Points International Residency Exhibition III
In autumn 2019, Points Center for Contemporary Art is honored to participate in diverse international cooperative partnerships such as the Australian Jiangsu-Victoria Sister State 40th Anniversary art exchange and the Dutch cooperative institution V2_Lab for the Unstable Media’s international artist exchange program, Summer Sessions.
Following a series of international residency projects in June this year, Points Center for Contemporary Art welcomed the third exhibition of its international residency project. In separate spaces, Australian artist Dane Lovett and Dutch artist Minke Nouwens present the creations of their residencies in China for the first time with personalized creative themes.
Dane Lovett A Maiden Falling Asleep
In Dane Lovett's exhibition space, a series of oil paintings with the theme “A Maiden Falling Asleep” expresses the artist's emotional interaction with local culture during his residency. These images are inspired by the water flowing through the town and the plants that float above the town’s canals and lake, which the artist would pass by each day on his way to breakfast. The images are naturally agile and imbued with a sense of peace that has a far-reaching and mysterious quality. These works also continue the artist's interest in creating “repetitive paintings.”
If Dane Lovett's previous work deals with the same or different image sets, then this series of works is based on the same scene — although there are subtle differences in cropping, zooming in or out of each piece. As the painter himself describes, the themes of these works may be similar, but like breakfast, they need to be consumed every day.
Minke Nouwens A Ghostly Life
Unlike Dane Lovett's flowing images, Minke Nouwens, a visual artist and anthropologist, chose “A Ghostly Life” as the theme to present an experimental exploration through three sculptures. Blue glass sculptures, white glass sculptures with black mirrors, and a two-part LED lighting sculpture together form a narrative about writing code and transforming it into a visual interaction of humans today. Screens, such as laptops, touchpads, or smartphones, present the viewer with a physical experience of an invisible life that invades by machine code.
Through the three important carriers of glass, LED lights, and text, Minke Nouwens attempts to use this set of installation programs to provide viewers with imaginary sounds of the digital world, enabling them to derive, forward, and inspire their viewers to think about hidden existences and meanings with their own limited programming language capabilities. At the same time, the artist puts himself and the viewer in the code, through his eyes, to observe the world, to test the subtle relationship between humans and technology and its function as a communication medium.
The exhibition is co-organized and supported by the following organizations: State Government of Victoria, Australia; The Foreign Affairs Office of Jiangsu Provincial People's Government; Asialink Arts; Fortress Contemporary Art Foundation; Nanjing University of the Arts; V2_Lab for the Unstable Media, the Netherland.