Exhibition poster by Jianping He
This June, invited by Japan DNP Foundation for Cultural Promotion, I will have my solo exhibition "Flashback" at the ggg gallery in Tokyo, 65 pieces of my posters and publications will be exhibited. The opening will be held on June 5th, 17:30 to 19:00. There will also be a forum with honorable guest speakers including Kaoru Kasai , Hideki Nakajima, Wang Xu and Guang Yu.
Theme: "flashback" - Jianping He Solo Exhibition by ggg
Date: 5th - 28th June, 2012
Time: 11:00am - 7:00pm
Opening Ceremony: 5th June, 2012, 17:30-19:00
Forum Speakers: Kaoru Kasai, Hideki Nakajima, WangXu, Guang Yu, Jianping He
Address: dnp ginza bldg. 7-7-2 ginza, chuo-ku tokyo 104-0061
I wish to see you in Tokyo!
Warm Regards,
Jianping
ggg - flashback - Dali
This is my first solo exhibition in Japan. With the unstinting support of two forerunners, Mr .Shin Matsunaga and Mr. Katsumi Asaba and the generous help of ginza graphic gallery, over fifty select posters and book design works from my 15-year career will be exhibited.
I set out to select the works to exhibit in my Berlin studio as I started to ponder on the theme of the exhibition. I felt the warmth of the winter sun on me, and the snow out of the window became unreal, as if part of a stage set, and I felt no cold at all. The works casually littered on the studio floor triggered many memories, difficulties, and frustrations, interspersed with friendship and love.
To render the word "flashback" more visually intelligible, one may think of flashbacks in cinematography and reverse narrative in literature. They may bring sparkles of inspiration, or simply the resurrections of the past. In the Chinese context, I would choose "a sudden turn of my head", a turn of phrase already imbued with the charm of a cinematographic cut. Moreover, for a designer, it vividly captures the pursuit for creative sparks. Every piece of my work comes with struggling and bears witness to the rather strenuous process of searching and exploring. The scenario Wang Guowei (1877 – 1927) aptly described as the third stage of scholarly achievement, "I searched high and low in the crowd. But as I suddenly turned my head, there she was in the end of the streets where lights were the dimmest", would be a perfect ending for a designer.
"A sudden turn of my head" is a stop motion in time, which remained immaterial until the emergence of the clock. Since then time has been fixed within the twelve sections of the disk. Time has been shaped by accuracy, science and order. The moment when a shape is created and a figure finds expression also marks the end of the expansion of fantasy. Does man also create boundaries as he gives expression to his creativity? It applies to objects. What about graphic design?
When it comes to time, I can't avoid mentioning Dali. This great artist has afforded me a certain valor in thinking for a graphic designer like myself. He has broken many boundaries in relation to the figure of time and created a kind of time that is soft and distorted, just like viscose drops of liquid falling from the edge of the table or hanging on a twig.
The process of creating the posters featured in "Flashback" was filled with various representations of Dali. I have asked my assistant to take pictures of an ancient Bodhi tree in front of my studio on a sunny winter day. In the rich nakedness of its foliage, one notices the protean lines drawn by individual branches that contribute to the overall peacefulness of the tree. Slowly I hung every letter of the alphabet on the tree, in the hope that I would not disturb its wintry poise, blessed with Buddhist wisdom.
Jianping He
Berlin, on the eve of March 12th, 2012
The distant so close – Posters by Jianping He
When you move from one culture to another you basically have two options. Either you decide to integrate or to live in a parallel world. So, what does a designer do whose first influences came from China, his second from Germany? Does he unite the two in harmony or pit one against the other in direct contrast? Jianping He's works, however, cannot be stuck in either drawer. Besides being influenced by two worlds, to me it seems the key to his success is his individual sense of creativity that goes into his posters. This freedom to use the means at his disposal gives rise to posters that would be unimaginable, both in China and in Germany, without the one or the other part. Coming from Jianping He, these works are wholly comprehensible in the way he borrows everything he needs for his final draft freely from either world. The decisive factor isn't which source he uses, it's how he uses it.
Since the slow, but conscious approximation between western European states after the end of the Second World War, the possibility of defining a national historiography of the poster disappeared altogether in the course of the 1980s. Designers are a rambling people; one is German, studied in France, works in Denmark… Another, like Jianping He, is Chinese. He studied there and in Germany and now works in both countries. In this sense, he is at the spearhead of a new generation. Their context is no longer just their country or continent of origin; they tap potential from the contrasts between the cultures.
The thing that fascinates me above all about posters of Jianping He is how they manage to present me with the familiar and the foreign at the same time or in a reciprocal effect – all on a single sheet of paper. For example, when the infinite bits and pieces that make up the large sum remain visible and comprehensible in their precision of execution, or if familiar messages can be read in the foreignness of the design, it seems as if two distant worlds are encountering each other and using the same formal vocabulary. And Jianping He manages to join the individual elements without ever calling their visual relationship to question.
Rene Grohnert
Director of German Poster Museum
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