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REDCAT Presents Recent Works By Internationally Acclaimed Filmmaker Yang Fudong

Monday, November 1, 8:00 PM

View the event & purchase tickets

Program curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud

JACK SKIRBALL SCREENING SERIES: One of the rising stars of the Chinese art world, Yang Fudong (born 1971), known for his moody, haunting black-and-white imagery, comes to REDCAT to present a program of recent works. Jane Perlez writes in The New York Times: "Part of the fascination surrounding Mr. Yang is founded on his place at the center of a digital whirlwind in China, where a new generation of artists have spurned the canvases of Mao-like heads. Instead, he is creating videos about personal feelings and anomie amid the warp-speed change in China."

REDCAT will present three recent works by Yang Fudong. Liu Lan (2003, 35mm/video, 14 min, black and white), shot in a way that elegantly reconstructs the tropes of Chinese landscape painting, is a short, elegiac piece about femininity and lost love. Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest is a 5-part work-in-progress (planned to last up to 120 minutes) inspired by the gathering of talented intellectuals during the Wei and Jin dynasties. REDCAT will show the two parts that have been completed so far. In Part I (2003, 35mm/video, 30 min, black and white), the actors and actresses, strikingly dressed in early 20th century clothes, ascend Huangshan Mountain, talk with one another and meditate on life. As their desultory conversations unfold, longings for romance gradually emerge. By contrast, Part II (2004, 35mm/video, 45 min, black and white) takes place in modern times, in urban settings, and is more clearly about the sexual confusion and the cruelty of the relationships between genders in a society of shifting values.

Yang was trained as an oil painter but started to explore film and video a few years ago. What makes the originality and the appeal of his work within contemporary Chinese media is its alluring mixture between classicism, a certain "anachronism" suggested by the use of the black and white, and its search for modernity. His filmwork courts narration, while eluding it, weaving together a series of small, elusive vignettes, enhanced by the use of music (as traditional instruments and singing play a significant role in the sensual texture created by the pieces). Apart from classical Chinese painting, his major references are Chinese films from the "Golden Age" of the Shanghai studios in the 1930s and 1940s, the French New Wave and Jim Jarmusch.

Yang's work has been exhibited at Documenta 11 (Kassel), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Venice Biennale, Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), among others; it is currently featured in the Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), the Renaissance Society (Chicago), the Liverpool Biennial and is included in the exhibition Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia at the San Diego Museum of Art, opening on Nov. 6.

Yang Fudong will be present at the screening.

The screening at REDCAT is organized in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum, the San Diego Museum of Art and ShanghART Gallery.

REDCAT is located in downtown Los Angeles at the corner of W. 2nd St. and S. Hope St., inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Tickets are $8 for the general public, $6 for students with valid ID and $4 for CalArts students. Tickets may be purchased at the REDCAT box office, calling 213.237.2800 or at www.redcat.org.

Film at REDCAT is partially funded by a gift from Wendy Keys and Donald A. Pels

For more information about Yang Fudong: www.shanghart.com and www.yangfudong.com.

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