The paper learned that "ON | OFF2021: Back to the Future" was exhibited as the first exhibition of the ShundeHe Art Museum in Guangdong during the Spring Festival, exploring the narrative of Chinese contemporary art in the post-global era. The exhibition echoes the 2013 exhibition at the UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, an attempt to confront the uncertainty of the future through memories in this post-pandemic era.
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“ON| OFF: The Concepts and Practices of Young Chinese Artists" exhibition can also be used as a time machine? Just like Martin, the protagonist of the Hollywood science fiction movie "Back to the Future" in the last century, he drove a time shuttle transformed by a car, traveled from the "root era" back to the "Eisenhower era", and re-rehearsed the direction of the development of the event. The opening exhibition "ON" at the Shunde Art Museum in Guangdong | OFF 2021: Back to the Future", curators make such a discussion. The exhibition attempts to "return" to the "ON| held in 2013 at the Ullens Contemporary Art Center (UCCA) in Beijing OFF: The Concept and Practice of Young Chinese Artists" to "complete the unfinished narrative of that exhibition, but also to complete the identification of some of the past." Curator Sun Dongdong wrote.
Artificial Moon 2 Wang Yuyang 2020 Image courtesy of the artist
"S" Chen Wei Inkjet Printing, Lightbox 187.5×150cm 2018 Image courtesy of the artist
In 2013, the exhibition "ON | "OFF" was once the theme of a famous group exhibition at the UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art that reflects the concepts and practices of young Chinese artists in the post-Olympic era, and now it is marked with a new time and subtitle, aiming to relive and continue the unfinished theme narrative of the 2013 exhibition from the increasingly fierce tension of "integration and decoupling" in the post-global era. Correspondingly, the trend of retrospective reality in the recent practice of Chinese contemporary art in terms of temporality is no longer manifested as a transparent group practice with predetermined logical goals, but a consciousness and ability to reset the future based on the spirit of introspection and the active return of emotional recall and historical memory.
Labyrinth- Red Line, Xu Qu Acrylic on canvas, 250× 375 cm, 2019-2020 Image courtesy of the Artist and Tang Contemporary Art Center
The exhibition is divided into three units: "Time Posture", "Memory Space" and "Multiple Echoes", starting from human cognition and feelings of time, the issues such as cosmic movement, human destiny, and historical moments are descended and condensed into a certain mood of the times at this moment, and in the relationship with the interaction with the artist's individual practice, the promise of the future of human beings is transformed into a life energy beyond time and space.
“ON | OFF 2021: Carousel of Progress", based on the "post-globalization" era, interprets the recent trend of retrospective reality in Chinese contemporary art practice as an action to create the future. The works on display cover a variety of artistic media such as painting, sculpture, photography, installation and video, and the themes of the works involve different topics such as media society, natural environment, identity, geographical boundaries, etc., but they are all common
The same presents a spirit of introspection that stems from the inner nature of life—introspection of where it came from and where it went.
"Weakness" Li Liao Soap, sponge, aluminum plate, single-channel video (color, silent) 2019 pictures courtesy of artists and blank space
Although this exhibition involves different awareness of issues, artists and others try to get out of the predicament of history and transform the class's belief in the future into a kind of life energy that transcends the shackles of time and space. In Sun Dongdong's view, for Chinese contemporary art, "ON| OFF 2021: The Carousel of Progress "can" take our backtracking to more diverse dimensions, ultimately overcoming the concrete in an abstract form and reconstructing the world of action. ”
Return, repetition and spiral are the curatorial concepts emphasized in this exhibition, on the one hand, it is a poetic comparison with the spatial form of the art museum, on the other hand, it also tries to increase the theme and concept between the works, so that the audience can sense the cosmic view of the intersection of the architectural space of the art museum and the narrative structure of the exhibition in the rhythm of time and life, global and local, memory and history.
"The Lemon Picker" He Xiangyu 2017 Image courtesy of the artist and Blank Space
"Treasure Hunt" Liu Yujia Single-frequency 4K image, color, stereo 53' 14" 2021 Image courtesy of the artist
"Gravel Forgives the Sea No. 14" Jiang Pengyi Photography 120× 264 cm 2020 Photo courtesy of the artist
Located in Shunde, Guangdong Province, the He Art Museum is a non-profit private art museum initiated by the family and designed by Tadao Ando. The museum pays attention to the process of contemporary art from modern cultural and artistic trends to international perspective, presenting exhibitions and diversified and open cultural activities to the public. In Sun Dongdong's view, the exhibition was held in the art museum "really unexpected": originally thought that she might still be in a city immersed in more global experience, there are more contemporary art institutions, but "it is reasonable": after more than four years of reform, the development of Chinese cities is on the verge of new transformation and upgrading, and the emergence of art museums just mentions the understanding of the current state of china's art museums, that is, it is necessary to break through the so-called "city" mindset, which needs more to be defined as "marginal" or "" before. Spatial sample of the ground. Just like "crossing the river by touching one's head" in the early days of China's reform and opening up, the description is absolutely only a top-level policy design, and it also emphasizes the capture, summarization, refinement, and popularization of experimental experiences in various places. "Therefore, the art museum and this exhibition are, in a sense, reliving the historical experience of China's reform and opening up."