My respect for Mr. Yuz is entirely due to his art museum and his dedication to art.
Mr. Yu DeYao
Mr. Yu died yesterday in Hong Kong after battling advanced cancer for more than six years. I think that in the past 6 years of hardship and suffering, he is not working hard to prolong his life, but to gain a little more time to arrange the future of the Yuz Museum and the Collection of Chinese Modern and Contemporary Art that he loves.
I didn't have much contact with Mr. Yu, and my first acquaintance was in a TV interview with me. After the show was done, he said very politely that we would communicate more in the future, and also added WeChat. But then we didn't communicate much, only occasionally at a gathering of friends. I gave a lecture there during the Giacometti exhibition at the Yuz Museum. That's it.
Since the completion and opening of the Yuz Museum in 2014, the museum has won wide acclaim for its pursuit of unique artistic personality and wonderful exhibitions. He not only invested in the introduction of world-class art exhibitions, such as large-scale solo exhibitions of Giacometti, Andy Warhol, Kaws, etc., as well as large-scale installation exhibition "Rain house", which attracted widespread attention and influence, but also focused on discovering and promoting current Chinese artists, holding academic solo exhibitions for Zhou Tiehai, Yang Fudong, Ni Youyu, Chen Fei, Tan Ping, Qin Yifeng, etc. The list of Chinese artists promoted in the form of group exhibitions is even more numerous. He also predictably launched a series of trend art exhibitions, leading the way.
Yuz Museum
As an Indonesian patriotic overseas Chinese and an entrepreneur, Yu's fate with art was initially only a "crazy" collection out of personal hobbies. He once proudly said: "The entire history of Chinese contemporary art, especially the period in the 1980s and 1990s, I have a relatively complete collection, and this batch of things can be said to be the treasures of The history of Chinese contemporary art." At this stage of history, only two people now have a relatively complete systematic collection, the first is Mr. Hick, but he has donated to Hong Kong, and the second is me. ”
He is particularly unique in his collection of installation art. Installation art is arguably the most influential but difficult art of our time. Large-scale installation works, strong visual impact, large production investment, but lack of collectors, lack of market. Some collectors joke that "they can afford it, they can't afford it", because it is huge and needs extraordinary space to collect. So, at the end of each biennale, a large number of giant installations were demolished after completing their mission. Yu Deyao, on the other hand, is so keen on collecting installations that he has been struggling to find a space to store his works. It is said that all his collections would require at least 20,000 square meters of space if they were to be displayed.
As a personal hobby, after the collection reached a considerable size, he felt that he could not enjoy it exclusively, but should establish an art museum for the society and share it with the public. He first opened an art museum in Indonesia, which is free to the public. The wishes are very full, the reality is very bone, the local art atmosphere is cold, and the audience is few. So he decided to bring the museum back to his hometown of China.
The road back to China to open an art museum is not easy. People are not familiar with the head, the laws and policies are not understood, and many detours have been taken. In The West Bund Cultural and Arts District of Shanghai, he was welcomed with warm arms and provided him with an abandoned hangar as a venue for the Yuz Museum.
Yu Deyao did not fail to live up to the confidant of Shanghai, and the abandoned hangar has since been rejuvenated with a new life - the life of art.
His inaugural debut exhibition, "The Time of Heaven and Man", is the first concentrated appearance of his collection, and it is also a concentrated appearance of the exploration and reflection of Chinese artists of his collection in this era. From the shelf to the photography, from the sculpture to the installation, the academic combing with a clearer context has been carried out.
The 2016 Giacometti exhibition is probably The one that Yu is most proud of. As an important cultural exchange project between China and France, this exhibition was signed by Vice Premier Liu Yandong and the French Foreign Minister in Beijing. Through Yu Deyao's efforts, it became the world's largest Giacometti exhibition. Including sculptures, drawings, oil paintings, documents, etc., a total of 250 works are presented.
When the Giacometti exhibition opened, Yu Deyao, who had just finished chemotherapy in the United States, endured huge pain and flew back to Shanghai to participate in the opening ceremony. Otherwise, he said, he would "regret it for the rest of his life."
Yu's pancreatic cancer was detected at an advanced stage. Since then, he has rarely appeared outside, but he has begun to arrange "aftermath" for his beloved art as if he were racing against time. He wants to keep his collection in China forever. He preached that many of the world's great museums were transformed from private museums into public museums. His desire was also to turn his art museum into a public interest. However, China's private art museums only have a history of more than a decade, and the corresponding regulations and policies are far from complete. He knew he might not be able to wait for that day, so he tried to do two things, one was to build the museum's local operation team, the other was to find the right partner, and he finally found the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to cooperate and jointly establish a foundation to preserve most of the Chinese contemporary art collection donated by Yu Deyao.
When Mr. Yu Saidu bid farewell to the world, his last art exhibition, "Yoshitomo Nara", was suspended due to the epidemic. Many people who haven't had time to see the show yet, including me, are looking forward to the reopening of the show.
The value of life may not be what you have in this world, but what you leave in this world. Yu de Yao left behind his beloved art and the art museum that has won the love of many people. (Lin Mingjie)
The following are all the posters of the exhibition held by the Yuz Museum so far -