Scottish born artist Vanessa Notley has been living, working and exhibiting in Beijing for over two years.  Before coming to China, she lived in France for many years where she studied and worked at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts in Bourges before moving to the south of France.  She continues to be represented by the galleries AL/MA in Montpellier and Jacques Girard in Toulouse.

• 1965  born in Elgin, Scotland    
• 1986 Bachelor of Arts (magna cum laude) History of Art, Bryn Mawr College, PA, U.S.A.    
• 1989 Diplôme National d’Art Plastique à E.N.B.A. in Bourges, France
• 1991 Diplôme National Supérieur d’Expression Plastique at the Ecole  Nationale des Beaux Arts
• since 2005 lives and works in Beijing, China

Vanessa Notley’s work plays with language (words and sounds, translations and entertaining idiomatic expressions and meanings) and with a certain humour and flexibility she seeks to give language a visual, tangible and sometimes nonsensical form in steel and fabric. The verb “to wander” means to deviate, to stroll, to meander, to have no fixed course and in the series of sculptures entitled Wandering out of Formation she sought to create forms that go physically astray. Like most of her work, they are made of stainless steel which is polished, the edges are precise, their volume contained/ restrained.  Steel, by its very nature, does not lose shape, float or expand. These sculptures of dresses and the little “Tang dynasty sculpture” hairdos lose their restraint; they suggest a sense of spilling out and over.  Their wavy, buxom forms give a rather comical result of lopsidedness.

The expression “ladies-in-waiting” is the title of another series of sculptures.  The term designated servants who were at the beck and call of their superior, usually the queen but it has also come to mean a waitress, a woman waiting on someone. A woman who waits is one waiting for a man, a customer, a suitor, a husband. A waiting woman is also a pregnant one. Here, the artist has added lace sleeves to the sculptures. Protection sleeves are still worn by waitresses in Beijing, by men selling copper tubing in Guang Zhou but here they are rather beautiful, transparent, fragile and impractical attributes emphasising (with a certain irony and humour) a lack of real protection at every level.

Her work will be on show from 18 - 23 May 2008. The opening will be at Embassy House on Dongzhimenwaidajie from 5pm-7pm on 18 May. It closes on 23 May, open all day

Selected exhibitions, residences, grants
2006    On-Line Group exhibition curated by Jocelyn Adele Gonzalez Junco. Litou Space, Beijing

First International Elaborate Sculpture Show, Zheng Zhou, China    2005 Acquistion of the 26 Hats for Horse and 3 drawings by FRAC Languedoc Roussillon, France ；Group show in St. Nectaire, France；Solo exhibition: Galerie Jacques Girard, Toulouse, France    2004 Solo exhibition: AL/MA Gallery, Montpellier, France；Group show at ESPAI TPK, Barcelona for the launch of the art review IRISFOOD, Spain；Group show Imprévus au Jardin at St Gervais s/ Mare, France；Solo exhibition at Jenny, Hagenthal-le-bas, France；Residency at the Sculpture Centre, Montolieu, France；    2003 Solo exhibition: Hand in Glove at the Chapelle des Penitents, Aniane, France；Residency at the Sculpture Centre, Montolieu, France；Jardins privés, jardin publics, Castries, France；Rencontres 2  Château de Bosc à Domazon, France；Fête de l’Humanité, Paris, France；Château de Haut Gléon, Villèsque des Corbières, France；Residency at the Sculpture Centre, Montolieu, France    2002 Grant from the DRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, France；Les Pardessous des Parasols Installation at the restaurant le Caladoc, Cap D’Agde, France；Une Ballade à Pied Levé Installation in the gardens of Roland Baladi, Levet, France；Group show in the Sculpture Garden of the Château du Bosc, Domazon, France；Solo show at the St Ravy Gallery, Montpellier, France    2001 Les Parures de Gentille et ses Amis Contemporary Art Fair, Bourges, France；So, was hast du gemacht ? Solo exhibition at Atelier Doris Pietsch, Germany    2000 Entre le Metaphore et le Succédané Ecole des Arts Appliques, St. Amand Montrond, France    1999 Les Couvertures Solo exhibition at La Renaissance, Paris, France    1998 Solo exhibition at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France；De-ci De-là. Group show at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Reims, France；Group show, Les Correspondances, at Domaine de la Mhotte, St. Ménoux, France    1997/98 Residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts. Paris, France；De-ci De-là. Group exhibition in Nantes, France   1997 Installation entitled Forme, Couleur, Contenu in a Chronopost van, Nantes, Lille et lssy-Ies-Moulineaux.；Courant d’Art group show at the Deauville racecourse.；Bicentenary of Lithography,group show Salonika, Madrid, Spain; Paris, France    1995 Grant from D.R.A.C. du Centre Vœux d’Artistes. Paris, France；Residency at  the Château de La Napoule, Fondation Henry Clews, La Napoule, France；La Promenade des Anglais. Solo exhibition in the cathedral gardens in Bourges, France；Quatre Artistes dans les Graves. Group show at Château Chavat, Podensac sur Gironde, France；10ième Grant for Monumental Art C.R.E.D.A.C. Ivry s/ Seine, France；Pour un Couteau. Group show at Creux de l’Enfer, Thiers, France    19948Artistes Group show at the Cordeliers,Châteauroux,France Germinations 8. Breda; Warsaw; Athens; Madrid    1993Douze. Group show at the Maison de la Culture, Bourges, France；Post Diplôme. Manufacture des Tabacs, Nantes, France；Les Enfants du Sabbat. Group show at  Creux de l’Enfer, Thiers, France

Previous Exhibition Highlight: on lines -group exhibition on contemporary drawing
curated by Jocelyn Adele Gonzalez Junco

Artists:
Cang Xin (China)
Boaz Kaizman (Israel)
Vanessa Notley (France/UK)
Yin Qi (China/France)
Song Yang (China)

on lines opened on Saturday, June 3rd 2006 3pm-6pm at Dashanzi / 798 Art District’s LITOU SPACE.  It was the first show of a planned series in this gallery to propose international and Chinese artists in joint discourse.  A catalogue with accompanying essays was published. It continued until 28 June 2006.

The contemporary craze about painting’s mighty return in China and abroad has suggested a need for a visual space in which artistic production can take place with minimum means through a subdued approach. on lines is a group exhibition that emerges from a concern about drawing as a medium often discarded and shadowed by its flashier counterpart:  painting.

In recent years, there has been a tendency in Western art to revisit and revalue this, the most ancestral, basic and vulnerable artistic medium.  Already in the past year, major established institutions –amongst them New York’s MoMA and London’s Tate Modern- have hinted at the return restatement of drawing and its relevance in the contemporary art landscape.

As opposed to Europe or the Americas, it is surprising how much less often drawing seems to emerge in exhibition proposals and even artistic productions precisely in China, despite its vast tradition of paper work, ink and line (calligraphy) as an ancestral undeniable ever-presence.

on lines presents drawing as a somewhat marginalized space of the inner, an escaped self where lines pave a path towards a private world.  While drawing denies the need of transgression, it reaffirms the temporary, immediate, unprocessed thought (or processed non-thought) in its purest form.

The concept behind the exhibition does not attempt a unifying thesis, but strives to assert the quiet but solid presence of “lines” as a timeless artistic approach.

Whether fictional or realistic, figurative or abstract, decorative or conceptual, the artists hereby proposed utilize drawing mainly as an agent for self-exploration and freedom, a secondary alternative medium as a diversion from their principal modus operandi.

Cang Xin is well known for his performances and photographic essays where he explores contemporary Chinese identity conditions.  Much less known however are the drawings the artist commissions to craftsmen and art students, in which more private subjects of Shamanism (like self-birth and the tree of life), as well as existential issues are addressed, through the subtlety of paper and the disclosed noble nature of the medium.  The LITOU SPACE exhibition on lines will feature a selection of Cang Xin’s small-format ink drawings never before shown to a public.

As the artist himself asserts, Boaz Kaizman's work concerns itself with the contours of time and movement within a specific frame of reference, and seeks to define a sphere for itself: an abstract visual – music. The Israel-born artist (currently living in Germany) works in the conceptual field, mainly with installations. In the piece here exhibited, 101 drawings the artist departs from the scribbles of a child, random energetic colored pencil shapes transposing each other and all the while music composed by Thomas Brinkmann and based on the “Fibonacci Row” plays on. In Kaizman’s work, the music is not accompanying the film, nor vice versa. “What you see is what you see, and what you hear is what you hear.”

The naïve nobility in Vanessa Notley’s drawings are a prelude to her sculptural work on metals, which concern feminine (although not feminist) departures of identity in history and the present.  Her drawings are made of subtle lines, which barely there, seem altogether to disappear at times. Either as studies for three-dimensional constructions or “therapeutical” exercises or simple escaped dreams, Notley’s drawings are abstracted and stylised from art historical Western and non-Western sculptures and master paintings -Greek classical sculptures, 1000 year old Chinese relieves, or masterpieces by Masaccio, which she complements with silk thread sewn into the surface, bringing texture and a three-dimensionality that echoes her sculptures. The works on paper exhibited in on lines (which were produced in Beijing, where the artist lives since 2005) will swift away the viewer’s mind into a timeless world where decorative lines and classical beauty rule.

Also for Yin Qi is drawing a secondary medium that allows a more personal reflective exercise.  Greatly differing (at least aesthetically) from his monochromatic grey richly textural still-life paintings, Yin Qi has been using pupil’s (Chinese) calligraphy notebooks for a number of years in a sort of playful comic story-telling manner.  An image diary of a private and even romantic sort:  the “main character” in many of the drawings and his source of inspiration being a reference to his wife and the situations reflecting trips made together or daily life scenarios.  In these episodes, Yin Qi plays with word-games of known and made up Chinese sayings where both, the personages and Chinese characters are elements of linear narratives.  Accompanying a display of these “school booklets,” on lines will also exhibit other recent abstract works on paper from Yin Qi, drawings which retain the humorous aspect to his work and incorporate different textures and materials forming imaginative and explorative collages.

The younger artist in the exhibition, comic-draughtsman, musician and scene-personality Song Yang represents the younger generation taking over China’s art terrain as culture and business.  In Beijing, one might recognize his drawings in the English edition of the Time Out magazine, with which he collaborates with a monthly pictorial “column” titled Song Yang’s people.  Here his pen here becomes linear and sketchy as he takes a more social and even critical approach to the city’s life.  Among the works featured in on lines there will be the original drawings for his new logo Bad Girl, a contemporary tough girly and young woman figure that serves as mascot for the upcoming launch of his commercial brand (Music CDs, T-shirts, souvenirs, etc) under the same name, and arguably as an alter ego for the upcoming trendy manga-obsessed generation that is still on the underground in the Chinese metropolis, but gradually asserting itself in China’s contemporary culture.