不知道 i don’t know

Time for a meaty quote about art, I think:

Paintings and sculptures, Schapiro pointed out, were ‘the last hand-made personal objects’ within a social order dominated by the division of labour. In a world in which the life of most individuals was subordinate to unsatisfying practical activity, ‘the object of art is, therefore, more passionately than ever before, the occasion of spontaneous or intense feeling’. Abstract art met this need best, because it refused ‘communication’ in a world in which communcation had been utterly instrumentalised and reduced to a notion of the most efficient stimulus to produce a given response. More than any other art, it corresponded to ‘the pathos of the reduction or fragility of the self within a culture that has become increasingly organized through industry, economy and the state’. Although it had no specific political message, abstract painting was the ‘domain of culture in which contradiction between the professed ideals and the actuality [of our culture] is most obvious and often becomes tragic’.1,2

1. HEMINGWAY, Andrew (2006), ‘Meyer Schapiro: Marxism, Science and Art’ in HEMINGWAY, Andrew ed., Marxism and Art History: From William Morris to the New Left, London: Pluto Press. p.142
2. Quotes taken from SCHAPIRO, Meyer (1957), ‘Recent Abstract Painting’, in SCHAPIRO, Meyer (1978), Modern Art: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, New York: Braziller. pp.217–8, 222–3, 224.

Announcing that our next show at CPU:798 will be opening next weekend. This will also be the first new show in our new space, so I’m pretty excited about it.

The show is called “Frivolous” and is a set of installation by our artist Zu Jing. Zu Jing hails from Beijing and although she’s been working for a few years now on the series which we are presenting, this is the first showing of them in a gallery. She’s a very talented artist for whom we have high hopes! I’ve written a short introduction to the show on the website and will do a longer text over the next week.

So do join us next Saturday!

Shu Yong at Highlight Gallery

Highlight Gallery have just opened a group show called Body Media, and although I’ve not been in to see the show yet, it’s been difficult to miss the piece that they’ve placed outside the gallery.

Highlight Gallery is right by one of the entrances to the 798 Art District in Beijing, so placing this particular sculpture outside the gallery, beside the main road was always going to be somewhat problematic (is it obvious what they are? Clue: there’s a tiny woman flying behind them and to which they are connected). And this is the result.

So, the ’secret’ project that I’ve been working on for the last few months has finally come to fruition. As of Friday 29th February the gallery that I am working on with my colleagues will be open! The gallery is called CPU:798 and is situated (as the name suggests) in the 798 area of Beijing, well-known and perhaps somewhat notorious for the imbalance in the art:reality ratio.

Our first show is a new installation by Wang Yuyang entitled ‘Dust is Dust,’ featuring a series of large-format transparencies of scanning electron microscope scans of dust, and illuminated crystal balls embedded in the floor.

The website is up and running, so please visit and take a look at what’s going on if you aren’t able to visit us in person. If you are in Beijing and are able to pop in, we’d love to see you!