Nigel Rolfe
The Time Is Now
Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing
From February 1 to February 25, 2018
Extraordinary success specially for his live four performances
Congratulations to gallery artist Nigel Rolfe on his survey show at Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing opening 31st January 2018 and running until February 25th.
Large turn out and warm receptoin for Nigel Rolfe with Living in the moment, pushing boundarieshttp://usa.chinadaily.com.
Press release
The Red Brick Art Museum will present one of the most iconic characters in the history of performance art from February 1 to February 25 - the "The Time Is Now" solo exhibition by Nigel Rolfe (born in Isle of Wight, England in 1950) , Opening on January 31st, curated by Jonas Stampe, a senior curator at the Red Brick Art Museum. For nearly 50 years, Nigel Rolfe has been one of the most important practitioners in the field of performance art since 1969. This exhibition attempts to trace back and collate the artist's artistic practice since 1973, including historical works, site-specific photography and new work done at the Red Brick Art Museum. In addition to 20 performance art pictures, the exhibition will also showcase his important video works.
The performance artist has come to Beijing and will act on the spot according to the local conditions in the Great Wall and the Red Brick Art Museum. As a large-scale ancient defense project and an important relic in the history of human civilization, the Great Wall often becomes an element of artist creation, especially the birthplace of contemporary performance art. With his usual analytic perspective, Nigel Rolfe will have a dialogue with the multi-cultural connotation and symbolic meaning of the Great Wall's evolving history and will reflect on and pursue his application in the context of contemporary performance art. Red Brick Art Museum's garden is the modernization of Chinese classical landscape mapping, a unique oriental space aesthetics, which will provide artists with a wide range of cultural context. The three acts, which have been handed over in the context of both the ancient and modern dimensions of space and time and the fields that carry Chinese tradition and contemporary culture, will bring a unique experience of participation for Chinese audiences.
As curator Jonas Stapf said: "Experience Rolfe's behaviour at the scene is to spend a moment of rich detail and presence. As the owner of the body and spirit, his behaviour is not only about where and how The most important thing to do is to move, when to rest, to watch, and, above all, how to use space in all dimensions. There is no limit to his artistic vocabulary, and though his interaction with the material and intellectual worlds is transient, his images are powerful and breathtaking. "
Nigel Rolfe's performance art works have their roots in the tradition of Viennese Actionism in the 1960s and Body art in the early 1970s. He often uses the body as a "Sculpture in Motion" and painting tool to directly interact or counter with raw material and environment such as water, fire, air, earth and wood, to find and establish balance, violence and the violent dynamic visual process of collapse, and appear above the body. He always uses the personal body as a place to challenge the physical and psychological limits and reveal the vulnerability of life. In recent years, he has created large-scale productions of images, videos and sound works based on his performance-art images, on-site remnants and related studies.
As one of the outstanding practitioners of performance art and a man of profound knowledge and analytical skills, Nigel Rolfe is now a professor at the Royal College of Art in London. He has had survey shows at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin) and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, as well as Venice, Italy , Sao Paulo, Brazil, Busan and Gwangju, South Korea, and the Biennale of Contemporary Art. In 1988, at the release of Nelson Mandela concert at Wembley Stadium, London, 600 million viewers around the world watched Rolfe's video work.
