San Francisco-based artist Shan Shan Sheng participates in Venice Biennale 2009 with Open Wall project

The artist’s bold glass installation re-interprets a section of the Great Wall of China for the
international audience of the historic art exhibition.

San Francisco, CA. Shan Shan Sheng, the San Francisco-based artist internationally renowned for her public art glass sculptures and large-scale paintings is currently participating in the 53rd Venice Biennale (June 7 – November 22, 2009) with her glass installation project, Open Wall. The sculpture is sited on the island of Certosa across the lagoon from the Biennale entrance. This installation work is part of a series of outdoor sculptures in Biennale’s La Città Ideale that are presented there especially for the 2009 Venice Biennale by the International Association of Art – UNESCO, Italian Committee, through which Venice is conceived as a theatre for Le Corbusier’s concept of “museum of unlimited growth.” Sheng's Open Wall is a work of art that combines the rich architectural heritage of the East with the artist’s contemporary artistic vision; it is positioned to welcome visitors to the exhibition.

Consisting of 2,200 glass bricks that correspond to the years of the Great Wall’s Construction, the Open Wall is approximately 20 m (60ft) long, 2 m (6ft) high and 80 cm (2ft) deep. Sheng uses translucent stacked Venetian glass, a medium she has worked with extensively, to allude to dynastic Chinese architecture. Warm colors of red, gold and yellow are used intermittently in layers making this an exquisite luminous structure. Being a temporary work, Open Wall reconstructs China’s Great Wall as a sequence of stacked glass bricks. The glass bricks become a kind of cultural currency as they were distributed and redistributed in the process of installation. This creation of a modern work of art inspired by a great Chinese monument ultimately represents the newfound openness of contemporary China: A country that wishes to retain its rich cultural heritage whilst being open to global economy and the international exchange of ideas. With her Open Wall Shan Shan Sheng presents a temporary threshold between water and sky, past and present and the walled cities of Venice and China, marking this critical intersection of Chinese and Western cultures.

Throughout her career as a visual artist, Shan Shan Sheng has been greatly concerned with the dualities of East and West, Tradition and Innovation. Her work draws on classical Chinese painting as well as Western Modernism and Abstract Expressionism and is truly universal and bicultural in scope. Creating artwork in Asia, Europe and the U.S for nearly three decades, Sheng is considered one of the most acclaimed artists of our time in public art, large-scale and glass sculpture.

Born and raised in Shanghai, China, Sheng furthered her education and artistic development in the United States. In 1982, Sheng came to United States to pursue her academic and artistic interests by attending Mount Holyoke Collage and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she earned her Master of Fine Arts Degree, and went to Harvard University as an artist-in residence for two years. She currently lives and works in San Francisco. In addition to her large-scale glass sculptures, Shan Shan Sheng is celebrated as the first Chinese visual artist to be invited to collaborate with Venetian glass experts of Murano, the island renowned for a glass art tradition that extends back over a thousand years. Her paintings and sculptures appear in numerous international collections, including Harvard University, the China National Art Museum in Beijing, the Shanghai Art Museum, the Art Museum of South Texas and the Berengo Collection in Venice, Italy.

Her large-scale artworks have been installed in four of the world’s ten tallest buildings, as well as other major works of architecture, (IFC II, Hong Kong, the second tallest building in the world, designed by Cesar Pelli, NYC; Jin Mao Tower, Shanghai, the third tallest building in the world, designed by SOM, Chicago; Central Plaza, Hong Kong and the Amaco building of Chicago, the sixth and ninth tallest buildings in the world).

The Venice Biennale has for over a century been one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world. Ever since its founding in 1895, it has been in the avant-garde, promoting new artistic trends and organizing international events in the contemporary arts in accordance with a multi-disciplinary model which characterizes its unique nature.

Shan Shan Sheng's Open Wall project will be exhibited in Venice until October 25th and will subsequently travel to London, Munich, Prague, Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore, Taipei, New York, Hong Kong, Miami and San Francisco.