How long have you not traveled freely from Hong Kong and Macau? Now that mainland residents are visiting Hong Kong, the Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning also has a "2022 Hong Kong and Macao Visual Arts Biennale" worth seeing before planning this walk-and-go trip to Hong Kong and Macau. This art exhibition full of collision of ideas presents an innovative and growing regional art ecology with unlimited vitality and potential. The exhibition runs until February 19 and is free to the public, and Art Chestnut has selected works to accompany you online.
01
Think about the world differently
The Hong Kong and Macao Visual Arts Biennale is an art event for cultural exchanges between the Mainland, Hong Kong and Macao, and is one of the important brand exchange activities organized by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau of the HKSAR Government and the Secretariat for Social Affairs and Culture of the Macao SAR Government. Since its inception in 2008, it has become a major cultural exchange event between the Mainland, Hong Kong and Macao, and is held every two years.
Exhibition view
After its first exhibition in Beijing, the "2022 Hong Kong and Macao Visual Arts Biennale" was specially exhibited at the Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning, marking the first time in this series of exhibitions to land in Shenzhen. With "Art and Technology" as the core theme, more than 20 artists/groups from Hong Kong, Macao and the Mainland were invited to participate in the discussion of science and technology, art, individual experience, natural ecology and other themes in the context of the times.
As the most eye-catching and browsing form of contemporary art in China, science and technology art has extended to mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, information technology, artificial intelligence and many other disciplines, and the forms of expression are also rich and colorful. As one of the central cities of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Shenzhen is also a jungle of tens of thousands of industrial, scientific, technological, cultural and design enterprises.
Exhibition view
The themes of previous biennials ranged from calligraphy and painting, photography, graphic design to contemporary art, and this time the focus was on new media art, resulting in a vivid and vivid art scene. The Mainland section of this exhibition is specially curated in the context of the in-depth integration and development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, with Guangdong artists as an important part, showing the latest exploration of "art and technology" by artists in the Greater Bay Area, bringing new discourse to the integration and development of technology and art.
The works of the artists of the three places are both independent and superimposed, forming a tense dialogue under the theme, presenting their own unique curatorial perspectives, and drawing a multi-faceted art map of the Greater Bay Area. What they present is not only the latest power of "art and technology", but also the thinking and practice of local artists in the context of the new era based on their own environment and personal experience.
Exhibition view
The Hong Kong section is entitled "The Dimension of Perception – Multiple Explorations of All Things and Self", showing multi-dimensional humanistic thinking brought about by the interaction between nature and people, people and people, and inner self-reflection; The Macao section uses "Digital Text – A New Perception of Culture" to interpret the textual reshaping of tradition, nature and memory in the digital age.
The inner floor of the Beijing Station explores how human beings coexist with all things from the perspective of "nature and ethics"; Through the "Dimension of Perception - The Domain of Symbiosis between Humanism and Creation", the floor block in Shenzhen Station responds in an artistic way to how to build a sustainable organic system between humanism and creation, and realize the harmonious symbiosis between man and machine under the background of artificial intelligence.
Chen Jiajun "Migratory Birds"
This year's Biennale has distinct characteristics of humanistic care, and there are still many places worth pondering about the perspective and presentation method of the works, inviting the audience to imagine the possibility of human social survival and development in the post-epidemic era. As Sandra, director of the education department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said, the real power of art lies not in aesthetics at all, but in inspiring people to think about the world in different ways, in opening up dialogue between different times, different spaces, and different civilizations.
02
Observe life in technology with art
There is no doubt that technology has made a huge difference in people's lives. Artists active in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao have keenly captured many details of current life, and reflected on the people and things, people and people, and people and the environment connected by technology. What do you need to do to see a visual arts biennale? Perhaps after reading the following works, you already have a way of thinking of your own.
Group 01 (Chen Rongbin, Liang Lianxi) "Explosive Mercury"
Since May 22, 2020, the 01 team stationed in Guangzhou (Chen Rongbin, Liang Lianxi) has begun to cooperate with a number of Internet celebrities to conduct live broadcast sales. These "goods" are actually natural objects such as air, tree branches, stones and other natural objects collected by the art team from the Guangzhou scenic area in plastic bags, and calligraphy characters are printed on the outside. Mercury is the god of commerce and deception in Greek mythology, and viewers can place orders for these products labeled "Blockbuster Mercury".
This work critically reflects on the relationship between spiritual entertainment and material commercialization, requiring Internet celebrities to output spiritual content on live broadcasts, thereby reflecting the live broadcast economy in the digital information age.
Compared with the 01 group's reflection on the information age, more artists still tend to find creative inspiration from people's emotions and social relationships.
Huang Zhiquan "Distance · Two"
A Hong Kong-based student, Wong Chi-kuen is a multimedia artist, mechanical and media designer who actively explores the possibilities of combining technology and personal emotion in his work. "Distance" is a work in the artist's "Distance" series, which discusses the endless changes in human relationships. When viewers look at the two swinging screens in front of them, they will notice that their swing rhythm is irregular.
The eyes on the screen change randomly, piecing together different faces according to the program's algorithm. This experience symbolizes the emotions that arise when people communicate with each other: identification, rejection, neglect... It is also a metaphor for the relationship between technology and the individual, which is rapidly changing and unpredictable.
Chen Hsien Yew "Alternate, Reincarnation"
Born in Zhongshan, Guangdong, Chan Hsien Yew moved to Macao in 1999 and has long documented the changes in Macao society and the expression of contemporary art ideas. The large-scale photographic work "Alternation and Reincarnation" in this exhibition was created between 2016 and 2022 and was filmed at the Macao Abandoned Car Dumping Place.
Chan Hsien Yew records the long-term images of abandoned cars engulfed by nature and presents them in chronological order in a long shot, showing the traces of changes in the energy era. And this video work will extend to the ground, putting the audience in the torrent of the times: 2022 is the "first year of autonomous driving", in the context of the new era of the rise of China's automotive industry, where will we go?
Dong Yongkang "One Hundred Jumps"
Even digital art, which requires logic and technology, is still inseparable from the emotional bond, which is the source of all creation. There is no art, only artists. Artists with emotions end up bringing more warmth to digital art.
03
Understanding society and nature through "symbiosis"
American biologist Lynn Margulis, after studying eukaryotic cells, believes that all living things are a symbiotic evolutionary relationship. The innovative significance of this theory lies in the opposition to the "natural selection" of the theory of biological evolution, and there is no competitive relationship between life. Artists in the Greater Bay Area have a strong mobility in the region, and it is such frequent exchanges and mutual integration that make them both common and differentiated, thus constituting a unique Greater Bay Area art ecology.
Ye Weihan, Tao Zhichen "The Use of Trees"
Ye Weihan and Tao Zhichen, who are active in Hong Kong, have created a virtual jungle. As the viewer enters and wanders through the space, the tall tree grows with the viewer's movement, and other species wither with it; When the viewer is no longer moving, the forest reproduces rich and diverse species, taking on another state.
The title of the work "The Use of the Tree is from "Zhuangzi", Keiko's vision of the tree cannot be used by carpenters, but Zhuangzi says that this tree can be planted in the endless wilderness for people to rest. The work embodies the idea of "uselessness", seeking the audience's self-acceptance, which extends to appreciation, respect and tolerance of all things.
Li Jiaying "City #01"
Born in Macau, Li Jiaying placed the city's stacked buildings on the thin wings of butterflies, and discussed the concept of "symbiosis" with the concept of mustard seeds and sumu. The artist believes that not only the city and nature are symbiotic, but also the real and the virtual. Li Jiaying's "City #01" combines nature and society in a virtual space on a scale that transcends living things.
Through this work, the audience can feel that the rapid development of human technology cannot be above reality, if nature is swallowed by human activities, then the butterfly's wings will vibrate violently, and the city will become a nesting egg in an instant.
Li Yan "Lost"
Li Yan, who graduated from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, shares Li Jiaying's concern for the concept of "symbiosis". Observing that flocks of birds in the city were affected by artificial lights, she created the work of the same name as the poet Kitajima "Lost". Viewers can use mobile phone lights to make the "flocks" on these thin steel pipes start randomly and vibrate their wings, but in fact, the strong artificial light source has an impact on the navigation system and breeding laws of birds.
In Li Yan's view, each bird symbolizes the people living in modern cities, so the uncontrollable birds in the work are very similar to the people in real society who are driven by the trend of the times. The artist once said of the work in an interview: "In my thinking about this work, 'irreversibility of social development' is a key word... The process of human social development is too fast, we set out on the pretext of 'making the living environment of human beings more comfortable', but at the fork of the road, we lost the map to the end. ”
Exhibition view
History is always moving forward, and the Greater Bay Area, as its name suggests, is a whole, symbiotic evolution. In this region with similar accents and cultures, the early opening of ports and the economic take-off have exposed artists to more fresh art forms and concepts early, which is also an important reason why artists in the Greater Bay Area have always been at the forefront of experimental art. Rooted in the Chinese and Chinese context, Chinese artists make Chinese-style creative expressions in cutting-edge art fields, which is also a constant artistic characteristic of this region.
The text | Yu Chihe
Photo | Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning
Part of it comes from the web