Xu Jiang

Xu Jiang ( Chinese  許 江 , Pinyin Xǔ Jiāng ; * 1955 ) from Fuzhou is a Chinese painter and president of the Chinese Academy of the Arts in Hangzhou .

biography

Xǔ Jiāng completed his training as a modern painter ( oil painter ) in 1982 . When oil painting in Chinese painting the entire western style is called. Despite these formative contacts with modern Western painting, he has remained a teacher of traditional Chinese methods. At the beginning of Deng Xiaoping's reforms from 1978 onwards, the Chinese University of the Arts in Zhejiang introduced modern art from abroad relatively early and promoted artistic exchange with the West. As a result, Xu got to know other art concepts and styles at an early stage. During this personal development he was able to place himself under the protection of the political maxim : "Say goodbye to the classical and rebel against the orthodox".

In 1988 he went to the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and shortly afterwards began to experiment with other materials, expanded concepts and new styles in abstract oil paintings and art in public spaces .

At present you can divide your work into two areas:

• the abstract painting and
• the connection of painting and sculpture to painted sculpture.

In Chinese oil painting , the four-part wall screens , which he began painting after his stay in Germany, must be emphasized.

Offices

• Professor of the Chinese College of Arts and its President
• Director of the Association of Fine Artists of China
• Member of the Committee of Oil Painters of China
• Board member in the Society of Oil Painters of China
• Deputy Chairman of the Society of Zhèjiāng Artists
• Chairman of the Society of Oil Painters in Zhèjiāng

Reception of his works

The reception of his work shows that different aspects are emphasized in China and Germany. While the Chinese side mainly emphasizes the emotional and structural embedding in the culture of Chinese painting, which are, however, definitely connected with formal elements of the Western style, the discussion of the "Sunflowers" exhibited in Dresden and Kassel in 2012 shows their socially critical symbolic content in put in the foreground:

• Chinese commentary

“The painting collection Four Seasons, Eight Cardinal Points, published by him, is a special collection of his abstract paintings. [...] But he gave it his love for the mountains and rivers of his fatherland. These works all have the structure of four-part screens - they obviously have an eastern shape. Brush strokes of wandering clouds and flowing water show the everlasting charm of Chinese ink painting. [...] Spring sacrifice, the harmony of the landscape, summer ears of corn [...] and other abstract works [...] are on the one hand connected to the Chinese tradition by the form of four-part screen, on the other hand they show the entire breadth of the technique of western painting. "

• German commentary

“XU Jiang made his first experience of Germany in 1988/89 as part of a study visit to the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg. Today he works as a professor, curator and artist with a focus on landscape painting. His landscapes are an expression of spiritual as well as intellectual and cultural issues that preoccupy the artist in his perception of the world. He often combines traditional art with new media. "

" As part of the Chinese year of culture, XU's sunflowers have already been shown in the Dresden State Art Collection. The sunflower motif has determined both XU's oil paintings and his installations since 2003. They tie in with his time as a teacher in Fujian Province and are reminiscent of that of Sunflower-shaped campus of the China Academy of Art, of which XU is director. They combine Western art with traditional Chinese aesthetics. […] The sunflowers evoke very different associations in the Chinese context. At XU, the flowers appear on the one hand half withered and with bowed heads They are reminiscent of the dramatic effects of the Cultural Revolution on his generation. AI Weiwei also sees the sunflowers in his work “ Sunflower Seeds ” as the masses that lean towards the MAO, the sun, and on which they threaten to burn at the same time. Also XUs Flowers can be interpreted in this ambivalence, because they show through their turn in different e cardinal points the necessity of a generation influenced by the cultural revolution to reorient themselves. "

Awards

• 1993: Art that will always flourish

Exhibitions

There were exhibitions of Xu among other things

• 1984: Brothers and Sisters of Overseas Chinese , 6th National Art Exhibition
• 1986: Army drummers and trumpeters , National Fine Arts Exhibition
• 1987: Beyond the Open Door
• From 1988 to 1989 he worked in Germany at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg. He also showed his series Jiang xiang he (將 相合) within the exhibition of young Chinese art in Saarbrücken
• 1991: Second exhibition of the new academic group
• 1992: Annual exhibition of Chinese oil painting in Hong Kong
• 1993: Anniversary celebration of the Chinese Academy of the Arts in Zhejiang
• 1994: Exhibition of the works in the Chinese College of Arts
• 1995: “Exhibition of New Chinese Art” in Hamburg
• 2001: Heaven and Earth: Two Visions of China (with Shi Hui) , Chicago, USA
• 2006: Far West , Kunsthaus Hamburg
• 2012: Everything under heaven belongs to everyone , Kassel.
• 2012: Re-Generation , Lipsiusbau, Dresden

Publications

• "From Sketch to Design", Fine Arts Publishing House, Zhejiang
• "Four seasons, eight cardinal points", Hong Kong Yihualang.
• "Far West - KP Brehmer , Xu Jiang, Shan Fan, Wu Shanzhuan. Four artists between Germany and China [paperback] Claus Mewes (author).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Chinese biography of Xu Jiang . Artcaves. Archived from the original on December 8, 2015. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved February 22, 2013. 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Press release on the Far West exhibition. . © kunstaspekte international art information. Retrieved February 21, 2013.
3. ↑ Review of Sunflowers Chinese Public Art . Chinese Public Art press release. Retrieved February 22, 2013.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Exhibition list by Xu Jiang . Artnet Worldwide. Retrieved February 21, 2013.
5. ^ Far west: KP Brehmer…; four artists between Germany and China; Exhibition: Kunsthaus Hamburg, 15.09. - October 22nd, 2006 as part of "China Time" Hamburg 13.09. - October 1, 2006 / [Ed .: Claus Mewes. Translator: Lucian Hamid… ] . Ebenhausen near Munich; Hamburg: Dölling and Galitz Hangzhou: Volksverl. for art Zhejiang. Retrieved February 21, 2013.
6. ^ First major retrospective by Xu Jiang in Dresden , Focus Online, May 9, 2013
7. ^ Press release Far West . Kunsthaus Hamburg. Retrieved February 22, 2013.