Group photo of guests at the opening ceremony of "Re-focusing on the Medium: The Rise of Video Art in East Asia"
On March 5, 2022, "Refocusing on The Medium: The Rise of Video Art in East Asia" opened at the Minsheng Art Museum in Beijing, The first public interest cultural and artistic institution in China to be funded and operated by financial companies. Bringing together 17 heavyweight artists from China, Japan and South Korea who pioneered video art experiments, the exhibition presents 31 exemplary works of great achievements in the field of video art, aiming to re-examine the way East Asian artists treated this medium at the time of the rise of video art, and to contribute to the global history of video art.
Exhibition curator Kim Machan congratulated the opening of the exhibition online in Brisbane, Australia
At the opening ceremony, Kim Machan, the curator of the exhibition in Brisbane, Australia, congratulated the successful holding of the exhibition online. Kingman said that the exhibition is presented again in Beijing after the first exhibition of the OCAT Shanghai Pavilion, and on the basis of continuing the basic structure of the exhibition, not only three new Chinese artists have been added, but also innovative in terms of exhibition design and work presentation. At the same time, she stressed that due to the epidemic situation, the exhibition can only be curated and set up online, which is not only a great challenge for herself, but also full of great difficulties for the art museum, and it is the enthusiasm and professionalism of the museum team that enables the exhibition to be finally presented. She hopes that in the future, we can continue to trust each other, work together across the ocean to overcome difficulties and launch more high-quality exhibitions.
Li Feng, Director of Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, delivered a speech
Li Feng, director of Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, thanked everyone for coming and supporting the museum and exhibition. He said that Minsheng Art Institution has always had a tradition of making video art exhibitions. Compared with the first presentation in OCAT Shanghai, this exhibition not only adds three new Chinese artists, but also has a wider number and scope of works, which is particularly precious in the external environment of the epidemic, which is the result of the hard work of the art museum and the teams of all parties, and is also specially grateful to the museum's donor, China Minsheng Bank, for its sponsorship and support of the exhibition. At the same time, he said that although the participating artists geng jianyi and Chen Shaoxiong in this exhibition have all passed away, as long as the works are on the spot, they have not left us.
Zhang Peili, representative of the participating artists, delivered a speech
Participating artist Zhang Peili first thanked the Beijing Minsheng Art Museum for its support of the exhibition. Zhang Peili said that he has a deep relationship with minsheng art institutions, not only cooperating with minsheng art institutions to do his first retrospective exhibition in Shanghai, but also doing the only overseas exhibition of Chinese video art in Italy. This time, he changed from the role of organizer of the exhibition to an exhibiting artist. Zhang Peili especially thanked Jin Man, the curator of the exhibition, who believed that Kingman has paid attention to East Asian video art and Chinese video art for many years, and the research work he has done has greatly touched Chinese video artists. He sincerely hopes that in addition to the presentation in Shanghai and Beijing, this exhibition can be implemented in East Asia such as South Korea and Japan in the future, and hopes that the museum can present more such high-quality exhibitions in the future.
The scene of the opening ceremony of the exhibition
Since 1965, when the Sony Portapak was invented in Japan, artists around the world have gained exposure to this global medium and contributed to its development. Over the past decade, exhibitions on the history of video art have been held across Asia. As these materials gradually accumulate to a certain extent, the depth and detail of the history of video art in a particular area gradually emerge. These exhibitions and related research materials not only expand the existing history of global video art, but also provide academic interpretations of the experimental practice and international exchange of video media, and provoke people to more thoroughly reflect on the way video art is interpreted.
Exhibition entrance
Artist Wang Gongxin introduced the work "Two Square Effective Space" on the spot
Exhibition site
As a distinctive new technology and experimental art medium, video art has become a new global contemporary art tool without cultural traditions paving the way, and without important artistic conventions or historical premises. In a very short period of time, video art experiments spanned all continents and cultural territories, and video art became the first global contemporary art medium. In East Asia, artists have used video, a non-specific cultural medium, to enter new networks of cross-regional, cross-border exchanges, starting with nam June Paik's global art network. For more than two decades, video art has connected artists from around the world, with a focus in East Asia on Japan since 1968, South Korea since 1978, Taiwan since 1983, Hong Kong since 1985 and Chinese mainland since 1988.
This exhibition shows how East Asian video art has become a global hybrid art form in the context of post-media contemporary art practices, and re-evaluates the contributions of East Asian artists to this still controversial history. The exhibition theme "Refocusing on the Medium" aims to inspire people to think about the use of video media and how to look at it. When one begins to compare these works of art based on video media, one activates one's perception in different ways that go beyond narrative reasoning based on cinema and cinematic history. Starting with the processing of artworks from closed-circuit television monitors, the exhibition reveals the vast differences between video and traditional film and video, in an attempt to reshape the audience's expectations and assumptions about the medium of video, as well as the way in which video works are experienced.