Yun-Fei Ji
the empty city
23 april - 24 may, 2004
also on view in Philadelphia:
Yun-Fei Ji: The East Wind
1 may - 1 august, 2004
Institute of Contemporary Art
University of Pennsylvania
118 South 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA
www.icaphila.org
the empty city - east wind,
2003
mineral pigment on xuan paper
35.5 x 53.5 inches
the empty city - calling the dead,
2003
mineral pigment on xuan paper
19 x 185 inches
the empty city - calling the dead,
(detail)
the empty city - calling the dead, (detail)
the empty city - listen to the
wind, 2003
mineral pigment on xuan paper
25 x 116.75 inches
the empty city - fragrant creek,
2003
mineral pigment on xuan paper
59.25 x 37.5 inches
press release
Pierogi is very pleased to present new work by Yun-Fei Ji. Ji's paintings reveal a sophisticated and oddly elegant mix of radically juxtaposed imagery. Traditional Chinese symbolism is subverted by contemporary references, dream sequences mix with "reality," and the living interact with the dead. Working on layers of mulberry paper, using a mix of wet and dry brush techniques with mineral pigments, Ji works the surface, sometimes clear through. Tan Lin describes the result as
...a mottled, crinkled paper ground that looks like it has suffered the enervations of a premature antiquity experiment. Colors vanish into nothing; a variety of ink lines, dots, brush strokes, and 'accidental' splotches wanes against the soaked ground of his paintings—only to re-emerge with demonic vigor elsewhere. (Lin, 2004)
Ji's compositions incorporate shifts in scale and perspective—his subjects and imagery unfold in a non-linear manner, allowing a variety of readings.
Multiple images are always looming into view while myriad others seem to be withdrawing or disappearing, turning the paintings, in effect, into conduits between the seen and the barely seen, present and past, meticulous observation and unbridled imagination. (Gregory Volk, 2004)
The Empty City refers to the towns and cities along 350 miles of the Yangtze River in China that have been emptied in preparation for the flooding of the Three Gorges area for the world's largest hydroelectric dam— over one million people have been displaced. The figures in the paintings are stragglers, scavengers, or ghosts. Some cling to the only place they have ever known as well as ancestral burial sites, while scavengers strip the area of any worthwhile scraps. In all of these works the dam itself never appears. Regarding the largest painting in the exhibition, "The Empty City—Calling the Dead," Tan Lin writes
The figures are painted in colors so muted they appear to be outlines of humans; the flood has yet to arrive but they are already memories in a washed out history. The painting depicts things left over, along with the dead who are seen and yet not seen, which is to say Ji's subject is an invisible history that has yet to have taken place and which cannot yet be spoken. (Lin, 2004)
Ji begins each body of work with a period of intense research; he may study historical events, review photographs, films and paintings and, as he did for the Three Gorges Project, visit the site taking numerous photographs. Athough this research informs the subjects of the paintings, it does not limit them. In the process of painting
...all of this research factors in, but it also gets thoroughly transformed. Photographs, for example, are worked up into notebook drawings, some of which...are sources for the numerous vignettes in his paintings. When they do enter the painting, they are always altered, resulting in a blurring of fact and fiction, documentation and imagination. (Volk, 2004)
Yun-Fei Ji was born in Beijing, China in 1963. While in high school Ji had several art teachers; one an army officer whose responsibility was to draw hand-to-hand combat scenes. In 1982 he recieved a BFA from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, after which he taught at the Beijing School of Arts and Crafts while studying calligraphy in his spare time. In 1986 Ji was invited to study in the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship and in 1989 he received an MFA from the University of Arkansas.
The Empty City is a traveling exhibition which was organized by the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and which will be on view at the Rose Museum, Brandeis University (Fall 2004) and elsewhere.
A catalogue—featuring essays by Tan Lin and Gregory Volk, and an interview between Ji and Melissa Chiu— has been published to accompany the exhibition.
bio
ONE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2004 The Empty City, Pierogi, Brooklyn, New York
The Empty City, Contemporary Art
Museum St. Louis, The Rose Museum (Brandeis University), and elsewhere
East Wind, ICA, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2003 The One-Hundred Old Names, ZenoX, Antwerp, Belgium
The One-Hundred Old Names, The Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York,
NY
2001 New Work, Pierogi, Brooklyn, New York
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2004
Initial Encounters, organized and curated by the Viewing Program
committee of the Drawing Center, The Arts Center of the Capital Region,
Troy, NY (March 12–June6, 2004)
Regeneration: Contemporary Art from China and the US, curated by
Dan Mills and Xiaoze Xie, organized by the Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell
University, PA (Opening at the Samek Art Gallery January 26 Ð April 4.
Traveling nationally between Summer 2004 and Fall 2006)
Open House: Working in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn,
NY (April 16ÐAugust)
2003
Thinking in Line, A Survey of Contemporary Drawing, curated by
John Moore and Ron Janowich, University Gallery, University of Florida,
Gainesville, FL (November 4ÐJanuary 10, 2004)
Reality/Fiction: (Re) Constructing Representation, Jamaica Center
for Arts & Learning, Inc., Jamaica, NY (Oct. 25, 2003ÐJanuary 17, 2004)
Strange Worlds, The Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery at Hunter
College (Oct. 30ÐDec. 13) catalogue
For the Record: Drawing Contemporary Life, The Vancouver Art Gallery
(June 28ÐSeptember 21)
In Heat, Pierogi, Brooklyn, NY (July 5Ð28)
Rendered, Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York, NY (June 17ÐAugust 1)
Breaking Away, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Clock Tower Fellowship
exhibition
Pierogi Presents, curated by Joe Amrhein, Bernard Toale Gallery,
Boston, MA
A Brush with Tradition: Chinese Tradition and Contemporary Art,
Newark Museum, curated by Carmen Ramos, Newark, NJ (April 23-July 6)
Beyond the Flâneur, ISE Cultural Foundation NY Gallery, curated
by Yasufumi Nakamori, NY 2002 Whitney Biennial
2002
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Umano Animale Vegetale Minerale, Galleria Alessandra Bonomo, Rome,
Italy
Fantasyland, d'Amelio Terras, New York, NY
Strolling Through an Ancient Shrine and Garden, ACME Gallery, Los
Angeles, CA
Selection 1; Made in Brooklyn, Wythe Studio, curated by Phong Bui,
Brooklyn, NY
Faux Real, Borusan Art & Culture, Istanbul
PROJECT 3, curated by Elga Wimmer, Elga Wimmer Gallery, New York,
NY
Altoid's Curiously Strong Collection, New Museum for Contemporary Art,
New York, NY
Fellow's Exhibition, Art Association, Provincetown, RI
2001
Best of the Season, Selected Work from the 2000-01 Manhattan Exhibition
Season, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT
ArtForum Berlin 2001, work exhibited by Pierogi, Berlin
Brooklyn!, Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art; Palm Beach,
Florida
Selection, The Drawing Center, New York, NY
2000
The Meat Market Art Fair, Pierogi, Brooklyn, New York
The Old News, curated by Sabine Russ and Gregory Volk, P.S. 122
Gallery, New York, NY
Haulin' Ass: Pierogi in L.A., Post Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Multiple Sensations, Yerba Buena Center For The Arts, San Francisco,
CA
Super Duper New York, Pierogi, Brooklyn, NY
1999 Sensation, Richard Anderson Gallery, New York, NY
Faculty Show, Lemmerman Gallery, Jersey City, New Jersey
1998 Yun-Fei Ji, Andrea Dezso, Randy Wray, Jack Tilton Gallery, New York,
NY
1997 Fermented, Parsons School of Design, New York, NY
Relocating Landscape-East and West, Caldwell College, Caldwell, New Jersey
Artist in the Marketplace Program, The Bronx Museum, New York, NY
Travel-Sized, City College, New York, NY
Reflecting Pool, Kenkeleban Gallery, New York, NY
Twelve Cicadas in the Tree of Knowledge, Asian American Arts Center, New
York, NY
1996 Immigrant Artists from East and West, ONETWENTYEIGHT Galley, New
York
1993 Recent Paintings, Meredith Long Gallery, Houston, Texas
1990 Introduction, Meredith Long Gallery, Houston, Texas
AWARDS
2004 Sharp Foundation Fellowship, New York, NY
2003 PS1 Contemporary Arts National Studio Program Fellowship, LIC, NY
2002 Headland Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA
2001-02 Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown,
Rhode Island
2001 Art OMI, New York 1999 New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, works
on paper
1998 Joan Mitchel Foundation Grant
1997 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant
1996 The Millay Colony For the Arts. Residency, Austerlitz, New York
Artist in the Marketplace Program, the Bronx Museum, New York
1995 The Ucross Foundation, Clearmont, Wyoming
1994 Banff Center for the Arts, Banff, Canada
1993 The Macdowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire
1991 Henry Street Settlement, New York
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Elena Sorokina. "Williamsburg–das New Yorker Galerienwunder,"
Junge Kunst, Nr.56, Fall 2003. pp.22-27 (illus.)
Carly Berwick, "Before the Deluge," (Artists to Watch: 10 People
Who Are Making Waves in the Art World), Art News, September 2003, Vol.102
/ No.8. pp.101-102.
Mel Watkin, "Grasping the Ungraspable: Yun-Fei Ji's classical forms
document China's controversial modernization," Art Papers, September/October
2003. p. 18-19
"De doorbraak van de Amerikaanse Chinees Yun-Fei Ji: China Herschreven
de Geschiedenis Van," Kunstbeeli, No. 07/08 2003. pp.19-21
Robert Knafo, "Yun-Fei Ji: Moral Vistas," Art in America, No.
6, June 2003. pp. 104-7, 137
Charlie Homans, "Folk Songs of the Flood: Yun-Fei Ji and The One
Hundred Old Names, Museo 6, Spring 2003 (printed at Columbia University,
NYC). pp. 20-25
Michael Wilson, "Yun-Fei Ji: Pratt Manhattan Gallery," Artforum,
XLI, No 9, May 2003. p.171. (illus.)
Ken Johnson, "Yun-Fei Ji 'The Old One-Hundred Names,'" The New
York Times, Art Reviews, Last Chance, April 11, 2003. p. E37 Ken Johnson,
"Yun-Fei Ji 'The Old One Hundred Names," The New York Times,
Art Reviews, April 4, 2003. p. E35
The New Yorker, April 7, 2003.
Harper's Magazine, February 2003. Image.
Frances Richard, Critics Pick, Boiled or Fried, ArtForum on-line, July
2002
Nancy Princenthal, "Whither the Whitney Biennial?" Art in America,
June 2002
Tim Griffin, "Bi American," Time Out NY, March 14-21, 2002
Roberta Smith, "Bad News for Art, However You Define It," The
New York Times, March 31, 2002
Holland Cotter, "Spiritual America, From Ecstatic to Transcendent,"
The New York Times, March 8, 2002
Jerry Saltz, "American Bland Stand," The Village Voice, March
7, 2002
Dan Bischoff, "Moving images: At the Whitney Biennial, everything–even
the facade–is in motion," The Star-Ledger, March 7, 2002
Blake Gopnik, "The Armory Show, With Wit in Store," The Washington
Post, March 3, 2002
Smith, Roberta, Yun-Fei Ji, The New York Times, June 29, 2001
Shaw, Lytle, Art Reviews, Time Out NY, June 21-28, 2001
Olesen, Alexa, Ji Yun-fei Puts a New Spin on an Old Landscape, Virtual
china.com, 2000
Cotter, Holland, A Flock of Fledglings Testing Their Wings, The New York
Times, 1997
Introduction, Houston Chronicle, 1989
Scott, Daniel, Two Artists from China, Boston Chronicle, 1987
Fine Arts, art journal published in China, 1985
Art Journal, art journal published in China
EDUCATION
1989 M.F.A Fullbright College of Art and
Science. U.S.A.
1982 B.F.A Centual Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, P.R. China
BORN
1963, Beijing
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noon to 6p thursday through monday and by appointment
pierogi is an innovative art gallery in williamsburg, brooklyn, new
york