On the west side of Chongming Island in Shanghai, a former chicken farm has been transformed into an art museum.
On October 26, the Dingding Art Museum, which was converted from a chicken farm, was officially opened to the public. The opening was accompanied by the permanent exhibition "Landing 1.0", the themed exhibition "We borrow dreams from others, like debts", and the residency project "soft as cotton, hard as a needle".
Topless Art Museum Theme exhibition hall
Wuding Art Museum is located in Luhua Town, west of Chongming Island, Shanghai. The art museum covers an area of about 40 acres, adjacent to Xisha Wetland Park, close to the north and south branches of the Yangtze River in the south and west, and is the location of the Yangtze River watershed. As the largest alluvial sand island in China, Chongming Island carries the products left over from socialist labor construction such as land reclamation in the second half of the last century.
After passing rows of trees and flat roads, on the westernmost side of the island is a neatly arranged wasteland of farmhouses and the location of the Roofless Art Museum. Walking along the only main road, there is a row of promenade-like farmhouses as the exhibition hall of the museum. It is understood that the former chicken coop here is Luhua Chicken Farm, which was built in the 70s of the last century and has a construction area of about 3,000 square meters. Today, the old brick house, which has been abandoned for more than 20 years, has been converted into an art venue.
No Top Art Museum Aerial view
No Top Art Museum Aerial view
The staff of the art museum told reporters, "Apart from the basic facilities, there has not been much renovation here. There are no big lights in the exhibition hall, and things are done according to the law of sunrise and sunset. Among them, several "chicken coops" do not have roofs, and the museum has not been rebuilt, but has remained as it is, becoming a "roofless" art museum. "It's a natural link, and you can see a lot of stars when you look at the sky at night."
In 2019, artist Xu Zhen and his team held a contemporary art group exhibition "Arrival" in the outpost village of Chongming Island, displaying more than 40 groups of paintings, sculptures, installations and other works, trying to explore the impact of art on the ecology of the countryside in today's increasingly urbanized and rural areas. The construction of the Headless Art Museum also continues its concept of connecting the countryside with nature.
Xu Zhen, an artist and curator, says this is not a typical case of a contemporary art museum. He called it an "artistic collective life," as another production base, an art creation camp, a collective organization that might be free from individual influence. He said the trip to Chongming was not to reshape the island's artistic ecology, but to "actively accept the transformation of nature".
Permanent exhibition view
On the opening day, the museum brought the permanent exhibition "Landing 1.0" to the audience. This exhibition presents more than 10 sculptures by Xu Zhen.
In New Laocoön, the distorted Laocoön and his two sons "break through" the museum house, and they are grappling with a giant python; Above the eaves diagonally is the work "Eternal Life - Six Dynasties Painted Tao Dragon, Sleeping Muse" - a combination of Six Dynasties painted Tao Dragon and the egg-shaped "Sleeping Muse" of the artist Brancusi.
Exhibition scene, Xu Zhen "New - Laocoon"
Exhibition scene, Xu Zhen "Eternal Life (Greek column, high heels)"
The basic materials of the "Eternal Life" series of works come from ancient sculptures, which collide and explore through the classic cultural images of the East and the West. In the exhibition hall, the work "Eternal Life (Greek Column, High Heels)" combines the Collins column with red high heels, forming a collision between ancient Greek civilization and modern consumer economy; On the other side, there is a sculpture decorated with triangular frieze on the east side of the Parthenon and a fusion of six Buddha statues of Northern Qi and Tang Dynasties in different forms, presenting the eternity of the core of Eastern and Western civilizations... In addition, in the open space outside the house, a "dinosaur" was split in two and placed in two transparent glass cases. This work "Untitled" is Xu Zhen's rebuttal to Damien Hirst's "Shark".
Exhibition scene, Xu Zhen "Untitled"
In addition to the permanent exhibition, there is also the theme exhibition "We borrow dreams from others, like debts". The work of 13 artists occupies the indoor and outdoor spaces of the museum's themed galleries, exploring the urgency of renewing identity politics, aesthetic institutions, and other avant-garde legacies. The temporary nature of the exhibition and the sense of desolation and ruins outside the exhibition hall make the exhibits have a different sense of existence.
Outdoors, artist Lu Pingyuan's "Blue Cabin" is an audio segment that presents the story of a mosquito's survival experience; The artist Feng Zhixuan's sculpture "How to Stand a Huge Pillar Sculpture" is to support the condensate condensed in the drainage canal of the dried chicken farm, and the water quality regulating filter material dug up to oyster shells, coral bones, etc., showing the history of this man-made natural ecology; Li Hanwei's work "Economic Zone" is a lawn with nearly 30 large and small, real and false tents, each with its own theme, through the means of stitching, and presents our various judgments and attitudes towards health, people, ecology and tools.
Exhibition scene, Feng Zhixuan, "How to stand a huge pillar-like sculpture"
In the indoor exhibition hall, artist He An collected jeans worn and discarded by family and friends, and then pulled these jeans into strips of rags by himself, turned them into cloth shapes from aluminum, and piled them up into a hill. Ho An believes that clothing is the most direct symbol of human beings, representing the physical body, in contrast to the cold material without emotion and consciousness; Wang Jianwei's work "The Prophet" is related to the city's street lamps, lightbox advertisements and tailpipes, showing a look about the city.
Artist Chu Bingchao's video works tell a story. While inspecting a small town in the northwest, he found an unburned candle in a dilapidated grotto, lit the candle, and told the story of the town: decades ago, someone knocked out the statues in the surrounding grotto as building materials, transported them to the river, and built a bridge; Liu Yujia's film is a wandering, masked wanderer shot in Thailand. He dragged a giant inflatable swan behind his motorcycle and told his story as he rode it.
Curator Sun Qidong said that the display scene here is different from the exhibition in the urban area. "After a long time of traveling through space, entering here, you need to transform a state of mind. Of course, we must pay attention to art and works, but we also need to pay attention to the external ecology. These ecosystems, in turn, re-enter the exhibition space, helping us adjust our perspective and our relationship with the environment. ”
Chu Bingchao, Bridge, 2020, video, 1 hour 19 minutes (video screenshot)
Chen Axis's film "Mountain God Eagle Training", 2021
It is reported that the Visiting Artist Residency Program (MVAIR) promotes research and supports the creative process of artists. The 2-month residency provides artists with valuable time and space resources for open-ended investigation, experimentation, and collaboration to push the boundaries of their own practice. On the opening day, the first residency project presented was artist Jin Feng's "soft as cotton, hard as a needle". Jin Feng's work involves a variety of mediums, and is committed to blurring the connection between the dual identities of artist and theoretical author. "Soft as Cotton, Hard as a Needle" is a performance lecture conceived by Jin Feng during his residency, and he hopes to translate Chongming Island as an encounter between different objects through writing, performance and archives.
Wang Jianwei, Prophet, 2012, Integrated Materials Installation
At the opening scene, Jin Feng's performance lecture
The reporter learned that the Wuding Art Museum signed a contract with this remnant of the 70s of the last century for ten years. After renovation, the land has a new function and is being used a second time. Whether these man-made and natural objects can extend into an artistic ecological theater will also be revealed in the next few years.
"We borrow dreams from others, like debts" will be on display until April 15, 2023; The residency project "Soft as Cotton, Hard as a Needle" will be on display until April 15, 2023.