2024.7.3-2024.9.15

Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium, Château La Coste, France

Curator: Alfredo Cramerotti

This summer, Château La Coste is pleased to present a major survey exhibition of works by Ding Yi, a leading figure in Chinese geometric abstraction, in the Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium. Running from 3 July – 16 September 2024, the presentation titled ‘Prediction and Retrospection’ features approximately 30 works on canvas, wood and paper, created over the last forty years.

Drawing upon Eastern philosophy and Western aesthetics, the exhibition presents both experimental, process-based and traditional approaches to contemporary painting. During his long career, Ding has applied such methodology in his studio practice to explore personal and societal cross-cultural perspectives in relation to fast-paced development, urban environment and human culture in general.

The ‘predictive’ element referred to in the title underscores the use of the cross sign, whether a ‘+’ or an ‘x’, as an emblematic gesture and mark. Ding’s practice not only links Western and Eastern formal aesthetic approaches but prefigures the ‘absolute matrix’ of the binary code, one of today’s most prominent visual tropes, now largely seen in the supercharged development of the digital realm.

The ‘retrospective’ aspect is instead manifest in the selection of works from the 1980s to the present, a temporal arch that has seen dramatic societal development such as the fall of Soviet Communism, the decline of the American dream, and the simultaneous iconic rise of China and the Southeast Asia region. Ding’s work, in its integrity and motif-based approach, provides a lens through the contingent results of such epochal events can be read, enabling the viewer to experience this timeframe as a unicum of human culture.

The artist said, “Out of the many galleries at Château La Coste, the one that attracted me most was the Niemeyer gallery. It was immediately apparent to me that this gallery could create new possibilities between painting and space. With its curved glass walls, the Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium is strong, open, and transparent, and allows the surrounding natural landscape of Château La Coste to be brought in. The shimmering light and shadows in the pool outside, along with the intense sunlight, will create an interesting composite relationship with my work and add an exciting, new dimension.”

Curator Alfredo Cramerotti said: “This exhibition unveils Ding Yi’s mastery in navigating the intersections of tradition and innovation; my aim as curator is to invite every viewer to absorb and immerse oneself into the convergence of form and concept. In Ding’s solo presentation at Château La Coste, expect nothing short of a transcendent journey through the labyrinth of visual language, where every brushstroke resonates with the echoes of cultural memory and contemporary resonance.”

About Alfredo Cramerotti

A cultural entrepreneur working at the intersection of contemporary art, media and technology, Alfredo Cramerotti is Director of Media Majlis Museum at Northwestern Qatar. He is President of IKT–International Association Curators of Contemporary Art, Chair of the Digital Strategies Committee of AICA–International Association of Art Critics, and Advisor to the KSA Visual Art Commission, UK Government Art Collection, British Council Visual Arts Acquisition Committee, and the Italian Ministry of Culture.

His curatorial projects includes Art Dubai Digital and the Maxxi-Bvlgari prize for digital arts (both 2024), four national & collateral pavilions at the Venice Biennale (Wales 2013; Maldives 2013; Mauritius 2015; Pera Fauna Flora–Malaysia 2022); Ideal-Types (Amsterdam 2018, Venice 2019); Sean Scully at the Hong Kong Arts Centre (2018), Shezad Dawood at ISMAR/Querini Stampalia Venice (2017); EXPO VIDEO Chicago (2015); and the biennials Sequences VII Reykjavik (2015) and Manifesta 8 Spain (2010). He co-directs Multiplicity Consultancy, a curatorial and publishing initiative fostering the career of artists with diverse and multiple forms of identity. Alfredo has written extensively on contemporary art and media theory with over 200 texts published on topics such as the intersection of art and technology and the impact of globalization on the art world. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Critical Photography book series by Intellect Books, and the author of five books: The Transparent Layer (forth. 2024), Curating the Image: Notebook for a Visual Journey (2020); Forewords: Hyperimages and Hyperimaging (2018); Unmapping the City: Perspectives of Flatness (2010); and Aesthetic Journalism: How to Inform without Informing (2009).

About Château La Coste

Situated in one of the oldest winemaking regions of France, between the historic city of Aix-En Provence and the Luberon National Park, Château La Coste is a vineyard where wine, art and architecture co-exist in harmony. Since it opened to the public in 2011, Château La Coste invites visitors to discover over forty major works of contemporary art installed in the open air and five gallery spaces dotted across the 500-acre site.

Each year artists and architects are invited to visit the domain and discover the unique beauty of this Provençal landscape, with its famed cypresses, stone pines, olive trees and ancient oaks. They are given the freedom to create a site-specific work in an area of the site that inspires them, so Château La Coste continues to evolve as new projects and installations are developed. Artists and architects who have created permanent works at Château La Coste include Frank O. Gehry, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Louise Bourgeois, Richard Rogers, Sophie Calle, Prune Nourry, Tracey Emin and Jean Nouvel.

Ding Yi: Prediction and Retrospection

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