((PKG)) ANCIENT ART REIMAGINED
((Banner: Ancient Art, Modern Tech))
((Reporter/Camera: Elizabeth Lee))
((Map: Los Angeles, California))
((Popup Banner:
An immersive art exhibition fuses philosophies of Chinese landscape art with modern life and technology))
((NATS))
((Justin Hoover, Curator, Chinese American Museum))
In traditional Chinese landscape, you see often mountains in the distance with diaphanous clouds, waterfalls, trees.
((NATS))
((Justin Hoover, Curator, Chinese American Museum))
And it evolved over the years and today, you see it still practiced in the traditional style. However, it’s also evolving today using new technology and contemporary strategies to achieve a new audience.
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((Wu Chi-Tsung, Artist))
Back to the old time, it was for all these artists to create a world which they wanted to hide, avoid, escape from the reality. So, they created a mountain, imagined they could live there. You should follow the little path inside and follow the stream, imagine you are inside. The funny thing is for nowadays people hide also, find a way to hide, like, in the digital world, in the cyberspace.
((NATS))
((Wu Chi-Tsung, Artist))
For me, the most important inspiration of my creativity is trying to link this new and old, and Oriental and Western altogether to find a new dialogue. I used Crystal City series to try to describe this relationship.
((NATS))
((Wu Chi-Tsung, Artist))
This is Crystal City 007, a series of installation I started 10 years ago. All based on these simple plastic boxes, plastic material and moving light source on the mechanical structure. Through the lights you see the shadow, the image looks very solid and strong, even stronger than real object. We spend most of the time in our daily life, no matter to work or our social life or our entertainment, all on this cyberspace. It’s a new space we created in this 20 to 30 years but it’s invisible.
((Nick Dong, Artist))
Artists are not just painters, not just craftsmen for sculpture or different medium. It’s a quest for, searching for you true identity, your true aesthetics. I’ve been on this quest of finding myself, as I born, I was born in Taiwan. I was trained traditionally with Chinese calligraphy, ink painting as well as western art like, oil paintings and drawings and sculpture. So, being able to do a lot of different medium made me start wondering, are there Chinese tradition that I carry within me and how do I express that? So, this exhibition allows me to visualize it and actually make it a reality.
In my mind, heaven is a place of selfless. So eventually, once you’ve entered the installation, at first, you’ll see a lot of your reflection, but once you sit down, you trigger the mechanism of the room. The mirror actually starts to reflect and you yourself will disappear within the space. You vanished. All you have is this empty wide open space. For me, it’s the ultimate evolution.
((NATS))
