RE-IMAGINING THE HOME
As a continuation of ‘Art in Resonance’, The Peninsula’s global programme celebrating and nurturing contemporary art, The Peninsula Beijing has partnered with the four founding artists of the YUAN Museum - Song Tao, Zhang Qi, Cao Feng, and Wei Minghui - to present ‘The House of Collections’ exhibition. On show at the hotel’s Art Gallery from now through the end of October, four immersive art spaces invite guests to reimagine their personal meaning of "home" in thoughtprovoking ways.
As a continuation of ‘Art in Resonance’, The Peninsula’s global programme celebrating and nurturing contemporary art, The Peninsula Beijing has partnered with the four founding artists of the YUAN Museum - Song Tao, Zhang Qi, Cao Feng, and Wei Minghui - to present ‘The House of Collections’ exhibition. On show at the hotel’s Art Gallery from now through the end of October, four immersive art spaces invite guests to reimagine their personal meaning of "home" in thought-provoking ways.
According to the authors of the recently published book ‘Contemporary Chinese Furniture Design', Charlotte and Peter Fiell state that “since the mid-1990s a definable movement in contemporary Chinese furniture design has been growing with a ‘snowballing momentum', and is looking back to its cultural roots and reinvigorating past techniques, materials and forms.”
This statement is verified when one looks at the works of designers and artists such as Song Tao, Zhang Zhoujie, and Shao Fan, amongst others, who in the authors' words will “force a reappraisal of contemporary Chinese design, tipping the balance of international influence from west to east.”
Taking furniture design as its theme, ‘The House of Collections' is an experiential exhibition currently on show at The Peninsula Beijing Art Gallery which showcases variations around the theme of the home from diverse artistic and aesthetic perspectives. Visitors entering the exhibition can create their own journey through a series of visually stimulating settings, including an entrance hall, a living room, and a tearoom.
In these familiar, yet reimagined settings, the participating artists express the emotional and cultural connections between people and everyday home furnishings: carpets, lacquerware, ceramics, paintings and other objects. By challenging guests to think about the aesthetic concept of living, the exhibition brings together historic and contemporary influences from both Eastern and Western lifestyles.
To launch this immersive new exhibition, The Peninsula Beijing Art Gallery on the third floor of the hotel, hosted a grand opening on 22 July, where guests joined the four organising artists as well as specially-invited art collectors and curators for an exclusive preview and tour. The four artists discussed the fascinating stories behind each exhibit in the collection, and also shared their views on contemporary art, culture and lifestyle trends, as well as the emerging influences on design and urban living from both China and around the world.
Co-Founder of the YUAN Museum and one of the most prolific contemporary furniture designers in China today is Song
Tao. Born in Shanghai in 1969, Song studied at the National University of Art and Design (now the Advertising department of Tsinghua University), majoring in Graphic Design and Drawing. In 1993, he attained a Master's Degree in Plastic Arts from Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne University, before returning to China the following year to found the TAO Gallery, which staged a multitude of exhibitions of the work of Chinese contemporary artists.
Subsequently, he founded the Song Tao Design Studio, which offered services including furniture, interior and exhibition design. In 2002, Song opened his exclusive brand agency, promoting the artworks of outstanding Chinese artists and designers. Five years later, he founded SAY FINE ART in the 798 Art Zone in Beijing, which was dedicated to the recreation of traditional Chinese handicrafts.
Song's experience overseas has brought an open quality to his creative vision that fluidly bridges the aesthetics of East and West. His design objects are hybrids of international values, and his works are often characterised as the essence of “understated elegance”, perfectly balancing traditional feng shui elements and cutting-edge modern sensibilities.
Zhang Zhoujie graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London and he is a member of the Architectural Association. He established Zhang Zhoujie Digital Lab in 2010, becoming a pioneer in the realm of digital creativity and establishing a new digital furniture brand, ‘Endless Form®', a groundbreaking furniture brand known for its diversity and personalisation.
Zhang's work is known for being independent, experimental and futuristic, and believing that objects in the digital world can grow and develop much like natural evolution, he is dedicated to discovering and exploring the methods within these transformations. His work mainly focuses on the simplicity of logic, variety and unpredictability, which is based on his understanding of nature.
At Design Shanghai in 2018, Endless Form® presented a series of revolutionary and disruptive digital furniture products, together with an eye-catching installation of nearly 100 chairs in the courtyard of the venue. Each piece of furniture was unique and exhibited a futuristic perspective; that of the designer not being a person, but rather a computer.
One of the young rising stars of contemporary Chinese design, Zhang is at the vanguard of his practice, using revolutionary computer algorithms to create furniture unlike anything ever seen before.
Indeed, his furniture is not actually designed by Zhang himself per se, but by the generative computer algorithms that he and his team create. The irony is that the design of one of his origami-like chairs or tables is created in just a couple of seconds of digital processing, but are then painstakingly constructed using traditional hand-welding and polishing techniques over a period of approximately two months. Through this ongoing process, Zhang's aim is to perfectly combine design function with a naturalistic
growth process using computer algorithms, or as he himself puts it, to “expose the natural beauty of digital logic."
Zhang's work, which has been presented in over 30 exhibitions around the world, is a compelling blend of Chinese traditional art perspectives, Western design methodology, digital engineering and artisanal craft.
Chinese painter, sculptor and designer Shao Fan was born in 1964 into a family of artists. He is the son of parents who were painters and professors at the Chinese Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Shao's sculptural work combines traditional Chinese furniture techniques with modern day design practices, and he was one of the first Chinese artists to explore the boundaries between visual art and design.
According to the Victoria & Albert Museum: “To the contemporary Chinese design industry, the name Shao Fan is often immediately associated with his reconstructed, or rather, 'deconstructed' chairs.
In his 'Chairs(?)' series (1996), Shao sought to reinterpret the traditional concept of furniture making. In his mind, Ming furniture displays the essence of Chinese philosophy, but by taking furniture in the Ming style apart and combining it with contemporary materials and design, he wanted to express the philosophical and cultural changes and contrasts that he felt faced China in modern times.
Shao's deconstructive process involved joining the parts of chairs of contrasting styles and he revelled in the irony of both the method and outcome. His art was also a tongue-in-cheek commentary against the common practice of antique dealers who purchase modern reproductions and reconstruct them to attempt to pass off as the genuine article. While such reproduction furniture may look authentic, they are nonetheless cheap copies. Similarly, with humorous irony, the materials used in the designer's chairs are not 'noble' woods such as huali or teak, but rather those used more commonly in furniture in the North of China, specifically elm and catalpa.
'King', 'Kun', 'Moon' and 'Wei' are based on Shao's humorous take on modern man's fascination with the logographic nature of Chinese characters. The chairs are thus modelled to be reminiscent of Chinese ideograms, and often they indeed end up resembling the logograms they were based on.
Shao's creations deliberately attempt to bridge the division between fine art and applied art. While the design of his chairs is innovative, it is combined with traditional methods. The chairs may be regarded as sculpture or conceptual art, yet they sometimes remain functional as furniture. The ambiguous nature of the works present an interesting dynamic that continues to fascinate the artist and his audience.”