Chiu-Ti Jansen Interviewed Armory Show China Focus Curator Philip Tinari
New York, NY (PRWEB) March 10, 2014 -- CHINA HAPPENINGS™ is pleased to announce that its founder Chiu-Ti Jansen interviewed Philip Tinari, curator of the 2014 Armory Show CHINA FOCUS and Director of The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (UCCA), in her blog titled CHINESE ELEMENTS for Sotheby’s International. Titled “The China That Philip Tinari Wants You To Know,” their conversation focused on how the show attempted to smash many stereotypes about China’s art world, from variety of artistic expressions, gallery system, collector bases to artistic practices.
http://www.sothebys.com/en/news-video/blogs/all-blogs/chinese-elements/2014/03/the-china-that-philip-tinari-wants-you-to-know.html
Chiu-Ti Jansen, Founder of the CHINA HAPPENINGS™ brand, who attended the VIP preview and commented: “CHINA HAPPENINGS™ takes it as its mission to present contemporary China in its multi-faceted dimensions. I share a heart-felt affinity with Mr. Tinari’s attempt to rectify many common misconceptions about contemporary Chinese art.”
The Armory Show, a leading international contemporary and modern art fair and one of the most important annual art events in New York, took place on Piers 92 & 94 in central Manhattan during March 6-9 this year. Dedicated to showcasing the most important artworks of the 20th and 21st centuries, the curated section of The Armory Show on Pier 94 highlighted the gallery and artistic landscape of a chosen geographic region. For the fifth Focus edition, Mr. Tinari curated Armory Focus: China, shedding new light on the country’s contemporary cultural practice.
Ms. Jansen observed that as an initial impression the CHINA FOCUS show did not come across as very “Chinese,” meaning, the works on display did not share a common denominator that could be handily classified with a shared cultural identity. To show the diversity of the contemporary Chinese art scene, Mr. Tinari explained that eight or nine artists presented were born in the late 70s and 80s and included in the “ON/OFF” exhibition at the UCCA last year, while artists from the Stars Group generation, such as Wang Keping and Huang Rui, also participated with their earlier and recent works.
For Mr. Tinari, by presenting the artists in the context of an art fair, he was also bringing galleries to New York. “You show that there are these great galleries in China . . . . People did not realize that suddenly in China you have this incredible gallery scene. There was this stereotype of Chinese artists being disloyal [to galleries] and would sell works out of their own studios. Actually in the last couple of years this has all been changing, because the quality of the galleries has gone so much better.”
Similarly, Mr. Tinari described Chinese collectors, some of whom were visiting the Armory Show, as getting more sophisticated and increasingly so. “You see more and more collectors who are learning so much about art so quickly. Many of them are new to the field. So many of them I know are interested in this for intellectual reasons. For them, art is a way to think through issues they face in their careers, their lives and their society. There is this stereotype about Chinese collectors being just investors. I don’t think it is true.”
CHINA HAPPENINGS™
CHINA HAPPENINGS™ is a multimedia platform founded by Chiu-Ti Jansen that focuses on the lifestyle and cultural industries in contemporary China. Ms. Jansen is a TV presenter, a lifestyle magazine publisher and a writer based in New York City with a pulse on China. She hosts TV and video presentations on fashion and style for Phoenix TV, Phoenix Fashion and SINA Fashion, and writes a blog titled CHINESE ELEMENTS for international auction house Sotheby’s (http://www.sothebys.com/en/news-video/blogs/all-blogs/chinese-elements.html) and a fashion and style column titled NEW YORK IN STYLE for the Financial Times’ Chinese edition (http://www.ftchinese.com/column/007000053). Prior to founding CHINA HAPPENINGS, Ms. Jansen was a New York-based corporate partner of an international law firm. A native speaker and write of Mandarin Chinese, Ms. Jansen holds advanced degrees from Yale University and Columbia Law School and serves on the Contemporary Art Advisory Committee of China Institute in America and the Board of the Couture Council of Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT).
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