Guan Huaibin

From Asian Art Documentation

Born in 1961 in Nantong, Jiangsu Province Now residing in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province Solo Exhibitions: 2004 Poet’s Corridor, The University Art Museum, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music 2002 Landscape By Chinese Ink, Museum of Modern Art, Saitama 2000 Freeflow, Yokohama Museum of Art 1999 The Sound From the Opposite Side, Tokyo Chofu Plaza Gallery 1997 The Boundary of Sailing Trace, Art Gallery of Saitama University Group Exhibitions: 2006 Microcosm, Macau Museum of Art 2005 n and Out or In Between N Kinds of Space Displacement, Soka Contemporary Space, Beijing 2004 New Media Art Festival, Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou 2001 On The Edges: International Symposium, Lithuania Art Centre; Asia Contemporary Art Exhibition,Tokyo Metroporitan Museum

An active figure in the Asian contemporary art scene, Guan Huaibin is always preoccupied with the task of creating new forms through giving modern expressions to Eastern traditional ideas. In the past decade, his works, often referring to the oriental landscape architecture, have cast new light on social issues and the nature of art. His contribution to this Biennale, City of Labyrinth, is a sociological and archeological investigation of the changes occurred in the Twentieth Century. The labyrinth, juxtaposed with a slanted tower, is composed of about a hundred doors from in various places and periods in the last century. As a vestige of the bygone world, they create a realm between time and space, inside and outside, history and memory, the past and the present. We cannot help but question our existence and conditions here and now.

—— Zhang Qing