On October 28, 2021, the UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art held its annual media appreciation meeting and announced the 2022 exhibition plans of UCCA, UCCA Edge and the UCCA Dunes Art Gallery. In the new year, UCCA will present a total of 14 exhibitions to the public, including the Beijing-Shanghai inter-curricular touring exhibition, at venues in Beijing, Shanghai and Beidaihe to promote international cross-cultural exchanges, further practice and deepen the concept that "art can go deep into life and improve life", and develop more possibilities for Chinese contemporary art.
The 14 exhibitions in 2022 cover well-known and emerging artists from home and abroad, including Henri Matisse, Maria Rasnigg and Thomas Dimand's first institutional solo exhibition in China. In addition, there will be solo exhibitions by foreign artists Jeff Oppenheimer and Monilla Al Kadiri, as well as representative figures of Chinese contemporary art Liu Xiaodong and Yang Fudong and emerging artist Zhang Ruyi.
In addition, UCCA will also explore the diversified development of contemporary art through 5 group exhibitions with a global perspective spanning eras and regions: reviewing and sorting out the "past of the lower city" explored by the pioneers of the art community in New York's downtown in the 1980s; using the "present tense" to open an in-depth investigation of the current group of young Chinese artists; the results of the year-long cooperation between UCCA and The Para Site Art Space in Hong Kong, bringing together many artists and group perspectives. The "overflowing ground" that attempts to interrogate the material, spiritual, and ecological connections of the giant project of human transformation of the earth; the "illusion/lamp" that focuses on the short-term and non-negligible role of photo projection in the history of Chinese contemporary art at the end of the 20th century; and the inspiration from the local environment of the UCCA Dune Art Museum to explore the flow and evolution of sound, and how the ocean has become an "undercurrent" of cultural communication media.
Matisse Matisse (2022.3.26 - 6.26)
Henri Matisse, Self-Portrait, 1918, oil on canvas, 65.5 x 54.3 cm. Donated by Marie Matisse to France, preserved in the Musée Matisse, Le Catto-Cambrece, 1978, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Image courtesy of Matisse Gallery, Le Catto-Cambrezi/DR. © Succession H. Matisse 2021
As the first solo exhibition of Henri Matisse (1869-1954) Chinese mainland, UCCA will work with the Musée Martis in Le Cateau-Cambrésis in northern France to select more than 250 works from its collection, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, ink on paper, prints, paper cuts, book illustrations, fabrics and other different media, to fully present Matisse's artistic career. The reason why the exhibition is named "Matisse's Matisse" is to emphasize Matisse's own "curatorial" role in the exhibition, because most of the works are from Matisse's personal collection, and the exhibition design of the Matisse Art Museum itself also fully respects and references his wishes, and the entire exhibition can be regarded as the unique artistic will left by Matisse and the current audience.
"Matisse's Matisse" will be divided into 10 chapters according to the clues of time, from the early academic period of copying works and style explorations, to the earliest representative works of Fauvism, and the exploration of human bodies and portraits in the 1920s and 30s with sculpture, drawing, printmaking and other media. It will also present the inspiration and influence of the Tahiti trip to Matisse, as well as the iconic colorful oil paintings and ink line drawings of the 1940s, highlighting the turn of Matisse's artistic creation in his later years and the diversity of the media involved– from his designs for the Church of Vence at the age of nearly 80 to the fabrics, paper cuts and book designs of the same period. The UCCA curatorial team will also add a special area at the end of the exhibition to present and explore the influence of Matisse and Fauvism on the modern Chinese painting movement in the 1920s and 40s through a large number of historical documents and works by modern painters such as Ding Yanyong, Guan Liang and Chang Yu.
"Matisse's Matisse" is curated by Patrice Deparpe, director and chief curator of the Matisse Gallery, co-presented by UCCA, and supported by Door Art Culture. The exhibition will tour to UCCA Edge shanghai from July to October 2022.
The Past of The Lower Town (2022.7.30 -10.23)
Jean-Michel Basquiat in the attic, 1982, 91.44 x 91.44 cm, Polaroid SX 70 museum paper. © Mary Pearl
"Downtown Memories" is a collective look back and tribute to the art community active in New York's Downtown in the 1980s. At that time, although New York was mired in the quagmire of the Great Depression, the expression and exploration of art entered a period of great creativity. Dozens of artists have lived here in the name of the group, and their artistic lives have intersected, with the same dreams, the same obscurity, and now the most important artists of the late 20th century. The exhibition does not follow linear temporal threads, nor does it unfold according to style or medium, but through dialogue between artists with very different backgrounds and motivations, it shows the avant-garde artistic exploration of the art community in the lower urban area, the diversified artistic practices based on ideas, politics and graffiti, and the new forms of expression born in nightclubs and street cultures in the context of the AIDS crisis, the rapid gentrification of the city and the rapid development of consumer culture.
"Once Upon a Time in the Lower Town" brings together some of the most famous and little-known creations of the Lower Town art community, including some of the most iconic works of the period, such as the paintings and drawings of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, which were first exhibited in China. The exhibition is co-curated by Carlo McCormick and UCCA Curator Peter Yiley.
Yang Fudong (2022.11.26 – 2023.2.26)
Circa 1976 at the Summer Palace, picture courtesy of Yang Fudong Studio
Yang Fudong's works have a breakthrough significance in the practice of contemporary Chinese visual creation. In 2002, his first film, Strange Paradise, premiered at Documenta in Kassel, Germany, presenting a new narrative and visual sensibility that permeates the contemporary aesthetics of multiple styles, while the monumental work "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest", created five years later, poetically expresses the confusion of his contemporaries at the beginning of the millennium. As his filmmaking gradually developed into an installation that sometimes covered the traces of filmmaking, his subsequent creations extended cinematic thinking to the realms of space and multi-time.
As Yang Fudong's most comprehensive and first institutional solo exhibition held in Beijing to date, the exhibition will present the first part of Yang Fudong's "Library Film Project". The project began after Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest as a constant quest to create a film that could accommodate a complex reality—especially when it was both real and constructive. Drawing inspiration from childhood experiences in the rural countryside of Beijing's eastern suburbs, the first part of the "Library Film Project" presents Yang Fudong's video narrative of closely intertwining the past and the present, the public and the individual. The exhibition is curated by UCCA Curator Feiyu Tian and UCCA Curator Dialect.
Liu Xiaodong: Your Friend (2022.1.15 – 4.10)
Liu Xiaodong, Changing Lights, 2021, oil on canvas, 250 x 300 cm. Images courtesy of the artist
As a contemporary pioneer of China's neorealist painting tradition, Liu Xiaodong's major works in the 1990s are striking and clear representations of The Changing Times in China's New Era, and his keen perception of imagery and photography in his works has been called "painting as a camera" by curator Jerome Sans. Since the beginning of 2000, Liu Xiaodong has expanded his artistic practice, depicting the social realities that unfold in a narrative, even geopolitical, region of narrative and even geopolitical significance, from the Three Gorges Dam to the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2010, in UCCA's solo exhibition "Jincheng Kid" in Beijing, Liu Xiaodong expanded from his focus on childhood friends in Jincheng Town, Liaoning Province, a post-industrial paper factory town, to reflections on social mobility and personal transformation.
This exhibition will feature portraits of artists who are closest to him in his life and career. The exhibition begins with an important self-portrait: in the cold winter, in a village a few kilometers from Jincheng Township, the artist crouches down on his father's grave. This work was created in New York based on photos taken by Liu Xiaodong in his hometown of Heitu Village. Liu Spent a crucial early part of his career in New York (1993-1994) and spent most of 2020 in quarantine in a Manhattan apartment with Yu Hong, the wife of a famous painter, and Liu Wa, the daughter of a new media artist. Other works on display in this exhibition include portraits of film and literary figures who inspired or engaged in dialogue with Liu Xiaodong's artistic creations, as well as portraits of his mother, brothers, relatives and friends. In addition, a series of smaller works on paper, journals and archival materials by the artist will be exhibited, as well as a new image taken by director Yang Bo to document the creation process and background of the above works. Curated by Feiyu Tian, director of the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, and UCCA curator Fang Yu, "Liu Xiaodong: Your Friend" will be exhibited at UCCA Edge in summer and fall 2021, with some of the new works touring to Beijing in January 2022.
Jeff Oppenheimer: The Man of Reverse Degrees (April 30 - July 31, 2022)
Jeff Oppenheimer, The Observer (Partial), 2019-2021, Cast Copper, Pigments, Medical Carts, Medium Density Panels, Laminated Materials, Woven Leather, 147 × 61 × 89 cm
For more than two decades, artist Jeff Oppenheimer has used the mediums of sculpture, video, drawing, and photography to analyze not only the connections between people, but also the connections between individual relationships and broader social and economic issues. As Jeff Oppenheimer's first solo exhibition in China, "The Man in reverse" will feature the artist's latest work commissioned by UCCA and the Dirier Biennale Foundation. An immersive spatial context of walls, carpets, raw materials and mass-produced products focuses on the artist's three sculptural works: the merchant, the flag bearer and the observer. The sculptures and their environments illustrate the growing attention paid by modern socioeconomic people to symbols, images and roles, highlighting how artists use the body as a medium to express contemporary conditions, and how visual art essentially presents irrepressible and ineffable emotions and experiences to the world. This exhibition is accompanied by publications co-designed by the artist and David Giordano as an important part of the exhibition, including articles written by art historian David Gas, playwright Zhao Chuan, and UCCA Curator Feiyu Tian.
Zhang Ruyi (2022.4.30 – 7.31)
Images courtesy of the artist
In the past decade, Zhang Ruyi has explored two intertwined threads based on cacti and urban architecture and artificial space with the artist's own precise grasp and delicate perception of the language of sculptural materials. The works travel between artefacts, industrial experience and urban life, using "reality" as a "model", drawing out the individual's perceptual moment under urban change, and rooting it in the material, giving it meaning outside its form. As The largest institutional solo exhibition of Zhang Ruyi in recent years, the exhibition will feature a series of the latest works commissioned by UCCA, further exploring and contemplating its tense binary relationship network of natural and man-made objects. The exhibition is curated by UCCA Assistant Curator Nanzhao Zhang.
Maria Rasnigg (20.08.2022 -11.27)
Maria Rasniger, Two Ways of Existence (Double Self-Portrait), 2000, Oil on Canvas, 100 x 125 cm© Maria Rasniger Foundation
One of the most famous artists of the 20th century, Maria Rasniger's first major solo exhibition in China. In more than 70 years of extraordinary artistic career, Rasniger has devoted himself to "body consciousness" paintings that express the moods and sensations of the body, rather than depicting the external forms of the human body. Although he lived in Austria for most of his life, he also had considerable experience living occasionally or abroad, such as in Paris and New York. From early abstract graphics, to "realist" paintings of the 1970s, to later creative self-portraits, the exhibition includes works from various periods of Creation by Lasniger, systematically sorting out his pioneering and diverse artistic life in the form of special themes. Curated by UCCA Curator Peter Yori and Antonia Hoschelmann, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at albertina Museum, the exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Albertina Museum and the Maria Rasnigg Foundation in Vienna.
Illusion/Light (2022.12.17 – 2023.3.5)
The Great Achievement of Self-Reliance, 1965, offset color transparent, by Thomas A. Thompson Su Wen's "Beijing Silver Mine" program is available
"Illusion/Lamp" focuses on the short-lived but non-negligible role played by photo projections in the history of Chinese contemporary art at the end of the 20th century. Because of its portability and reproducibility, slideshows have become popular in China since the 1980s, and artists and curators have quickly used them as a tool to widely share their work and learn about the development of art in various regions. Slides are not only often screened in group settings, but are also suitable for private viewing and communication, and in the short transition period before the popularization of video technology and computers, they play an important role in disseminating artistic ideas and providing inspiration for the formation of new artistic expressions. Through documentary archives and different forms of materials, the exhibition will reproduce and explore the social and cultural history carried by this important communication medium, while sorting out the emerging artistic developments since the 1980s. The exhibition is curated by UCCA curator Holly Roussell.
Shanghai UCCA Edge Thomas Dimand: The Tongue of History (2022.4.2 - 6.19)
Thomas Dimand, Workshop, 2017, Colour Blend Printing, Diasec Process Mounting, 180 × 310 cm. Images courtesy of the artist, Matthew Marks Gallery, Sprüth Magers Gallery, Sibor Gallery and Taka Ishii Gallery
UCCA Edge will present Thomas Dimand's first comprehensive retrospective in China. For the past 25 years, Thomas Dimand has combined his talents as a sculptor and photographer to try to capture the incredible "tongue-in-cheek" of history at the roots of contemporary image culture. "Thomas Dimand: The Tongues of History" brings together about 60 photographic, film, wallpaper and other works created by the artist's career, showing how the artist can deal with the impact of historical events through images while taking an overview of the way the artist sees the world. The exhibition combs through the artist's important artistic practices in four sections: "Mysterious History" presents anonymous scenes of extraordinary historical significance with large-scale photography; "The Mystery of everydayness" focuses on the small-scale "Everyday" series; "The Impulse of Architecture" includes Dimand's "Model Study" series of works and the wallpapers of its design; and "Moving Images" shows the artist's exploration of stop-motion animation filmmaking. The exhibition was curated by Douglas Fogel for the Nonprofit Photographic Exhibition Foundation (FEP), a minneapolis/Paris/Lausanne.
Starry Night Boat (2022.11.12 – 2023.2.12)
Yuyu Wang, Elastic Waterfall (Partial), 2020, Silicone, Wire, Amaranth, Acrylic, Hair, Silk, Water-Soluble Plastic, 90 × 400 cm
The exhibition will showcase the work of more than a dozen young Chinese artists, examining the themes and methods of these emerging artists, including the transformation of scenes and materials in everyday life, as well as an examination of the boundaries between the private and public spheres. At the same time, by emphasizing feminist and queer perspectives, the participating artists propose new ways of thinking about the body as a material and subject, and are curious about existence beyond the scale of human experience. "Starry Night Boat" is curated by UCCA curator Qiu Yun.
Beidaihe UCCA Dune Art Museum Spill Site (2022.3.20 - 6.12)
Chang Yuchen, "Coral Dictionary (Seven Sentences on the Dock)", 2019, Coral Skeletons, Fishing Nets, Fishing Lines, 150 x 150 cm. Photo: Guan Jun, image courtesy of the artist
As a result of a year-long collaboration between UCCA and Para Site Art Space in Hong Kong, Spillover Will tour to the UCCA Dunes Art Museum in Beidaihe in March 2022, following its premiere in Hong Kong in the summer of 2021, to further evolve the poetics of ecological entanglement in the duo of water and land, liquid and solidification. Bringing together the perspectives of many artists and groups, the exhibition attempts to interrogate the material, spiritual, and ecological connections of the megaprojects of human transformation of the earth, especially in today's projects to transform coastal areas and islands. Some works intervene in places where nature is inexorably exploited to dismantle the catastrophe behind highly sophisticated developmentalist thinking; others turn to primordial maritime myths and construct ecological kinship in search of antidotes to the chronic diseases of modernity. Some works explore the voices of non-human subjects, flora and fauna native to the island's ecology, while others unearth from the embers of colonial history the rebellious spirit of resistance to rule that lies in the life of the island. In addition to the series of works jointly commissioned by UCCA and Para Site, a group of works that have never been exhibited before will be presented, including several new commissions created specifically for the UCCA Dunes Art Gallery. On the one hand, these works focus on the specific geographical and ecological issues of North China, and on the other hand, they will explore the rich texture of queer nature and further break free from the shackles of a dualistic worldview. The works distributed throughout the organic shape exhibition space, together with the scenes of the distance and proximity that transcend the white cube space they discuss, converge into an attempt to rethink the most fundamental dynamics of all matter and life—the dialectic between entropy and order, between dissolution and crystallization. The exhibition is curated by Li Jiahuan and Feng Junyuan.
Monilla Al Qadiri (3 July – 10.9, 2022)
Monilla Al Qadiri, The Submariner (Video Still Frame), 2018, Video, 4 min. Images courtesy of the artist
Monilla Al Qadiri's artistic practice is an in-depth exploration of the oil culture of the Middle East and its future possibilities, while also covering gender performance and pathos. Through the creation of a variety of media, including video, sculpture and performance, she investigates the economic transformation of Kuwait and the Gulf region and the dramatic changes it has brought to socio-economic relations and local life. Through a synthesis of Monilla Al Qadiri's previous creations, the exhibition will attempt to explore how we can relate to personal and macro history through art. How do we think about our relationship with nature and distant natural resources in a life where exploitation and industrial production are completely invisible or heard? How should we understand the poetry implicit in the self-destruction of the unconscious? This exhibition is curated by UCCA curator Luan Shixuan.
Dark Surge (2022.10.30-2023.3.12)
Yuanyuan Yang, Anecdotes of Chinatown, 2019, single-frequency color audio HD video, 19 minutes and 11 seconds. Images courtesy of the artist
Drawing inspiration from the UCCA Dunes Museum's seaside location, Dark Surge explores how sound flows, immerses and changes, and how the ocean becomes a medium for cultural transmission. Through video, installation and audio works, the group exhibition attempts to discuss sound and music as complex subjects in which they are inseparable in the social and economic context, rather than as simple objects of artistic creation. The exhibition explores ideas raised by some of the most important works of music criticism, such as David Tupu's Ocean of Sound: The Language of the Underworld, Ambient Music, and the Imagined World (1995), from The Gamelan music of Bali to Debussy to the echoes of Jamaica, which traces the evolution and flow of music in the near-ocean region. It also explores how the historian Paul Gilroy's theory of the "Black Atlantic" could be equally applicable to the understanding and analysis of the history and culture of black people shared in Africa, the Americas, and Europe, and how it could be explained in terms of the dispersed migration of the Chinese and how that migration spread sound and music culture around the world. "Undercurrent" attempts to present immersive sound art in near-ocean areas, as well as works of art that explore how the flow of people and ideas across the ocean shapes musical culture. The exhibition is curated by UCCA Publications Editor Simon Frank.
Editor/Yajing Wang