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ma_yongfeng

Title:
The Origin of Species 02

Dimensions:
120x120 [cm]

Medium:
photograph (film)

Description:

about ma_yongfeng
	Ma Yongfeng 1971 Born in Shanxi, China Currently lives and works in Beijing Selected Solo Exhibitions 2002 Internal Overlook, Shenzhen 2006 Becoming Landscape, Platform China Contemporary Art Institute, Beijing 2007 The Cretaceous Period, Artsway, Hampshire, UK Selected Group Exhibitions 2007 Ruins: New Photography and Video from China at Inova , Lawton gallery, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, USA The Thirteen: Chinese Video Now, John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton, UK Dragon’s Evolution, ChinaSquare Art Center, New York Fractured Visions: Chinese Video Art, Center for Asian Studies, University of South Carolina, USA LOOP Festival, Casa Asia, Barcelona China Under Construction: Contemporary Art from the People's Republic, Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, USA Rejected Collection, Ke Center for Contemporary Arts, Shanghai Three Dimensional Viewing Mirror -International Visual Art Festival, Art Beijing Filming East Festival, Ultimate Picture Palace, Oxford, UK FESTIVAL de Performance Pasage de la Paz,Off*Ample, Barcelona, Spain False, 798 Project Space, Platform China, Beijing 2006 Ruins: New Photography and Video from China at Inova , Peck School of the Arts, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA The Wright Museum or Art, Beloit College, Wisconsin, USA The Thirteen: Chinese Video Now, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center at MOMA, New York & Platform China Contemporary Art Institute, Beijing Video-Easy: video art from China & Australia, The Hart Center for Arts ,Beijing VideoZone3: The 3rd International Video-Art Biennial in Israel, The Center for Contemporary Art，Tel Aviv, Israel Engagements and Estrangements: Video Art from China, Chinese Contemporary Xchange Art Projects, Toronto, Canada Misalignments: Video and Performance Art Documenta from the PRC, Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley DiVA Miami Beach 2006 The Fragmented Gaze: Video Art from the PRC，Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, USA 2005 Scratch-Or: China-Singapore Digital Image Art Exhibition, Beijing & Shenyang VIDEOFORMES 2005 , Clerment-Ferrand, France PixelDance Video Art Weekend , Fine Arts School of Thessaloniki, Greece &"Art-Hostel" in Sofia, Bulgaria China Action 1-2, Centre chorégraphique national de Tours, France Videonale 10 , Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany 6e Festival de cinéma asiatique de Tours, France Nouveautes Sans Limites, Beijing 2004 Thailand New Media Art Festival-2004, Bangkok How Can You Resist? Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Sense of Fragility, Italian Embassy-Cultural Office, Beijing 2003 Videobrasil :The 14th International Electronic Art Festival, SaoPaulo Bare Androgyny, Beijing Art Focus 4, International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Underground Prisoner’s Museum, Jerusalem, Israel Chat and Chat – An Art Workshop Between Belgian and Chinese Contemporary Artists, Chinese European Art Center, Xiamen. Random-ize Beijing International Video & Film Art Festival 2003, 798 Space, Beijing 2002 To Each His Own, Guangzhou Post-Experiment Fusion, Changsha Measuring the Pupil Distance Video Arts Festival, Shenzhen 2001 Metropolitan Sneeze, Shenzhen One Hundred Artists’Face, Nanjing Selected Bibliography 2007 Dan Smith “Ma Yongfeng: The Cretaceous Period” , page 28-29, October 2007, Art Monthly “Ma Yongfeng: The Cretaceous Period”,page 10,September 2007, a-n Magazine “Ma Yongfeng And Joel Papps”, August 11-17, 2007,The Guardian Katie Stilp “UWGB art exhibit comments on emerging China” March 9,UW Green Bay Press-Gazette Jes Randrup Nielsen“Millionerne ruller” 15.marts 2007,MORGENAVISEN Jyllands-Posten David Thorp“ Chinese Video Now” catalogue published by John Hansard Gallery , University of Southampton and Platform China , Beijing Maya Kóvskaya “China Under Construction: Contemporary Art from the People's Republic” catalogue published by Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston 2006 Weng Zhijuan “Representing Evolutional Trace” page 215, December 2006, ARTCO Lee Ambrozy “Art Review: Becoming Landscape, Ma Yongfeng”, page 43, December That’s Beijing Maya Kóvskaya “Put Nature in its Place” ,November-December 2006, NY Arts Magazine Ben Davis “Thirteen Uneasy Pieces” Artnet Magazine 2005 “Kunst - Aktien fürs Wohnzimmer?” Sonderschau und Katalog zur Art Frankfurt, 9 May 2005 Andreas Denk “Die Entdeckung Der Inneren Realität” page 407, Juni-August, 2005, Kunstforum International KÄTHE BRANDT, “Videokunst wird museal” , 7 May 2005, Die Tageszeitung 2004 Holly Willis, “In the Fast Lane” Nov 5-11,65 2004 LA Weekly Isabel Saij and Francis Wittenberger, “Isabel Saij interviews Francis Wittenberger, who curated and managed the Media Art Festival 2004, (MAF04) in Bangkok, Thailand, 20-28 March, 2004”.07 June 2004, Netart Review 2003 Ingrid Commandeur “Beijing standing. The art of urban guerrilla tactics”, No.3, 2003 Metropolis M Sergio Edelstein, “Art Focus 4 International Biennial of Contemporary Art”, Underground Prisoner’s Museum, Jerusalem, Israel page 85-86 2003 Residency & Visiting Artist Program School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA Peck School of the Arts, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester, UK ArtSway, Hampshire, UK Vermont Studio Center, USA The Arts Institute at Bournemouth,UK Grants, Awards & Fellowships “PRODUCTION” Residency Scheme, Chinese Arts Centre & ArtSway, UK 14th Annual Asian Artists Fellowship, VSC Freeman Foundation, USA
curatorial description
The Focus of My Works Ma Yongfeng From 2002 to 2006, I have created a series of video installations and photographic work relating to aspects of animal culture, man-made environments and topographic modelling. In my video installations and photography of recent years, I have proceeded into more interdisciplinary, multi-domain exploration and research, ranging from natural history to animal culture and fossil archaeology in combination with long-term observation of biological habitat restorations, archaeological simulations, geographical models and displays in natural history museums. I have attempted to discuss “the status” of humans and animals, the relations between them, how the animal culture affects the human self and the relationship between artificial environments, natural habitats and aesthetics. Have humans become the Earth’s most formidable drive in species evolution? In "The Origin of Species", a photographic series from 2005, I captured some scenes from the zoological garden and reconstruct them. These photos were of the man-made backgrounds of simulated biological habitats consisting of waterfalls, rivers and the woods but in the middle is a composed environment of dead trees, stone, sand, string and guano illuminated under a gloomy natural light, giving an atmosphere of bewildering dispiritedness, bearing a sense of tragic beauty. In the photos, all the animals have vanished, leaving behind a scene of solitude and suspension. This is perhaps the scene that precedes the ‘origin of the species’ or the aftermath of biological extermination. All signs of bodily life have disappeared, including human ones. My other photographic series in 2006, "Ideal conditions of a Weather Forecast " shows pre-made topographical models which I drenched in heavy rain for a very long time and then photographed with a digital camera these imitations of geomorphological terrains. What results after the digital processing is a return another kind of ‘reality after reality’, strongly resembling the effects painting or drawing. A completely different conceptualism manifests in my video installations. From the single-channel video “The Swirl” in 2002 to the three-channel installations of “Beijing Zoological Garden" (2004) and "Storm Model" (2005), they all present complex relations with the Chinese tradition of drawing. "The Swirl” is a significantly conceptual work, where several goldfish are thrown into a whirling washing machine as though the literary intelligentsia were dejectedly discussing the decline of traditional values in modern China. But "Beijing Zoological Garden" utilises the filmic language to resurface the human constructedness of animal culture and the spirit of Song Dynasty Chinese painting. In the more recent "Storm Model", I constructed an installation model of a flood scene and videoed it under changing lighting conditions and artificial flashes in my studio. It was then projected onto a wall as a video installation, which I then termed an ‘installation after installation’. In the above two photographic series, I have attempted to bring into my photography elements drawn from installation and painting, seeking a kind of harmonious ‘non-realism’. These scenes and environments which I have actively represented are a form of alternative reality. The falsity of an artificial environment prompts us to ponder about what is the concept of ‘the real’? In the video installations, the tendency is towards a form of ‘re-mediation’, amalgamating the filmic language and mobile environments, ideas that are continued into my present video works.

all submissions
The Origin of Sp... ma_yongfeng photograph (film) 120x120[cm] 375	The Origin of Sp... ma_yongfeng photograph (film) 120x120[cm] 384	The Origin of Sp... ma_yongfeng photograph (film) 125x325[cm] 395	The Origin of Sp... ma_yongfeng photograph (film) 120x206[cm] 364	The Origin of Sp... ma_yongfeng photograph (film) 180x250[cm] 402	The Origin of Sp... ma_yongfeng photograph (film) 180x230[cm] 402

The Origin of Sp... ma_yongfeng photograph (film) 180x230[cm] 395	Family Tree ma_yongfeng photograph (film) 180x230[cm] 401	Volcano ma_yongfeng photograph (film) 130x180[cm] 426	Waterfall ma_yongfeng photograph (film) 120x270[cm] 414	Hibernation ma_yongfeng photograph (film) 120x170[cm] 389	Transparency is ... ma_yongfeng photograph (digital) 150x352[cm] 397

Transparency is ... ma_yongfeng photograph (digital) 150x352[cm] 511

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