The International Artist Residency Program at TWT’s Creative Precinct in St Leonards, provides a unique opportunity for both emerging and established artists to immerse themselves in a new art context, community and culture. This experience enables artists to practice in a global context, build knowledge, networks and partnerships and ultimately, influence their future arts activity.
As part of the TWT International Residency program, artist Peng Yong will stay in Sydney for 3 months. This is not his visit – in 2016 he opened his first solo exhibition Urban Imprint at Vermilion Art Sydney.
Born in Shaoyang, Hunan Province, China, Peng Yong studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the China Central Academy of Fine Art (CAFA), then went on to complete his Master of Fine Arts. He lives and works in Beijing and Tianjin and currently teaches at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts. Peng Yong was the winner of Yishu 8 Award in 2014, a privileged Sino-France culture and art program. He was selected to study at Cites Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2015.
“His work is composed of many 50 x 50 cm master plates, producing prints which freely connect with each other, closely related to the exhibition space, to create a changeable artistic effect. Like most of the construction processes of a standardised building, the inner module determines the scale and change of the building, which plurality thinking of Peng Yong’s work is based on, the screens are divided into similar sized grids by a variety of horizontal and vertical, thick and thin straight lines, arbitrarily combining them according to different exhibition venues and offering exhibition effects, and even spreading to the three-dimensional space. The uniformity and abundance present an abstract aesthetic feeling and dynamic rhythms
The cumbersome and expressionless screens of his works present a special beauty of order as well as the sense of desolation of the modern urban buildings. Lonely buildings stand in silence, as if they are the residues of the universe. Concentrated and depressive black blocks are as colourful as floating bubbles of the bright coloured texture. “Plurality” becomes a resonant superposition instead of citing and piling up symbolic images. He calls it “integrating many into one”. Perhaps it is a practice of Buddhism for him, infinitely repeating the name of Buddha, constantly practicing the Teaching of the Buddha, to gain the purification, gradual enlightenment, and a purer ego”. Text by Tan Ping Supervisor, China Central Academy of Fine Art (CAFA).
Peng Yong has already met with Chinese art curator Cao Yin from AGNSW and with Michael Kempson, Head of Print Making UNSW. Last week, Peng Yong was also invited by UNSW Art & Design faculty to give two lectures to their year 1 and 3 students.
