The Red Mansion Foundation: Contemporary Chinese Art

The Red Mansion Foundation is in dialogue with the following artists through residencies, exhibitions, lectures and other events:
CANG XIN CAO FEI CHEN SHAOXIONG CUI GUOTAI	FANG LIJUN HE SEN LI JI LIU DING	LIU WEI MIAO XIAOCHUN SHI JING SHI XINNING	SONG DONG WANG NINGDE WENG FEN XING DANWEN	XU ZHONGMIN YANG QIAN ZHAN WANG ZHAO BANDI

OCTOBER 2007 QIU JIE ARTIST IN RESIDENCY
In October 2007 The Red Mansion Foundation invited Qiu Jie to London to take part in an artist residency, part of our wider programme of exchange activities. Qiu Jie stayed in London for one month and produced a new series of work based on his encounters and impressions of London, which will be shown at The Red Mansion Foundation in Spring 2008.

Having trained in both Chinese high-realism and European multi-media schools, Qiu Jie's drawings are informed from a wide range of aesthetic influence. Executed in massive scale, and taking months to complete, Qiu's pencil drawings are achievements of awesome endeavour. His painstaking process is canonised in the timeless quality of his images, which merge the styles and iconography of ancient Chinese art with traditional and contemporary western imagery and references.

Bateau 2
Lead pencil on paper
1993
300cm x 245cm

NOVEMBER 2006 - CANG XIN ARTIST IN RESIDENCY
In November 2006 Cang Xin stayed in London for one month as an artist in residence with The Red Mansion Foundation, during which time he produced a new series of work 'Identity Exchange: London Series', a continuation of the ongoing 'Identity Exchange' series.

Cang Xin is one of the first performance artists to come out of China after 1989, from the East Village in Beijing along with Zhang Huan and Ma Liuming. In his ongoing 'Identity Exchange' series, he asks workers from different professions if he may wear their clothes while they stand next to him in their underwear. The works at first glance seem frivolous "...but it is through clothes, that Cang Xin seems to have entered into the bodies of other through a symbolic act, a modern approach to the traditional concept of souls travelling between bodies", reflects Zhu Qi from the book Cang Xin.

IDENTITY EXCHANGE PROJECT GALLERY

JULY 2006 - WENG FEN (WENG PEIJUN)
In July 2006 The Red Mansion Foundation invited Weng Fen to London to create a site specific installation in our space. The work that he created, The Viewing Stand - Sandy Beach was exhibited later with his series of photographs Staring at the Sea. The installation was a comment on boundaries and relationships between those on either side of them. The tension that is shown between the male 'viewers' on the outside of the fence and the females being 'viewed' on the inside can relate to a number of situations and relationships: the rural urban divide; the West's views of the East and vice-versa; personal relationships; and the hopeful idealistic view of immigrants for city life in China and elsewhere that Weng Fen expores in his other works.

2003 - ZHAO BANDI
Zhao Bandi and his panda were invited to London for a one month residency in 2003 to produce a series of works inspired by their experiences in Britain. Bandi created a video and a series of photographs with captions.

The Manchester Art Gallery, the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham and Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth as well as the London Underground were showing his work simultaneously during the summer of 2004 in a series of off-site shows (billboards and banners) and gallery-based exhibitions.