Xiong+Wenyun

=Xiong Wenyun=



Introduction
Xiong Wenyun is a contemporary artist living and working in Beijing. She is multi-disciplinary, working in painting as well as site specific work documented through photography. She attended art schools in both China and Japan. She was born in 1953 in Chongqing, China in the Sichuan province located in the southwest. In her early years, she was sent for [|re-education] to the Tibetan region. Here she was influenced by the culture of Tibet which carries into her artwork (99ys.com). From 1979 to 1983 she studies in the department of Chinese painting at the Art Institute of Sichuan Province. She didn't travel to Japan for her masters degree until 1991 and studied at Tsukuba University until 1993. There she studies Japanese painting in art research department. She stayed in Japan teaching from 1994 to 1997 as a guest research member in the Fine Arts Research Section of Bunkyo University (ThreeShadows.cn). While studying in Japan she conducted in-depth research on the composition of color which is noticeably the most prominent element in her work (ArtSpeakChina.org / Xiong Wenyun). While primarily a painter, Xiong Wenyun also explores site installation and photographic documentation, most notably in the three year project, Moving Rainbow. Her current collection of work, Kong Kong, includes both painting and photography as well as other multimedias.

Artwork
**Moving Rainbow 1998-2003** - This multimedia project was composed along the Sichuan/Tibetan and Qinghai/Tibetan highways, logging highways that runs through remote mountain villages. Xiong Wenyun drew her inspiration from the colorful clothing of the local ethnic groups and from the Buddhist prayer flags. She uses color as a way to talk about conflict between modern civilization and traditional cultures, man and nature and harmonious living (ArtSpeakChina.org / Xiong Wenyun). This series is made up of several location-specific installations over a three year period. The installations were documented with photography and video. Xiong Wenyun uses bright, vibrant colors to cover the canopies of trucks, the ends of logs on trucks, the doorways to various buildings along the highways, rocks, small figures (described as pagodas), and colored flags underwater. By applying color to the landscape, she draws attention to the connection the local peoples have with the surround land. These works were also environmental in nature, calling attention to the excessive logging and forced modernization of the Tibetan landscape. Her along with her partners, used the installations to communicate environmental protection. They held exhibitions, collected signatures, distributed information, and invited people to make photographs (GG-Art.com).

**Kong Kong - Present** - This is another multimedia series that incorporates more painting, but she also creates stuffed toys and poses and takes photographs of them in and around various sites in China and video animation and gallery installation. Kong Kong was bourn out of her disappointment with her childlessness and also comments on the fast pass of modern civilization and a loss of connection with spirituality. While living in Japan, Xiong became influenced by Japanese pop culture and [|anime]. Once again, her Tibetan and color inspiration are found here. While the figures seem childish, the name "Kong Kong" comes from the [|heart sutra], “Colour is emptiness, emptiness is color” (WhiteRabbitCollection.org).


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Exhibitions and Galleries
Xiong Wenyun's first solo exhibition was in 1989 in Hasegawa Gallery, Tokyo, Japan. Her first solo exhibition outside of China and Japan was the "Chinese Contemporary Photography" exhibition at Gallery Steinek-Halle in Vienna, Austria (ThreeShadows.cn). She has had exhibitions primarily in Japan and China, but also in Italy, Austria, Croatia, Korea, Germany and Spain. Her work has been exhibited by Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing. Three Shadows is the first gallery in China to be dedicated to photography and video art. Their exhibitions have lead to a growing interest in photography in the Chinese art world (ArtSpeakChina.cn / Three Shadows). To celebrate the 10th anniversary of her Moving Rainbow series, Three Shadows held a show named "Ten Years of Moving Rainbow". She also participated in the "Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China" exhibition in 2004. It traveled to New York, Chicago, Seattle, Santa Barbara, London, and Berlin (ArtSpeakChina.org / Xiong Wenyun).