HSBC bank is an active cultural sponsor of Chinese Arts and it has livened up its
Corporate Headquarters in London with a Chinese Paper Cut Art theme.
J Walter Thompson's London office developed the concept for HSBC as part of the bank's continuing cultural sponsorship activities and specifically for the bank's sole sponsorship of the China Design Now exhibition in London. This exhibition showcases contemporary designs coming from China. JWT's concept was to use a traditional Chinese Art form to depict modern subjects. The ancient art of Chinese Paper Cutting was chosen as the media to execute this concept which posed a big challenge on how to fuse modern subjects and themes with design elements and constraints of this traditional art form.
A search was made for an authentic Chinese Paper Cut Artist with a strong Chinese Traditional Paper Cut style who can be commissioned to do this art work. J Walter Thompson found native Chinese Paper Cut Artists in China Art World's website - and coordinated with China Art World to select a suitable artist whose style would work well with the concept.
One of China Art World's featured artist - Han Jing, was finally chosen as the artist to be commissioned to develop this art work. The commissioned work was awarded to China Art World and coordination and communication between artist and ad agency was handled by China Art World. The commissioned work was a typical East meets West scenario posing various challenges in the process of getting the western concepts executed using Eastern Values - in this case the artistic values of Chinese Paper Cut Art. Language was also a barrier since the artist does not speak English. The development of the commissioned work required a series of iterations and modifications while carefully balancing commercial content with artistic content. At the end, a beautiful Chinese Paper Cut Art work was created. This was an A3 size art work scissor cut on red xuan paper.
The commissioned art work depicts modern China's skyline with famous prominent landmarks and buildings like the Shanghai T.V. Tower , the CCTV building and the Beijing Olympic Stadium. A bullet train is seen speeding through the skyline looking as if it is a mythical chinese phoenix in flight. In the foreground, the paper cut art work shows bits and pieces of people in modern day activities like a disc jockey spinning music, skateboarders, fashion models and even robots doing some sword play. All of these were executed in the paper cut art style of Han Jing. His trademark flowing birds and flowers were used to accent the modern scenes and subjects.
Today, this artwork is on display at the Canary Wharf Global Headquarters building of
HSBC. The original artwork is on display as well as a gigantic 20 foot re-creation adorns the imposing glass wall of the building. Snippets of the art work were also used to accent other areas in the building reception as can be seen in the photos.
Notes: Photo's were provided by J Walter Thompson and permission to use has been granted to China Art World.
|
