Via del Castello 11, San Gimignano (SI), Italia tel. +390577943134 | [email protected] | www.galleriacontinua.com

QIU ZHIJIE Racing Against Time

Opening: Saturday February 13th 2016, Via del Castello 11, 6pm-midnight Until 30.04.2016, Monday–Saturday, 10am–1pm, 2–7pm

After the solo show at the environment to which the work reacts; gallery in 2013, Galleria Continua is it is a complete practice,” says the pleased to present, for the first artist. It cannot but engage, then, with real life, society, politics and history, time in its San Gimignano space, a both that of our own age and that of solo show by the Chinese artist the past. Qiu Zhijie, entitled Racing against Time. The project comprises a group Qiu’s art is the representation of a of new works specially conceived new mode of communication between the Chinese literary tradition and for the occasion. contemporary art, social participation and the power of self-liberation given by Qiu Zhijie is not just an internationally art. In his work he uses different media, established artist but also a key point of ranging from video to photography, reference on the scene. His performance to ink painting and artistic practice embraces calligraphy, installation. This mixture of languages poetry, teaching, criticism and curating. function as a single whole: “I try to use Thinker, activist and cartographer, Qiu all types of media, I believe that my ideal is a multi-faceted intellectual figure, medium is the relationship established and his work is articulated through an between all the objects,” he explains. all-inclusive practice which in Chinese is called Guangtong art. The term Racing Against Time, the project encompasses various different meanings. conceived by the artist for the gallery’s It is the expression of individual freedom large ground-floor rooms, takes the whilst respecting social responsibilities, form of an archaeological site: “It is like it is the concurrence between rational a palaeontological dig and a time machine analysis and impulse, it is the harmonic of humanity. Looking back in time to the interaction between the different dinosaur kingdom, the bird kingdom and spheres of action in which we engage the mammal kingdom, the whole history with. And finally it is the reciprocally of evolution is based on the survival advantageous fellowship between the of the fittest. The theme of this explosive experience of making art exhibition is the battle of powers and and the experience of everyday living. the war between empires. It dwells upon “Art does not just concern the work the dichotomy of these two logics”, produced, but also the more general comments Qiu. The show features a series of ‘landscapes’ Qiu Zhijie was born in Zhengzhou, in the entitled Evolution. Reflecting Qiu’s province of , China, in 1969. He lives typical style, they are realized using and works in Beijing and . After the centuries-old Chinese technique graduating in printmaking from the Zhejiang of padding with sponges: “It is a very Academy of Fine Arts in 1992, he immediately advanced traditional technique,” became active on the contemporary art explains the artist, “usually employed to scene. He is a professor at the Academy transpose onto paper inscriptions and of Chinese Art and at the Department of graphic motifs depicted on ancient vases. Experimental Art of the Central Academy of All the studies about traditional Chinese Fine Arts. His major solo exhibitions to date inscriptions on stone, jade, bronze, etc. are: The Grand Project, Fujian Art Museum, are based on this technique. The main Fuzhou (2015), L’Unicorno e il Dragone, difference between padding and a cast Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice (2013), is that the former is able to transform Blue Print, WDW Art Centre, Rotterdam the three-dimensional into the two- (2012), Twilight of the Idols, Haus of World dimensional, in effect to transform Culture, Berlin (2009), Breaking Through the world into texts.” These paper the Ice, Ullens Contemporary Art Center, reliefs, some scattered with fossils and Beijing (2009), A Suicidology of the Nanjing fragments of artefacts, are a world Yangzi River Bridge 1 - Ataraxic of Zhuang that comes to the surface thanks to Zi, Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Qiu’s archaeological sensibility. Shanghai (2008). The artist has contributed to many group shows, including: Bentu, The Evolution series develops Chinese Artists in a Time of Turbulence and chronologically, from Pangaea to the Transformation, Fondation Louis Vuitton, invention of agriculture and through to ; the 56th Venice Biennale (2015); the “birth of God”; the images of the the 31st São Paulo Biennial (2014); the intricate skeletons of Lover and those Göteborg Biennial (2013); the 53rd Venice of the legendary bird Kunpeng represent Biennale, Chinese Pavilion (2009); The Real the final point of evolutionary history. Things: Contemporary 6th Chinese Art, Tate “Attestations of merit and heraldic Liverpool (2007); the Gwangju Biennale (2006); symbols are forms of power; swords, the Yokohama Triennale (2005); and the 25th armour and pistols are used to show off; São Paulo Biennial (2002). As a writer, Qiu has gates and towers are both architectural published various texts on art, including: The forms of symbolism, an expression of Image and Post Modernism (2002), Give Me perseverance: gates represent power a Mask (2003), The Limit of Freedom (2003), and will, towers symbolize a reaching Photography after Photography (2004) and upwards; plants and animals are links On Total Art (2012). Qiu also curated the between the history of evolution and first video art exhibition in China in 1996, the history of empires: birds and eagles, and, between 1999 and 2005, a series of detritus of buildings, Duogong brackets, exhibitions called Post-sense Sensibility, Roman columns, all shattered fragments the purpose of which was to promote the and ruins of imperial formalism,” explains work of young Chinese artists. In 2012 Qiu. he was the curator of the 9th Shanghai Biennale, Reactivation.

For further information about the exhibition and for photographs: Silvia Pichini, Communication Manager [email protected], mob. + 39 3474536136