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Preface 1
Huang Kunming
Hangzhou is renowned as a typical embodiment oftraditional orientaculture, boasting beautiful sceneries,many famous personalities,profound cultural heritage,and brilliant literary and artistic achievements. In recent years,contemporary artistic elements in Hangzhou have unleashed enormous vitality with its cultural and artistic ecological structure being rapidly geared tointernational standards.A series of important art activities, such as the establishment of Bauhaus Museum of Design b yChina Academy of Art,Cai Guoqiang Art Exhibition held by Zhejiang Art Museum and etc,have enriched people’s spiritual and cultural life and extended Hangzhou's cultural influence. which have plaved an active role in Hanezhou’s development into a modern city.Currently, the International Triennial of Fiber Art held in Hangzhou has once again rendered this city a center of worlds attention.,displaying Hangzhou’s distinctcultural and artistic charm to the whole world.
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Preface 2 The Dimension of Weaving
Xu Jiang
The world is caught in constant change, both at the micro and the macro levels. Therefore the dimension of our perspective matters enormously. Heaven-and-earth is on one end of the dimensional spectrum, hence the legendary giant bird of Peng in Zhuangzi’s parable comes with wings spreading out like clusters of clouds. Yin-and-Yang (obscurity and brightness) also refers to a dimension, in which ‘all things leave behind them the Obscurity (out of which they have come), and go forward to embrace the Brightness (into which they have emerged), while they are harmonized by the Breath of Vacancy’.Life is such a dimension that the mushroom of a morning does not know (what takes place between) the beginning and end of a month, and an insect of the summer cannot be talked with about ice, therefore the perfectly happy Zhuangzi was found drumming on the basin and singing after the death of his wife.
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Preface 3 The Significance of Contemporary Art in Promoting Culture
Ma Fenghui
There are two features of moden art museum:the first is regionalism.Aregion can boost its confidence and sense of pride by exploring and displaying its cultural content, through which it can also enhance its influence upon other regions: the second is contemporariness. Asan important component of contemporary art ecological structure, art museum should fully integrate itself into international communication and cooperation with an open attitude, academic spirit and international vision so that it can lead and advance the rapid development of contemporary art. Only through the organic combination and coordination of the two can the cultural image of modern art museum be formed and the culture coordinate of art museum in contemporary art ecological structure be established.
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Interlacing New Directions
From time immemorial, weaving art around the world has been passed down from one generaion to the next. Therefore,the history of fiber art also reflects the history of different people and culture. However, despite all the changes occurring in weaving techniques around the world of all ages, they still remain closely dependent on warp and weft.
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Digital Jacquard Arts
Huang Nengfu
The invention and development of textile technology symbolise the progress of humancivilisation. The weaving of silk and hemp was invented over 7000 years ago in China.Originally, weaving was purely carried out by hands, called “hand weaving by means of hanging”. In weaving practices during the past thousands of years, a series of looms were invented, evolving from back-strap looms, simple looms with a machine frame, basket type and lattice type warp patterning looms, to Chinese drawlooms. It was not until the beginning of the 19th century that the power driven mechanical Jacquard loom was invented, but there were limitations in the fabric weave and colour design. In the 1980s, the electronic Jacquard shedding mechanism was integrated with a variety of high-tech CAD systems and modern machineries for textile, and textile art and design were transformed into the weave structure of textile design, and further converted into information and signals for Jacquard weaving pattern.
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Exhibition of Chinese Kesi Art
Kesi refers to silk products made with continuous warps and discontinuous wefts. It is weaved with small shuttles basing on the different sections and colors of the pattern, resulting in clear rim of the pattern. For such "hard edge" effect, it is also called “cut silk”. It is highly labor and time consuming to produce a kesi work, but various motifs such as flowers and gradd,birds and animals can be exquisitely produced with high flexibility,and it is believed that one inch of kesi textile is worth one inch of gold.
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Vision for Future: Digital Jacquard Arts
Dr Kinor Jiang
The exhibition ofDigital Jacquard Mythologieshas invited six leading artists in the ficld of fibre art including Junichi Arai,LouiseLemieux,Bérube Philippa Brock,Lia Cook,Wen-Ying Huang and Liz Williamson,who all uphold distinct artistie notions combinating tradition and innovation.,and have tirelessly explored the inte gration of computer technology and traditional Jacquard techniques.Their artistry achievements have set examples for a new era in the field of fibre art not only they are irreplaccable. they also have significant in fhuence on modern textile design and innovation.
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On the Boundary Crossing in Maryn Varbanov’s Art Practice
It has been two decades since Mr. Varbanov passed away. Two decades is not a short period of time, yet it seems it was only yesterday that I was working with him. Back then we gathered around Mr. Varbanov, our hearts filled with endless expectations of contemporary art. We were indeed like a tabula rasa with our supplicants’ hearts, anxiously anticipating enlightenment from Mr. Varbanov. Our startled eyes scanned his every draft, the sight of which filled us with excitement as well as anxiety. We could discern, however vaguely, that a new era was dawning upon us. Today, after two decades, when we revisit these drafts and Mr. Varbanov’s art thinking, we are still astounded to find that his unrealized exhibition scheme still strikes one as experimental; what he had envisioned almost two decades ago is exactly what we are practicing and discussing today.
