MEDIA RELEASE FOR 2010 CHINESE CONTEMPORARY ART AWARD (CCAA)

International jury announces the winners of the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards CCAA: The winners are Duan Jianyu (Best Artist), Sun Xun (Best Young Artist) and Zhang Peili (Lifetime Contribution Artist).

Established by Uli Sigg in 1997 as an independent non-profit entity, CCAA’s purpose is to give awards to Chinese artists and art critics who show outstanding achievement in artistic creation, and its analysis and critique. CCAA encourages their development and enhances awareness and appreciation to a wider public for what Chinese art contributes to contemporary Chinese culture. It has since become an institution of significance for the Chinese art scene, with the CCAA winners becoming well recognized also by the international art world.

DUAN JIANYU : Her paintings and installations are highly personal.Her painterly renderings and textual notes connect with a worldwide discourse on the correlation of art and life. It is highly artificial, yet at the same time deeply real. She delivers a mirror both to her artist peers and women specifically, who are seeking to reinforce their particular sensibilities and imaginations.

SUN XUN: His work should be seen in the rich tradition of Chinese and Asian contemporary cinema. At the same time he confirms and renews the importance of traditional Chinese ways of art making, reintegrating old techniques into newer media. In the meantime, he has developed diverse strategies to create a new dimension for the filmic structure through spatial occupations.

ZHANG PEILI: Father of Chinese Video art, he has been a leading figure in the Chinese contemporary art scene since the mid-1980s. His influence on his peers and his role as educator of younger generations of artists cannot be emphazised enough. As the main founder of the first new media department in the Chinese art eductation system, his pedagogical engagement has been greatly fruitful.

The Jury made the choices in view of the overall context of Chinese contemporary art today:

“We are witnessing in the artists’s works presented to us, especially the youngest works, a much larger diversity , as well as personal, sensitive and investigative efforts. In terms of Chinese contemporary art in general, we would like to see even more encouragement of independent positions. We would support further singular ways of art production, exhibition making, and critical discourses, which is to our opinion the only guarantee to reinforce the importance of the works which we had to judge upon. And we hope these endeavours will continue to grow, and that others come into being. The strength of young art works worldwide will rely on their further emancipation as well as distancing from the domination of art market, both local and global.”

The members of the jury consisted of internationally reknowned experts on contemporary art. They are Ruth Noack (curator of documenta 12, Kassel), Chris Dercon (director of Haus der Kunst, Munich), Hou Hanru (director of exhibitions and Chair of Public programs, San Francisco Art Institute), Huang Du (independent curator, Beijing), Uli Sigg (founder of CCAA), Zhang Ga (professor of Media Art, Academy of Art and Design, Tsinghua University), Zhang Qing (vice-director of Shanghai Art Museum).

Contact info:
Wang Weiwei , Coordinator
Email: wangweiwei328@gmail.com
Mobile: +86 15000679012