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showcase your art to thousands
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| Han Bing | |
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Han Bing (1974- ) grew up in an impoverished village in rural China. After studying oil painting in college, he commenced advanced studies at the Chinese Central Academy of Art. Moving to Beijing, he witnessed the harsh contrast between the urbanized "Chinese dream" propelling the nation's struggle to become "modern," and the cruel realities of those left behind, or trodden underfoot in this stampede. As a clarion voice from the "new contemporary art of the everyday" in the "globalized, post-colonial context," Han Bing expresses the struggles and desires in the "theater of Chinese modernization." His works use photography, video and multimedia performance installation to invert quotidian practice, making us rethink the order of things and the human condition. Han Bing's art manifests a kind of amor mundi—love of the world—investing ordinary objects from everyday life with a subtle sense of the sacred. Prominent contemporary art exhibitions across Europe, Asia and the US have featured his work. |
| About the Artist | |
Han Bing's work is intimately connected to the vicissitudes of the everyday, and deeply invested in the creation of discursive space for both the examination and the reimagination of who we are and what we could be. Using conceptual and performance photography, as well as video and performance installation, Han Bing creates "spaces of appearance" in which people, often those who have been marginalized in some way, represent themselves as sentient subjects facing uncertain futures in modernizing China. Han Bing, who grew up in a poor rural village, identifies with his subjects, inviting them to participate in performance art, conceptual photography and video art that voices the commonality of their quotidian concerns, constituting an "imagined community" of those struggling, dispossessed, and yet still dreaming of a better life. |
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Urban Amber, No. 1
2005 |
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| The specter of glamorous high-rises, those icons of middle-class China's dreams of home and a better life, appear again in Han Bing's latest conceptual photography series, Urban Amber(2005). Juxtaposed to the nearby, ramshackle, temporary dwellings of the urban poor, these fantasy high-rises appear resplendent and dream-like until you realize that their inverted images are reflected in Beijing's ubiquitous, industrial-waste and garbage-infested "stinky rivers." Like amber, these rivers capture the sediment of the times, showing us through a mirror darkly, the underbelly of China's fantasy of modernity. |
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Urban Amber, No. 16
2005 |
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Urban Amber, No. 17
2005 |
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| see above |
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Mortal World II-1
2006 |
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New Culture Movement
2006 |
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| New Culture Movement, No. 30
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Love in the Age of Big Construction II
2006 |
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| LOVE IN THE AGE OF BIG CONSTRUCTION, II, Han Bing's multimedia performance installation, "Love in the Age of Big Construction II," opened the China-Chai-Na (Demolish There) Exhibition, located in the ruins of an old factory at the 2006 Dashanzi International Art Festival, at 798 Art Factory in Beijing. For three hours, the mostly nude artist used gender-blurring wiles to seduce and subdue the enormous steel clawed arm of a backhoe--a quintessential machine of destruction and construction, typically used in sites of demolition and building across China. On a bed of bricks and white cotton, fluffy like cumulous clouds, beneath a diaphanous white canopy that hinted of wedding night rituals, and behind a red neon rope and construction cones, for three straight hours Han Bing caressed, kissed, snuggled and stroked the hulking metal machine. His video "Age of Big Construction," projected ghostly images of brutal demolition, the frail hopes of construction, the elan of laboring people, and the uneuphemized realities of life in a zone of ongoing destruction and construction, onto his body and against the curtain behind him to the rhythm of industrial noise and the warnings of nature pushed to its limits. In a move that repudiates the logic of "fight fire with fire," or as it's said in Chinese, "use poison to fight poison," the artist embraced a strategy reminiscent of pacifist civil disobedience, employing a dialectic of antinomies to create a space for overcoming. The softness of the bed of cotton is used to overcome the hardness of the machine, weightless clouds to hold up tons of steel, sensuality to overcome the numbed philistine quality of the contemporary age, Eros to tame the death drive, seduction to overcome violation, feminine generativity to overcome masculine destructivity." --Maya Kovskaya, Art Critic and Independent Curator based in Beijing
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Walking the Cabbage (composite 2)
2007 (composite of images from |
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Walking the Cabbage (2000-present) is an ongoing performance art piece that has taken Han Bing across China--from his tiny home village to Tiananmen Square, from the colorful minority village of Dali in the southwest mountains to the tranquil water towns of Suzhou, from the Westernized Bund in Shanghai to the Great Wall and beyond--the USA, Japan and Europe. By inverting quotidian practice, Han Bing foregrounds the lowly cabbage--the Chinese comfort food and bottom line staple of the poor--as a laden signifier of the nature of the times in "modernizing" China. For the nouveau riche, the humble cabbage as a sign of basic material stability (once horded by urban residents en mass to get them through the winter) has been replaced by the pampered pedigreed pet. What do the objects we attach to ourselves say about how we define our identies and values in this rapidly changing world? How do our mundane everyday practices and routines serve to constitute our shared sense of the normal? Han Bing poses these question with his public performances of Walking the Cabbage, which are conducted as everyday practice across a diverse array of social spaces and in public places everywhere, inciting the emergences of the "Cabbage-Walking Tribe" who question the authority of the norm and bring our attention back to the way the world is shaped by our everyday actions. |
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| Education and biography | |
| HAN Bing 1974 Born in Jiangsu, PRC, Lives and works in Beijing 1996 B. A. Xuzhou Normal University, Department of Art, PRC 1999 Advanced Studies, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2007 Everyday Desire in the Theater of Chinese Modernization, Beursschouwburg, Brussels, Belgium The Fatalistic Language of Things: Han Bing, Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina, USA Han Bing: On the Stage of Modernization, Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, Texas, USA 2006 Other Modernities: Han Bing Solo Exhibition, Bamboo Lane Gallery, Los Angeles, USA The Other Shore of Desire, UCLA Center for Chinese Studies, Los Angeles, USA Han Bing—Quotidian Iconic, with Orimoto Tatsumi—Quotidian Holy Mother: Dual Solo Exhibition: Jing Art, Shanghai, PRC Love in the Age of Big Construction, IEAS Center, University of California, Berkeley, USA SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 Dragon's Evolution: Chinese Contemporary Photography, China Square, NYC, USA Detour: The Moleskine Experience, Director's Art Club, New York City, USA Mortal Worlds Exhibition, Reflex Gallery, Paris, France Dragon's Evolution, 798 International Cultural Festival, Beijing, PRC Fractured Visions: Chinese Video Art, Center for Asian Studies, University of SC, USA The Fragmented Gaze: Video Art from the PRC, Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, TX, USA 2006 Proyecto Generos, Espace Cultural Ample, Barcelona, Spain Misalignments: Chinese Performance Art Documenta, UCB Institute of East Asian Studies, USA Engagements and Estrangements, Contemporary Chinese Exchange, Toronto, Canada The Nekromantics, Temporary Contemporary, London, UK Open International Performance Art Festival, Must Be Contemporary Art Center, Beijing, PRC Beyond Experience: The New China, Arario Beijing, Beijing, PRC UNESCO's Together with Migrants Festival: China's Happiness and Pain, SOHO, Beijing, PRC China--Chai-na Exhibition, Dashanzi International Art Festival, 798 Art Factory, Beijing, PRC 2005 Tian An Men- Gate to Heaven, Fotografiemuseum (FOAM) Amsterdam, Holland China Action 1: Video Art Exhibition, Centre Chorégraphique National de Tours, France Transborder Language Performance Art Exhibition: Beijing Tokyo Art Projects (DIAF), Beijing, PRC Vehicle and Mirror Exhibition, Beijing New Art Projects, 798 Art Factory, Beijing, PRC 2004 Photographic Memory, Thinking Hands Projects, 798 Art Factory, Beijing, PRC Tian An-Men, Chinese-Eyes Gallery, Paris, France Sense of Fragility Exhibition, Italian Embassy, Beijing, PRC 2003 The First Dadao Live Art Festival, 798 Art Factory, Beijing, PRC I'm China Exhibition, SOHO, Beijing, PRC The Beautiful Life Exhibition, SOHO, Beijing, PRC DNA Visual Exhibition, Nanxincang, Beijing, PRC 2002 New Chinese Photography: Pingyao International Photography Festival, Shanxi, PRC Act of Flying Live Art Performance, Red Square Art Center, Beijing,PRC Post-Revolutionary Era Video Exhibition, China New Media Art Space, Beijing, PRC View/Distance Photography Exhibition, There Space, Beijing, PRC To Each His Own Contemporary Art Exhibition, Guangzhou University, PRC Sino-Japanese Performance Art Exhibition, Waterside Space, Guangzhou, PRC 2001 Knowledge is Power Exhibition, Beijing Book Building, PRC Zero Degrees Contemporary Art Exhibition, Beijing Bridge Art Factory, PRC Treatment Exhibition, Damu, Beijing, PRC Dang.com Performance Art Exhibition, Kaixin Leyuan, Beijing, PRC 2000 Man and Animal Performance Art Exhibition, Nanjing, PRC SELECTED PERFORMANCES 2007 Walking the Cabbage in South Carolina, Columbia Museum of Art, SC Capitol Building, USA Walking the Cabbage at Art Basel-Miami, South Beach, Design District, Miami, Florida, USA Walking the Cabbage in New York City, Time's Square, Central Park, 5th Avenue, East Village, Chelsea, DUMBO, Greenpoint Brooklyn, Queens, NYC, USA Walking the Cabbage in San Francisco, Haight-Ashbury, Powell and Market, Fisherman's Wharf, North Beach, City Lights Bookstore, Chinatown, SF, USA Walking the Cabbage in Mississippi, Longwood, Mammy's Cupboard, Natchez, MS, USA Walking the Cabbage in Louisiana, along the banks of the Mississipi River, USA 2006 Walking the Cabbage in Los Angeles, LA MoCA, Hollywood, Santa Monica Mall, Venice Beach, The Grove, Chinatown, Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, CA, USA Walking the Cabbage in Berkeley, Telegraph Avenue, Shattuck, UC Berkeley, Jupiter Pub, CA, USA Walking the Cabbage in the East Bay, Okland Chinatown, Livermore, San Mateo, CA, US Walking the Cabbage in Ikebukuro, Ikebukuro International Art Festival, Tokyo, Japan Walking the Cabbage in Tokyo, Ginza, Shibuya, Harajuku, Akihabara, Shinjuku, the Yamanote Subway Line, Tokyo Station, Shin Tokorazawa Love in the Age of Big Construction III, Beyond Experience: The New China, Arario Beijing, PRC Love in the Age of Big Construction II, China—Chai-na Exhibition, Dashanzi International Art Festival, Beijing, PRC Mortal World II, Nanmen Reservoir, Dali Old Town, Yunnan, PRC 2005 A Dream between Cotton and Stone: Mating Season, No. 9, Beijing Tokyo Art Projects, Beijing, PRC My Intimate Past with a Shovel: Mating Season, No. 8, Houhai, Beijing, PRC 2003 Mortal World I, Shilianghe River, Jiangsu, PRC 2002 Strolling Bones, Guangzhou Art Museum, PRC 2001 Hammer and Sickle: Mating Season, No. 6, Zero Degrees Exhibition, Bridge Art Factory, Beijing, PRC Healing: Mating Season, No. , Treatment Exhibition, Damu Space, Beijing, PRC Making Love with Thirteen Shovels: Mating Season, No. 5, Dang.Com Performance Art Exhibition, Kaixin Le Yuan, Beijing, PRC SELECTED ENGLISH LANGUAGE BIBLIOGRAPHY "Quotidian Amor Mundi: Orimoto Tatsumi and Han Bing, " Maya Kóvskaya, Flash Art, January, 2007 "China's Art Factory," Jessica Au, Newsweek International, 20 November, 2006 "Critical Mass: Six artists and art industry experts select their favourite exhibitions of 2006," David Teh, Art & Australia, Vol. 44, No. 2, December 2006 "Beyond Experience: The New China and the Landscape and Forms of its Selfhood," Zhu Qi,15 July, 2006 "Han Bing: Quotidian Iconic, Orimoto Tatsumi: Quotidian Holy Mother," Maya Kóvskaya, Art Picks Art iT, Fall/Winter Issue, 2006 "Field of Vision: Center Stage," David Drakeford, Beijing Today, 15 September, 2006 "Together with Migrants—Chinese Contemporary Art and Social Criticism," Nathaniel M. Stevens, NY Arts Magazine, September/October, 2006 "Beyond Experience," Luna Fenichel, NY Arts Magazine, September/October, 2006 "Arario Brings The New China," Maya Kóvskaya, Art Picks Art iT, Summer/Fall Issue, 2006 "China's Happiness and Pain Exhibition at the UNESCO "Together with Migrants" Festival," Maya Kóvskaya, ArtPost, 19 June, 2006 The "China--Chai-Na (Demolish There);" Exhibition Rocks the DIAF's Soldiers at the Gate Forum," Maya Kóvskaya, ArtPost, 15 May, 2006 "Tectonic Shifts in the Beijing Art Scene," Maya Kóvskaya, Art iT, Spring/Summer Issue, 2006 "Modulating Space: Negotiating the Aesthetic and the Semantic, Maya Kóvskaya, Artpost, Feb 2-11, 2006 "Engaging the Everyday," Luna Fenichel, City Weekend, Issue 4, February 09, 2006 "Han Bing: Chinese Performance Art Engaging Life on the Margins," Maya Kóvskaya, NY Arts Magazine, November-December, 2005 "Indeterminate Expression—Ambiguity Exhibition Preview," Maya Kóvskaya, Art iT, Fall/Winter 2005 "The Raw and the Reel," He Chang,City Weekend, Issue 15, August 1, 2005 "China Witnesses a Boom in Performance Arts," Lev, Micheal, Taiwan News, June, 12, 2005 "Artistic Revolution Emerges in China: From Torpedo-in-a-Cart to a Pet Cabbage, the Ultra Avant-Garde Movement Pushes the Changing Societal Limits," Lev, Micheal, Chicago Tribune, June 5, 2005 "Beyond Shock Value: Chinese Performance Art Make the Ordinary Extraordinary, " Hao Chong City Weekend, Issue 10, May 24, 2005 "Starving Artist Pet Theory: Han Bing Asks Pet Owners: Who’s Really in Charge?" Ching, Dixie, That's Beijing, January 01, 2003 |
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| Future shows | |
| On April 28th, join Han Bing and other prominent Chinese artists at the "Dragon's Evolution Chinese Contemporary Photography Exhibition" Opening Party/Performance: 28 April, 2007, 3 pm Place: 798 Art Factory, Debang Space 2 Jiuxianqiao Rd. Dashanzi Art District, Chaoyang District, Beijing |
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| Website: www.amormundi.com | |
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