Gosh – another long night – Pablo has a cold that turns into a awful weeze and cough from around midnight to 4am. He didn’t have a temperature, but those nights are long – It sounded like he was having trouble breathing. On his side he slept OK. I think I had about three hours sleep – maybe. He needs to have another quiet day. We are using the heating at night, except we are on the same power switch as the other apartment, so it fuses out a lot and switches itself off- and I think this has been the beginning of Pablo’s cold. I need to know the address (in chinese) of the nearest hospital, just in case. The weezing scares me.
The internet has gone down. Really frustrating – I hope they get it back up as soon as possible. I took the opportunity of not working to give the bathroom a good scrub – I have been putting it off, because its not in a good state – but now, atleast it feels a bit better. The cleaning standards here are pretty low. Per and Tuuna, who have the apartment next door spent four days scrubbing their apartment. It looks good now – except I don’t think I am prepared to spend four days cleaning. I am now over at the gallery space – there internet is still working. I think it may have something to do with the power surges. Viki, from platform china, has been great dealing with the issues
Last night we went to another opening at Where Where Art Space, which is in the same compound as Platform China.The Where Where Art Space is operated by Gordon Laurin and Jing Yuan Huang. Gordon Laurin is a curator, artist, and arts administrator who has directed public art museums for twenty years in Canada before relocating to Beijing in 2009. Jing Yuan Huang was born and raised in Mainland China. She received a BFA from Concordia University in 2005 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008.
A Canadian Artist, Jean Klimack was showing her work. http://jeanklimack.com/statement.html
She writes “I make artworks that have contradictions in them, artworks that lie somewhere between the sublime and ambivalence. Through these processes, I focus on materials that are dissimilar in nature or exhibited in curious ways. By working in this manner, tensions are created between the materials I choose or through the manipulation of their original contexts. For instance, tensions between attraction and repulsion insight disorder or chaos, at which point I impose my sense of order. In other words, I try to take the mundane and simply reorganize its significance.”
It was nice to talk to her about it – her process is interesting. Met some great people, a strange mix of expat artists that have lived here for a lot of years. Sculptors seem to be based here because its a great place to produce work. Studio costs are minimal, assistants are plentiful, other artists seem to get a well paid teaching job, enjoy the cheaper living costs and studio costs, leaving time to create work.
Where Where Art Space also runs a residency. I had a look at the studio – it looks great.
