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WATER FORMING STONE: HE YUNCHANG

Past exhibition
17 October 2015 - 6 February 2016
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Overview
He Yunchang 何云昌, Eyesight Test 视力检测, 2003
He Yunchang 何云昌, Eyesight Test 视力检测, 2003

INK studio is pleased to present He Yunchang's solo exhibition Water Forming Stone, which includes a brand-new series of three performances and a selection of his past works. Trained as an oil painter, He Yunchang (b. 1967 in Lianghe, Yunnan) turned towards performance art in the early 1990's and has become one of its most committed and challenging practitioners. By treating his own body as both medium and object, he turns abstract philosophical concepts and the amorphous transformations of our times into experiences that are concretely comprehensible and lived. Indeed, he refers to his practice in Chinese as xianchang yishu or "live art" in distinction to the sense of "performance" as acting. Testing the extremes of psychological and physical endurance, his works achieve a poetic and cathartic intimacy that reverberates through and beyond their visceral impact. 

 

Water Forming Stone marks a critical transition in He Yunchang's career: in his own words, an expansive opening after summiting a peak and a tranquility after a mortal confrontation. Unfolding as a narrative, the tripartite performance series also evokes the formation and evolution of life, nature, and society. It engages ink, water, and paper—the essential elements of the classical ink tradition—as well as the artist’s own interpretations of the philosophical dialectics between solid and void, yielding and unyielding, active and inactive, pure and impure, past and present.

 

Curated by Nataline Colonnello, INK studio Gallery Director, the exhibition surveys documentation and material artifacts of He Yunchang's past works, including Dialogue with Water (1999), in which he attempted over 90 minutes to cut a river into two halves with a knife while hanging upside-down from a crane; The Rock Tours Around Great Britain (2006-2007), in which he carried a rock from the northeastern coast of England and returned it there after walking 3,500 kilometers counterclockwise along the perimeter of Britain; One Rib (2008), in which he had his eighth rib—one of the longest and most vital—surgically removed and made into a necklace, and then posed for photographs with the five most important women in his life wearing it; and Eyesight Test (2003), in which he stared at close distance at 10,000 watts of light for an hour.

 

Born and raised in western Yunnan near the Myanmar border, He Yunchang graduated from the oil painting department of the Yunnan Arts University in 1991. He has held solo exhibitions at such major venues as the National Gallery of Belgium (2013) and Indonesia National Museum (2008). He has participated in group exhibitions at the Yokohama Triennale (2014); China Pavilion, the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); Fukuoka Triennale (2009); Performa (2007); Sharjah International Art Biennial (2003); and Busan Biennale (2002); as well as Groninger Museum, Gwanju Museum of Art, Seoul Museum of Art, and National Museum of China, among many others. He is the recipient of International Exchange Award of the Macao Museum of Art (2006) and the First Yan Wenliang Art Award (2011). His works may be found in the collections, among others, of the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney, Australia; Macao Museum of Art, Macao, China; and in the private collections of Uli Sigg and Jin Hongwei.

 

Performance Schedule

 

The Expanse of Tranquility

October 17, 2015 (Sat), 16:30-20:00

 

Cloud Shadows at the Heart of the Mirror

October 24, 2015 (Sat), 16:30-18:30

 

The Embrace of Wind and Dew

October 31, 2015 (Sat), 16:30-20:00

Works
  • He Yunchang 何云昌, One Rib 一根肋骨, 2008
    He Yunchang 何云昌, One Rib 一根肋骨, 2008
  • He Yunchang 何云昌, One Meter of Democracy 一米民主, 2010

    He Yunchang 何云昌, One Meter of Democracy 一米民主, 2010

  • He Yunchang 何云昌, Eyesight Test 视力检测, 2003
    He Yunchang 何云昌, Eyesight Test 视力检测, 2003
  • He Yunchang 何云昌, Wrestling:One and One Hundred 摔跤1和100, 2001
    He Yunchang 何云昌, Wrestling:One and One Hundred 摔跤1和100, 2001
  • He Yunchang 何云昌, Nirvana-Flesh 涅磐肉身, 2013
    He Yunchang 何云昌, Nirvana-Flesh 涅磐肉身, 2013
  • He Yunchang 何云昌, Keeping Promise 抱柱之信, 2003
    He Yunchang 何云昌, Keeping Promise 抱柱之信, 2003
  • He Yunchang 何云昌, The Rock Tours Around Great Britain 石头英国漫游记, 2006-2007

    He Yunchang 何云昌, The Rock Tours Around Great Britain 石头英国漫游记, 2006-2007

  • He Yunchang 何云昌, Dream of Travel—From Fukuoka Asian Art Musem to Fuji Mount 卧游—从福冈美术馆到富士山, 2009

    He Yunchang 何云昌, Dream of Travel—From Fukuoka Asian Art Musem to Fuji Mount 卧游—从福冈美术馆到富士山, 2009

  • He Yunchang 何云昌, The Needle Confronts a Huge Moster 针对庞然大物, 2000

    He Yunchang 何云昌, The Needle Confronts a Huge Moster 针对庞然大物, 2000

  • He Yunchang 何云昌, Hongtashan Brand Cigarette 红塔山, 2008
    He Yunchang 何云昌, Hongtashan Brand Cigarette 红塔山, 2008
  • He Yunchang 何云昌, Weather Forecase: Sunny from 1950-2050 天气预报1050-2050, 晴,2002

    He Yunchang 何云昌, Weather Forecase: Sunny from 1950-2050 天气预报1050-2050, 晴,2002

  • He Yunchang 何云昌, 010 010, 2000
    He Yunchang 何云昌, 010 010, 2000
  • He Yunchang 何云昌, Inner Sanctuary 心殿, 2015
    He Yunchang 何云昌, Inner Sanctuary 心殿, 2015
Installation Views
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Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: He Yunchang: Water Forming Stone 何云昌:王道至柔
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: 2015.12.04_INK_Studio_Beijing_He_Yunchang_0022_LO-RES.jpg

He Yunchang: Water Forming Stone 何云昌:王道至柔

Documents
  • Drowned in Faith's Embrace

    Ink Studio
  • My only requirement is to stay alive

    He Yunchang
Publications
  • Water Forming Stone: The Live Art of He Yunchang

    Water Forming Stone: The Live Art of He Yunchang

    2016
    Hardcover 精装 112 pages
    Publisher: Ink Studio 墨齋画廊
    ISBN: 978-0-9977386-0-5
    Read more
Events
  • Art021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair 2015

    Art021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair 2015

    He Yunchang, Tao Aimin, Yang Jiechang 19 - 22 Nov 2015
    Booth A-24 November 19 - 22, 2015 Shanghai Exhibition Center, 1000 Yan'an Middle Road At Art021 2015 in Shanghai, INK studio will present works by three highly experimental artists: He Yunchang, Tao Aimin, and Yang Jiechang. Each of them is deeply engaged with ink as a cultural tradition and an artistic medium, but each is also redefining it in a radically different manner. In Dream Journey—From Fukuoka Asian Art Museum to Mount Fuji , performance artist He Yunchang (b. 1967) excavates himself from 999 rocks as he inscribes on each...
    Read more

Related artist

  • He Yunchang 何云昌

    He Yunchang 何云昌

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Red No. 1-B1, Caochangdi

Chaoyang District, Beijing, China 100015

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