LABA International Art Festival Artists Joe Davidson and Xinyong Wang International Video Conference

Joe Davidson Exhibition at Bulthaup in West Hollywood, California

West Hollywood, California, USA. 2nd March, 2023. Joe Davidson, one of the 2021-2022 LABA International Art Festival's Top 10 Global Most Influential and Most Valuable (MIMV) Artists, and Xinyong Wang, the chief representative for East China, set up an international video conference at a sculpture exhibition that was held at Bulthaup in West Hollywood, California. Joe Davidson is a fine art sculptor and one of the first artists to win a LABA Icon Award. Xinyong Wang is Chinese artist and fine art painter living in the US, who was also a winner of a LABA Icon Award and one of the Top 20 Global Most Influential and Most Valuable (MIMV) Artists. The sculpture exhibition brought together mainstream artists, international curators, and art collectors who came see to Joe Davidson's artwork.

Artist Joe Davidson, Italian curator Cynthia Penna, and Joey Zhou

Joe Davidson has an art studio in Los Angeles. His work touches on themes of gravity and impermanence with sculptures and large scale installations cast from unexpected materials: slip-cast porcelain for the speed bags, glazed porcelain for the towels, cast Hydrocal for the freestanding balloons and Aqua-Resin for the sculptures on the walls. He graduated in 1995 with a Master's of Fine Art (MFA) degree in Sculpture from San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, California and in 1992 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in Sculpture from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Massachusetts. He has exhibited throughout North America and Europe, and in 2009, received the C.O.L.A. Fellowship from the Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles, California. He has been reviewed by many publications including the Los Angeles Times, Artillery Magazine, Artscene, and THE Magazine.

Artist Joe Davidson

One of Joe Davidson's sculptures has this quote, "In the end, gravity always wins. It is a blunting, unchanging force with a continual effect that keeps us grounded and ultimately pulls us in. Sculpture, by its very nature, talks to this pull, sometimes enjoying and acknowledging it, sometimes trying to hide and scorn it."

Sculptures by Joe Davidson

Joe Davidson describes his artistic work and inspirations, "My work acknowledges gravity, sometimes implicitly, sometimes overtly. It's a way of blending the refined with the ordinary. Materiality while also trying to address the ephemeral. Because sculpture is so deeply rooted in the ground, one has to accept its materiality. However, some of the most effective work I have witnessed is an attempt to transcend. It is mass and lightness, A steady push and pull between solidity and absence, form and void. In addition, I am drawn to familiar objects and the associations embedded in them. Current work references visual anchors such as body shape, sagging or bloating. Whether the product is scotch tape, or whether making a still life or a bouquet made of plaster flowers, I see the dreamlike as the object of my work. The work is strongly representational in content, but has no clearly assigned meaning, thus creating unease. With this way, I think in a Surrealist way, looking for traditional figures like Eva Hesse and Piero Manzoni, as well as contemporary figures like Robert Gerber and Matthew Barney. Deceptively simple streamlined objects juxtaposition with this unease adds powerful force to the work, again symbolizing the contrast between the emotional lives that define us as human beings and the obsessions and minutiae that make up our everyday lives."

Sculpture by Joe Davidson at the exhibition

At the sculpture exhibition, Joe Davidson met with Joey Zhou, the founding chairman of the LABA International Art Festival. In addition to communicating with various artists and curators, Joey Zhou arranged for an international video conference with Xinyong Wang, Joe Davidson, Italian international curator Cynthia Pena, and an American curator, Michelle Gagnon. Joey Zhou also owns a sculpture by Joe Davidson.

Artist Xinyong Wang

Xinyong Wang is an artist living in the United States. In recent years, Mr. Wang's original works have attracted the attention of the calligraphy and painting market, especially the unanimous praise of deep senior collectors and celebrities. Wang has devoted himself to the innovative research and practice of meticulous painting for more than 30 years. He has visited Michigan State University and Texas A&M University for visiting studies. His artistic creation starts from traditional meticulous painting, which has both inheritance and transformation, embodying a philosophical foundation of self-reflection and practice. His works show the expansion and integration of Eastern and Western art, break through the solidified expression and expression of techniques and images in terms of subject matter, shape, texture, color, texture, etc., and trace the natural origin of art with simple and pure creativity.

Xinyong Wang has successively held exhibitions in Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, Taos, Texas A&M University STARK Gallery, Texas Brasso Art Center, Michigan State University Asian Research Center, etc. as well as lectures and cultural exchanges. Wang is a member of the Artists Association & Calligraphers Association in Jiangsu Province, Chairman of Jiangsu Micro Technology & Culture Co. Ltd, Executive Vice President of the US Jiangsu General Chamber of Commerce and Deputy Director of the Culture and Arts Commission of the US Jiangsu General Chamber of Commerce, and the vice president of the Nanjing Chamber of Commerce in the United States. He has been committed to cultural and artistic exchanges between China and the United States for many years, promoting and enhancing China's excellent traditional culture International popularity and influence.

In 2022, Wang won the LABA Icon Award and ranked among the Top 20 Global LABA-MIMV lists, attracting extensive mainstream media attention and reports in the United States. The online popularity in North America has reached 16 million people. In 2021, the "Extraordinary Craftsman" column of CCTV's National Video Archives Channel broadcasted Xinyong Wang's personal special documentary "Unbounded Art Is Here."

During the video conference, Xinyong Wang expressed his interest in Joe Davidson's sculpture exhibition held in West Hollywood, and his appreciation of his sculptures. He looks forward to the opportunity to hold a joint exhibition with American artists under the arrangement of the LABA International Art Festival.

The Beverly Arts News is sponsored by the JHSZ International Art Institute