Johannes Zits and Ed Pien

For his upcoming exhibition, Zits will present new textile based collages made during his two-month residency at Bizart and the Shanghai version of his “Body Print” video/performance series. Zits will also present a new live-for-the-camera performance in collaboration with VJ Karlen Chang at the Ying Yang Bar. This performance will combine music, video mixing with hints of “reality” TV.

The suite of four textile-based appliqué work takes the form of bed coverings. The images on them consist of figures in various reclining poses. They figures are constructed from with a variety of textile patterns, printed images, colours, as well as texts and logos that reference specific manufacturers. The appliqué are created in such a way that the image of the figure will oscillate between skin/flesh and the fabrics from everyday live.

For the opening night “Body Print” video/performance, Zits will create a series of three collaged body portraits while simulcasting and recording the performance. One at a time, the participants will have their body painted with glue. Pressing their body on the canvas the wet glue imprints will be used as the basis for making collages that will be completed during the course of the evening. The participants will choose materials for their collage portrait from a large pile of magazines. While the participants are washing off the excess glue from their body, Zits will continue to work on the portraits. The finished collage works will form part of the exhibition alongside documentary footage from a previous performance.

At the Ying Yang Bar, artist Johannes Zits, VJ Karlen Chang and DJ Siesta will create a lively event combining performance, video and funky-jazzy-liquid sounds. Mixing sampled video footage from around the globe with a live feed, the performance will explore the dynamic interplay between the audience and the performers, examining the individual’s evolving relationship with the outside world.

In his art practice Johannes Zits is committed to the use of collage and has

pushed its traditional boundaries to include samplings from electronic billboards, internet, TV commercials, sound bites and live performances. Zits utilizes collage as a means to expose and subvert the assertions of pop culture and how it shapes us. Identity is akin to collage, in that its complexity takes form from many sources. For over ten years Zits has been combining the figure with appropriated images from advertising and interior design magazines to explore personal/public spaces, identities, intimacies and desires.

Flying Creatures Ed Pien

The intensity of Ed Pien’s work physically draws the viewer into his world of strange hybridised creatures inspired by both Chinese folklore and western society.

Pien’s work advances his interest in fear and vulnerability, as explored in his projects incorporating notions of ghosts and themes of transformation. Through his drawings and installations, Pien incorporates the monstrous in order to deconstruct normality, to reconsider our preconceived notions of difference, and to celebrate possible ways of being in the world.

During his two-month residency at Bizart, among other projects, Pien will realize a suite of large-scale kites to be flown in The People’s Square on the 16th of February at 2:00 pm by the fountain behind the Shanghai Museum. The resulting event will be exhibited at Bizart as a video work along side the kites.

Pien's work extends the traditional notions of drawing. The kites allow him to

deploy his two-dimensional work into three-dimensional and time-based realms where the sense of the performative is also encompassed.

Pressetext

Johannes Zits and Ed Pien
BizArt artists in residence programme
Ort: BizArt Art Center