Treehugger by Dutch conceptual artist Edwin Zwakman has now found a permanent home in the Putuo District of Shanghai. The opening ceremony of Treehugger will take place at Gate #4 Changfeng Park on Daduhe Lu on September 4, 3 pm, with a press conference to follow at 4.30 pm. The ribbon cutting will be hosted by Governor of Shanghai Putuo District People’s Government Mr. Sun Rongqian and Consul General of the Netherlands in Shanghai, Mr. Eric Verwaal.
The Dutch conceptual artist and photographer Edwin Zwakman fulfilled an artist-in-residency in Beijing last year and it was then that he developed a great interest in Chinese daily life at street level and the extensive park culture of big Chinese cities. It inspired him to design TREE HUGGER. The artwork uses the iconic form of a pedestrian bridge, taken out of its context, to circle a live tree, providing a unique experience for the public to appreciate the tree at different levels. Many Chinese cities lead their pedestrians through heavy traffic via stairs and bridges. To see the design in a different context than the usual urban landscape, can at first sight be confusing. But the unexpected poetic experience and the different point of view it offers the spectator - in this case in between the leaves of a tree - is what Zwakman’s work is famous for.
TREE HUGGER is placed on a striking spot in Changfeng Park in Putuo district, Shanghai. This park was founded in 1956 and is one of the biggest and oldest parks in Shanghai. It is a landscape park which accommodates more than 160 kinds of plants, a man-made lake and it hosts yearly the China Flower Expo. The park already features several public space artworks, and therefore is the perfect place to welcome TREE HUGGER.
Arthub Asia is a proud partner of this project, along with OCT, FondsBKVB, DCC and Consulate General of the Netherlands.
See more details below.
Edwin Zwakman
Rendering Real – New Work in China
Dutch conceptual artist and photographer Edwin Zwakman has made his fame with photographs of diligently constructed cardboard models that look vigorously real - fake, but accurate, as one of his most recent solo exhibitions suggests.
As constructed universes, Edwin Zwakman’s photographs share a quality that goes beyond the mere accuracy allowing for a lapse in perception to take place in the heads of its spectators. The stillness and awkwardness inside of the image transforms the portrayed landscape into a poetic standstill, a subtle reflection, giving way to the kind of alienation that one experiences when landscape steps out of the background and assumes an uncomfortable presence, or when a sudden awareness rises over those things surrounding us that we normally hardly notice. From this perspective, Zwakman’s photographs do not have the intention to trick us; rather, they show us how that what we consider to be real, plays tricks with us.
In his in-situ work, Zwakman explores similar mechanisms, and once again he makes use of symbolic and/or poetic imagery to instigate the confusion that characterizes his work. Whether subtle or not at all, Edwin Zwakman’s reconfigurations and interventions in public space again create a sense of alienation that makes for the audience to re-boot its view on the world - in the blink of an eye, momentarily, as a snapshot. Following this logic, Zwakman’s in-situ work can be read as a collection of temporary snapshots, only now he is not taking the picture, but the random passenger is.
In China’s urban metropolises, it seems as if reality needs to be rendered first before it can actually come into being. Massive billboards and advertisement campaigns announce the look of the new China in flashy renders and miniature models that once constructed and inhabited might turn out to look quite the opposite. The political power of the branded, rendered image, the poignant differences with the realization of it and the two parallel realities they eventually become, provides with a fascinating case to study in China when scouting the borderlines between fake real and real fake. It is one of the main research scopes of Edwin Zwakman’s residency in Beijing.
With the Treehugger project to be realized in the next months in Beijing, Zwakman applies another recurrent strategy in his work: to re-adjust the use of a symbol or an object and copy-paste it next to another, creating as a result a somewhat estranging encounter. The city’s numerous passenger bridges are taken out of context and simulated around a tree. But the Treehugger project also involves a reflection on the dichotomy between the above mentioned real and rendered real, and so he will alter an intervention in public space with reproductions or renders in a white cube setting. Or was it the other way round?
Els Silvrants, 16 April 2009
Edwin Zwakman will give a lecture presentation on his work in the Beijing University on May 8 at 7 PM and in the Central Academy of Fine Arts on May 15, also at 7 PM. For more information contact Liu Gang at liu@theatreinmotion.org.
With the Treehugger project to be realized during the Expo2010 in Shanghai, Arthub continues to host Edwin Zwakman at Arthub studios during his preparations. In his first trip, Edwin Zwakman resided in Beijing with Theatre in Motion.
His project is sponsored by OCT, FondsBKVB and DCC.
荷兰概念艺术家及摄影师，埃德温·斯瓦克曼因他显示着勤奋制造的纸板模型的照片而出名。这些照片看上去旺盛地逼真—— 如他最近一次个展的名称所标明一样—— 虚假但准确。
像被建造的宇宙，埃德文·斯瓦克曼的照片有一种不仅仅局限于因准确而能使观众产生错觉的本质。形象中的寂静和不安使照片上的景观陷入颇有诗意的停滞状态，微妙的反思，让位于一种像当景观走出其背景并采取让人不安的存在时那样的脱离感，或者一种像当我们突然发现平时不注意的东西的那样感觉一样。真么一看，斯瓦克曼的照片没有欺骗我们的企图；反而使我们发现平时认为真实的如何欺骗我们。
在他的现场作品中，斯瓦克曼探究类似的机制，也同样为了让观众迷惑而使用象征的和/或有诗意的意象。不管它们是否微妙，斯瓦克曼在公共场所进行的结构变形和干涉也都造成让观众换另一种眼光看世界的脱离感。即使是一眨眼的功夫、像快照一样即刻的。 按照此逻辑，斯瓦克曼的现场作品可被视为暂时快照的收集。不过，不是斯瓦克曼在拍照，而是偶然的过路人。
在中国的大城市，真实似乎首先是被营造的，然后才是形成的。巨大的广告牌以及广告战役通过鲜艳的绘图和缩小的模型宣布新中国的面貌。但此面貌被建造、并有人开始居住之后也许会完全不同。被营造的品牌形象的政治力量，形象与其实现结果的突出区别，以及形象与结果最后变成的平行现实，都使中国在寻找虚假真实及真实虚假之间的界限作为吸引人的研究事例。这也作为埃德文·斯瓦克曼在北京驻留的主要研究范围。
斯瓦克曼将会在北京的接下来两个月内完成他“抱树者”项目。斯瓦克曼还会采用在他作品中经常出现的策略：将一个形象或实物的用法重新调整并复制粘贴在另一个形象旁边，而以此造成一种疏离性的相遇。
然而，“抱树者” 项目也蕴含着对以上被提到的真实与被营造真实之间的关系的一个反思。因此，斯瓦克曼将会在一个属于公共场所的白色立方体里采用营造的东西来改动及干涉。
埃德文·斯瓦克曼将于5月8日在北京大学以及于5月15日在中央美术学院就他作品进行两次讲座。对讲座感兴趣的，请与刘刚联系：liu@theatreinmotion.org.
