Amateur World
03 Nov - 13 Dec 2007
Tong Biao
Geomancy
Charcoal, acrylic
1 meter diameter
Geomancy
Charcoal, acrylic
1 meter diameter
Wu Junyong
Carps
Animation
9 min
2007
Carps
Animation
9 min
2007
Ye Linghan
Osedax
Animation
5 min 18 sec
2007
Osedax
Animation
5 min 18 sec
2007
Zhu Li
Prediction
Color photography
90 x 135cm
Prediction
Color photography
90 x 135cm
Liu Weijian
A game without issue
Acrylic on canvas
100 x 200 cm
2007
A game without issue
Acrylic on canvas
100 x 200 cm
2007
Amateur World-- a Chinese contemporary art group show
Artists: Chen Wei, Chen Xiaoyun, Cheng Ran, Jin Shan, Liu Weijian, Lu Chunsheng, Lu Lei, Sun Xun, Tong Biao, Wu Junyong, Ye Linghan, Zhu Li.
“Here is almost a place for pseudoscience, here is no true more or less.”
-----Sierra Club declaration, 1911
At the beginning of the last century, an amateur astronomical observatory named “Sierra Club” was founded in Ethiopia. During its early stage, this club was commited to observing and recording astronomical phenomena. Later it became a place where café and spices’s amators used to gather; later still it became a branch of Ethiopian’s technics development institute. For a very short time, this club was a moral and disciplining committee. In the decades that followed, this club dealt with bootlegging and weapons smuggling. Time passed, and people slowly forgot the existence of this place. Later on, “Sierra Club” resumed its work as an organization involved in astronomical observation, weather reports and population census. But at the same time, the place was supporting underground activities such as illegal map reconnaissance, high-power electrotherapy and extreme human body experiments.
The only guideline of “Sierra Club” was refusing to concede life.
In general, human beings depend on life; even wilder than life is the World, which exists whether we can understand it or not. And beyond life, outside the World, we say it is emptiness.
Emptiness is even more awkward and more embarrassing than the notions of absurdity, surprise, numbness, fatness, the concepts of high power, partial nature, astronomical copies, science memos and even more than the ideas of OCT medicine, Arab bombs or satellite hitting the earth.
Thus, we can only look for another way of explanation; we can assume that there is another kind of world structure, a different way for us to look at this world that we might never understand. This structure is Amateur World.
Venue: Platform China Contemporary Art Institute Main Space A/B
Address: 319-1, East art zone A, Caochangdi Village, Chaoyang District, Beijing
Artists: Chen Wei, Chen Xiaoyun, Cheng Ran, Jin Shan, Liu Weijian, Lu Chunsheng, Lu Lei, Sun Xun, Tong Biao, Wu Junyong, Ye Linghan, Zhu Li.
“Here is almost a place for pseudoscience, here is no true more or less.”
-----Sierra Club declaration, 1911
At the beginning of the last century, an amateur astronomical observatory named “Sierra Club” was founded in Ethiopia. During its early stage, this club was commited to observing and recording astronomical phenomena. Later it became a place where café and spices’s amators used to gather; later still it became a branch of Ethiopian’s technics development institute. For a very short time, this club was a moral and disciplining committee. In the decades that followed, this club dealt with bootlegging and weapons smuggling. Time passed, and people slowly forgot the existence of this place. Later on, “Sierra Club” resumed its work as an organization involved in astronomical observation, weather reports and population census. But at the same time, the place was supporting underground activities such as illegal map reconnaissance, high-power electrotherapy and extreme human body experiments.
The only guideline of “Sierra Club” was refusing to concede life.
In general, human beings depend on life; even wilder than life is the World, which exists whether we can understand it or not. And beyond life, outside the World, we say it is emptiness.
Emptiness is even more awkward and more embarrassing than the notions of absurdity, surprise, numbness, fatness, the concepts of high power, partial nature, astronomical copies, science memos and even more than the ideas of OCT medicine, Arab bombs or satellite hitting the earth.
Thus, we can only look for another way of explanation; we can assume that there is another kind of world structure, a different way for us to look at this world that we might never understand. This structure is Amateur World.
Venue: Platform China Contemporary Art Institute Main Space A/B
Address: 319-1, East art zone A, Caochangdi Village, Chaoyang District, Beijing