Tianjin Event of the Week: 'Wood Engraving' Exhibition at TAFA

That's Tianjin picks the best thing to do in the city each week. 

Wood Engraving, an art exhibition, is now on display at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts (TAFA). 

The show is a collaborative effort between the printmaking departments of TAFA and CAFA (Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing), with additional backing from the International Academic Printmaking Alliance (IAPA). After a series of symposia in CAFA late last year, this exhibition is now being held in Tianjin, in an unequivocal attempt to save a (supposedly) dying art form from extinction.

Standouts are the stylistically diverse works of Belgian wood engraver Peter Posteels, playful miniature engravings by 18th century British illustrator Thomas Bewick and ominous, naturalistic prints by the hand of 20th century British artist Monica Poole. These are interspersed with innovative and thought-provoking pieces of TAFA graduates such as Zhang Liang, Yang Yanyu and Gu Xiuhua. 

The exhibition’s prize-piece, a long scroll entitled Unnameable by Yang Hongwei, Vice Dean of CAFA’s printmaking department, features a curious mixture of biblical symbolism and lewd, apocalyptic scenes of bacchanalia, alongside grotesque futuristic machinery and an “unnameable” amount of... phalluses. 

Through Tue Apr 10, free; Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, see event listing.

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