Frank Vigneron
Professor, Fine Arts Department
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Since the better artists of today are always those who have a clear grasp of the world that surrounds them, it would obviously be absurd to state that only university studio art educators are more aware of the present than artists who do not have the responsibility of engaging with young people. The work of Shi Jin-hua, for instance, who is not attached to an art education institution, is so deeply rooted in the demands of his physical condition and his understanding of human relations that it belongs just as much to the present as that of Ho Siu-kee and Wei Qingji who are both full time academics. And yet, it could be argued that, beyond their own personal intellectual pursuits, it is partly thanks to their everyday involvement with much younger students that artists like Ho Siu-kee and Wei Qingji have been able to renew and reinforce their own practices. As for Shi Jin-hua, we will see that his take on art as healing and connecting makes of his practice an ideal way to unite with the present. The involvement of these teachers and healers takes place within a vast and complex environment that has been called the ‘artworld’ (in one word) by the American philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto (1924-2013), who thus defined the aesthetic, intellectual, institutional and commercial context where art itself is created. Today, very few studio art teachers at university level would be taken seriously if they did not have their own professional practices and if they did not engage directly in the artworld. All the same, since the two teachers of this exhibition also constantly resist the conservatism that often appears in the institutional structure of art education, it cannot be said that the works on display here come merely from their engagement as art educators. Since they are first and foremost artists, their art practices allow them to resist the institutions of art education from the inside and renew it in the process. The same can be said of Shi Jin-hua whose conceptual performative projects have also engaged some aspects of the artworld in order to change it from the inside. This show gathers three artists who can claim prominent places in the very artworld they have helped built over the years as artists, teachers and healers. ....view full article