Highlights of the "Art Macao: International Art Exhibition" Main Exhibition in MAM

Jennifer Wen Ma, A Metamorphosis: No End to End, 2019

Being the most important hub of art in the city, the Macao Museum of Art (MAM) is also the main venue of Art Macao. If you are at the stage of checking out the long list of Art Macao events, unsure where to begin your journey, MAM is the perfect starting point. This is because the main exposition of “Art Macao: International Art Exhibition” is located right there and showcases artworks selected by hotels and integrated resorts, seeking to reveal the charm of contemporary visual arts in a variety of forms. So walk around the halls of MAM to learn about mesmerizing contemporary art pieces and get inspired while exploring more of the amazing festival!

All the art at “Art Macao: International Art Exhibition” are united with one theme, diversity. That includes cultural and national diversity of artists who took part, the diversity of their styles, and the forms and instruments they use. So to guide you through the huge variety of art on show, we put together a list of “Art Macao: International Art Exhibition” highlights to pay special attention to!

Caroline Yi Cheng, Prosperity (2019)

Caroline Yi Cheng, Prosperity

A UK born artist of Chinese descent, Caroline Yi Cheng is a ceramic artist, educator and founder of the largest ceramics center in Hong Kong, The Pottery Workshop. Throughout her career, she’s been relentlessly promoting ceramic art by creating her own art, giving lectures and curating exhibitions. Not only is she one of the most talented ceramic artists of her time, but she’s also an inspiring leader of the art community. For her distinguished contributions, Caroline Yi Cheng was awarded “Outstanding Achievement Award” from the America National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) in 2014.

The work of Caroline Yi Cheng, “Prosperity” is exhibited in MAM. What looks like a gorgeous golden dress in a traditional Chinese style has a profound message behind it. Once you approach it, you would see that the dress is, in fact, not made of a sparkly material, but of tiny ceramic butterflies. All of them handmade, therefore unique. “Prosperity” aims to represent China. From an outsider’s point of view, it might look like a beautiful unknown while its beauty is actually woven with a myriad of unique individuals that make the whole country shine and prosper.

You can see the rest of Cheng’s works from the “Prosperity” series, as well as the “All That’s Gold Does Glitter” exhibition of more than 90 ceramic art pieces at The Venetian Macao, The Parisian Macao, Four Seasons Hotel Macao, and Sands Macao.

Refik Anadol, Macau Currents: Data Paintings (2019)

Refik Anadol, Macau Currents: Data Paintings

A native of Istanbul, Turkey, Refik Anadol currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He is a media artist who believes that any public space or unremarkable wall can be turned into a canvas. Instead of oil and brush, he uses machine intelligence as his tool. Each of his projects is assigned to a specific space. This is how Refik establishes a symbiosis of architectural and digital, inviting the audience to take a glance into the future where the border between physical and virtual is wiped out.

If you had to describe Refik’s art in only one word, it would be “hypnotizing”. The creation he prepared specifically for Art Macao is a data sculpture called “Macau Currents”. Sea surface activity data collected in 30 days by a high-frequency radar is exhibited on three parallel LED walls. The eternal calming movement of the digital waves captures the attention and cocoons the viewer in a mesmerizing visual adventure.

Visit Wynn Palace to see more digital art pieces by Refik Anadol and other renowned artists.

Yang Yongliang International Art Exhibition Art Macao MAM macau museum of art

Yang Yongliang, The waves/The Traces/The departure, 2019

Yang Yongliang, The waves/The Traces/The departure

Another digital artist not to be missed is Yang Yongliang from China. Born and raised in Shanghai, Yongliang studied calligraphy and traditional Chinese art since grade school. His deep interest in traditional oriental aesthetics is always present in his works, a fusion of traditional and contemporary. By using digital tools, he revives what is now only found in museums and books and gives it a new life. “As long as the characteristics don’t change, the media you use to express the art doesn’t matter”, Yongliang explains. For him, the creative process is a way to understand Chinese culture and go back in time.

In his series, Yongliang builds a bridge between the futuristic world and the world that is long gone and only remains in myths and paintings. Dozens of video and photo levels build up a new reality inspired by Yang Yongliang’s rapidly developing hometown and classic Chinese paintings. In a way, his art is a metaphor of a contradiction between growing metropolises and the remains of their historic past.

Wang Dongling, Drinking Alone Under the Moon by Li Bai (2016)

Wang Dongling, Drinking Alone Under the Moon by Li Bai

“When I studied art, there were two competing ideas in my mind: shall I follow the steps of my predecessors and write calligraphy to perfection or shall I treat calligraphy as an art form which should be creative and keep changing?”, says Wang Dongling, a renowned calligraphy artist from China.

So he kept studying and practicing, at the same time developing his own style. Today, Wang Dongling is an expert in traditional calligraphy and a modern calligraphy artist with an expressive manner of brush strokes. His calligraphy demonstration sessions are a piece of art themselves, a performance of expressive movement and total immersion in the process.

At some point of his artistic career, he invented “Luanshu”, or Chaos Script, a form that combines calligraphy and abstract painting. Breaking one of the strictest rules of Chinese calligraphy–no crossovers between words and strokes–he creates a new art form. One of the examples of “Luanshu” is the 18-meter-long “Drinking Alone Under the Moon by Li Bai” exhibited in MAM.

Jennifer Wen Ma, A Metamorphosis: No End to End

This piece exhibited in Macao Museum of Art is a part of a large scale installation at MGM Cotai “A Metamorphosis: No End to End” (see featured image at the top). An impressive metal structure that dominates the room, it was created by Jennifer Wen Ma, a visual artist working between Beijing and New York. Such large scale work is not a first for Jennifer. During the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, she was involved as a Chief Designer for Visual and Special Effects, working alongside Cai Guo-Qiang. Later, she designed an installation opera for Lincoln Center Festival in New York, acting as a visual designer, librettist, and the opera director.

The honey-combed layers of “A Metamorphosis: No End to End” resembles the traditional Chinese art of accordion paper lantern-making. It is like a creature creeping up the wall, a living organism born from three Chinese characters “nothingness” 無, “exhaustive” 窮, and “limit” 盡.

Experience “A Metamorphosis: No End to End” at MGM Cotai’s Spectacle.

Gabrielle Wambaugh International Art Exhibition Art Macao MAM macau museum of art

Gabrielle Wambaugh, Deflated, 2012

Gabrielle Wambaugh, Snow/Deflated/String

Gabrielle Wambaugh is a French sculptor who specializes in ceramic sculpture. There are three works by the French sculptor presented at the exhibition–Snow, Deflated and String. In her artistic career and in these particular sculptures, Gabrielle studies the texture and experiments with its different forms and states, with the fluidity of ceramic. She adds patterns and wrinkles, stacks and layered elements and explores the variability of the material and the relationship of space and interspace. Thus, her ceramic sculptures often look like they are made of various materials of different elasticity and plasticity.

Find more of Gabrielle Wambaugh’s ceramic sculptures in Riviera Hotel Macao.