Reporter | Chen Jiajing Lin Ziren
Edit | Lin Zi people
1 [Shanghai] Water Domain
Exhibition time: February 28 - June 5
Venue: Pudong Art Museum
Tickets: 130-200 RMB single pass / 260-400 RMB family (2 large and 1 small) single pass
The Mask of the Sea Bass, Museum of Quebrand, France
Image source: Pudong Art Museum
Pudong Art Museum's first new exhibition of 2022, "Water Domain", brings more than 100 precious collections from the Museum of Queblancy in France and the François Schneider Foundation to Shanghai. The Musée d'École Dei Quebrand is the fourth largest museum in France and is known for its collection and display of African, Asian, Oceanian and American art. Focusing on the theme of "water", the exhibition showcases archaeological objects, ritual masks, idols, ponchos, Turkish bath utensils, fishing gear, contemporary art, etc. created by artists and craftsmen from ancient times to the present, showing how the source of life shapes and influences people's lives, beliefs and concerns. It is worth mentioning that this exhibition is the first time that the Pudong Art Museum presents historical artifacts, and some of the exhibits can even go back thousands of years, such as a terracotta pottery excavated in Mexico and 1700 years ago in Lishui , it is a sculpture of the Rock Rain God in the Aztec civilization.
Yoshitomo Nara
Exhibition time: March 5 to September 4
Venue: Yuz Museum
Tickets: 200 RMB
Yoshitomo Nara, Sweet Home, 2019
Acrylic on jute is mounted on a plank 180.5 × 160.5 × 4.8 cm
Artist Collection, YOSHITOMO NARA
Image source: Yuz Museum
Curated by the Yuz Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and in close collaboration with Nara Yoshitomo and curator Mika Yoshitake, the exhibition presents more than 70 paintings, sculptures, ceramics, installations, and more than 700 works on paper, including a large number of manuscripts on display for the first time, providing a comprehensive review of the artist's artistic career spanning 37 years. This is not only the First Solo Exhibition of the 1959-born Japanese artist in Chinese mainland, but also his first large-scale retrospective tour around the world.
The exhibition begins with a retracement of Nara's early life and enters the first exhibition hall, where the first thing that catches the viewer's eye is the cover of a music album that covers the entire wall, hinting at the important influence of music on the artist. In fact, music, literature, childhood memories, and his studies and life experiences in Germany (1988-2000) have inspired Nara to create endlessly. Looking back at Yoshitomo Nara's artistic career, it is not difficult to find various changes in his creation. From the earliest graffiti to the slanted-eyed big-headed girl who gradually became her iconic figure, from works on paper painted on unfolding corrugated boxes to sculptures, ceramics and installations, from simple lines and color blocks to large, hazy dream-like paintings that blended multiple colors during the pandemic, Yoshitomo Nara is constantly challenging new creative mediums, techniques, and responding to a changing world.
Looking at Yoshitomo Nara's work at the moment, the anti-war and anti-nuclear elements may be particularly noteworthy. From an early age, Nara Yoshitomo felt that he was close to the war and sorted out a distinct anti-war attitude. In the "Billboard" painting series created between 2017 and 2019, there is a painting titled "The Girl of Peace", in which the girl steps on Hitler's head with a vicious face. Yoshitomo Nara explained this, "Standing on the most notorious dictator of the twentieth century, why does the face of the girl of peace look malicious?" The more you think about how peace is formed, the more complex it seems to become. ”
Zeng Xiaolian: Painting and photography
Exhibition time: March 5 - May 22
Venue: Shanghai Center of Photography
Tickets: 30 yuan
Red Original Chicken Zeng Xiaolian
Image source: Shanghai Center for Photography
Zeng Xiaolian, a researcher-level senior engineer at the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, is "the first person in Chinese plant painting". After retiring in 1997, Zeng Xiaolian devoted himself to the creation of plant paintings, and he once said, "A naughty boy who scribbles with his hands, enters the painting path by chance, and draws illustrations for flora based on wax leaf specimens." The world is dismissive, and I think it tastes good. You have to sit on the cold bench and climb the mountain. Sometimes the apes and horses break into the deep mountains and old forests to appreciate the beauty of the wild; sometimes they are like wooden chickens watching the flowers blossom and fall, clearing the taste of the elephant, and feeling the true meaning of life. Find a fertile ground for inspiration between movement and stillness. To make up for the clumsiness with diligence, to grind hard, and to practice the law that cannot be done. The flowers, birds and trees are on the end of the pen, coaxing themselves and leaving some aftertaste for the viewer. Casual and secure, do your best, plain and self-satisfied. ”
This exhibition exhibits 40 masterpieces by Zeng Xiaolian. Holding a botanical painting exhibition at the Shanghai Center of Photography has a deep meaning – what is the relationship between painting and photography? Can photos replace silent drawings? Zeng Xiaolian's brushstrokes are delicate and realistic, almost reproducing plants and animals into the brush. In the era before the invention of photographic technology, painting was an important medium for zoologists to record and study. Today, even with the perfection of photographic documentary technology, the diligence and skill of plant science painters are still admirable. In addition to Tsang's work, the exhibition also features works by domestic and foreign artists such as Araki Jingwei, Liu Ye, and Giovanni Ozzola.
Imagination and Reality: The Late Qing Empire in Nineteenth-Century European Copperplate Engravings
Exhibition time: March 8 - April 5
Exhibition venue: Shanghai Lu Xun Memorial Hall
Admission: Free
Beijing Yuanmingyuan Zhengda Guangming Hall
Image source: Shanghai Lu Xun Memorial Hall
From 1792 to 1794, count Magolney led a delegation to represent Britain on his first visit to China, intending to establish diplomatic relations and open trade with the Qing Empire. The mission employed the painter William Alexander as a draftsman, and during his time in China he painted a number of illustrations about China. Since then, as China has slowly opened its doors to the West, and the popularity of pictorials and magazines in the West, more and more Westerners have painted the China they see or imagine, and these images thus constitute the visual impression of Westerners on the late Qing Empire.
Co-organized by the Shanghai Lu Xun Memorial Hall and the Ningbo China Port Museum, the exhibition features 90 copperplate engravings from Thomas Arom's 1843 collection of Thomas Arom's copper plate paintings China: Landscapes, Architecture and Social Customs of that Ancient Empire, as well as 9 volumes of European copperplate engravings related to Lu Xun in the collection of the Shanghai Lu Xun Memorial Museum. These copperplate engravings include many iconic scenes of China, such as the Old Summer Palace in Beijing, the Great Wall, the Xizhimen Gate in Beijing, the Dragon Boat Festival, the Dinghai Mazu Temple, the Canal and so on.
It is worth mentioning that Lu Xun has played an important role in the cause of Chinese art, especially the emerging woodcut movement, so this exhibition is also a review and inheritance of Lu Xun's vigorous advocacy of the emerging woodcut movement. In his early years, Lu Xun immersed himself in reading novels such as "Journey to the West", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Fengshen Yanyi", and "Liaozhai Zhiyi", copying and illustrating; later, he painstakingly collected printmaking works from Europe and Japan, and introduced the works of excellent European printmakers such as Kollwitz and Mayfaeld to China, believing that their works were "very worthy of study by art students and art lovers."
Note: The above venues are currently temporarily closed and reopening is to be determined.
【Beijing】
Austin Lee: Paradise on Earth
Exhibition time: February 13 to May 8
Venue: Mumu Art Museum (Hall 798)
Tickets: 100 rmb
Austin Lee, Cry baby, 2021, acrylic on canvas, courtesy of Peres Projects Gallery (Berlin).
American artist Austin Lee represents a new way of artistic practice: he first creates in virtual reality software, then presents it in physical form as paintings, installations, and sculptures. He believes that the process of the intersection of art and technology is very natural. Humans are good at using tools, and digital technology is nothing more than a new tool. He hopes to use these tools to better understand and empathize with others.
In the fusion and transformation of virtual and reality, the exhibition deeply explores the important questions that run through the artist's creation: how do we interpret human emotions through digital technology, and how can the progress of science and technology help us better understand the depth of human feelings? This has been interpreted in works such as Cry baby (2021) and Train Tears 2 (2021). "Growth", the core theme of this exhibition, is not only reflected in Austen's work, but also throughout the exhibition period. He will continue to create new animation works during the exhibition and loop them in the exhibition hall.
Meet Keith Haring: Post-Pop Fashion Art Exhibition
Exhibition time: March 13 - June 13
Exhibition Venue: Meet the Museum in Space
Tickets: 128 yuan
Keith Haring's untitled mural work, located in the stairwell of Grace House in upper Manhattan, New York
Keith Haring was an American street painter and social activist active in the 1980s, and his graffiti has a strong pop art style, mostly thick contour lines, monochrome, hollow abstract human, animal and other patterns. In 1982, he created the first famous large-scale mural on an abandoned wall on Houston Street in Manhattan, New York, and his graffiti spread around the world. Whether it is the "barking dogs" next to the Cathedral of Ulmminster in Germany, the hollow people with hands and feet on the Berlin Wall, the "The Whole World" on the wall of the Monastery of San Antonio in Italy, or the red line graffiti in Barcelona, Spain, it has become a must-visit punching place for tourists.
However, as Harlem's public murals are auctioned off one by one, there are fewer and fewer opportunities to see and punch in the real ones. At present, in New York, Pisa, Ulm, Paris and other places, he has only 10 remaining public murals, although in Haring's view, the permanence of graffiti art is not important, the moment it is created is already eternal.
Curious girl Alice
Exhibition time: February 28 – June 11
Venue: U2 Art Gallery
Tickets: 158 yuan
Archetypes of "Alice": Alice Riddle, photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron, "Roman Goddess Pomona", Silver Salt Print, 1872. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
"Curious Girl Alice" is presented by the V&A Museum in the UK in conjunction with the U2 Art Gallery. For the first time, the exhibition completely sorts out the cultural value of "Alice" through nearly 300 works. On a summer afternoon more than 150 years ago, Oxford University teacher Charles Douchesson took three young daughters of colleague Henry Riddle's family on a boat trip on the River Thames. Looking at the scenery along the coast and the small animals that appear from time to time, Dodgeson has a flash of inspiration, flashing a little girl who follows a talking white rabbit into the underground wonderland and embarks on a fantasy adventure. Later, he named the protagonist of the story after the second daughter of the Riddle family, "Alice".
In the winter of 1865, Charles published the first fantasy novel Alice in Wonderland under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. To date, Alice's story has been translated into more than 170 languages, producing hundreds of film and television entertainment works that have sparked the imagination of generations. Spanning performance, fashion, art, music and more, the exhibition includes a series of illustrations by Salvador Dali for Alice in Wonderland, recreating the bizarre "Underworld"; "Queen of Polka Dots" Yayoi Kusama using Alice as the source of her creation to inspire people to see the world with love; and a checkerboard installation created by avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, showing Alice's transformation from "chess piece" to real "Queen of Wonderland"... The exhibition will also recreate the famous scenes in Alice's story through multimedia means, allowing the audience to be immersed in the scene.
The Real Flower Exhibition: Between Fiction and Reality
Exhibition time: March 19 - June 19
Venue: Beijing Times Art Museum
Tickets: 148 yuan
mika ninagawa, Courtesy of Tomio Koyama Gallery
Japanese artist and director Shikazu Kuakawa has won one of the authoritative awards in the Japanese photography industry, the Kimura Ibei Photography Award, and directed the films "Evil Girl Hanaei" (2007), "Wolf" (2012), "Killer Canteen" (2019) and "Human Disqualification" (2019). "Flowers" has always been her trademark and an eternal theme on her creative path, and the flowers she photographs are colorful and dreamy, fiercely expressing the inner spiritual world.
With the theme of "Between Fiction and Reality", the exhibition has a total of 12 exhibition areas and nearly 700 works of art. These include "Forever Flower" and "Sakura", which have always been colorful and colorful, Portraits of the Time, which has photographed many celebrities and athletes, "Beautiful Days", which has stepped into new areas, and Imagination Garden, a popular area that has been exhibited for the first time overseas, showing the infinite possibilities under the lens of Shika Kawa from many different perspectives.
Anton to Dandong: Rafts, broken bridges and passers-by on the Yalu River
Exhibition time: March 13 - June 5
Venue: Sleep Art Space at Ten O'Clock
Tickets: 72 yuan
Located in the heart of Northeast Asia, Liaoning Dandong is a typical northeastern city composed of three parts: the old city (or old gathering place), the railway annex (the Manchurian railway dependency in southern Manchuria and the Middle East railway annex in northern Manchuria), and the commercial port land (the area delineated by the opening of the port for trade and trade between the "indigenous people" and the "outsiders" for free trade). From "Anton" before 1965 to "Dandong" after 1965, the city was initially led by handicrafts such as trade and silk, and later became a star city of light industry, and now it is rising as a popular tourist city.
This exhibition focuses on the history and present of Dandong, showing the creation of novels, poems, paintings, photographs, videos, and installations by authors of different eras based on Dandong. The rich historical context makes Dandong not only a cut into the northeast, but also an international, multi-cultural exchange and conflict border fortress. In the exhibition, the audience will piece together, reconstruct and reproduce the "local landscape" through the authors' unique perspectives. In addition, the exhibition also miniaturizes the spatial geography of the Yalu River in the exhibition hall, trying to explore new possibilities for local research and spatial storytelling.