A three month residency spent exploring the tendency of individuals to become absorbed within their own cultures despite being members of a global society has culminated in Katrin Korfmann and Jens Pfeifer’s exhibition, “I Am A Mountain” at the Chinese European Art Center in Xiamen, China.
Pfeifer, who is the head of the glass program at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, investigates the connection individuals feel to their culture through the natural phenomena of the regions they originated from. China in particular is known for its bamboo forests and sacred mountains, which Pfeifer interpreted as a part of his personal narrative through the pieces he created during the residency. Using clear glass tubing molded in the shape of bamboo, he created "Elevated Nation", a tower stacked as high as possible without collapsing from under itself. With hammered steel, he recreated a few of China's holy mountains, but titled them "I-Shan", "J-Shan", and "K-Shan", the names of his personal saints, claiming ownership of the symbolic mountains.
Taken from an aerial view, exploring the loss of individuality through communal action and ritual, Katrin Korfmann's photographs appear to reduce individuals to a collective being. Wen ji qi wu is, the large-scale photograph on display at CEAC, depicts people enacting a faux ritual that she devised, created costumes for, choreographed, and photographed in execution during her residency. The purpose of the ritual she created, which was performed on Easter, was to join traditional Chinese dance with the European tradition of hiding and hunting Easter eggs.
"I Am A Mountain" will be on view through June 11, and in its final weeks, will continue to fuse Chinese and European culture, examine patterns of collective thought and ritual, and impress viewers with large-scale, well-executed works in assorted media.
Xiamen City,
Fujian pr P.R. China (361005)
http://www.ceac99.org