Canvas International Art presents Maleonn

JIU SHAN HE – Old Mountains and Water 

TWO SITE SPECIFIC INSTALLATIONS by MALEONN

After being part of the exhibition CYNICAL RESISTANCE in Nieuw Dakota and Canvas International Art in 2012, Maleonn is invited for a second project with Canvas. This will be his first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. For this solo and a site-specific installation for Art Rotterdam Maleonn will spend a month in residency in Amsterdam.

This winter Maleonn will recreate a traditional Chinese landscape painting in a whimsical installation at Canvas. A shadow play of trees, mountains and winter landscapes will be part of a multi-media show in the gallery, also featuring some of his best photography. For Art Rotterdam Maleonn will make a theatrical ‘time machine’ consisting of sculpture and hundreds of antique photographs.

The Shanghai based artist Maleonn is known for his theatrical, melancholic and magical works that usually have a dark edge. The son of the director of a Beijing opera director and a well-known actress, Maleonn grew up in a world of stageing and enscening. It came as no surprise that he later on in life did not fulfill his romantic childhood dream of becoming a postman, but rather became an artist. Nor it came as a surprise that his theatrical upbringing inspired him in many of his works, whether recreating Chinese fables, literary works or the streets in Shanghai's French concession where he grew up in.

“[I am] coming back and forth between the most unreal world and the most real one, e.g. like bringing some amazing but fragile things in memories back to present; like taking some ordinary time of nowadays into certain atmosphere of the past or the future, seeking the beautiful balance lost in time”.

In the works Maleonn is preparing for his solo presentations in both the gallery and Art Rotterdam he will also attribute Chinese history and tradition. Like in previous series he combines found bits and pieces with theatrical lightning and handmade objects. Amongst others he will use hundreds of antique photographs, dozens of old hour works and watches, 60 kilo salt and cranes, butterflies and other specimens shipped from China.

Over the last years Maleonn gained fame with his imaginative projects. In 2008, for example, he worked on his version of Journey to the West, a photo depicting the classic Chinese tale about the study of Buddhism. The hardship a monk came across on his way to Nepal and back – encounters with fabulous creatures, demons and questionable beings – are portrayed in a handmade diorama.

In 2011 and 2012 Maleonn traveled over 35 cities in 25 provinces of China with his mobile studio. He shot portraits of thousands of ordinary Chinese. Maleonn made over 1,600 portraits of people dressed in outrageous costumes, with diverse poster backdrops and surrounded by strange props of all shapes and sizes. All images were published on Weibo (the Chinese Twitter) and were shown in a widely published exhibition in Shanghai (e.g. The Guardian, The Daily Mail, Art Newspaper) before travelling to Swansea (UK) and Paris.

* Maleonn stays in Amsterdam from January 10th working on both installations and is available for interviews.

Exhibition at Canvas International Art:

25 January – 23 February 2014 (Opening Saturday January 25, 17.00-19.30)

Art Rotterdam: 5 February – 10 February 2014