Getting modern life into shape

• Source: Global Times
• [09:14 September 02 2010]
• Comments

Red Beacon by Arne Quinze. Photo: Cai Xianmin

By Nick Muzyczka

A balmy, iridescent Tuesday evening in Shanghai saw the opening of the Jing'an International Sculpture Project situated across nine sites including Jing'an Sculpture Park, Moller Villa, Plaza 66, among others.

Coming at a time when the continuous appearance of Expo-related projects has perhaps numbed some to their effect, this major development promises to inject real energy into proceedings.

Organized by the Jing'an district government and planned with the Purple Roof Art Gallery, the exhibition is a truly international affair with 31 artists from eight different countries and regions.

The exhibition aims to reflect the most contemporary issues facing metropolitan residents, both in Shanghai and throughout the world.

According to curator Huang Du, the project looks to "analyze and interpret aesthetic issues such as modern public art and public aesthetic education, historical memory and daily experience."

The very particular flavor of modern Shanghai life, composed of overlapping colonial, regional and international influences, has given the participating artists a rich tapestry within which to situate their art.

The result is an exhibition with an impressive range of colors, moods and expressions.

"Whether it is pop or conceptual language, or whether minimalist or abstract in style, these works combine serious cultural analysis with relaxed visual pleasure and a sense of humor," said Huang.

Among the big names on show at the Jing'an Sculpture Park is Belgian artist, sculptor and designer Arne Quinze.

Most famous for his elaborate public sculptures, Quinze offers Red Beacon, a highly complex wooden sculpture that rises from several stilts or legs, before unfolding into a form that weaves through the treetops.

The work is both powerful and delicate, and aims to bring people together, according to Quinze.

"We now live very quickly. Everybody is always walking somewhere, or typing away on the Internet," he told the Global Times.

The complexity of Quinze's structure reflects this dynamism and energy.

"With this installation, every wooden beam is a person and every overlapping connection is a crossover between people," he explained.

"I always adapt my installation to the local surroundings, be they trees or a bridge or a square, but the work tries to go further. This concept has traveled all over the world and always has the same reaction. With this piece you go inside it, under it, you are absorbed by it," Quinze said.

Continuity with the landscape is also important to American artist Barbara Edelstein, whose work Harmony, from her Elemental Spring series is one of the few sculptures to be selected as a permanent piece in the park.

The twists and turns of its 350 meters of copper piping are counterpoised with a leaf-like structure that strains upwards toward the light. In several places water runs from the structure in streams that are individually illuminated by lights at the base of the work.