The 10th Anniversary of Luo Zhongli Scholarship Retrospective is opening at CAFA Art Museum

TEXT:Sue Wang    DATE: 2015.12.21

Poster of The 10th Anniversary of Luo Zhongli Scholarship Retrospective

The 10th Anniversary of Luo Zhongli Scholarship Retrospective will present 20 artists who were finally selected in July by the academic committee through the voting process. The academic committee of the retrospective includes the Head of the scholarship Luo Zhongli, President of China Academy of Art Xu Jiang, the famous artist Sui Jianguo, Director of CAFA Art Museum Wang Huangsheng, Director of Shanghai Zhang Jiang Art Museum Li Xu, Director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art Philip Tinari, the senior curator of M + Dr. Pi Li, the founder of Sifang Art Museum Lu Xun.

Participating artists of the 10th Anniversary of Luo Zhongli Scholarship Retrospective including (in alphabetical order according to surname): Cai Lei, Cai Yaling, Cui Xinming, Fan Anxiang, Geng Xue, Hao Liang, Jin Yanan, Leng Guangmin, Liu Yazhou, Pang Zhiqing, Ren Jie, Wang Zhibo, Wang Congyi, Weng Jie, Xu Bacheng, Ye Linghan,Yu Ying, Yuan Yuan,  Zhai Jing, Zhang Ruyi.

It also sets up a special plate entitled “Luo Zhongli Scholarship and Sichuan Fine Arts Institute”, inviting the previous winners or shortlisted artists of the Luo Zhongli Scholarship to present their works, including Luo Dan, Peng Hanxin, Xiao Xu, Liu Yujie, Ma Wenting.

Luo Zhongli writes in the preface that: “First of all, we choose art because of love”. “A man is happy when he can do the thing that he loves. It depends on the choice and pursuit in the youth, through study, experience and thinking, to constantly adjust our ultimate direction, and then persistently pursue it, so that one can comprehend more about creating happiness and harvest more existing meanings on the road to beyond the limitation of the individual and time, to finally turn dreams into the reality of life... A generation has correspondent art and the youth of today have more opportunities to realize the dream, because we fortunately live in a great time with the revival of the Chinese nation. Culture and art is an important mark for the development of the time. Luo Zhongli Scholarship aims at rewarding creative outstanding young students who persistently pursue their art careers and build a platform to showcase their talents, recommending them to the related art institutions, art museums and galleries, offering them the opportunity and possibility to continue to engage in artistic creation after graduation, to cultivate the newcomers for the development of Chinese art.”

Qiu Haoran believes that the success of an artist should not be built on the basis of other artists’ “failure”, or the dominant trend or the eclipsed trend. If artists view and measure their art achievements or auction ranking (or how many people “like” it on WeChat) from the perspective of business forever, if the artists only treat the art as a work targeted at success, it might influence the development of Chinese art and culture in the future. Through the experience of collection and appreciation of his grandfather Qiu Yanzhi who was a collector of antiques in Shanghai, he puts forward that a collector is not a talent scout, he shouldn’t be self-centered, willful, arrogant, but properly influence others through a professional, strong and confident aesthetic vision.

Curator He Guiyan writes that, the Chairman of Taiwan Mountain Art Foundation Ming-che Lin set up the Luo Zhongli Scholarship in 1992, and it lasted for 7 years, with a total of 35 prize winners, and most of the artists have become the backbone of contemporary art today. In 2006, supported by the overseas Chinese Qiu Haoran, Luo Zhongli Scholarship was restarted, and it is the 10th anniversary this year. The scholarship aims at rewarding and promoting newcomers, to encourage the innovative excellent students who have the courage of exploration, and build a platform for them, committed to the introduction and cultivation of the newcomers in Chinese art. In the past ten years, there were 265 students included in the annual exhibitions, selected from more than 2186 contributors, and 51 artists who won prizes, on such a platform, their artistic talent is presented, attracting the attention of the art world and many artists have become emerging new stars of the current contemporary art world. Their works have a wealth of information, different starting points, different cultural appeal so that it is impossible to summarize it from a single perspective and theoretical discourse. In a word, their creation is distinctive and has a lot of personality, while the shape is multivariate and contemporary.

About the Exhibition

Title: The 10th Anniversary of Luo Zhongli Scholarship Retrospective

Duration: December 26, 2015 to February 18, 2016

Venue: CAFA Art Museum Gallery 3F

Opening Time: December 26, 2015 4:00 pm

Venue: CAFA Art Museum

Organizers: Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and Haoran Art and Education Fund

Co-Organizers: CAFA and CAFA Art Museum

Media Partners: Artron.net, Bazaar Art

Courtesy of the artists and CAFA Art Museum, translated by Chen Peihua and edited by Sue/CAFA ART INFO, for further information please visit http://museum.cafa.com.cn.