img_assist|nid=1501|title=Bingyi opening reception|desc=The artists and UB fauclty members Bingyi and Tyrone Georgiou at the opening reception of The Dawns Here Are Quiet at UB Art Galleries from 4/19/07-5/19/07. photo: D.Steckler|link=none|align=left|width=0|height=0]BINGYI: THE DAWNS HERE ARE QUIET
EXHIBITION BY UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO FACULTY MEMBER ON VIEW AT THE UB ART GALLERY APRIL 19-MAY 19, 2007
Bingyi opening reception, photo: D.Steckler: The artists and UB fauclty members Bingyi and Tyrone Georgiou at the opening reception of The Dawns Here Are Quiet at UB Art Galleries from 4/19/07-5/19/07
BUFFALO, N.Y. - Bingyi: The Dawns Here are Quiet opened at the UB Art Gallery, Second-Floor Gallery, with a public reception on Thursday, April 19th at 5pm. Bingyi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Studies at the University at Buffalo.
Much of Bingyi’s subject matter draws heavily from media representations of global politics and ideological conflicts that she pares down to a few enigmatic details. For instance, Central Park (2006) features a bear sleeping peacefully in the center of a billowy forest of charcoal grey trees. An ominous blue bird flies overhead as a camouflaged predator approaches. This image refers to a coyote that, having found its way into New York’s popular Olmstead park in 2006 from upstate New York, was hunted down by police, and died in captivity just before its release back into woods. Target Day (2006) shows a sniper—a spider dangling above his head—lying in a green field aiming his gun at a meditating Buddha. This suspenseful scenario calls to mind the recent destruction of the giant Buddhas of Bamyan in Afghanistan. Recently, Bingyi has explicitly embraced politics in paintings such as Space Garbage (2007), which depicts the flotsam and jetsam that the world’s super powers have left in orbit such as abandoned space stations. While a condition of helpless absurdity informs these works, there is also a calming beauty and breathtaking silence that permeates Bingyi’s shadowy expanses. Her paintings could be read as either a nihilistic treatise on alienation, or, rather, an awakening that comes from relinquishing one’s ego and becoming an infinitesimal dot in the galaxy.
Bingyi has worked with a number of media including fiction, poetry, fashion and film. Yet it is in painting that she has found her most powerful expression. She earned her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from Yale University. She has curated various exhibitions both in the U. S. and China. In 2005 Bingyi worked as the curator of cinema for The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art. The Wall was the first collaboration between U.S. art museums and a significant Chinese art museum to focus on contemporary Chinese art.
Bingyi: The Dawns Here are Quiet is on view at the UB Art Gallery through May 19, 2007. UB Art Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. with extended hours on Thursday until 7 p.m. The exhibition will travel to the Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, 18 Jay Street (between Hudson & Greenwich Street in Tribeca), New York City, May 31 through June 31, 2007.
This exhibition is one of many events that are part of A Greener Shade of Blue UB's semester-long focus on global environmental concerns. The two following lectures are scheduled to take place in the UB Art Gallery, Second-Floor Gallery, on Earth Day, April 20:
11:00 am. - 12:00pm
Environment and Society Institute and Engineers for a Sustainable World presentation
Joachim Ibeziako Ezeji, CEO, Rural Africa Water Development Project (RAWDP), Nigeria
“Low Cost Water Treatment for Oil Producing Communities”
2:00 - 3:30 pm
Canada-U.S. Legal Studies Centre, UB Law, presentation
Dr. Debora Van Nijnatten, Professor, Department of Political Science, and Program Coordinator, North American Studies, Wilfred Laurier University
"A Greener Shade of (Tory) Blue: The Politics of Climate Change in Stephen Harper's Canada"
For more information please visit http://www.buffalo.edu/greener_ub
The UB Art Gallery is funded by the UB College of Arts and Sciences, the Visual Arts Building Fund, the Seymour H. Knox Foundation Fine Arts Fund, and the Fine Arts Center Endowment.