Qiu Anxiong is a Chinese contemporary artist who works in various fields such as painting, sculpture, installation, animations, et cetera. At the same time, he writes articles and gives lectures.
Besides, in 2007, he has begun an art project called
The Museum of Unknown with other young artists, musicians, and curators. This project aims communicating among diverse groups of people and making foundation for collaborations among these groups. As a result, the performing project called
Social meditation, which considers communicating with society as its key point.
The most outstanding work of Qiu Anxiong is his animation works. He uses his drawings and paintings as materials for animations. He put his works together by using the stop motion technique.
The Haze of Shanghai (2012),
Minguo Landscape(2007),
Jiang Nan Poem (2005),
New Book of Mountains and Seas (2006-2007) are his stop motion animation works.
Among many of animations,
New Book Classic of Mountains and Seas, which is a series work of two animations (part one in 2006 and part two in 2007), is the most significant work of him.
New Book Classic of Mountains and Seas is motivated from
Classic of Mountains and Seas, which is a Chinese myth book that collects stories about strange living creatures such as monsters or ghosts. He makes
New Book Classic of Mountains and Seas with the basic structure of
Classic of Mountains and Seas. Unlike the old book, Qiu's work talks about the Chinese modernization. Factories, cars, skyscrapers, and wired animals dominate the nature, mountains and seas. Through that, Qiu throw the question to the audience: "is it what the modernization promised to China?", and "is it positive change?" In other words, he questions if today which is built on destroyed yesterday is right.
The artist says that the present is the new version of the past so that their bases are the same. Thus, the past and the present is the same. For him, it seems like that tradition and present, the old and the new, are not different. Consequently, Qiu interprets the present via techniques and sources from the past and reproduce the past via current techniques.
Qiu Anxiong was born in Sichuan, 1972. He was educated in the Sichuan Art Academy, China (graduated in 1994) and studied in Kusthochschule of University Kassel, Germany (graduated in 2003). In 2004, he joined
New Landscapes section of Metropolitan's Ink Art Past as Present in Contemporary China exhibition to give a lecture to the audience. Nowadays, he lives and works in Shanghai, China.
Press release courtesy Wooson Gallery.