shangyuan

Our aim is to discover and promote excellent art practitioners. We encourage art pertaining to one’s own existence and life experience, distinguished by creativity and poetic quality. We would like to choose 30 persons each year to participate in our residency program, which runs from March to October. We don’t restrict the age, education, district and race. It is required that you should be the creator of the paintings, sculptures, architecture designs or other art forms which you submit. This fact is affirmed by no less than three committee members of Shangyuan Art Scene.

The fist step of application is to recommend oneself or be recommended by others. You should present your personal resume and the application for joining the program; meanwhile you should send us ten works as computer files. After confirmation by the committee of Shangyuan Art Scene, we will offer you free spaces to create, live and exhibit for seven months. After these seven months, we will organize a symposium which will also include exhibition, publication and criticism on your work.

A Brief Introduction To Beijing Shangyuan Art Scene

Categories: Art Scene (Art Museum, exhibition hall, Literature Museum, library)

Telephone Number: 010-60635299/60635757

Fax: 010-60635299

Website: www.syartmuseum.com

E-mail: ssyuan@126.com

Permanent Secretary: Cheng Xiaobei

Some Chinese poets and critics speak of Shangyuan Art Scene as a utopia of art, which is to say that in a standardized, uniform society, Shangyuan Art Scene is searches for a certain kind of difference, whereby each individual, each creative self, every creative living entity is honored for the way in which they seek their value and meaning of life.

This utopia of art is the achievement of poet Cheng Xiaobei and a group of artists, poets, writers and architects. Beginning in 2000, they raised funds for themselves and searched for a suitable location north of Beijing, at the foot of the Yan mountains. After 7 years spent in site-selection, organizing, planning, and actual construction, the first stage of this modern architectural complex, with over 19,700 square meters of total floorage on 30,000 square meters of land was finished in late 2007. This complex, comprising 21 works of original modern architecture, includes a salon space, library, exhibition hall, open-air platform (from which you can see Yan mountains), video room, Liang Sicheng Memorial Exhibit Hall, cafe, writers’ apartments, artists’ studios, etc.

The Purpose of Shangyuan Art Scene:

1. Organizing communication among different art fields: To recover the tradition of Chinese intellectuals in which regular communication was held among poets, printers, calligraphers and musicians. We want to improve the situation in present China in which artists are addicted to their own art fields and often have little communication with people from other art areas.

2. Operating a Residency Program: To outstanding artists from different fields we offer free studio and apartments with peaceful and pure surroundings for their creative activity.

The Principle of Shangyuan Art Scene:

We encourage and promote art which 1) is done in an independent creative spirit, 2) possesses characteristics of creativity and poetic language, 3) relates to the artist’s ‘present’ existence, 4) is stimulated by the artist’s genuine life experience. We emphasize mutual encouragement and cooperation among artists from various art fields; we also attach importance to helping and supporting the growth of young artists.

Shangyuan Art Scene / The ‘Uninterrupted Art’ Support Program:

1. Residency Program: Outstanding artists are selected from various art fields—painting, architecture, literature and poetry, music, performance and film—and provided with a studio and apartment. At the same time, Shangyuan Art Scene has established a ‘Shangyuan art criticism’ writers’ group, who have an opportunity to develop along with the artists.

2. Exchange Program for Art Teachers: This will give art teachers with creative aspirations a place to show their works and get stimulation. They can strike creative sparks by interacting with other artists at Shangyuan Art Scene, with its fertile gathering of musicians, poets, critics, painters and film makers. By expanding our horizons, stimulating our senses, and allowing introspection, we can mutually raise our level of understanding; at the same time, we will have a chance to exhibit excellent art works by teachers of art.

Note: The purpose of this program is to raise aesthetic awareness and prevent lack of aesthetic knowledge in the future; we want to instill aesthetic awareness and ability to gauge aesthetic value.

3. Support Program: Shangyuan Art Scene wants to help outstanding artists, for as long as they are in residence, to carry out continuous development of their art concepts, to tap the deep reserves needed to create serial works, and to keep exploring their artistic path. Our atmosphere of ongoing interdisciplinary exchanges can help them actualize a genuine qualitative leap.

4. Organizing and Facilitating Worldwide Art Activities: Creative Projects, Academic Exchanges, Thematic Dialogues, Exhibitions and Displays, Discussion of Works, Concerts, Poetry Readings, visual and auditory intersections, etc.

The Great Wall, near the art museum, is where the artists love to go. Photography - Dora-Lutz- (Hungary)