Reporter | Yin Qinglu Lin Ziren
Edit the | Forest people
【Shanghai】
Before dawn breaks
Exhibition time: October 15, 2022 - December 31, 2022
Exhibition Venue: Shanghai Photography Art Center
Tickets: 40 RMB
This exhibition focuses on British photographer Nick Brandt's latest series "Before Dawn". In 2018, a forest fire hit Brandt's Southern California area, which made him feel that environmental concerns are not unfounded, and that life is in jeopardy in the face of climate change. Filming Before Dawn began in 2020, the photographer's clearest expression of environmental issues in his career: in each black-and-white photograph, the quiet coexistence of humans and animals brings a dramatic tension. Brandt's subjects are people and animals whose livelihoods are threatened by environmental degradation and habitat destruction – couples whose crops have failed due to drought and have to beg for water from surrounding areas, cheetahs on the verge of extinction, women who are destitute due to the death of livestock in dry wells, and giraffes who suffer from the post-traumatic effects of the massacre and cannot raise their cubs... Through this juxtaposition, Brandt alludes to the interdependence of human and animal fate.
The first part of the series was filmed in Kenya and Zimbabwe in East Africa in 2020, and the second part in Bolivia in South America in 2022. Although both areas are recognized as wildlife havens, the region's most important species face unprecedented threats. "Fog" as the main visual element runs through "Before Dawn", symbolizing the confusion of humans and animals. A luminous chandelier also appears in several works in the series, as if to light up a faint hope for an unknowable future.
"New Culture Producer" Season 1: Craftsmanship Revived
Exhibition time: November 5, 2022 - February 5, 2023
Exhibition Venue: Exhibition Hall, 2nd Floor, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai
Admission: Free
The first season of the "New Culture Producer" project "Craftsmanship Revival" was exhibited in the form of a double exhibition. This season's two selected proposals are "Madman's Hill" curated by Feng Lixing and Wu You, and "Back to the Future: Through the Barrier of Times" curated by Zuo Jing and Wang Yanzhi. With different entry points, they invite the audience to discuss the current situation of Chinese craftsmanship and the possibility of revival.
"Madman's Hill" presents the works of 11 artists, all of whom in some way emphasize the crucial role of craftsmanship and labor in the process of human understanding of the world, such as Ni Youyu's collection of tens of thousands of old photographs from all over the world over the years to classify, cut, reassemble, and collage the fictional "Getaway", which responds to the literati sleeping tour tradition while referencing the contemporary experience of globalization; Fu Xiaotong used countless needles to thread rice paper, using dense holes to outline mountains and waves on the paper; Li Gang made brown pigments from soil from his hometown; Liu Jianhua used superb pottery to imitate the frost on pine branches... The circulation design of the exhibition hall cleverly divides the exhibition into three groups, namely craftsmanship as a carrier of knowledge and memory, craftsmanship as a memory of history and time and space, and craftsmanship as a copy of nature and body. Hidden in the walls and stands are spaces where visitors can enter or open for exploration, inviting them to engage in dialogue and reflect on the relationship between craft, creation and understanding the world.
Back to the Future: Through the Barriers of Times systematically reviews Zuo Jing's team's rural folk Renaissance practice over the past ten years. The exhibition presents some specific cases of the Folk Art Revival, such as Ninghua jade button paper and wooden movable type, Liuyang Xiabu, felt and wool products of Tibetan cooperatives, and explores the possibilities of local practice of "reviving craftsmanship". It is worth mentioning that the exhibition commissioned architect Luo Yujie to design the exhibition, and the exhibition wall and booth were assembled using recycled corrugated paper in a mortise and tenon manner, demonstrating the application of natural construction in the exhibition and contemporary life scenes. In the foreword to the exhibition, Zuo Jing and Wang Yanzhi said: "The era of craftsmanship cannot be reproduced, and we have no intention of returning. However, to gain inspiration from tradition is a kind of future-oriented speculation, which is also the meaning of 'Back to the Future: Through the Barriers of the Times'. ”
Caroline Walker – The woman who was seen
Exhibition time: November 8, 2022 - February 12, 2023
Exhibition Venue: Chi K11 Art Museum Hall 3 and 4
Tickets: from RMB 58
In The Invisible Woman, British writer and journalist Caroline Criado Perez argues that for almost entire human history, "the life of men has been used to represent the life of all human beings, and when it comes to the life of the other half of humanity, only silence is usually left." Under the brush of British artist Caroline Walker, the ordinary and even taken for granted moments in the daily lives of contemporary women are observed and recorded and pushed to the audience.
Women Observed is the first systematic and large-scale exhibition of Caroline Walker's artworks from a female perspective in China, in which she carefully observes the lives of her subjects, captures unique moments, and uses these photographs as a model for her paintings, which ultimately leaves a certain hyper-realistic strong impression. Walker depicts women from the perspective of a bystander—the women in the picture are immersed in what they are doing, and Walker even deliberately keeps the doors and windows in some works, emphasizing that this is a voyeuristic moment—but the women's undistracted mind in the painting magnifies her life experience in the moment and highlights the identity of her subject.
The exhibition is divided into three parts: "Family", "Leisure", and "Women at Work". The "Family" series is Walker's most well-known and personal work. She depicts her mother Janet, sister-in-law Lisa, and daughter Daphne, showing the intimate relationships between women in the family and the chores that take up much of their time but are often ignored by us. The "Casual" series depicts women's moments of relaxation from the daily chores, and this series is a reversal and satire of the "male gaze" that male artists usually display when depicting female characters. In the "Women at Work" series, Walker looks to professional women such as beauty technicians, cleaners, tailors, shop owners, and healthcare workers, with the intention of shattering our stereotypes about these typical female-dominated professions.
Who is he? A retrospective of Geng Jianyi's works
Exhibition time: November 10, 2022 - February 12, 2023
Exhibition location: Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, 1st floor lobby, 5th floor exhibition hall
Admission: Free
Geng Jianyi (1962-2017) is one of the most influential conceptual artists of contemporary China. This exhibition presents Geng Jianyi's representative works from various stages of his career from the mid-1980s to 2016, some of which are shown to the public for the first time, such as the special project Waterworks (1987/2022) presented in the lobby on the first floor, and the artist's never-before-published experiments in using pulp as a material in Japan in 2016. Exhibition title "Who is he?" "From Geng Jianyi's conceptual work of the same name, created in 1994. At that time, the artist heard that a stranger had visited his home when he was out, so he subconsciously asked: "Who is he?" In order to clarify the identity of "him", Geng Jianyi invited neighbors to provide written descriptions and portraits, and created the work as the content. The curator also uses the question "Who is he" to guide the audience to observe Geng Jianyi's artistic practice up close and come up with his own answers.
Looking at Geng Jianyi's work, the viewer may find that the responses of China's earliest contemporary artists to their time are so epochal, but also so transcendent. Blank, pigment-impregnated, overlapping prints so that they cannot be read, or moving books, almost playful on the boundaries between "understandable" and "incomprehensible", "important" and "unimportant", interestingly, the subject of books is also important in the creation of artist Xu Bing; Confirming a person's identity with forms, documents, portraits, and testimonies of acquaintances reveals that the individual's existence is invisible in dense social networks; Abandoned personal items are carefully collected by the artist and displayed like cultural relics, and the reasons for abandonment written by the original owner are attached to the items, and the old objects no longer make people nostalgic on the way to the commodity society, which is in contrast to the narrative formed by the artist Song Dong in sorting out the various daily necessities collected by his mother Zhao Xiangyuan over the years, and forming in the exhibition "Making the Most of Things"... All this not only records the atmosphere of the era of social transformation, but also echoes the surprising situation.
They and abstraction
Exhibition time: November 11, 2022 - March 8, 2023
Exhibition location: West Bund Art Museum, Hall 3
Tickets: RMB 60 (Early Bird Ticket) / RMB 120 (Original Price)
The West Bund Museum and the Centre Pompidou's five-year exhibition collaboration has recently launched a special exhibition "They and the Abstraction." The exhibition was well received by the public during the 2021-2022 tour of the Pompidou Center in France and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and was highly praised by major overseas mainstream media. As the first special exhibition in China to focus on female abstract artists, the exhibition traces the history of Western abstract art in the 20th century written from the perspective of female artists, presents the works of some little-known artists to the world, and re-evaluates the important contributions of women to abstract art. Based on the Pompidou Centre collection, curator Christine Macel has selected nearly 100 works by some 35 artists, including Sonia Delaunay-Terk, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, and others, to show Loïe, the source of abstraction at the end of the 19th century Fuller's snake dance performance begins with an introduction to the contributions of women in European modernist avant-garde, abstract expressionism, optical and kinetic art, and fabric art.
Two noteworthy timelines are also incorporated into the exhibition. One is the development of art and feminism in the United States and Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. With the beginning of the second wave of feminism in the United States and the formation of the French Women's Liberation Movement League, feminist ideas began to enter the art world and left a profound impact, and female art practitioners contributed to the development of feminism in their own way. For example, in 1971, art historian Linda Nocklin published in Art News entitled "Why Are There No Great Women Artists?" questioned women's place in art history and the institutional barriers they faced. In 1983, American science fiction writer Joanna Russ quoted this article in How to Suppress Women's Writing, and in this sharp feminist literary criticism, she pointed out the structural violence of women marginalized in the literary world.
The other is the development of the Chinese abstract art movement. The curators point out that while fiber art has been promoted by Eastern European and American artists since the early 1960s, Chinese artists also see the potential of fiber art. In 1986, Gu Wenda, Liang Shaoji and Shi Hui participated in the Lausanne International Biennale of Wall Hanging Art. However, Shi Hui's place as a female artist is still underestimated in the Chinese contemporary art canon compared to Gu Wenda and Liang Shaoji.
(Also on display were "Hu Xiaoyuan: Sand Path", "The Sound of All Things: The Pompidou Collection (II)", "Wow! Ground floor! "Interactive installation exhibition. ）
【Beijing】
Gaze Light – Lita Kaberut China Exhibition
Exhibition time: November 05, 2022 - January 15, 2023
Exhibition Venue: Raffles City Mall, Beijing B2 Level B16 Art Exhibition Hall
Tickets: 97 RMB
Spanish artist Rita Caberut once said, "My childhood was like that of thousands of street children around the world." Growing up on the streets of Barcelona, Caberut was adopted by a couple at the age of 12, who discovered her artistic talent and began her life as an artist. Her works are mostly large portraits, and she is deeply influenced by Rembrandt and Goya in terms of style, focusing on expressing the spiritual world of the characters; In terms of contemporary art techniques, she specializes in the use of mixed materials to create works that range between ancient murals and contemporary colors.
"Gaze at the Light – Rita Kaberut's Works" presents some of the artist's representative works and new works from recent years. In addition to paintings, the exhibition also features a number of interactive activities, including the paper-tearing installation "Break and Stand, Tear and Reborn", which interprets the artist's original cracking technique; The VR work "Zero Distance Viewing of Caberut's Creations" "moves" the artist's studio from Spain to Beijing, allowing the audience to see the creative process and characteristics more intuitively.
Solo exhibition by Julian Ope
Exhibition time: November 19, 2022 - March 26, 2023
Exhibition Venue: Lisson Gallery Beijing Space
Admission: Free
British artist Julian Oppe specializes in exploring traditional and advanced imagery, such as classical portraiture, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and traffic signs, and as a way to express the side of contemporary people: indifference, superficial emotional reactions to the external world, or surprise out of ignorance. Even if you're not familiar with Obe's name, you've probably seen his work long ago, like the line figures running and jumping on LED installations or the faces of the four young men on the cover of the band Blur album.
Following Obbeh's 2020 solo exhibition in Shanghai, Lisson Gallery's solo exhibition will feature the artist's new paintings, a series of stainless steel body sculptures, landscape light boxes, and dancing figures rendered by LED animation, vinyl and mosaic tiles. Oppe invited four dancers to perform the dance, which was continuously presented on four LED screens and columns, with steps inspired by Tik-Tok and music inspired by millennial electronic dance music. How can the purely visual language of modern life relate to elements of art history? This exhibition brings you a lot of inspiration.
(Coinciding with this exhibition, another exhibition of Oppeh, "OP. VR/HEM@shenzhen" is currently on display at Vientiane Tiandi, Shenzhen, featuring Obei's latest VR works and selected works from the past. ）
Gigel and Kushanji: Tomorrow is approaching
Exhibition time: November 19, 2022 - February 19, 2023
Exhibition Venue: UCCA Lab Beijing Art Space
Tickets: from RMB 58
On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the birth of Hans Ruedi Giger, the "father of aliens", a traveling two-person exhibition of Giger and artist Kushanji traveled to Beijing.
The two artists' visions overlap considerably – a shared interest in the convergence of artificial intelligence and mechanics, and a high sensitivity to business. But there is also an underlying tension between the two, with Giger's hellish darkness contrasting with the surrealism of empty mountain-based, and the latter's passionate outlook on technology being challenged by the former's nightmarish dystopia. The exhibition will feature more than 40 works by the duo from the 1960s to the present, divided into three chapters: "Surreal Exploration, Fear and Fantasy", "Before Tomorrow, Between Biology and Machinery" and "Seeds of Popular Culture". What kind of future will we share in this gloomy world? In the choice of left or right, in the foreground of light and darkness, the audience is able to rethink this question.
Futuristic Universe – Collection of the Massimo and Sonia Chiruli Foundation, Italy
Exhibition time: September 6, 2022 - December 4, 2022
Exhibition location: Tsinghua University Art Museum
Tickets: 60 RMB
Standing today, how do we look back at the optimistic yearning for technology in futurist art? The Italian poet Marinetti published the Futurist Manifesto in 1909, expressing a distaste for old ideas and advocating a modern life driven by technology, a school of artists who saw cars, planes and industry as glamorous symbols of man's conquest of nature.
The exhibition "Futuristic Universe" consists of 12 units that explore the rich nature of futurist creation in different dimensions. "Conquest of the Sky" presents a collection of paintings, sculptures and poems on the theme of aviation in the 2030s with the theme of flight, while the "Energy" unit is a passionate imagination about oil, coal and power sources. In addition to the industrial revolution of life, Futurism is also committed to initiating a sensory revolution, including subversive cooking methods and gastronomic views, which will appear in the "Italian Cocktails and Food" section.
Shen Ling's solo exhibition "Empty Flowers, Years Portrait"
Exhibition time: November 05, 2022 - December 08, 2022
Exhibition Venue: Tang Contemporary Art Center, Beijing 798 Second Space
Admission: Free
This exhibition presents Shen Ling's early precious works since the 1980s and representative works in recent years, including more than 50 oil paintings, albums, and comprehensive works on paper, which is Shen Ling's most important solo exhibition in recent years.
Using rice paper as a medium, Shen Ling paints the four seasons, natural morning light, and autumn wind and rain in her eyes, which are the artist's own experiences and implicit her inner world. As curator Feng Boyi believes: "This is an abstract reality that is refracted internally. The seemingly inadvertent place is actually forced, but it just gives people a natural feeling; It seems disorderly, but it sets off the capacity of different images such as people and birds, beasts, flowers, grass, trees, etc. It's like picking up flowers at night, clearing frost overnight. ”