In the evening of October 1st, 2013, New Star Art Festival Awards Ceremony was held in Guangzhou. In the awards ceremony, it announced all the award winners of the year – Lei Qiaowu, Zhai Xuanhong, Li Na, Zhang Zengzeng, Huang Ying who won the “Newcomer Awards”, He Libin was awarded “Jiayuanhai Annual Experiment Award” and Zheng Yu won the “Public Prize”.

But the “Art-Trend” award winner, as the spotlight was vacant again, Zeng Qiong, the founder of New Star Art Festival said at the ceremony: “We are very pleased to see that the overall level of the participating artists and works in this new star festival is higher than the previous years, but all the judges agreed that there isn’t any “surprising” works this year, it’s a regret but also full of hope, to look forward to better works appearing next year.”

Deng Jianjin, He Duoling, Lv Peng, Liu Jiakun, Wang Jianwei, Ye Yongqing, and Zhan Wang composed of the “final jury”, and Gu Zheng wrote the foreword for the festival. One hundred finalists of young artists as well as hundreds of community celebrities, entrepreneurs from across the country gathered in Guangzhou, to witness the birth of the winners of the 4th “New Star Awards”.

New Star Art Festival adheres to the freedom, independence, innovation, artistic attitude and spirit for exploration of the “Star Art Festival” 1979, and strives to build a platform for young Chinese contemporary artists. The New Star Art Festival has been touring to more than ten nationwide major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Changsha, Nanjing, Ningbo, Qing Dao, Chengdu, Tai Yuan and so on. In order to encourage young artists who have perseverance and confidence in art creations, to create real innovative works of force and tension, Chen Jun, Chairman of 1912 Group has donated one million of RMB for the “1912 New Star Charity Art Fund”, during the awards ceremony.

On October 1st and 2nd, there were three related forums held in the exhibition hall, including “Dislocation of Rich Information and Poor Thinking – Examining the Phenomenon of the Contemporary Young Art Forum”, “Trans Media – Spanning Between Art Mediums Forum”, “Market and Development of Chinese Art Derivatives Forum”. In the “Dislocation of Rich Information and Poor Thinking – Examining the Phenomenon of Contemporary Young Art Forum”, Prof. Guan Yuda, from the Department of Fine Art at the School of Art and Design Yunnan University, thought that current information was too advanced, and young people were short of the spirit of rebellion, while the art was rebellious. Rather than rebuilding the structure and order, current China urgently lacked cultural conservatism, and a loner attitude. Associate Professor Hu Bin from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts said, contemporary art was neither divorced from society, nor does it humor the mass’s tastes, but is ahead of the public’s aesthetic feeling while the young artists should have the courage to keep their art in spite of disapproval. Zeng Qiong, founder of New Star Art Festival spoke that artists had matured in the 30 years, if they argued that they were in need of more time to grow up, it was a reflection of weakness and surrender. He Jinfang, former editor in chief of “Gallery” magazine said the immaturity didn’t mean the immature of technique, but the lack of independent thought, rather than the pursuit of a performance of screen, a young artist should increase their judgment, which required them to read more books. In the “Trans Media – Spanning Between the Art Mediums Forum”, Yang Qingqing, Professor of Shanghai Theater Academy talked about “Trans Media”, which is realized when a medium breaks out of the old boundaries to become a new form of media. The “Trans Media Art and Fashion” is a transposition of art and fashion, which turns the desire for the new and creative into consumption, and cutting-edge artistic experiments into market demand. In the dialogue with Yang, Zeng Qiong said “trans” was neither simply transforming a painting into a design, nor a derivative of art, it was an idea, in addition, copyright issue was still a debatable issue.

The related exhibition of New Star Art Festival opened on October 1st going through to October 4th in Guangzhou Poly World Trade Center Exhibition Hall. Let’s look forward to the arrival of the next New Star Art Festival.

Journalist: Chen Peihua/ CAFA ART INFO