Portrait: Cover and Clean

2011 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

Qiu Anxiong

location: Shanghai, China
year born: 1972
gender: male
nationality: Chinese
home town: Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China

A Portrait: Covering and Cleaning is an installation of six black-and-white video projections. Each video depicts a portrait with features changing continuously and quickly into different persons, animals and symbols. Driven by the evolving contents of the screen itself, this piece showcases the form and material of Qiu Anxiong’s working method, which relies on precisely planned storyboard sketches drawn in pen on A4 paper. After the narrative is fully formed, Qiu transfers each image by painting it onto a small canvas with acrylic, which can be quickly wiped away to prepare for the subsequent image or element to be painted on top. Such process distills an aesthetics of over-painting that drives narrative development through changing logical relationships between material and form rather than plot elements.


Qiu Anxiong creates paintings, sculpture, installation and animation. He is best known for his moving animations implementing the style of traditional Chinese ink painting. His merging of traditional painting into moving images has distinguished his practice at the forefront of contemporary experimental ink painting. He uses this interplay between the past and the present as a strategy to examine the relationship between man and nature, especially how today’s mass urbanization has compromised our values for tradition and the environment.


Colors:



Related works featuring themes of: » Animation, » China, » Cityscapes, » Consumerism, » Chinese  
» see more

Unregistered City series #1 #2 #7
© » KADIST

Jiang Pengyi

2008

Unregistered City is a series of eight photographs depicting different scenes of a vacant, apparently post-apocalyptic city: Some are covered by dust and others are submerged by water...

Pleasant Sensation Passing Through Flesh - 3
© » KADIST

Yang Zhenzhong

2012

Peasant Sensation Passing Through Flesh – 3 consists of a massage chair fixed to a wall...

Lift with care
© » KADIST

Hu Yun

2013

This research-based artwork acts as a memorial to early twentieth century European exploration of China...

Collective Memories: Beijing Hotel
© » KADIST

Chen Shaoxiong

2007

After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...

Other related works, blended automatically  
» see more

Unregistered City series #1 #2 #7
© » KADIST

Jiang Pengyi

2008

Unregistered City is a series of eight photographs depicting different scenes of a vacant, apparently post-apocalyptic city: Some are covered by dust and others are submerged by water...

Pleasant Sensation Passing Through Flesh - 3
© » KADIST

Yang Zhenzhong

2012

Peasant Sensation Passing Through Flesh – 3 consists of a massage chair fixed to a wall...

A Slap in Wuhan
© » KADIST

Li Liao

2010

A Slap in Wuhan documents Li Liao’s performance in Wuhan, China on January 8, 2011...

Drag
© » KADIST

Xiaoyun Chen

2006

In the video work Drag, a man in a dark room pulls on the end of a rope...

Related works sharing similar palette  
» see more

Protesters Call for Gaza Ceasefire at Art Basel Miami Beach
© » HYPERALLERGIC

Protesters Call for Gaza Ceasefire at Art Basel Miami Beach Skip to content Protesters installed a banner reading "Let Palestine Live" in front of Art Basel Miami...

Asha Schechter
© » KADIST

Conducted by Devon Bella, this interview was shot on location in Asha Schechter’s Los Angeles studio....

Samuel (Standing), Vaalkoppies (Beaufort West Rubbish Dump)
© » KADIST

Mikhael Subotzky

2006

At the halfway point along South Africa’s Highway N1, running from Cape Town to Johannesburg, sits the small town of Beaufort West...

Visalia Livestock Market, Visalia, California
© » KADIST

Sharon Lockhart

2011

Visalia Livestock Market, Visalia, California results from Lockhart’s prolonged investigation of an agricultural center and community...

Related works from the » 2010's created around » Shanghai, China  
» see more

5
© » KADIST

Jiang Zhi

2012

5 is a three channel video about the dualities of death and resurrection, reminiscence and fantasy, chronological and retrospective narration...

Mythological Time
© » KADIST

Sun Xun

2016

Sun Xun’s lushly illustrated, dynamic short film Mythological Time is a dreamy chronicle of rapacious industrial development, the mythical qualities of state propaganda, and the constancy of change, as experienced by an unnamed coal mining town...

A Slap in Wuhan
© » KADIST

Li Liao

2010

A Slap in Wuhan documents Li Liao’s performance in Wuhan, China on January 8, 2011...

Vanishing Point
© » KADIST

Xiaoyun Chen

2014

The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment...

Related artist(s) to: Qiu Anxiong » Lu Chunsheng, » Chen Qiulin, » Xu Zhen, » Yang Fudong, » Zhang Ding, » Biljana Ciric, » Cao Fei, » Chen Shaoxiong, » Chu Yun, » Gunnar B Kvaran  
» see more

I Want to be Gentleman
© » KADIST

Lu Chunsheng

2000

Lu has developed an oeuvre that consists of characters in bizarre situations...

RMB City: A Second Life City Planning 04
© » KADIST

Cao Fei

2007

Since 2007, Cao Fei has radically focused her work on Second Life, an online space that virtually mimics “the real world” and includes everything from the expression of ideas to economic investment...

Diversionist
© » KADIST

Cao Fei

2004

Diversionist is part of the Cosplayers Series from 2004...

Ink Diary
© » KADIST

Chen Shaoxiong

2006

After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...

Related works found in the same semantic group  
» see more

Untitled (History painting)
© » KADIST

Korakrit Arunanondchai

2017

His untitled paintings express his concern regarding perception in abstract form...

White Minority
© » KADIST

Juan Capistran

2005

White Minority , is typical of Capistran’s sampling of high art genres and living subcultures in which the artist subsumes an object’s high art pedigree within a vernacular art form...

The Rebellion of the Roots (France)
© » KADIST

Daniela Ortiz

2021

The Rebellion of Roots by Daniela Ortiz depicts a series of situations in which tropical plants, held hostage in the botanical gardens and greenhouses of Europe, are protected and nurtured by the spirits of racialized people who died as a result of European racism...

Useless Wonder
© » KADIST

Carlos Amorales

2006

This work, a large oil painting on canvas, shows a moment from Amorales’s eight-minute two-channel video projection Useless Wonder (2006)...