Reception: Friday, December 6, 4-7pm
Artist talk: Friday, December 6th, 11-12:30pm
Maskbook workshop: Thursday, Dec. 5th, 2-5pm, AD 211

Documentary 

                                                        https://youtu.be/3KtyXjSHUqs

Press Release

                 Curator: Professor Dr. Meiqin Wang

     Curatorial associates: Yasmin Bouhafs and James Severtson
Dates: December 2 - December 19, 2019

Through photographs and a video, this exhibition presents contemporary Chinese artist Wen Fang's two series The Ideal World and Wall and her ongoing participatory art project Maskbook. It highlights her unique artistic vision and ability to transform the ordinary into significant and meaningful visual manifestations that either express the unfathomable force of nature or enable ordinary citizens to express themselves through image making.

The Ideal World, a photographic series on human bodies that Wen Fang began in 2005, expresses her understanding of the close affiliation between human body and nature. She sees graceful forms of vales and hills, clouds and plants, light and shade in body parts from ordinary people and appreciates the traces that embody the interaction of growth and decay, of order and chaos, of yin and yang as they play out in human bodies as they do in nature.

Wall, which she shot in 2006, continues Wen's akin interest in observing the effect of natural forces (which include that of human beings) on man-made world, this time, walls, and captures "the thousands of changes" that have left their traces on these walls through her camera lens. We are presented with the wonder of lines, shapes, textures, and colors whose interplay inspires imaginary readings as sky, clouds, snowy lands, turbulent flows, among others.

Maskbook, a participatory public art project that she initiated in 2015 in Paris with the sponsorship of the international organization Art of Change 21, invites people across the world to make masks from recycled materials or digitally to address the connections between health, air pollution, and climate change. This work has enabled thousands of ordinary people to express their concern of the environmental crisis and join the growing global civil society through art making.

A digital exhibition catalog will accompany the exhibition and be available on the Art Galleries' website. The exhibition is funded by Instructionally Related Activities and the China Institute at CSUN and is supported by the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication.

RELATED EVENTS: Thursday, December 5, 2-5pm

Maskbook Workshop @ Art and Design 211

Friday, December 6, 11am-12:30pm

Artist Talk @ CSUN Art Galleries-Main Gallery

Saturday, December 7, 7:30-9:30pm

Artist Talk @ Cultural Enrichment Coalition (email mwang@csun.edu for details)