Cai Hong // Rainbow – photography now

We are pleased to announce that on the 1st of December 2006 at 18:30 at Palermo's Galleria dell'Arco, via Siracusa 9 will open Xiong Wen Yun's personal exhibition entitled Cai Hong ('Rainbow'). The Chinese artist, amongst the most celebrated and esteemed working on an international stage, will be presenting her work for the first time in Italy. For this her first showing, Xiong Wen Yun will exhibit at the Galleria dell'Arco a selection of photographic images. The artist will also install a site-specific project in the city.

The exhibition, curated by Paola Nicita, consists of approximately twenty large-format pictures that document and at the same time belong in a project that Xiong Wen Yun designed and realized in China between 1998 and 2001. The project 'Rainbow-Cai Hong' is organized as an articulated ensemble of outdoor performances, environmental installations, and production of photographs. The photographs that will be exhibited in Palermo are both an element of her larger project and a direct vehicle of the artistic values expressed by the artist.

'Marking' several lorries with gigantic cloths painted in the seven colours of the rainbow, the artist leads a long and colorful caravan along the desolate and impassable route that connects Bejing with the Tibetan Plateau, passing through town and cities inhabited by and peoples for whom art and color remain alien concepts. Thus, the artist has created metaphorically a living rainbow with the dual intent of sharing and, at the same time, investigating the revelatory and magical power of colour. Embodied here in the most harmonious and perfect naturally-occurred structure of the rainbow, colour succedes, almost imperceptibly, in transforming perceptions of nature and landscape as it reveals a transcendental content and explores the mysterious and intimate relationship between art and nature.
For Xiong Wen Yun, art is a shared legacy that thrives when lavished on the people, those same people who ultimately allow art to live. Thus, the idea of the artistic experience as a moment of sharing together with the use of codes of Land Art conceived of as a collective performance constitute the historico-critical coordinates against which we must read a work which presents itself as a bridge (the very structure of the rainbow). In presenting itself thusly, the work of art seeks to act as a bridge between the universalistic aspirations of an "art of the people and amongst the people," and a profound and lyrical reassessment of the value of colour and the rainbow in Chinese culture, and, in particular, in the Buddhist interpretation of Tibetan tradition (for the Tibetan monks, the rainbow symbolises the ladder that unites the earthly sphere with the celestial).

As curator Nicita writes, "Xiong's is a simultaneously political and emotional performance that is able to combine different aspects in one perfect gesture. In this manner, her artistic action succeeds in acting in a well-constructed context: it becomes performance in the moment in which Xiong successfully persuades the lorry drivers who transport goods along the border between China and Tibet to cover their cargo with large coloured cloths and again when the homes on the border are draped with cloths coloured by the artist. And her work is certainly a metaphor of a new politics that seeks to oppose institutional hierarchies by means of a poetic sublime according to which the pursuit of the sign coincides perfectly with the very essence of colour.

The pictures which will be shown in Palermo were previously part of an important collective exhibit entitled "Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China", an exhibit which introduced a selection of the most important video and photographic Chinese artists to an American and in European audience. The various galleries which were home to this exhibit include the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, the Seattle Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and at the David and Alfred Smart Museum both in Chicago, and the International Center of Photography in New York City. Recently, the CCTV, the first Chinese State Television, dedicated and entire special to the 'Rainbow-Cai Hong' project.

A catalogue will be published presently and will include the curator's written commentary as well as a selection of images pertinent to the both the exhibit and the site-specific installation for Palermo.

(Translated from italian by Francesco Caruso )

Xiong Wen Yun - Biography
Born in Sichuan, China

1979
Art Exibithion of Sichuan, China
1980
Youth Chinese Art Works Exhibition, (Excellent work prize) National
Fine Art Museum, Beijing
1981
Chinese Art Works Exhibition, (Excellent work prize) National Fine
Art Museum, Beijing
1984
6° Edition of Chinese Art Exhibition, National Fine Art Museum,
Beijing
1985
Youth Chinese Art Works Exhibition, (Excellent work prize) National
Fine Arte Museum, Beijing
1986
Group Exhibition - Central Art College, Beijing
1989
15° International Artists Association Exibithion (Prize), National
Art Museum, Tokyo Japan
Personal Exibithion - Hasegawa Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
1990
Personal Exibithion - Hasegawa Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
1991
18° Liqizuo Exibithion, (Prize) National Art Museum, Tokyo
Personal Exibithion, China Gallery, Yokohama, Japan
1992
Personal Exibithion, Scotsdel Gallery, Ginza Tokyo, Japan
Japan China Korea International Exchange Exhibition, National Art
Museum, Tokyo Japan
1993
19° Soga Spring Exhibition, National Art Museum, Tokyo
28° Liqi Spring Exhibition, National Art Museum, Tokyo
Personal Exhibition, Hirose Gallery, Ibaraki, Japan
1994
Personal Exhibition, Tsukuba Art Museum , Japan
Asia Modern Art Exhibition (International Prize), National Art Museum,
Tokyo
1995
Personal Exhibition, O Museum, Tokyo, Japan
1996
Personal Exhibition, National Fine Art Museum, Beijing
Personal Exhibition, Art Center of Nan Kai University, Tian Jing,
China
1997
Personal Exhibition, Saitama Ken, Japan
Personal Exhibition, Towakasai Gallery, Tokyo Japan
Chuo Wei, National Fine Arts Museum of China, Beijing
"Rainbow Road" Earth Art Works on the Sichuan Prov. -
Tibet Prov Line China
1999
Personal Exhibition, Otemaqi Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
Media Intervention, Contemporary Art Exhibition,Hong Kong,China
Tachikawa International Art Festival,Japan
Cai Hong - Cheng Du - Chang Du, China
2000
Group Exhibition - Tokyo Plaza Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
2001
"Rainbow Road" Beijing - Everest Environmental Protection
Art Activity
Chinese Contemporary Photography, Gallery Steinek-Halle, Vienna,
Austria
Personal Exhibition, "Rainbow from Beijing to Everest"
, Xi Dan Technical Plaza, Beijing
2002
"Rainbow Road" Exhibition , FUJIKAWA Gallery, Osaka, Japan
Golden Harvest-Chinese Contemporary Art, Croatia
2004
Between Past and Future-New Photography and Video from China
The Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Haus der Kulturen der Welt , Berlin
Art Museum, Seattle
Museum of Modern Art, Chicago
David and Alfred Smart Museum, Chicago
International Center of Photography, New York
Shanghai Modern Arts Festival in the Pudong,China
China Chengdu Biennale, China
Pingyao International Photography Show, China
"The other end" He Xiang Ning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China
2005
Rainbow Magic Pen - The Kid's Painting Experimental Course,
Anni Gallery, Beijing
Art Game Exhibition - movement experience of contemporary art, He
Xiang Ning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China
Group Exhibition, ½ Space, Chong Qin, China