mapigilthings

January 22nd 2010 – February 28th  2010

Artistic Director: Victoria Lu

Curator: HUANG Yun, ZHANG Jiaping

Late last year, the first of the four exhibitions of the 2nd Animamix Biennial opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei. The Biennial now continues with three different exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary art in Shanghai, the Today Art Museum in Beijing and the Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou.  Nearly 300 artists from more than 30 nations have been invited to participate in the Biennial.
Although the Guangzhou-based artist and curator Huang Yihan began speaking of an art movement known as the “Cartoon Generation” as early as 1992, it was not until 2004, when Victoria Lu curated Fiction.Love at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, that a conceptual framework for the new aesthetics of animation (Animamix) came to be formulated. Victoria Lu sees the Cartoon Generation as the Asian origin of Animamix. Seeing this exhibition as an opportunity to look back on history and hoping to revise our understanding of the Cartoon Generation, the curatorial team for Dazzled and Enchanted – New Age Animamix has specially invited a number of artists from the Guangzhou region to show their works in this exhibition. This exhibition investigates the particular qualities of the art produced as Animamix aesthetics developed between the time of the Cartoon Generation and today. Too, the exhibition shows that the Cartoon Generation should be seen as a highlight of the history of the cultural and creative industries in the Guangdong region.
In 2006, when Victoria Lu curated the second version of  Fiction @ Love at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai, she coined the term “Animamix” (“animation” + “comics”) to describe this new trend in artistic production that she had been following for several years. “Animamix” works are characterized by the following four traits: 1) their worship of youth and idealized youthful beauty; 2) the richness of their narrative texts; 3) their interest in the colorful light of animation; and 4) their notion of a practical aesthetics and their adherence to high production values derived from the animation and comics industries.
The artists whom Victoria Lu sees as Animamix artists are not people who simply work in the animation or comics industries; similarly, the term “Animamix art” does not necessarily refer to animation or comics themselves. Whereas the Pop artists of the previous century simply appropriated visual symbols from animation and comics, Animamix artists have created a visual language that is itself an original form of art. Animamix has already become an important source of inspiration for the creative industries of the twenty-first century.
This new art form registers the power of human creativity in realms both real and fictional. Animamix works take almost infinite forms, even including items related to the most basic necessities of daily life-food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. The works included in this exhibition of the 2nd Animamix Biennial create a new category of the aesthetics of daily life appropriate to this young century. In this era, the division between high art and low art no longer exists.

Guangdong Museum of Art

Opening Time: 9:00—17:00 each day;  closed on Mondays

Address: 338 Yanyu Road, Er-sha Island, Guangzhou 510105, P.R.China

Tel: 020-8735 1468

http://www.gdmoa.org

December 27, 2009 – January 10, 2010

Artistic Director: Victoria Lu

Curator: LIU Chunfeng

Heurisko "Ms. and Mr. Gossip", 75 x 80 cm, oil on wood

Heurisko "Seaman Anne Jane", 77 x 76 cm, oil on wood

Heurisko "I Don´t Know", 68 x 66 cm, oil on wood

When Victoria Lu curated “Fiction.Love” in 2004 at MoCA Taipei, she become aware of a new trend in aesthetics, and in 2006,when she curated a new version of Fiction@Love at MoCA Shanghai she coined a term to describe this new trend: Animamix, combining”animation” and “comics.”.

• All the various and abundant forms of Animamix in popular culture are centered on the worship of youth and the pursuit of an idealized youthful beauty.

• The bizarre and ever-changing narrative texts in Animamix artimbue the images with a strong narrative character, which themselves form a visual language.

• The colorful lights derived from the electronic media create a totally new and unique visual experience of art with colored lights..

• Animamix involves the use of great human, material and financial resources interacting and cooperating across different sectors.

The Animamix artists of the 21st century are not just the people who are engaged in creating animation and comics products; rather,Animamix artists are found in all the fields of the creative industry. Unlike the pop artists of the previous century who simplyappropriated visual symbols from comics and animation, 21^st century Animamix artists are a new generation of Neo-Aestheticswho are already completely submersed in the aesthetics of Animamix. Themultifarious styles of Animamix art actually are the very archetype of artistic creation. In other words, Animamix art has become the most important source of inspiration for the global art scene in the 21stcentury.
Looking back at modern art, which only emerged at the end of the 19th century, it developed at the beginning of the last century entirely in the abstract style. Even in modern literary works, where language forms the main narrative, deconstruction of words frequently occurredplaying around with semantics or abstract deconstructionswhich made it difficult for readers to quickly grasp the meaning. In the digitized environment of the 21st century, literarynarrative has changed, becoming more diverse and more interesting. More and more information is being transmitted via pictorial languageto convey and communicate ideas. The anthropomorphic charactersfound in cartoons, animation and comics, coupled with the narrative of the story line, together become an exaggerated form of distortions,which will become the new mainstream characterizing visual aestheticsin this century just as abstract art led the way in the aesthetics of the 20th century.

Animamix art does not refer simply to animation or comicsalone. Its derivative products are so abundant in variety and large in number, extending even to items related to people’s livelihoods and to food, clothing, home and transport, that almost nothing is excluded. The value of the output of the Animamix industry is not just in the artworks themselves, but rather in the totality of the combined or multiplying cultural forces of an era. The production and marketingof Animamix art will become a most important link in the creative industry worldwide. This type of artistic creation is in perfect harmony with popular culture; in this new era, the division between high art and low art no longer exists.

This new type of art records in the virtual world the creative forces of our lives and saves them in the fourth dimension of theelectronic and digital worlds. The inaugural Animamix Biennial was staged at MoCA Shanghai in 2007. This year, the Animamix Biennial is expanding to four venues. It will open at the end of 2009 and continue into 2010, staging at MoCATaipei, MoCA Shanghai, Today’s Art Museum in Beijing, and Guangdong Art Museum in Guangzhou.

Animamix Biennial 2009-2010 is the first major cross-straitsinternational Biennial jointly hosted by four museums. It consists offourdifferent exhibitions with a book, Animamix: The New Aesthetics of the 21^st Century,will be published jointly by the four museums.

Today Art Museum Beijing

Opening Time: 10:00-17:00 (Except Spring Festial Holiday)

Address: No. 32 Baiziwan Road, Chaoyang District,

Beijing, 100022, China

Tel: 8610-58760600

www.todayartmuseum.com

Opens: Tuesday 01 of december 2009 at 20.00 hrs.

The exhition closes sunday 10 of january 2010.

Heurisko "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish", 80 x 86 cm, oil on wood

Heurisko "Public Woman", 77 x 63 cm, oil on wood

Heurisko "Public Man", 77 x 63 cm, oil on wood

CCCB – 2a planta

Centro de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona

C/ Montalegre 5  -  08001 Barcelona

www.bacfestival.com