Events and Lectures in October

Flooding by artist Wang Qingsong, featured in The Rising Tide

Thursday, 7pm @ Ferguson Theatre, 600 S. Michigan Ave.
Filmmaker Robert Adanto will be present at the screening for a Q&A session.

The scene of the greatest economic and cultural metamorphosis of our time, China is not only at the center of the world’s attention but has arguably the most vital, imaginative, and uncontainable art scene in the world. The Rising Tide investigates China’s meteoric march toward the future through the work of some of its most talented emerging artists, whose work reflects the country’s rising influence as an economic, political and cultural force in the global arena.

In recent years, Chinese artists, especially those working in photography and video, have gained international recognition for their powerful works capturing the social and aesthetic confusion created in a rapidly changing society. To the Chinese avant-garde, materialism is all pervasive, and the dominant consumer culture has altered people’s mentalities. Interestingly, their work, influenced by Western ideals and art practice, remains distinctly Chinese in its content and aesthetic.

Produced within the dual context of globalization and urbanization, the work of artists Cao Fei, Xu Zhen, Yang Yong, Wang Qingsong, Chen Qiulin, Birdhead, and Zhang O examines the collision between the present and the future, and the confusion and ambiguity that characterize the new China. Their work is often a stunned attempt to deal with the dynamic and tectonic forces transforming China. The Rising Tide captures this momentous time in China’s history while exploring the work of artists, who comment with intelligence, wit, foreboding and nostalgia.

Hugo Tillman: Film Stills of the Mind
Friday, 10:30am AND 1pm
Columbia College Chicago Library
623 S. Michigan Ave., 3rd Floor

In the revealing series of color photographs Film Stills of the Mind (on view at the CCC Library September 8 — October 30), British artist Hugo Tillman turns his lens towards China, the fastest growing force in art and economics, and examines in the most intimate of portrayals, approximately eighty of the leading Chinese artists of today. This solo exhibition presents selected film stills of this powerful investigation.

For this project, Tillman spent two years in China interviewing his subjects and immersing himself in the culture and art scene. He explains: “I interviewed each artist for a few hours, asking them about their past, their memories, their dreams and their fears. Then I photographed each artist in sets that recreate their memories and dreams.” The result is a mesmerizing look at the unique psychological landscape of the present-day Chinese art world, seen from Tillman’s Western point-of-view. The dreamlike quality of the settings that Tillman creates and the vibrant hues of red, blue, pink and green give the images a psychedelic quality reinforcing the surreal element of his project.

In this deeply personal examination by a Western artist of his Asian counterparts, Tillman creates, through artful stage settings, a dramatic composition to convey a generation of forward looking individuals whose struggle with the country’s recent past, its oppressive regime, is a constant battle. As in his other photographs, the intense tonal quality and the ambiguous settings contrast with the stark reality of the memories and dreams that they depict.

Friday, 7:30 pm @ MoCP

David Bowlin, violin

In collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Photography, ICE begins its Chicago season with this unmissable show featuring Luigi Nono’s late masterpiece, La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura, a poignant and sweeping work for violin and live sound, performed by ICE violinist David Bowlin. David will also play music by Luciano Berio and Salvatore Sciarrino, to whom Nono’s piece is dedicated.

Salvatore Sciarrino: 6 Caprices (1977)
Luciano Berio: Sequenza VIII (1976)
Luigi Nono: La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura (1992)

Download a ICE-produced podcast about the Reversed Images concert!

Thursday, 6pm
Ferguson Lecture Hall
600 S. Michigan Ave, 1st Floor

This program is presented by the Columbia College Photography Department’s Lectures in Photography series.