Winter Group Show - Works by Frank Tam, Qin Feng, Cha Guojun, Taiga Chiba and Junichiro Iwase

Art Beatus (Vancouver) Consultancy Ltd. is delighted to present a special exhibition to celebrate the holiday season with our Winter Group Show. We invite you to take a break from the wintery cold and the holiday bustle to see our featured selection of ink on paper works, mixed media paintings and sculptures.

Highly respected and well-renowned, Frank Tam draws on his experience as an artist caught between two cultures. His abstract ink on rice paper works use Eastern tradition to deconstruct Western modernism so as to reconcile the differences. Pieces from Tam's Lotus series in this exhibit are a fine example of the artist merging forms and creating balance within the highly studied yet effortless, spontaneous brushstrokes that only a true master can do. ♦ Qin Feng, an internationally acclaimed contemporary ink painting artist, also employs traditional Chinese ink painting and calligraphy with abstract expressionism. His Civilization Landscape series is part of a larger body of work that also includes installation and performance in which the artist uses his own “...language and system of symbols and signs to re-create and represent ancient cultures and civilizations that have long disappeared in the wind...”.

Cha Guojun's mixed media on paper works are evocative of a sumptuous and mysterious world. “I exert myself to use abstract language as a way to enter the boundless and wondrously exquisite universe in relating the story of Oriental mysticism”. These abstract but formally rich works reveal his masterful use of tone, colour and texture with the right amount of harmony and contrast. ♦ The subjects in Taiga Chiba's monochrome Japanese sumi-e ink paintings are fluid, spontaneous, playful, and expertly executed. The artist's unwavering fascination and curiousity with the origins of life, micro and bio-organisms, and their morphology is always present in his work. Inspired by the rich deposits of paleontological fossils found in the Burgess Shale in Field, British Columbia, one is never quite sure if the subjects in Chiba's Ancestors and Ancient Life series are entirely creations of the artist's imagination or if they really did exist once during a geological period that has now been long extinct. ♦ Sculptures by Junichiro Iwase are constructed with transparent acrylic materials and filled with brightly coloured water. Minimalist and calming, the works, which resemble spirit levels, are intended to be used as tools for meditation in order to strive for 'Mu' or 'nothingness', a Zen Buddhist concept which recognizes there is no right or wrong, good or bad, in order to transcend one's dualistic paradigms and to find one's centre. According to Iwase, the actual sculpture is the 'empty space' or 'nothingness' inside the air bubble within the coloured solution. Everything else is the supporting structure to the work.

About the Artists

The late Frank Tam (1941-1998) was born in Taishan in the province of Guangdong, China and moved to Hong Kong in 1950 before immigrating to Canada in 1972. As a youth, he was mentored in traditional Chinese painting by a great master of Lingnan School and of Song Dynasty landscape painting, Chao Siao-Eng and then he went on to study graphic design at Chinese University of Hong Kong. His work has been exhibited in Asia, North America, and Europe and his work can be found in numerous private collections and public institutions such as the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa, Canada and the Hong Kong Museum of Art.

Born in Xinjiang, China in 1961, Qin Feng graduated in 1985 from Shandong Art Institute in Shandong, China where he studied mural painting. In 1996, he began teaching at Berlin University of Art before moving to the United States in 1999. An acclaimed international artist, Qin Feng has been exhibiting and performing all around world and his work can be found in collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The British Museum in London, United Kingdom and the US State Department.

Cha Guojun was born in 1943 in Kunshan, China near Shanghai. Before becoming a professional artist in 1989, he graduated from the Shanghai Drama Institute in 1967 and went on to become a university lecturer in China, USA and Canada. Cha Guojun has exhibited his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout North America, Asia and Europe and has over 500 pieces of work in various private and public collections such as the International Bank of Paris, The Chinese Consulate General in New York and the United Nations.

Born in Shizuoka, Japan in 1950, Taiga Chiba earned a Bachelor of Arts from Musashino Art University in Tokyo, Japan in 1974 and, after immigrating to Canada in 1981, completed a Master of Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal in 1986. Chiba has exhibited extensively for over 30 years in North America, Asia and Europe and has received several awards, grants, and artist residencies. His work can be found in public and private collections in Canada, USA, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, and India.

Junichiro Iwase was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1971 and, during the following year, he and his family immigrated to Richmond, BC where he currently lives and works. Iwase graduated from Johnson Atelier Institute of Sculpture in New Jersey in 1997, and has since participated in local and international art exhibitions, residences, biennials, workshops and has had public commissions in Asia, Australia and North America.

For more information, please visit our website at www.artbeatus.com or call the gallery at 1 (604) 688-2633.

Art Beatus, with a location in Vancouver, Canada and two locations in Hong Kong, showcases international art with a focus on contemporary Chinese art. Art Beatus (Vancouver) is located in the Nelson Square Office Tower at 108 – 808 Nelson Street in Vancouver, BC.

Art Beatus (Vancouver) Consultancy Ltd. is open Monday to Friday, 10am-6pm and is closed on weekends and holidays. Underground and street parking is available. Free admission.

For more information, please contact Media Relations, Tamla Mah or Ellinda Siu by email: info@artbeatus.com or telephone: 604-688-2633.