Xi Jia – River Lethe: A Song Kun Solo Exhibition
INVOLVED
Source: ShanghArt gallery website
Curated by Philippe Pirotte
Group Exhibition XU Zhen, ZHANG Enli, SHI Yong, etc. ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai
Date: Oct 31, 2008 - Dec 05, 2008
Participating Artists: Knut Asdam, Stefan Brüggemann, Pavel Büchler, Corey McCorkle, Bradley Pitts (tbc), Luc Tuymans, Yutaka Sone, Armen Eloyan, Shi Yong, Zhang Enli, Xu Zhen
Curated by Philippe Pirotte, Kunsthalle Bern
October 31 – December 15, 2008
ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai
ShanghART Gallery is pleased to announce INVOLVED, the first exhibition at H-Space with both Chinese and foreign artists. The exhibition is curated by Philippe Pirotte, Director of Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland. Pirotte choose some of the most exciting contemporary artists from Europe, USA, and Shanghai to put together an extensive show under the elusive title INVOLVED.
As the title indicates, the exhibition evolves around different terms of engagement and involvement - be it artistically, sexually, or politically - often focusing on what is left unsaid. The great diversity of the artists and their projects display concepts of what it means to affect, include, contain, or comprehend in today’s world, with very different aesthetic and intended ends. Often evasive, the art here approach being INVOLVED on different levels. Indeed, such complexity and contradictory perspectives thwart a one-dimensional and ideological treatment of the subject matter, and keep it open.
New works have been conceived especially for this exhibition by painter extraordinaire Luc Tuymans, together with conceptualist Miroslaw Balka, and by Yutaka Sone, living in Los Angeles, and young London based artist Stefan Bruggemann. Projects also include paintings and drawings by Zhang Enli and Armen Eloyan, based in Switzerland, film and videos by Norwegian artist Knut Asdam and New York based Corey McCorkle, an out-door sound installation by Pavel Buchler, an archival video project by Shi Yong, a sculpture by Yutaka Sone, a three-dimensional piece by Xu Zhen, and a collaborative limited-edition sound piece by Tuymans & Balka which will also be for sale as a vinyl piece, including drawings by the artists, at the gallery.
The exhibition was realized with great support by White Cube, London, David Zwirner, New York, Maccarone Inc., New York, and Zeno X, Antwerp.
Please see below for further information on the artists and curator’s statement.
Further information please contact helen@shanghartgallery.com
Curator's statement
In relation to recent turmoil happening in and around a certain vigorous and performing China, the Western world seems to hold to an eerie misconception of the historical condition of geopolitical initiative today. This situation is not new, but perceived as such by a West that has difficulties to abandon its grammar of superiority. This attitude is of course combined with a fascination and an urgency to participate in the Chinese economical ‘hyper-growth’. The artistic project at hand here, rather than ‘celebrating’ naïvely the effects of globalization and the encounter between different cultural spheres, cannot deny that it is partly motivated by such a particular mixed set of feelings.
We chose to bring a group of artists together under the title Involved. ‘Involved’ can mean as much as being implicated in a crime or concerned in some intricate affairs.
As an exhibition Involved addresses content, which is not announced explicitly but becomes something understood by the observer of the work as it is experienced. It is focusing on subject matter underneath that what is rendered public. By careful use of subtexts, the exhibition instils a sense of purpose or focus to an anticipated future. Not necessary optimistic, this future is covered in an aside, sometimes through recollecting a past, suggested through that what is left out of a conversation.
Philippe Pirotte, Shanghai, September 2008
Knut Åsdam
Norvegian artist Knut Åsdam’s Untitled: Pissing is a video showing a crotch-shot of a man pissing in his pants. The main theme is in relation to masculinity, and in a simple way the video mentions masculinity and sexuality without being phallocentric. The wetting itself is not only traumatic in relation to masculinity (something the little boy does and knows he is punished for,) or something that happens solely from fear; it is also a sign of arousal and excitement even in the confrontation with the trauma; to come (on one self), have an orgasm, and furthermore has a feminine metaphor in ’getting wet’. This leads the video also to raise questions in relation to the viewer of what is erotic or simply perverse.
Stefan Brüggemann
Brüggemann (Mexico City, 1975) uses text in a rather unusual approach, combining a formal, and quite traditional conceptual approach to art with a rough and critical attitude. Brüggemann has been creating works of art that are expressed through tautological premises, not only within themselves but also in relation to the context in which they are conceived and inserted. His language-based works are founded in rebellion, irony and in institutional critique. He continues with the conceptual tradition of using industrial media that have a primordial utilitarian function. However, its contents also come from those same vernacular contexts, as if putting together message and medium he is able to reveal its hidden possibilities to express deeper meanings than the apparently superficial ones perceived at a first glance.
Some of his text pieces ambiguously present a cynical, nihilist and lucid reflection on certain economical and philosophical aspects related to the production and reception of cultural goods, art included. Brüggemann’s texts resound that same attitude of rebellion, discontent and skepticism. He has a contradictory behaviour, oscillating between criticizing and doing nothing. It’s hard to find a better tribute to punk.
Often, his text pieces make direct reference to the conceptual practices in which the artist inserts himself. However, there is a slight difference regarding orthodox conceptualism, and it lies in mockery and auto-irony: few conceptual artists play about their processes or question the validity of their redundancies, and that’s Brüggemann achievement, to tease about his own influences and creations.
At Shanghart he will create a very big vinyl text: “NEW” and wallpaper a room with “Conceptual Decoration”. Next to that he will try out graffitied paintings with mirrored dollar signs.
Pavel Büchler is a Czech born artist, lecturer and writer, living in the United Kingdom since 1981, where he is also a Research Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University. Büchler’s work evolves around two fundamental concerns: time and the manipulation of found materials. Concerned with the distortions of language, he gives a critical attention to the gaps in communication, fascinated as he is with the limits of the communicative properties of visual language. Particularly interested in art’s old links to language and literature, Pavel Büchler will show a group of works he conceived over the years with Marconi Sound projectors from the 1920’s and text-to speech software to read a text. In this particular piece Büchler uses a quotation from Franz Kafka’s The Castle, a quintessential text about labyrinthine bureaucracy and its control systems. The short section chosen by Büchler recounts the resentment with which the locals suffer Josef K’s presence in the village. It includes the words of a village landlady: “You are not from the Castle, you are not from the village, you aren’t anything. Or rather, unfortunately, you are something,
Source: ShanghArt gallery website
Curated by Philippe Pirotte
Group Exhibition XU Zhen, ZHANG Enli, SHI Yong, etc. ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai
Date: Oct 31, 2008 - Dec 05, 2008
Participating Artists: Knut Asdam, Stefan Brüggemann, Pavel Büchler, Corey McCorkle, Bradley Pitts (tbc), Luc Tuymans, Yutaka Sone, Armen Eloyan, Shi Yong, Zhang Enli, Xu Zhen
Curated by Philippe Pirotte, Kunsthalle Bern
October 31 – December 15, 2008
ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai
ShanghART Gallery is pleased to announce INVOLVED, the first exhibition at H-Space with both Chinese and foreign artists. The exhibition is curated by Philippe Pirotte, Director of Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland. Pirotte choose some of the most exciting contemporary artists from Europe, USA, and Shanghai to put together an extensive show under the elusive title INVOLVED.
As the title indicates, the exhibition evolves around different terms of engagement and involvement - be it artistically, sexually, or politically - often focusing on what is left unsaid. The great diversity of the artists and their projects display concepts of what it means to affect, include, contain, or comprehend in today’s world, with very different aesthetic and intended ends. Often evasive, the art here approach being INVOLVED on different levels. Indeed, such complexity and contradictory perspectives thwart a one-dimensional and ideological treatment of the subject matter, and keep it open.
New works have been conceived especially for this exhibition by painter extraordinaire Luc Tuymans, together with conceptualist Miroslaw Balka, and by Yutaka Sone, living in Los Angeles, and young London based artist Stefan Bruggemann. Projects also include paintings and drawings by Zhang Enli and Armen Eloyan, based in Switzerland, film and videos by Norwegian artist Knut Asdam and New York based Corey McCorkle, an out-door sound installation by Pavel Buchler, an archival video project by Shi Yong, a sculpture by Yutaka Sone, a three-dimensional piece by Xu Zhen, and a collaborative limited-edition sound piece by Tuymans & Balka which will also be for sale as a vinyl piece, including drawings by the artists, at the gallery.
The exhibition was realized with great support by White Cube, London, David Zwirner, New York, Maccarone Inc., New York, and Zeno X, Antwerp.
Please see below for further information on the artists and curator’s statement.
Further information please contact helen@shanghartgallery.com
Curator's statement
In relation to recent turmoil happening in and around a certain vigorous and performing China, the Western world seems to hold to an eerie misconception of the historical condition of geopolitical initiative today. This situation is not new, but perceived as such by a West that has difficulties to abandon its grammar of superiority. This attitude is of course combined with a fascination and an urgency to participate in the Chinese economical ‘hyper-growth’. The artistic project at hand here, rather than ‘celebrating’ naïvely the effects of globalization and the encounter between different cultural spheres, cannot deny that it is partly motivated by such a particular mixed set of feelings.
We chose to bring a group of artists together under the title Involved. ‘Involved’ can mean as much as being implicated in a crime or concerned in some intricate affairs.
As an exhibition Involved addresses content, which is not announced explicitly but becomes something understood by the observer of the work as it is experienced. It is focusing on subject matter underneath that what is rendered public. By careful use of subtexts, the exhibition instils a sense of purpose or focus to an anticipated future. Not necessary optimistic, this future is covered in an aside, sometimes through recollecting a past, suggested through that what is left out of a conversation.
Philippe Pirotte, Shanghai, September 2008
Knut Åsdam
Norvegian artist Knut Åsdam’s Untitled: Pissing is a video showing a crotch-shot of a man pissing in his pants. The main theme is in relation to masculinity, and in a simple way the video mentions masculinity and sexuality without being phallocentric. The wetting itself is not only traumatic in relation to masculinity (something the little boy does and knows he is punished for,) or something that happens solely from fear; it is also a sign of arousal and excitement even in the confrontation with the trauma; to come (on one self), have an orgasm, and furthermore has a feminine metaphor in ’getting wet’. This leads the video also to raise questions in relation to the viewer of what is erotic or simply perverse.
Stefan Brüggemann
Brüggemann (Mexico City, 1975) uses text in a rather unusual approach, combining a formal, and quite traditional conceptual approach to art with a rough and critical attitude. Brüggemann has been creating works of art that are expressed through tautological premises, not only within themselves but also in relation to the context in which they are conceived and inserted. His language-based works are founded in rebellion, irony and in institutional critique. He continues with the conceptual tradition of using industrial media that have a primordial utilitarian function. However, its contents also come from those same vernacular contexts, as if putting together message and medium he is able to reveal its hidden possibilities to express deeper meanings than the apparently superficial ones perceived at a first glance.
Some of his text pieces ambiguously present a cynical, nihilist and lucid reflection on certain economical and philosophical aspects related to the production and reception of cultural goods, art included. Brüggemann’s texts resound that same attitude of rebellion, discontent and skepticism. He has a contradictory behaviour, oscillating between criticizing and doing nothing. It’s hard to find a better tribute to punk.
Often, his text pieces make direct reference to the conceptual practices in which the artist inserts himself. However, there is a slight difference regarding orthodox conceptualism, and it lies in mockery and auto-irony: few conceptual artists play about their processes or question the validity of their redundancies, and that’s Brüggemann achievement, to tease about his own influences and creations.
At Shanghart he will create a very big vinyl text: “NEW” and wallpaper a room with “Conceptual Decoration”. Next to that he will try out graffitied paintings with mirrored dollar signs.
Pavel Büchler is a Czech born artist, lecturer and writer, living in the United Kingdom since 1981, where he is also a Research Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University. Büchler’s work evolves around two fundamental concerns: time and the manipulation of found materials. Concerned with the distortions of language, he gives a critical attention to the gaps in communication, fascinated as he is with the limits of the communicative properties of visual language. Particularly interested in art’s old links to language and literature, Pavel Büchler will show a group of works he conceived over the years with Marconi Sound projectors from the 1920’s and text-to speech software to read a text. In this particular piece Büchler uses a quotation from Franz Kafka’s The Castle, a quintessential text about labyrinthine bureaucracy and its control systems. The short section chosen by Büchler recounts the resentment with which the locals suffer Josef K’s presence in the village. It includes the words of a village landlady: “You are not from the Castle, you are not from the village, you aren’t anything. Or rather, unfortunately, you are something,
For more informations about the artists, please click on the links below:
Knut Asdam
Miroslaw Balka
Stefan Bruggemann
Pavel Buchler
Armen Eloyan
Corey McCorkle
Yutaka Sone
Luc Tuymans
Exhibition installation process:
EXHIBITED WORKS
Luc Tuymans, Against the Day 1
2008
224.0 * 174.0 cm (88" * 69")
Painting | Oil on canvas |
code: OTHERU028 / id:9165
Luc Tuymans
Against the Day I
'Against the Day' is derived from two sources: from a snapshot photography Tuymand shot in his hometown Antwerp, and a painting 'Der Jagdaufseher' (1883) by Flemish painter Ferdinand Knopf. In this painting, Tuyman's finds "reality without romanticism - a rationality of anonymity" which is very much similar to Tuyman's own paintings. His paintings are seemingly calm, but always imbued with quiet paranoia and horror. The paintings are strangely 'vacant', filled with amounts of sublimated violence.
Corey McCorkle, March
2008
10 minutes
Video |
Edition of 3
code: OTHERU029 / id:9166
The video documents 'The Knickerbocker Greys', which is a historic after-school leadership program for children and teenagers in NYC. Featuring the Knickerbocker Greys, a paramilitary drill club for children that has practiced at the Park Avenue Armory since 1881, McCorkle explores the club’s weekly pageant (they're marching, therefore the title), highlighting the neo-gothic interiors of this historic building. The video is of course remarkable because it's children 'playing out' military exercises.
Armen Eloyan,Untitled
2008
100.0 * 120.0 cm (39" * 47")
Painting | Oil on canvas |
Armen Eloyan
For his motifs Armen Eloyan often turns to folk-art and folklore, basing his paintings at times on 19th century Eastern European woodcuts and embroidery with representations of fairy-tales and stories, or on animation movies, comic strips and other popular art forms. His paintings are very expressive with strong colors, but with an under-current of something dark and scary.
Armen Eloyan,Untitled
2008
56.0 * 58.0 cm (22" * 23")
Painting | Oil on canvas |
Armen Eloyan, Untitled
2008
45.0 * 37.0 cm (18" * 15")
Painting | Oil on canvas |
Armen Eloyan,Untitled
30.0 * 20.0 cm (12" * 8")
Painting | Drawings |
Armen Eloyan,Untitled
30.0 * 20.0 cm (12" * 8")
Painting | Drawings |
Armen Eloyan,Untitled
20.0 * 30.0 cm (8" * 12")
Painting | Drawings |
Armen Eloyan,Untitled
20.0 * 30.0 cm (8" * 12")
Painting | Drawings |
Yutaka Sone, Six Floor Jungle
2008
150.0 * 72.0 * 63.0 cm (59" * 28" * 25")
Other | Sculpture | 白色大理石雕塑/white marble sculpture
Edition of 3
code: OTHERU030 / id:9183
Six Floor Jungle
Yutaka Sone's work deal with our relationship to nature and the built environment. With 'Six Floor Jungle' he created a utopian structure, partly apartment-building, partly jungle. He aims to bring people closer to nature through his animistic sculptures and installations.
Miroslaw Balka, B
2006
16 minutes
Video | Single channel |
Edition of 2
code: OTHERU034 / id:9202
B
This video is filmed inside the remains of the largest nazi concentration camp (where the Germans killed thousands and thousands of jews, political prisoners, homo-sexuals, among others, during the second world war 1939-1945). The Auschwitz concentration camp is located in Poland, Balka's origin), and the entrance gate reads the very famous words 'ARBEIT MACHT FREI', which roughly translated means 'work shall set you free'. This is of course, due to history, one huge terrible lie.
In the video one sees a B (in reverse) and this B is from the ARBEIT MACHT FREI, so this means that the viewer is actually located inside the gate/boundary of the camp. Meanwhile, snow is silently falling, and it's strangely beautiful despite the terrible context. Also one hears children's laughter, which makes everything even more absurd.
SHI Yong
Think carefully, where have you been yesterday?
2007
Video | Multichannel |
Shi Yong's extensive video project "Think Carefully, Where Were You Yesterday" (2007 – ongoing) deals with the 'politics of representation': The videos have deep personal perspectives and consist of interviews conducted with minorities that seldom have a voice of their own in China's public realm. Neglected and ignored identities such as AIDS victims, prostitutes, political activists, homosexuals and drug addicts are being thoroughly questioned about their existence, their desires and defeats. Contrasting the disturbing narratives of exclusion, the aesthetic and the visual language of the videos consist of calm b/w close-ups focusing on every little expression of the inter-viewees. The outcome is a touching non-judgmental documentation of marginalized realities in today's China.
Think carefully, where have you been yesterday?
2007
Video | Multichannel |
Shi Yong's extensive video project "Think Carefully, Where Were You Yesterday" (2007 – ongoing) deals with the 'politics of representation': The videos have deep personal perspectives and consist of interviews conducted with minorities that seldom have a voice of their own in China's public realm. Neglected and ignored identities such as AIDS victims, prostitutes, political activists, homosexuals and drug addicts are being thoroughly questioned about their existence, their desires and defeats. Contrasting the disturbing narratives of exclusion, the aesthetic and the visual language of the videos consist of calm b/w close-ups focusing on every little expression of the inter-viewees. The outcome is a touching non-judgmental documentation of marginalized realities in today's China.
XU Zhen
Just Did It
2008
Other | Installation | dust, microscope/在一粒灰上留下了一个脚印
Pavel Büchler, The Castle
2008
Other | Installation | sound installation, text
The Castle
In this particular piece Pavel Buchler uses a quotation from Franz Kafka's 'The Castle', a quintessential text about estrangement, labyrinthine bureaucracy, and its control systems. The short section chosen by Buchler recounts the resentment with which the locals suffer Josef K's presence in the village. It includes the words of a village landlady: "You are not from the Castle, you are not from the village, you aren't anything. Or rather, unfortunately, you are something, a stranger, a man who isn't wanted ...". 'The Castle' is about the struggle to fit in and its failure. Booming out through the old loud-speakers, the text recalls old factory or street propaganda announcements, this one declaring that assimilation is impossible and the stranger will always remain on the outside. Kafka's 'The Castle' was published in 1936 in Prague (same year as the production of the Marconi loud-speakers in Italy), a time of growing fascism and depression in Europe leading up to the second world war (1939-1945).
Knut Asdam, Oblique
2008
13 minutes
Video | Single channel |
Oblique
Oblique consists of dialogues (fiction) between various people traveling together through a meditative landscape and different urban locations. The conversations range from talks about the recent economic crash, to comments on other passengers, and mental powers. Referring to the title, something is strangely odd, sur-realistic, and out of the ordinary.
Stefan Bruggemann, Conceptual Decoration
2008
Other | Installation | Wallpaper, dimensions varlable
Conceptual Wallpaper
Bruggemann uses text as his fundamental premise, drawing on philosophical aspects related to the production and reception of cultural goods, art included. Bruggemann's texts resound an attitude of rebellion, discontent and skepticism. He has a contradictory behaviour, oscillating between criticizing and doing nothing. His texts are often tautological, i.e. repeating what has already been said or what is already inherent in the work itself. For example the wall-paper 'Conceptual Decoration' - the wall-paper is itself a conceptual decoration, but it also says so as text printed on the wall-paper. Bruggemann is very much influenced by the conceptual movement from the 1960's.
Luc Tuymans & Miroslaw Balka, Crazy Horses
2008
Other | Soundwork | Sound record, etching on the B side
code: SPEZIALU006 / id:9209
Miroslaw Balka & Luc Tuymans: Crazy Horses
Balka and Tuyman's tape recording originates from 1998 when they both participated in the exhibition "Privacy" in Porto, Portugal. The basic idea was to record the sound of running horses. During the process the other sounds landed on the tape which changed the running horses into crazy horses... On the recording, the two artists discuss art, the art market, and its diatribes. Releasing the record 10 years later, as a collaborative sound-piece, shows how much has changed in the art world, or maybe not...
The B-side of the record contains an etching by Balka and Tuymans.
Knut Asdam, Untitled: Pissing
1995
Video | Single channel |
Pissing-Untitled
As the title indicates, this film basically just shows the crotch of a man wetting his pants.
ZHANG Enli, Light
2007
100.0 * 90.0 cm (39" * 35")
Painting | Oil on canvas |
ZHANG Enli, Light Bulb
2008
Other | Sculpture | Aluminum, diameter:30cm, width:45cm
