The Paper's reporter Gao Dan intern Dai Fangying
From October 30th to 31st, Beijing Today Art Museum held a special event during the "Art of Love – Garden of The Senses" video art exhibition, including wearing traditional Mexican costumes, doing a day of "Frida", "Mexican Short Film Festival Screening", "Burying the Predecessor" performance art and music party, and so on. This year is the second edition of the "Art of Love" project, in which the display of female artists is particularly prominent.
With the release of an animated film "Dream Quest" in China a few years ago, Mexico's Day of the Dead has gradually entered the field of vision of Chinese audiences. From October 30th to 31st, the "Art of Love" exhibition hall of Today Art Museum and the Cultural Division of the Mexican Embassy jointly held a series of activities, including wearing traditional Mexican costumes, doing a day of "Frida", "Mexican Short Film Festival Screening", "Burying the Predecessor" performance art and music party, and so on. The venue for these events, the Today Art Museum, is presenting a video art exhibition called "The Art of Love – Garden of the Senses" in the last three months, and the exhibits include video works by frida Carlo, a legendary Mexican female artist, and a Mexican altar designed and recreated by the artist.
Today Art Museum", "Art of Love" exhibition event
Frida in Dream Quest
The audience can see such a clever connection: an art exhibition focusing on "sensory experience" selects the works of a number of female artists, and naturally selects Frida, a Mexican female painter who has suffered from pain all her life and left half of the contents of the paintings that present fragmented bodies and organs, and "first released" the biographical film "Frida Carlo" in the exhibition hall, and in order to make it more real and tangible, a Mexican-style altar was built in the exhibition hall, and with this exhibit, it was on the "Day of the Dead" On this day, relevant offline activities can be derived.
Biographical film Frida Carlo
Editorial curation
Looking back to the present, The Paper interviewed the creators of the second season of "LOVELOVELOVE Love Art", and discussed with them what type of exhibition the public needs more, what issues should be paid attention to as the main creator, and the difficulties encountered in continuing to operate an exhibition IP.
Chang Chen, one of the main creators of "The Art of Love", mentioned the concept of "editorial curation" many times when introducing the exhibition: "In fact, we are very much like the editors holding a topic selection meeting, we need to think of a topic first. In 2018, the Internet was at its peak, with young people talking about dreams and opportunities, but rarely talking about love. So we think of the concept of 'the art of love', and we want to use art as an experiential way to let everyone awaken the cognition of love, and then explore love together in the way of feeling. In the first season of 'The Art of Love' we focused on the theme of intimacy, and in the second season we wanted to subvert the poisonous chicken soup style of writing and find a more arguable, scientific perspective. Although there is no research to tell you what romantic love is, human hormones and hormones are really there, and the reaction of human hormones will tell us that love is happening. ”
The second season of "The Art of Love", under the name of "Garden of the Senses", explores how love happens, and also uses works of art to simulate and pre-rehearse love, the opening work Chen Wei's "Wishing Fountain" is a situational installation, the audience enters the exhibition hall will get a coin, one side of the "good dream" written on the other side of the "lovelovelove", the audience can decide whether to throw a coin into the trevi fountain, just as you decide whether you want to enter a love. Artist Liu Jiayu's "Night Fireflies" hints at the invisible scale of love, and the exhibition hall is full of dotted fireflies, but when people approach the wall, fireflies will disperse. There is also a piece of Tracy Emin reading the words in the small book in an expressive voice, the static images contrast with the undulating sound, conveying a full mood, and the curator in the exhibition hall has made a number of earpiece installations that gather sounds, so that the audience can experience that "no matter how noisy the sound world, you can always recognize what you want to hear the most." ”
The Trevi Fountain
Night Fireflies
Works by Tracy Emin
The creators said that in fact, the most difficult thing to do in the exhibition now is "how to connect with the audience". Liu Xiaonuo, one of the main creators of "The Art of Love", said: "Planning is planning, but it is more difficult to find points that are more acceptable to the audience, we hope that an exhibition can inspire some new experiences, some new ideas, not just as a background for taking pictures." ”
Chang Chen also mentioned that an exhibition needs to be continuously operated, rather than holding a simple opening ceremony as before, and this time holding the Day of the Dead and Halloween parties is also for continuous output. "Everyone's needs will become more and more complex, it is no longer to see the exhibition, drink a cup of coffee can meet, as the main creator, we are really the service industry, need to create a lot of new experiences, in fact, now everyone is constantly making new plans, such as the exhibition of Miyazaki Hayao of the Today Art Museum, doing a lot of parent-child experience."
"We've now refined enough to think about planning every week, producing hashtags, thinking about which hashtags can be given to the audience, and joining forces with many social media and bloggers to spend time thinking about some ingenious content and then releasing it."
Rising female power and "relative extremes"
Although there is no deliberate distinction between genders in the selection of artists, female artists are particularly prominent when presented in the second season of "Art of Love".
"When women express themselves in the theme of love, they are often more three-dimensional, more delicate, and more emotional. Even many artists' lives are the 'art of love' themselves. "When the work of female artists is drowned among many works, it is often overlooked, but when they come together to discuss the same theme, it seems rich, ambiguous, and more intense.
The exhibition shows a video of Louis Bourgeois, "Peeling Oranges", she tells her story while peeling oranges, she recalls that in her childhood, her father would draw a human figure on the orange, then peel it off little by little, and finally laugh at the bulging tip that Bourgeoisa, as a little girl, is missing part of the organ as a boy. Still responding to the fear of "losing" and "being abandoned", Bourgeois always openly confronts issues of identity and sexuality, and it is touching that she recalls the fierce anger of her childhood.
Luis Bourgeois's image "Peeling Oranges"
The orange little man was also extracted as an element to decorate the exhibition hall
Cao Yu, who has always been known for his avant-garde boldness, presents a work called "Mt. Fuji" in the "Garden of Fanaticism", a huge object that stands and trembles to give the viewer a strange, grotesque and strong sense of oppression. The creators of Love Art said that some of the scenes in the video that are too intense, bold or nudity will also be technically processed, "because considering that our type of exhibition is not facing an audience with exhibition professionals and so many academic backgrounds, we can only do a relative extreme, including Cao Yu's works, which are also a matter of opinion." ”
Cao Yu "Mt. Fuji"
Agnès Varda's BORD DE MER is a video installation depicting three different dimensions of time – past, perpetual and present. Still images projected onto a vertical screen show views of the ocean; on an inclined platform below, moving cameras show waves tumbling and dissolving into the coastline; and finally, this platform merges with a small stretch of sand beneath the viewer's feet. The work transports the viewer to the ocean, allowing them to see the water, imagine the wind, and hear the waves. This is one of the few calm and romantic works in the exhibition hall.
Agnès Varda, BORD DE MER
The creator of Love Art also talked about the selection of about 12 artists when doing the first season, of which two or three are male artists. Although it is not intentional, it can still be seen that in the discussion of love, discussion and sensuality-related content is that female artists will have a good performance, and when analyzing the user group, it will also be found that 60% of the audience watching the exhibition is women, the age is mainly distributed between 18 and 35 years old, and the main group of people watching the exhibition tends to be young women.
Editor-in-Charge: Lu Sijia
Proofreader: Liu Wei