Kun Art Centre, Beijing, China, 2020
Astro World (Exit Plan) was held in June, 2020 at Kun Art Gallery, Beijing, CN. It began as an art exhibition set for my art students, which grew into an edifying experiment aiming to breakdown educational stereotypes between art student, art teacher and working artists. The exhibition was international in scope (fundamental to the premise) – artists hailed from Germany, China, Poland, Taiwan, Canada and Britain. The participating artists ages ran from 17 years to 61 years, all at different stages of their careers. Astro World (Exit Plan) meant to challenge pedagogies of the art world. Marcel Duchamp once said " ... whatever adjective is used, we must call all it art. ".
Student-artists were in awe of exhibiting in a gallery and the fact that "strangers" might "judge" their art. Art teachers felt awkward, being "pinched" between student artists and senior artists whom often lived off sales of their art. Some of the professional artists were offended by being asked to exhibit with students and teachers. Others that said they would never show along side of one another. Fitting into two of the three categories, I suppose it was all selfish on my part as I wanted to see what would happen (3rd Practice Projects). KUN Art is an art education museum found in central Beijing. Significantly, it is located in a very popular mall and gallery-goers are usually anything but art lovers, seeing art as "art" not as categories.
Student-artists were in awe of exhibiting in a gallery and the fact that "strangers" might "judge" their art. Art teachers felt awkward, being "pinched" between student artists and senior artists whom often lived off sales of their art. Some of the professional artists were offended by being asked to exhibit with students and teachers. Others that said they would never show along side of one another. Fitting into two of the three categories, I suppose it was all selfish on my part as I wanted to see what would happen (3rd Practice Projects). KUN Art is an art education museum found in central Beijing. Significantly, it is located in a very popular mall and gallery-goers are usually anything but art lovers, seeing art as "art" not as categories.
