Intended as a traveling museum for the democratic movements, the exhibition includes art work featuring the Tiananmen Square demonstration, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the current fight against censorship and the creation of internet “walls” against freedom. The exhibition will be a “hall of fame” for those heroes who initiated, motivated and activated those movements. After the premiere, the exhibition is scheduled to tour Washington DC, Hong Kong, and will also visit Taiwan, Germany, the Czech Republic and Russia.
Key Artists: CHEN Weiming, who currently lives and works in Las Vegas after sculpting 18 years in New Zealand, is well known for his work, including a sculpture entitled Tibet's Road to Freedom, a bust of the Dalai Lama, a 20-foot statue of Democracy, and a statue of Sir Edmund Hillary. Through his belief in the social responsibility of the artist, Chen brings his work to life not only with sculpting tools but with spirit and integrity. Also trained in China as a sculptor and living in Las Vegas, YAN Yukun presents a different style in his sculptures. Yan is highly influenced by Dunhuang art, which is distinguished by figures created with a quality of refined and elegant ease.
ZHANG Hongtu established his career as a painter in 1970’s. Since moving to the United States from China in 1982, Zhang’s work takes a critical view of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, as depicted in his “Chairman Mao Series,” He is also well known for his deep immersion in both classical Chinese and Western modernist landscape styles. His recent landscapes are based on the Chinese practice of emulation through the copying of old masters. His subjects are traditional Chinese landscapes. However, he emulates a 19th-century European style and his medium is oil-on-canvas, rather than traditional Chinese ink-and-brush. Zhang was the subject of news reports last year after his painting “Bird’s nest in the style of cubism,” a rendering of Beijing’s Olympic stadium in a mock cubist style, was seized by Chinese customs authorities in advance of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Reasons given by the authorities for preventing the painting from entering China were as follows: 1. The colors of the painting are too dull; 2. The image of the Bird's Nest is no good; 3. The words on the painting are not acceptable. But nobody can stop this painting from being shown publicly in the U.S., and it will be included in this exhibition.
|
As an American artist, Robert R. Hieronimus, Ph.D., has been an acknowledged pioneer in the "New Paradigm" movement for more than 40 years. His highly acclaimed occult and symbolic Artcars and murals include the 2,700-square-foot prophetic "Apocalypse" at Johns Hopkins University, which led him to be hailed as "one of this country's best muralists" (Forecast Magazine). Art historian and critic Alan Barnet noted, "Hieronimus has a talent for winning the cooperation of the establishment while he lives and works in the counter-culture." Hieronimus’s most famous Artcar, the Volkswagen bus “Light” (better known as “the Woodstock bus”), was photographed by the Associated Press and Rolling Stone at the original Woodstock festival in 1969, and this image continues to be regularly reproduced in media all over the world. A diecast model of Hieronimus’s painted Woodstock bus is produced by Sunstar Diecast in recognition of the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival. His research into America’s symbolism has frequently been showcased on the Discovery, History, and National Geographic channels.
“Tear Down This Wall Expedition” is initiated by FANG Lizhi, LIU Gang, WANG Juntao, WANG Dan, WEI Jingsheng, XIONG Yan, XU Wenli and other human rights activists who have made freedom-fighting a top priority in their lives.
Tear Down This Wall Foundation
A non-profit organization dedicated to promote freedom of speech and communication
Tel: (646) 368-5993
TearDownThisWallFoundation@gmail.com |
