Recently, the "China City Competitiveness Report No.19" released the 2021 China City Competitiveness Index ranking, and Shenzhen, together with Shanghai and Hong Kong, ranked in the top 3 of the list.
After three decades of vigorous urbanization, Today's Chinese cities are facing tremendous changes in the transition to a cultural economy. Among them, the idea of "soft city" construction oriented by artistic intervention and urban design has reached a broad consensus, and has also played a key role in future urban development and pattern.
"Time is money, efficiency is life". For Shenzhen, which was once the "golden dollar overlord" and "art desert", Shenzhen is also facing a new round of challenges and opportunities. The changes in the city in the course of the times are undoubtedly particularly important in the development process of the entire Chinese city.
▲ Shenzhen city view
Just this year, next to the Shenzhen Science and Technology Park and across the sea from Hong Kong, a new construction area is emerging.
As one of the key areas in Shenzhen towards the future, the total fixed asset investment of Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base is expected to be about 210 billion yuan, with a land area of about 1.17km and a planned total development area of about 5.2 million square meters. Urban design work was carried out in 2001, after 20 years of planning, the urban positioning from a single living space to the guidance of urban production, life, ecological composite functional space, the future urban function will be a collection of headquarters gathering area, urban cultural highland, international exchange center, urban coastal living room as one.
▲ Shenzhen city view
There is no doubt that the soul of the city of the future is created by culture and art. Compared with the replacement of simple buildings or commercial bodies, urban renewal, as a social behavior under the projection of the spirit, connects the overall lifeblood of cultural landforms, ecological construction and urban development.
This is not a dualistic opposition of pragmatism or retreat, but we need to take the common quality of human existence as the ultimate concern to solve and even optimize the relationship between cities and people, people and society, individuals and the public.
The future of the city is full of imagination, and each sample will be our catalyst for reaching the future.
Recently, a super sample (SUPER SAMPLE) art exhibition hosted by Shenzhen Vanke will be held in the Shenzhen Bay Super ABP City Exhibition Hall, which has received special support from the Shenzhen Bay Super ABP Development and Construction Headquarters Office, the Publicity Department of the Nanshan District Party Committee and the Institute of Science and Technology and Art of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and is currently being set up. Works by Anish Kapoor, Daniel Buren and Su Xinping's internationally renowned masters will gather to unveil the grand international art. Shenzhen Vanke's collection of Masterpiece Anish Kapoor will also meet with the audience.
▲ Shenzhen city view
Curated by Sun Dongdong, the exhibition features a number of British Turner Prize winners, presenting the artworks of a number of artists representing China at the Venice Biennale, as well as a number of in-service teachers with academic influence. As the assistant curator of the Chinese Pavilion of the 59th Venice Biennale, Sun Dongdong took "sample" and "super" as the keywords of the exhibition curation, transformed the limited exhibition space into a spatial practice of seeing the small and seeing the small, and explored, experimented and looked forward to the future cultural and artistic ecology of the Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base through an international high-level art dialogue, as well as the possibilities for Shenzhen's urban cultural innovation and urban quality improvement.
In particular, it is worth mentioning that the Chinese artists participating in this exhibition are mainly artists at the Chinese National Pavilion at the 59th Venice International Art Biennale this year, which is equivalent to a display of the Chinese national team at the Venice Biennale in China.
▲ Su Xinping, "The Walking Man" at the exhibition site, FRP, 455x130x405cm, 2021
In a sense, any work of art, the creation of any artist can not get rid of the imprint of the times, the artist's thinking is also derived from the shaping of the society he intentionally or unintentionally received. The difference is that some artists choose to relax their bodies and let themselves be wrapped up in the tide of the times to follow the crowd to obtain a sense of security and the direction of progress, some artists are like hard river stones, do not change their original intentions; some are like speedboats filled with oil, resisting the water to fight for the tide of the times, and even eager to move faster than the trend or go up against the current.
At the entrance to the exhibition, a large sculpture stands gently but firmly, and his creator, the artist Su Xinping, vice president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, is such an alert or anti-tide person. His simple and sincere personality, the feeling of "compassion for heaven and man", the thinking about the essence of things, the exploration of self... Throughout his work and throughout. This artist has never stopped the pursuit and thinking of metaphysical spiritual expression, and at the same time, he has practiced his artistic ideals down-to-earth, and constantly explores social reality issues such as desire, spiritual or ideological crisis.
The early experience of life in the grasslands and the experience of serving in the army made Su Xinping deeply experience the lonely state of the earth, the sky and the soul. In the 1980s and 1990s, Su Xinping created a large number of prints reflecting such themes, showing the strength of his artistic spirit and the strength of his will to life; later, due to his sensitive recognition of the pain of China's social transformation, Su Xinping began to use direct painting methods such as oil painting and drawing to explore social reality issues such as desire, spirit, and ideological crisis; and with the gradual deepening of his understanding of his own way of work, Su Xinping also incorporated self-reflection and traditional cultural inquiry into the scope of practice. This leads to reflections on conceptual issues such as the intertextual relationship between art and everyday life, and the effective synchronization of time and thinking.
▲ Su Xinping, "The Walking Man" at the exhibition site, FRP, 455x130x405cm, 2021
The exhibit "Walking Man" is one of Su Xinping's latest series in recent years, and it is also the first time in decades that he has tried to express a given theme in the language of sculpture. The work follows the realistic perspective of the artist's social care since the 1990s, and this running image is from the large-scale oil painting "The Running Man" in 2010: the artist takes himself as the prototype, and in the fiery background, a person strides from the left side of the picture to the right, and his feet are extended to the edge of the picture. Where did he come from? Where to go? Why rush? ...... The artist uses ritualized formal language to abstract this body movement and facial expression about "walking" in the logic of reality, condensing a certain visual symbol with stable meaning. In the process of transforming the plane into space, this work is like a prism that reflects different levels of intention. "The Walking Man" not only has a more realistic scale relationship and physical feelings, but also gives a new visual imagination (Yu Ke) by materials, textures and expression techniques.
The prominent single image and the emptied material space, with a realistic appearance for ultra-realistic imagination, is one of the typical styles of Su Xinping's artistic creation. On the other hand, this work is also related to "people", which has been one of the themes of Su Xinping's creation since the 1990s. After thirty years of development, Su Xinping is now more concerned about the "value of life".
▲ Su Xinping, "The Walking Man" at the exhibition site, FRP, 455x130x405cm, 2021
Although the sculpture is still, the sharp silhouette, strong steps and resolute expression of the work always make people feel as if he is going to walk into the distance without squinting and striding forward in the next second. This is undoubtedly the embodiment of the Shenzhen spirit and the abstraction of countless Shenzhen people, presenting the living state and mental state of every enterprising person behind the rapid development of Chinese society, the value embodiment of each individual's life, the allegorical image of the rapid development trend of modern and contemporary China, and the artistic reflection of the spirit of the special zone.
Baudelaire once commented on modernity: "Modernity is half art, and the other half of art is those that are eternal and unchangeable." He argues that one of the elements that make up beauty is eternal, and that we are always extraordinarily difficult to evaluate; and that the other element that constitutes beauty is relative, that it is a product of the environment. We can describe the latter element (individually or synthetically) as the era in which beauty lies, the fashion of this age, and the morality and taste of this age. Modernity, on the other hand, is something based on a situation, it is very short, fleeting, and contingencious. It is this "eternal and unchanging" that allows modern art to reach the dignity of ancient art—"in order for any modernity to be worthy of being ancient, it is necessary to unearth the mysterious beauty that human life inadvertently puts into it." ”
▲ Su Xinping, "The Walking Man" at the exhibition site, FRP, 455x130x405cm, 2021
For "The Walking Man", a "capitalized person" is undoubtedly a monument to shaping the times for individuals who continue to move forward and struggle under the nourishment of the long history of art.
"I am grasping the relationship between people and people, people and society, people and the universe will not change, but the world is changing, in the face of the changing world will have different psychological reactions, I hope to capture this psychological change and conceptual change, of course, the basic things are always unchanged." 」
--Su Xinping
▲ Shenzhen city view
Since 1978, with the continuous emergence of concepts such as "empty talk misleading the country, hard work and rejuvenation", "dare to be the first in the world", Shenzhen, a land full of innovative vitality, has also attracted a group of young people, achieved one entrepreneurial miracle after another, and planted the seeds of modern entrepreneurship. Today, culture and art will also become an important driver for Shenzhen to set sail again.
Michael Porter, the father of world competitive strategy, once said that advantages based on culture are the most fundamental, irreplaceable and imitative, the most lasting and core competitiveness, and culture is the largest real estate of the city. The focus of world economic development is shifting to cities with heavy cultural accumulation, if cities do not attach importance to cultural accumulation, the future economic development of cities will also decline and be unsustainable. But culture is still the core competitiveness, but also the engine of urban development and renewal.
In fact, Su Xinping is not only an outstanding artist, but also an excellent art educator. His self-breakthrough artistic exploration since the beginning of the "85 Art Movement" has demonstrated the vitality of contemporary art, and this is exactly what this exhibition wants to bring to Shenzhen - through the most vivid vitality of contemporary art, activate the urban vitality of Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base, Shenzhen and even the whole country.
About the artist
Su Xinping, born in 1960 in Jining, Inner Mongolia, joined the army in 1977 to serve in the military, graduated from the Printmaking Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1989 with a master's degree, and stayed on to teach. He is currently the vice president, professor, doctoral supervisor of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and the president of the Institute of Science and Technology and Art. The early experience of life in the grasslands and the experience of serving in the army made Su Xinping have a profound experience of the lonely state of the earth, the sky and the soul. In the 1980s and 1990s, Su Xinping created a large number of prints reflecting such themes, showing the strength of his artistic spirit and the strength of his will to life. His works have been collected by the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University, the Ludwig Museum of Art, the Portland Museum of Art, the Museum of San Francisco, the Fukuoka Art Museum, the National Museum of Australia, the National Art Museum of China, the Shanghai Art Museum, and the CAFA Art Museum.