Speaking of vegetable markets, this autumn's joint show between Shanghai Wuzhong Bazaar and big names has caused a lot of topics, and it also hides the trend that the vegetable market is moving towards alienation. When online shopping becomes so convenient, where will the physical grocery store go? How will the vegetable market of the future retain the memory of the neighborhood and the interaction mode of the "acquaintance society"?
In fact, while the Wuzhong Market has caused topics and reflections, there is also a vegetable market art museum in the Cao Yang exhibition hall of the 2021 Shanghai Urban Space Art Season, which is located in Guixiangfang, and the original idea was to superimpose the cultural and artistic aspects in the most daily life consumption space to deepen and expand the connection between people. At the end of November, the space art season ended, did the original vision come true? Recently, "Revisiting the Possibilities of The Public: Guixiang Vegetable Market Art Museum/Art Night School Summary Exhibition" was held at the Liu Haisu Art Museum in Shanghai, why bring a public art project that initially tried to break the boundaries of the art museum back to the museum space for reproduction? Does "revisiting" leave a discussion of how art can really engage in communities?
Shanghai Liu Haisu Art Museum "Revisiting the Possibility of Public: Guixiang Vegetable Market Art Museum / Art Night School Summary Exhibition" exhibition site
The Guixiangfang area where the "Guixiang Vegetable Farm Art Museum" is located belongs to the original Caoyang Three Villages, and since the end of the last century, the three villages have gradually been updated into some new communities such as "Apricot Garden" and "Golden Plum Garden", and Guixiang Vegetable Farm has also come into being during this period. Since a renovation in 2013, guixiang vegetable market was remodeled again in April this year, this time retaining only the most basic beams and columns and floor structure of the building; more importantly, the entire vegetable farm will also be fully updated. According to the official introduction, it will be upgraded to a "comprehensive wet market, which will integrate old services, public social networking, one-stop convenience services, etc." At the turn of spring and summer this year, during the preliminary investigation of the exhibition planning team, it was seen that there were often middle-aged and elderly people looking inside at the intersections at both ends of Guixiangfang under construction, which showed the expectations of local residents for their appearance after transformation.
The curatorial team conducted research and investigation in Cao Yang.
It is in this context that Liu Haisu Art Museum "Su Shanghai" was commissioned by the Shanghai Urban Space Art Season to build a vegetable market art museum in Guixiangfang, the original idea was to integrate the exhibition behavior of the art museum with the business behavior of the vegetable market, the artist designed the logo for the vegetable market, and equipped the booth with exclusive space painting... In this process, artists and cultural workers from various fields have repeatedly come to the renovated Guixiangfang construction site to communicate with Guixiang and local residents, study the history of Guixiang and Cao Yang, and present works related to this.
At the end of September 2021, the "Guixiang Vegetable Farm Art Museum" was exhibited at the Caoyang Guixiangfang exhibition site
Guixiang Vegetable Market Art Museum and art evening school are re-presented
It is a little regrettable that when the Shanghai Urban Space Art Season was approaching the opening, Guixiangfang did not complete the rental of the vegetable farm, and the exhibition also changed from the original model of embedding the vegetable farm into a "white box" of the vegetable farm that had not yet set up a stall, and now this exhibition has come to liu Haisu Art Museum and has become the part of the "Guixiang Vegetable Farm Art Museum" in the summary exhibition.
This section consists of two exhibitions: "Cao Yang in Shadow Painting: Lu Yuanmin's Works by Li Shude" and "Urban Archaeology: Atypical Looking at Cao Yang". Lu Yuanmin and Li Shude are old colleagues of the Putuo District Cultural Center, and they use photography and sketches to record nameless moments on the street, revealing the poetry of daily life.
Lu Yuanmin, known for his "Suzhou Creek" and "Shanghainese" series of works, for a long time in the past he had to ride from his home on Nanchang Road at that time to cross the bridge over the Suzhou Creek to the Putuo District Cultural Center, in addition to the famous works, his camera also recorded the life of the Caoyang people in the 1990s, when people were swimming in huanbang, enjoying the pleasure of new fast food, and the current Caoyang residents playing chess in the park. His and Li Shude's works present Cao Yang's past and present, and also represent the common life experience of individuals and collectives.
Liu Haisu Art Museum's "Revisiting the Possibilities of the Public: Guixiang Vegetable Market Art Museum/Art Night School Summary Exhibition" shows Lu Yuanmin's photographic works showing the old and new Cao Yang.
From several old newspapers of the same day, the independent researcher Xu Ming and his team brought "Urban Archaeology: Atypical Looking at Cao Yang" excavated the relationship between the development of Cao Yang New Village and the country and the times from several old newspapers of the same day, and from the historical records carried by these newspapers, it seems that it can be read that most of the things that happened in Cao Yang New Village are small things of people's livelihood, but small things more or less reflect historical changes. At the same time, Xu Ming's team also collected and sorted out the architectural decoration textures rich in Cao Yang characteristics, using videos, animations, maps and other diversified graphic means to give the audience a deeper and closer to life perspective to understand the history and social life of this area.
Xu Ming and his team brought "Urban Archaeology: Atypical Looking at Cao Yang"
The interventional works that were not fully implemented in Guixiangfang are also presented in the exhibition, such as the sculptures of artist Su Chang, who were originally planned to be located at the entrance of Guixiangfang, which are now placed at the entrance of the art museum; designer Li Zhiqian has created a series of logos that combine Chinese characters and pattern elements for the Guixiang vegetable market, and thus developed the daily necessities in the vegetable market such as aprons and baskets.
Designer Li Zhiqian created a series of logos for Guixiang Vegetable Market that combine Chinese characters and graphic elements.
Another part of the exhibition is the review of "Art Night School", which is a display of the results of four series of workshops hosted by Jiang Qinggong, Wang Qing, XiaoLonghua and Yin Yi during the art season, in which you can see them starting from font and design, architecture, daily life, and environmental sounds, leading the students to explore Cao Yang's community space.
Xiaolonghua (Xue Yingfeng) "Cao Yang New Village Composition Map" workshop.
The workshop conducted research in a warehouse where furniture was stored in Caoyang Village.
Taking the "Caoyang New Village Composition Atlas" workshop as an example, Xiaolonghua and the trainees investigated the living space of residents of different ages in the Caoyang area, collected various objects and visual elements, and integrated them into the model of the residential building in Caoyang Village, the trainees started from their own areas of expertise and presented the lives of 6 families, including the restoration of the cramped and warm life scenes of the second half of the 20th century, the display of life modules in a digital way, and the simulation workshop of small installations in a limited space. Stir up everyone's own life memories in the old and the new.
The results of the workshop "Caoyang New Village Composition Illustrated" are displayed
Jiang Qinggong's daily logo and art character workshop invites experienced artists to co-create with students. In an era when the profession of traditional artist has gradually declined, the handwritten font and the slow and beautiful way of life of the era they represent are found. Architect Wang Qing's "Caoyang New Village Home" directly targets the newly renovated Caoyang Village, leading the residents of a village to paint a personalized or conceptual decoration plan for their new living space. Sound artist Yin Yi led the students to collect the sounds around them, and these sounds with the breath of life hung above the exhibition hall, making the audience who was in the art museum feel as if they had returned to the street market.
Yin Yi and workshop students collect voices in the Cao Yang community.
A reexamination of the possibilities of public art
Why did an exhibition that originally took place in the community vegetable market space turn back to the art museum? Does the title of the exhibition "Revisiting the Possibility of Public" and "Re-Exploring" imply that in the process of landing, there is still a gap in the acceptance of public art by society?
From the perspective of art history, art was public from the beginning of its birth, from cave frescoes to ancient Greek and Roman sculptures to the Renaissance, all the creations that are now considered art are in the public context, but the characteristics are different.
The appearance of art museums is much later than art, and art museums absorb some of the art that originally served the public space into the space of the white box, so public art enters the art museum, or works with public nature are expounded in the art museum, which is not new. However, after experiencing the baptism of modern and postmodern culture, art museums have become more and more sacred and have the function of shaping and defining classics. From Duchamp in the early 20th century to experimental art in the 1960s, to social intervention in the 1980s, to Chicago's "Culture in Action" in the 1990s, which advocated "turning cities into exhibition halls and objects into projects." Art began to try again to get out of the art gallery and return to the city and the community.
At the end of September 2021, the "Guixiang Vegetable Market Art Museum" was at the exhibition site of Caoyang Guixiangfang, and some residents passed by and stopped to see the exhibition.
The Urban Space Art Season continues the vein of art intervention in the community, especially art intervention as a strategy and method, which is extending from the public art field to a wider range of art practices. Looking back on the process from the beginning of creation, the participating artists have the willingness to take the initiative to go out of the art museum, and in the process of creating works, they have also visited Cao Yang many times to investigate, create for "local", and also try to use popular language to seek the possibility of innovation in daily life.
Su Chang's work "Migration" was "relocated" at the entrance of Guixiangfang and stayed for only one hour.
For example, Su Chang's work "Migration" actually comes from the Guixiang Vegetable Farm before the reconstruction, he turned the mold from the physical objects in the vegetable farm, and then recombined it into a work, and its volume was also set according to the environment of the landing. However, the work had to be removed only an hour after it landed, and the artist ridiculed it as his shortest art project.
Why was a work of art that had already been selected and reported to be removed, and which link went wrong? Is it a question for artists and art curators? Or is it a barrier at the level of acceptance? Or that after public art enters the community space, how to manage and continue also tests the level of community management and co-governance.
Liu Haisu Art Museum, "Revisiting the Possibility of Public: Guixiang Vegetable Market Art Museum/Art Night School Summary Exhibition", "Migration" at the entrance of the art museum.
In a sense, public art is not a unilateral activity, its publicity also declares openness, when local residents see a foreign object placed in the familiar space of their own city, they will wonder why it is placed here? While public art occupies urban space, it is also occupied by urban space. When influencing urban space, the effects of various forces are already generated. But public space is still open to the whole in nature, and the public slowly accepts it, or even takes the initiative to give it some room to replay and recreate; or does it directly refuse to understand? What kind of guidance should be done at the community and street level? These are all problems that public art needs to face when it truly intervenes in the community in the future, and at the same time, it is necessary to explore the boundaries and edges of public space, participatory and local, and the system and mechanism of curation.
For the public art practice in the "Guixiang Vegetable Field Art Museum", curator Shi Hantao also admitted that there are many aspects that need to be improved and perfected, and the reason why a public art project that has tried to break the boundaries of the art museum from the beginning is brought back to the art museum space for reproduction. "It's certainly not that we can't wait to historicize the project; on the contrary, it's actually a reminder that there's still a lot of room for running-in between public art and the real social environment." "Revisiting" in the art museum is an opportunity for ourselves and everyone to review and reflect on the gains and lessons brought to us by this project, and to re-imagine and explore more possibilities of public art. Shi Hantao said.
The exhibition at the Liu Haisu Art Museum will run until January 9