WINTER POLLINATION
Geographies of Influence - Art from China to Italy
Curated by Yiwei Lu
L. Mikelle Standbridge
with assistant curator Jiayi Hou
October 12, 2024 to February 23, 2025
Casa Regis - Center for Culture and Contemporary Art, Italy
The exhibition "Winter Pollination (Geographies of Influence - Art from China to Italy)" explores trajectories of ideas via Chinese and Italian artists' approaches to the historical and contemporary identity of China.
Casa Regis - Center for Culture and Contemporary Art, situated in the foothills of Italy's Alps, proudly presents six Chinese and two Italian artists, ranging in mediums from photography, to watercolors to ceramics. Yiwei Lu of Yiwei Gallery, with venues in USA and China, is lead curator of this multi-national exhibition, hosting artists Barbara Aloisio, Michela Cavagna, Teng Jingyi, Yan Jinsong, Chen Shangping, Jin Ting, Ye Wenlong, and Zheng Xiaolin. Beyond their artistic accomplishments, these Chinese artists were chosen for their strong identification with their homeland as well as their participation in global themes, whereas the Italian artists were chosen for the impact China left on their practice. The exhibition title "Winter Pollination" refers to the duration of the show literally extending into the coldest months of the year and, figuratively, sponsors bringing culture from one place to another and back again, cross-fertilizing the terrain of ideas, when the winter of political rivalry is at its darkest.
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The two Italians in the exhibition were heavily influenced by their stay in China, Michela Cavagna during her travels in 2002, and Barbara Matilde Aloisio as recently as this year with a two-month artist residency. Cavagna explores presenting the lasting impact of fleeting colors, fragrant fragments of views and tactile surfaces as she revisits her 600 Kodak slides from the impactful journey. Aloisio, inspired by chrysalides, moved her ceramic practice into the fine art of delicate "super white" porcelain sculptures as she worked at the world-renowned International Studios Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute.
Teng Jingyi's watercolors made an international stop before arriving to our Italian venue. Originally from China but now residing in the USA, Jingyi credits his ability to provoke empathy and intrinsic understanding in his portraits to the fact that he has had to work from a place of shared human spirit, beyond location or thanks to a change in location.
The tradition of ink-wash landscapes in China has reigned supreme for many centuries and has touched many traditional and contemporary artists. An aesthetic quickly adapted to today's tools, artists Chen Shangping and Zheng Xiaolin use the language of black and white photography to address the sublime in Nature. Shangping, having emigrated from Taiwan, sees China as a majestic beauty, filled with spectacular cloud formations and snowy peaks. Also Xiaolin's photography, with top-of-the-world vantage points, mysterious fogs, and night skies, exhibits reverence, as if to say the natural spectacle defies all limitation and invites the entire world to come and admire the geographic wonders of China.
Yan Jinsong is totally under the influence of the grand Chinese landscape tradition in the form of lengthy scrolls, yet, his photographic montage mountain-scapes, where haze delineates the atmospheric perspective, are in reality masterpieces of metaphor. Subtly emerging from the yellow tinted romantic coastal village scenes are mounds of oceanic trash, immediately transporting the image's content to include global topics of pollution, consumption, responsibility, growth and economics. No country is absent from this balancing act.
Ye Wenlong is right there as well in the forefront of global concerns, skillfully turning abandoned everyday objects on the beach into photographic icons, as if a Warhol soup can had been reclaimed by sea crustaceans. The deceivingly straight forward color documents actually reference nature's re-appropriation of her waters as much as they reference man's unchecked waste habits.
Another artist wielding the power of photography is Jin Ting, addressing a Chinese cultural identity through the remnants of industrial architecture and political agendas. Because of a surreal melancholy style, his faded color landscapes of old factories and monumental statues comment on the difficultly of sustained progress. Beyond their beauty, the significance of this series lies in its message for all developing countries.
This exhibition hopes to render relevant - through the highest of artistic achievement, with many of these artists having been awarded the highest of artistic recognition in China - the voices of artists who critically contemplate or give homage to the complexity of this vast historic nation, whether they be working from within or who are passing through. In addition, it is our goal to keep open all paths of cross-national communication, keeping in perspective the role of the individual in a larger scheme of geo-political needs.
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Part of a broader cultural sponsorship, this event is the continuation of an exchange started in 2023 and has a projected involvement through 2025. This is the second consecutive year that curator Yiwei Lu is bringing her artists from China to Casa Regis, and in the interim, multiple collaborations have been formed: The photographs of Ye Wenlong and Zheng Xiaolin traveled to Biella, to be included in the exhibition "Marco Polo: L'Impossibile" at Palace Gromo Losa; The Biella based Association StileLibero hosted the show and is hosting an artist-in-residence for the two Chinese photographers Ye Wenlong and Jin Ting in 2024 in Biella, to photographically interpret the area, and then host their work in the Festival Viaggio at Palazzo Ferrero, 2025; Yiwei Lu and Ye Wenlong are coordinating with Wenling Photographers Association to host photographer/curator L. Mikelle Standbridge and two photographers represented by Casa Regis, Michela Cavagna and Silvia Gaffurini, at the Wenling Residency in China, followed by participation in the Taizhou Photography Festival in China in 2025.
Co-Curator: Lu Yiwei
Yiwei Lu is a curator, writer, and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Born and raised in China, Lu's passion for the arts brought her to Los Angeles in 2014, where she studied film production at Loyola Marymount University before earning a master's degree in Visual Anthropology from the University of Southern California.
Lu's career in the art world began in 2019 when she started collaborating with international artists and curating exhibitions at art fairs. This experience led her to establish Yiwei Gallery in Venice Beach, Los Angeles and recently Wuhan Art Lab Gallery in China.
Co-Curator: L. Mikelle Standbridge
L. Mikelle Standbridge, born in Los Angeles, currently living and working between Milan and Biella in Italy since 2000, is the Founder and Director of Casa Regis - Center for Culture and Contemporary Art in Valdilana. She has a B.F.A. in Art from San Francisco State University and a M.F.A. from the University of Chicago in Photography. Working also as an artist and exhibiting internationally, she is represented by El Nido Arte Space in Los Angeles and by Gli Eroici Furori Gallery in Milan.
Assistant Curator: Jiayi Hou
Jiayi Hou is a curator originally from Beijing and now lives in Los Angeles. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Art History and is currently a MA candidate at the Curatorial Practice in Public Sphere program at University of Southern California.