The Art of Chance

Arriving in Beijing after what seemed like a series of coincidences, Alessandro Rolandi was anticipating a slow resumption of artistic output. But then a series of events all within three months that set him up with a gallery, a work space, and lasting friendships with Chinese artists Liu Ye, Qing Qing, and Li Gang reminded him of something a mentor once told him: "People meeting for artistic purposes never meet by chance."

"I realised then that on more than the obvious level, Europe felt old and jaded and China felt new, " he says. "I have met more people interested in art passing [my studio] here in 6 months than passed by in a year in Paris."

Originally from Italy, for the last 8 years Alessandro Rolandi has lived a life of relative freedom, mimicking the gypsy artists of old in Spain, France, Germany, England and the US, making him fluent in English and French. So does he plan to follow that pattern and learn Chinese? "Not just yet!"  In a way, he explains, the lack of language has been very liberating, giving him the familiar freedom he has depended on before in his travels and art. "I use my work as a communication tool. I let it go ahead of me, ahead of my words, ahead of the new words learned in a new country. I feel comfortable with this because it allows me to tell more with less, and sometimes to tell all I have to tell without a single word."

Rolandi explains that his work tends to start, as did his artistic career, without words relying instead on movement, dance and studies of the body. "[My work is] an effort to figure out what is behind an object, " he says, "I am less interested in drawing, say, a  crab than trying to capture the physical movements the crab makes."

His choice of subject strongly reflects the object and subject in action. His figurative work captures the human condition in some of its many abstract and emotional spaces by bringing to life the rigid, reflective and often troubled positions of the body. Critics have favourably remarked that the artists work has an experimental, raw and unfinished quality.

"The more you want to give art a name, the more false confidence you gain, the further you are from where you need to be creative." Rolandi adds  "I don't want and I can't pretend to understand China, nor to have deep opinions [about China] in the short time I have been here, but being here, I have felt inspired and confident."

And what of China s response to Alessandro Rolandi? Critic and artist Zhang Fangbai wrote, "His compositions on paper interest me, particularly the Chinese ink stick dipped in water. [They have] the aesthetic effect of Chinese ink and wash art, and are an original attempt [at] approaching the Chinese art of painting with a Western mind."

By invoking the "Western mind"  Fangbai concurs with Western critics, who have found Rolandis work to have much Renaissance influence. Zhang concludes that Rolandi s figurative work"...creates mystery and profoundness that [can] be attributed to enlightenments he achieved in Beijing."

With this kind of support, it seems Rolandi's chance opportunities are paying off in China and are likely to guarantee we will hear more from him in years to come.

Alessandro Rolandi April exhibition" Beijing Moods" ran in the Pickled Art Centre, an artistic community that began as the personal studio of artist and sculptor Li Gang.

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The Pickled Art Centre is currently running a series of drawing classes in both the Chinese and Western contemporary style. The Chinese course is taught by Feng Yi, and the Western by Alessandro. Both courses run until September. Contact Feng Yi on 136 0124 4475 or Alessandro on 135 2286 2994. Pickled Art can be found at 1 Fei Jian Cun, Lai Guang Ying Dong Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing.

地址：朝阳区来广营东路费家村1号