Crossing the Pond-NY Arts Beijing Space Exhibition

NY Arts Beijing Space is pleased to present a group exhibition of the works of four artists from around the globe: Cicilia Vazquez, Sasha Reibstein, Ana Bellido and Kristian Vodder Sevensson.

A pebble bouncing across the water’s surface creates a chain of interlinked ripples that radiate from their respective centers. While initially separate and distinct, they eventually cross one another and create multi-axial patterns, which eventually merge into a calm reflective surface.

Until recently, making waves in the Atlantic Ocean “pond” that divides North America and Europe, were those most often created. Despite the vastness of their nautical distance, the resulting historical, economic and cultural intersecting rings, often resulted in a calm reflective surface. While this relationship used to be a symbiotic existence without compare, trans-continental tides have since changed course.

Indeed, Asia’s rising power has caused tsunamic tides of global influence, as was witnessed during its recent Avian Flu Epidemic and the March 3rd, 2007 drop of the Shanghai stock market. These events had a far-reaching impact, and forced North America and Europe to re-engage with Asia on historical, economic and cultural levels. In so doing, these overlapping engagements have provided a context for artistic exchanges.

It is within this wave of burgeoning, global artistic relations that the New York Arts Beijing Residency is excited to assemble a group of artists—who span four countries and two continents—during their June 2007 residency program in China.

These artists will arrive from different points of departure, and converge in Beijing as small pebbles quietly splashing across distant shores. Cicilia Vazquez, who resides in Mexico City, is both a painter and installation artist. Her paintings poetically synthesize her intuitive forms, cacophony of expressions, and perfusions of eye-popping colors, into a visual symphony. Similarly, Sasha Reibstein, who predominately works in ceramics and installation, also explores the unity of conflicting ideas—drawing her inspiration from science and nature, society and the individual, as well as that which is organic and technological. She creates sculptural forms that evoke the relationship between individual/human space and ocietal/architectural space. Her work speaks to the idea of comfort and repulsion, where she pushes the boundary of familiarity and questions the nature of taste, and unsettlingly challenges viewers’ perceptions of that which is known and ordered.

The two European artists, Ana Bellido of Spain and Kristian Vodder Sevensson of Denmark, approach art-making from distinct world views. She is a printmaker and installation artist who painstakingly creates vessels from printed patterns and geometric paper forms. While modest in size, when placed within her installations, these vessels have a monumental presence.

Contrastingly, Kristian draws inspiration from regional and cultural concerns, and often creates site-specific work that incorporates daily, mundane struggles. However, his inventive utilization of materials indigenous to his sited work, allows Kristian to simultaneously engage viewers from a place of familiarity and novelty.

While each artist will bring their unique spirals of influence to this Asian shore, they will also draw inspiration from their newfound surroundings. Like casting a pebble in a pond, they will undoubtedly create their own undulations, which will traverse and dissipate into work reflective of their journey.