Chinese artist Duan Jianyu is preparing to go to Recife for a residency program. During this period she will make a serie of "notes" with observer eyes, a combination of tourist and spy at the same time.
Duan is one of the most appreciated chinese painters, caused by her shift in the perception of reality. Her works points to the philosophical nature of her art. Purposely avoiding the painterly sublime, she strives for the most generic subject matter and she delves into banal expression and style. The chickens, which appears in many of her photographs, multi-media installations and paintings, are a metaphor for this interest in the ordinary.
Yet hers is not a naive or even narrative description of everyday life. Instead, she uses a highly refined method of displacement, that propells the work into a realm where we start thinking of art as a language and painting as a medium. Her displacements include combining the wrong elements on a canvas, or mixing up poetry and poetics in her writing, or travelling to Qinghai Province on an extended stay, when instead she might have come to a thriving city center, the market place for art.
In august 2010, Duan will be traveling to Recife in search for inspiration, with her eyes as filters, connected to the Made in Mirrors program. She will be taking notes and photos, documenting the journey and experiencing pure curiosity. These notes will represent the base of her future works, that will be created once she is back in China.
“Many minor things in our lives seem to be trivial and simple, but they contain a great scientific knowledge and skills,” writes the artist.
So, we just have to wait a couple of weeks and see what has Brazil connected in Duan 's mind and perspective over life.
