Non-Profit CCAA, Established By Uli Sigg In 1997, Awards Outstanding Achievements By Artists And Critics#
With the welcoming mat being rolled out for Chinese contemporary art this week in Hong Kong for the Hong Kong International Art Fair (ART HK10) and the Christie's Spring Auctions, back in the mainland an international jury today announced the winners of this year's Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (CCAA). Established in 1997 by Uli Sigg, the former Swiss diplomat and tireless collector and promoter of Chinese contemporary art, CCAA (an independent non-profit) each year awards artists and art critics who show outstanding achievement in artistic creation, as well as its analysis and critique. Since its inception, CCAA has been instrumental in launching the careers -- or boosting the visibility -- of many of China's top contemporary artists and critics.
This year's winners of the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards, as chosen by a jury of internationally reknowned experts on contemporary art, are
Duan Jianyu#
(段建宇) for Best Artist;
Sun Xun#
(孙逊) for Best Young Artist; and
Zhang Peili#
(张培力) for Lifetime Contribution.
From CCAA:
Duan Jianyu (Best Artist)
: "Her paintings and installations are highly personal.Her painterly renderings and textual notes connect with a worldwide discourse on the correlation of art and life. It is highly artificial, yet at the same time deeply real. She delivers a mirror both to her artist peers and women specifically, who are seeking to reinforce their particular sensibilities and imaginations."
Sun Xun (Best Young Artist)
: "His work should be seen in the rich tradition of Chinese and Asian contemporary cinema. At the same time he confirms and renews the importance of traditional Chinese ways of art making, reintegrating old techniques into newer media. In the meantime, he has developed diverse strategies to create a new dimension for the filmic structure through spatial occupations."
Zhang Peili (Lifetime Achievement)
: "Father of Chinese Video art, he has been a leading figure in the Chinese contemporary art scene since the mid-1980s. His influence on his peers and his role as educator of younger generations of artists cannot be emphasized enough. As the main founder of the first new media department in the Chinese art eductation system, his pedagogical engagement has been greatly fruitful."
Members of the jury -- Ruth Noack (curator of documenta 12, Kassel), Chris Dercon (director of Haus der Kunst, Munich), Hou Hanru (director of exhibitions and Chair of Public programs, San Francisco Art Institute), Huang Du (independent curator, Beijing), Uli Sigg (founder of CCAA), Zhang Ga (professor of Media Art, Academy of Art and Design, Tsinghua University), Zhang Qing (vice-director of Shanghai Art Museum) -- said their choices for this year's awards reflected the broader context of Chinese contemporary art today:
"We are witnessing in the artists’s works presented to us, especially the youngest works, a much larger diversity , as well as personal, sensitive and investigative efforts. In terms of Chinese contemporary art in general, we would like to see even more encouragement of independent positions. We would support further singular ways of art production, exhibition making, and critical discourses, which is to our opinion the only guarantee to reinforce the importance of the works which we had to judge upon. And we hope these endeavours will continue to grow, and that others come into being. The strength of young art works worldwide will rely on their further emancipation as well as distancing from the domination of art market, both local and global.”
Artist images (Click for full-size):
