9 October 2009 - 10 January 2010

The exhibition was organized by the National Gallery in Prague - Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art in collaboration with the National Art Museum of China.

Fair Trade Palace - Small Hall, mezzanine and Eastern Wing of the 1st floor

The exhibition "Open Vision" is part of the Festival of Chinese Culture in the Czech Republic, organized by
the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic
the Ministry of Culture of the National Republic of China
and the Embassy of the National Republic of China in the Czech Republic.

National Art Museum of China
Chief curator: Fan Di'an
Exhibition director: Ma Shulin
Members of the Executive Board: Fan Di'an, Qian Linxiang, Yin Fu, Ma Shulin, Liang Jiang, Yi E, Han Shuying, Wang Lan, Pei Jianguo, Liu Mi
Executive director: Deng Feng
Coordinators: Han Shuying, Guo Yurong, Li Yunhui
Exhibition coordinators: Pei Jianguo, Wang Xiaomei
Transportation of the exhibits: Liu Mi
Graphic design: Liao Xinwei, Wei Feng

The National Gallery in Prague
Director General: Milan Knížák
Director of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art: Tomáš Vlček
Project manager and coordinator: Světlana Michajlová
Project production: Pavel Antoš
Exhibition production: Dagmar Němečková

Main partner of the National Gallery in Prague: UniCredit Bank
Patron of the National Gallery in Prague: SYNOT TIP
Main media partner: the Hospodářské noviny daily
Partners: Neternity
Media partners: Classic FM, AnoPress, ČRo 3 - Vltava, Grand Princ

Open Vision

In remembrance of the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Czech Republic, the cultural and artistic circles of both countries established fertile cultural collaboration and bilateral exchange of information. The extensive exhibition "Open Vision" - which introduces viewers to Chinese contemporary art and is co-organized by the National Art Museum of China and the National Gallery in Prague - launched a new chapter in this field and thus also the first stage of artistic dialogue between the two countries.

The exhibition whose main subject is "open vision" is quite significant because most of the selected works were created after the introduction of reforms and open policy to China, especially during the past two decades. The presented works are from the fields of ink painting, oil painting, photography, devices and other media, bespeaking of the variety and the complex character of Chinese art. It is fair to say that Chinese contemporary art brings forward a specific cultural status and spiritual system by both modes of succession and development to the future. The exhibition is based on an open, integral environment of Chinese society deeply embedded in history, on the ability of a taking a realistic view and on the relation among "nature, metropolis and focus on a human" in order to express the active role of Chinese contemporary art on the background of epoch-making changes. It reflects the current transformations in the traditional Chinese view of nature, the metropolitan reality and the philosophical issues linked with human existence.

Although a single exhibition can only hardly describe and display the diversity of contemporary art in China, it at least outlines its open spirit and its internationally oriented artistic view. Thanks to such an open, interactive and friendly communication as well as the international context, Chinese contemporary art will surely become increasingly active and mature. But first and foremost, the exhibition will present the new social environment and the diverse character of Chinese contemporary art.

Fan Di'an, Director of the National Art Museum of China and chief curator of the exhibition

During the recent decades, Chinese contemporary painting has been coping with the influences of the so-called Western culture (i.e. European culture, because this is where the Western culture has its roots; roots which were derived by North America only much later). The unanticipated and gradual adoption of very different principles, and not only formal ones - because the result is a dramatic change in perceiving human values - caused a stir in Chinese art which is yet far from ending.

During a very short span of time (c. from the mid-1980s), Chinese art succeeded to display the influence of all tendencies of Euro-American art, from the period of Impressionism to present. The generation of the Chinese "artistic enlightenment" was, all of a sudden, besieged by Expressionism, Pop Art and Action Art, also discovering the allure of an open political as well as sexual confession. This enormous "grip" and this combination, even confusion, of most various methods, materials and mainly ways of thinking brought very specific artistic attitudes to Chinese art, amongst them mainly abandoning tradition and intensively responding to the contemporary world whose changing form is co-created by the Chinese society of today.

Chinese contemporary art thus became an interesting actor on the global artistic scene. In parallel with the rapidly growing economy, art turns into the "bubble economy" whose future fate is rather uncertain, but today, significant.

The process of abandoning tradition is not over yet, it will certainly continue. I am, however, firmly convinced that the newly discovered freedom will make Chinese artists return - freely, willingly, spontaneously, and maybe even unconsciously - to the principles which helped maintain Chinese social ethics for millennia. Ethics which might be somewhat foreign to us, but which indeed must have been very strong, for it has lasted so long.

Milan Knížák, Director General of the National Gallery in Prague

"Openness" does not only suggest a specific approach to the environment, but also an utterly new conception and energy flowing in many directions, while "vision" refers to both an angle of viewing and responsiveness, sensibility, perception, wisdom and process of thinking.

"Openness" in a social sense represents the most significant event that China had the chance to experience during the recent thirty years, and it simultaneously reflects the transformation of the entire society and the change of its system, when modern lifestyles promote fast development of economy and the transformation of the environment and at the same time contribute to the arrival of global economy. Openness is increasingly deep and wide. "Openness" of artistic sensibility indicates liberation of spiritual dimensions and it also signals new beginnings of Chinese contemporary art which brings forth new energy and vitality - from the formal self-control of an artist to the conceptual revival and constant experimenting with visual morphology and exploring multimedia. "Sharing openness" supports social and artistic development, helping them combine and confront at the same time. New contexts discovered in Chinese contemporary art are born exactly through the symbiosis between reaction and interaction. Contemporary art thus spreads from one direction to many, the angle of viewing of an individual transforms into a public view, the close introspection bears open comparison, and the reflective character of traditional culture changes into reflection which is contemporary and realistic, while all this results in a specific "holographic network of vision". Chinese contemporary art moves along all grids of this network, presenting an utterly unique and multiplex structure, which is partly hidden and partly visible.

Considering the kaleidoscopic character of Chinese contemporary art in the era of openness, the exhibition - whose subject is exactly the "open vision" - focuses on most various works of art from the fields of ink painting, oil painting, photography and other media, created by more than fifty artists. Its main goal is to present a relatively clear platform through interaction and generalization. The exhibition translates the traditional character of Chinese art and the poetic aesthetics, the contemporary condition and the cultural interests active in the process of urbanization as well as human-oriented reflections on human existence. Key words here are "nature", "city" and "human orientation".

"Nature" is not just the essential source of human existence; it is also the subject which can be referred to and be reconstructed. In the traditional Chinese approach to nature, the relation between nature and a man is crucial and it receives the highest attention.

The place evacuated with the loss of home-nature has gradually been occupied by the "metropolitan reality". Due to the intensified social reforms in China and the opening of the country to the world, along with the influence of global economic integration, the Chinese urbanization process came to bring dramatic effects to the entire world. It delivers new contents of social culture and it creates new cultural environment, embodied in tall buildings and palaces as well as many other factors linked with urban life - its specific lifestyle, new types of knowledge and information and new models of social communication. Urbanization also represents a force which can activate the sensitive imagination and thinking of artists, allowing them to employ new media and new morphologies and at the same time to wander through urban landscapes and explore their spiritual dimension. Artists grasp reality through their sharp perception and brave self-exploration, expressing thoughts, ideas and feelings of an urban person in the form of story-telling and metonymy.

The works from the "Faces of Urban World" are a kind of a "group" structure and bespeak of artistic standpoints adopted during the urbanization process from three viewpoints: the enormous dimension of urban development and change, the lifestyle shared by urban inhabitants in the information and consumption era, and the experience of and the feelings associated with living in urban agglomerations. Contemporary artists employ the new cultural landscape, born through the urbanization process, as a specific driving force, while the visual linguistic form reflects the cohesiveness of artistic media and the transformation of art in the information age and at the same time initiates numerous and most diverse forms in Chinese contemporary art.

The "nature" and the "city" are spaces for people to live, spaces for human bodies and souls to exist. But "existence" is not just a specific denominator; it also represents a philosophical issue expressing the general character of everything and of all beings in the world. Its span is wide and only hardly to define: it is both physical and mental, both objective and subjective, both realistic and nihilistic. A single exhibition indeed cannot encompass the complex structure of Chinese contemporary art, because its dynamic changes make the character of its particular stages almost impossible to catch up with. But contemporary art does not cease to develop along the lines of "open vision", and it thus can go on searching for its own, peculiar way based on the principle of humanistic and spiritual scale of values that would depart from cultural traditions and would reflect the reality of contemporary Chinese society. And it moreover can express the viability and the endless chances offered by the new developments with increasing pertinence.

Deng Feng, Executive Director

The present exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue Open Vision - Exhibition of Contemporary Art from China, published by the National Art Museum of China.

Part of the exhibition project is the accompanying programs designed by the Department of Education of the National Gallery in Prague - Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art.
Information and booking: Department of Education, Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, the National Gallery in Prague, phone +420 224 301 003, e-mail: vzdelavani@ngprague.cz.

PROGRAMS FOR INDIVIDUAL VISITORS

SPECIAL EVENTS
Commented tours on the free-entrance days (3 p.m. - 8 p.m.)
6 January, Wednesday - Chinese Contemporary Art
Entrance fee: Free of charge / Duration: 30-60 minutes / Meeting point: Box offices in the Fair Trade Palace

PROGRAMS FOR CHILDREN
Open studios for parents with children
Come once a month and be active on Saturday art afternoons in the National Gallery in Prague! Our inspiration will be the works of art held by the collections of the Fair Trade Palace. All required material is available free of charge.

9 January, Saturday, 2 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. - Chinese Shadows: Program to the exhibitions of Chinese Shadow Play and Contemporary Art from China
Entrance fee: 80 CZK per person (the price includes the entrance fee, the fee for the service of the Department of Education and the art material) / Duration: you are welcome to visit the studio anytime between 2 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, 2 p.m. - 4:40 p.m. - Chinese Shadows: Program to the exhibitions of Chinese Shadow Play and Contemporary Art from China
Entrace fee: 80 CZK per person (the price includes the entrance fee, the fee for the service of the Department of Education and the art material) / Duration: you are welcome to visit the studio anytime between 2 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.

The National Gallery in Prague - Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art
Dukelských hrdinů 47, Prague 7

The ticket the present exhibition also covers the entrance to the permanent exhibition of the 20th- and 21st-Century Art in the Fair Trade Palace.

The entrance fee to the exhibition is part of the entrance fee to the permanent exhibition.
Basic: 160 CZK
Reduced: 80 CZK
Families: 200 CZK
REDUCED ENTRANCE FEE: from 4 p.m.

Open daily except Mondays, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

www.ngprague.cz

Press release of 8 October 2009
Contact for journalists: Petra Jungwirthová, press spokeswoman
Phone: +420 222 32 14 59
Cell phone: +420 606 166 513
E-mail: jungwirthova@ngprague.cz