Fang Lu | Momentum

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Berlin Beijing Artist Program Residency

(initiad by GEKA e.V. & BMW)

Fang Lu

CV – Website

17 August – 1 November 2015

Fang Lu at MOMENTUM_InsideOut Screening >>

The BERLIN BEIJING ARTIST PROGRAM, initiated by GEKA e.V. – Gesellschaft für Deutsch-Chinesischen Kulturellen Austausch * Association for German-Chinese Cultural Exchange – and BMW, this year features an Artist Residency with FANG LU, a chinese Video Artist, coordinated by MOMENTUM, with the support of the Sammlung Hoffmann.

Fang Lu (b. 1981, Guangzhou China) is a Chinese video artist. She received her BFA from Graphic Design department at School of Visual Art in New York in 2005, and MFA from the New Genres department at the San Francisco Arts Institute in 2007. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Boers-li Gallery, Beijing (2013); Pekin Fine Arts, Hong Kong (2013), Arrow Factory, Beijing (2012), Space Station, Beijing (2010), Borges Libreria Institute of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou (2011); and in group exhibitions such as the 28 Chinese in Rubell Family Collection Museum in Miami, My Generation in Tampa Museum (2014), On/Off in Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (2012), Shenzhen Sculpture Biennial (2012), CAFAM Future Exhibition (2012), We Remember the Sun in Walter & McBean Gallery in San Francisco (2008). She lives and works in Beijing.

Fang Lu is also the Co-Founder of Video Bureau, a non-profit organization that aims to provide a platform to exhibit, organize and archive video art. It has two spaces: one in Beijing and the other one in Guangzhou. The mission of Video Bureau is to collect and organize artworks of video artists in order to build a video archive that welcomes research and viewing. As an institute opens to the public, every two months Video Bureau features a new artist added to the archive, and hosts related events.

Still from ‘Sea of Silence’
A video By Fang Lu

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Sea of Silence is centered on the idea of speaking about love as a form of action. Part I of the work was developed and produced by Fang Lu during her stay at the Artport residency program in Israel. Three woman protagonists, as three very distinctive, unrelated individuals, talk to the camera of their experiences when they encountered love. They are situated in deserts. The untamed environment is a new habitat for them to pursue a new form of living.

Still from ‘Sea of Silence’
A video By Fang Lu

During her artist residency at MOMENTUM with the BERLIN BEIJING ARTIST PROGRAMME, Fang Lu creates the sequel of Sea of Silence. If Sea of Silence, Part I is about how one understands oneself, through the construction of a relationship, Fang Lu focuses the second part of this project on how one understands the other. The project invites women to describe in front of the camera one of their previous lovers: the physicality (such as height, hair, skin, color of the eyes); characteristics (personality); everyday habits; all the qualities that construct the subject as a human being. The descriptions should not include any names nor subjects’ social status. The narrators can speak in their native language.

The production of the sequel to “Sea of Silence” in Berlin is made possible by the generous support of the Sammlung Hoffmann.

Erika and Rolf Hoffmann began collecting contemporary art in 1968 for the inspiration and stimulation of living with it. Today, Erika Hoffmann opens her home to the public on Saturdays to share this experience with others. Sammlung Hoffmann is a private collection of contemporary art in all media. The collection is on display in Erika Hoffmann’s living and work spaces, which have been open to the public since 1997, upon appointment.

TOURS

Visitors are invited to join guided tours on Saturdays, in groups of up to ten. For approximately 90 minutes, a guide will serve as a moderator of sorts, hoping to spark conversation rather than simply presenting facts or accepted art-historical truths. Because a single visit could only provide an overview of the current selection, the guides decide which rooms to enter—based on their guests’ interests. The selection of works is installed in an associative manner. It is meant to offer a personal encounter with art that may impart a more lasting impression in this private setting than it would leave in a museum. There are no wall texts or captions that provide the artist’s name, the work’s title, or its year of production. The idea is to allow visitors a more immediate and emotional access to the works, while guides can provide additional information.

CURATOR

Erika Hoffmann updates the selection of works and rearranges the installation every July. Some pieces return to storage, others are moved to new locations. Works from storage often end up next to recent acquisitions. In this, Erika Hoffmann creates new relationships, explores the strengths of works in unexpected contexts, and sets out to uncover additional meanings.

About Berlin Beijing Artist Program Residency

The Berlin Beijing Artist Program Residency was initiated by GeKA e.V., the Association for German-Chinese Cultural Exchange, and BMW. The residency supports the artistic development and international careers of Chinese and German artists. It enables emerging talents to live and work in novel cultural contexts for a defined time-period. This Residency Program, active 2014 – 2016, enables each year two young artists (one Chinese, one German, ideally with at least one female artist) to spend two months working either in Berlin or Beijing. The artists are selected by a jury of established art world professionals. At the end of the residency period (2016), it is planned that all the residency artists are invited to exhibit their new works in Berlin, to acquaint a larger audience with their work.

With the generous support of