ArtSlant: Eliasson’s Essentials

The Pavilion, Vitamin Creative Space, 2503-B-Building 2, Northern District, Pingod Community, No.32 Baiziwan Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100022, China

May, 2012 –

Reflecting Vitamin Creative Space’s approach to the artwork as a “daily activity,” the four pieces by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson currently installed in their Beijing space (The Pavilion) are not quite an exhibition – there was no formal opening and no general announcement made, and there is no official end date to the show. Such an arrangement is part of Vitamin’s way of leaving space for the public to discover the works in conditions that strengthen their place in the world rather than as idealised art objects removed from it, potentially leading to more meaningful experiences with them.

This rather quixotic mode of presentation is reflected in the location of The Pavilion itself, perched on the top, 25th floor of an “art district” on the southern periphery of Beijing’s CBD. The relative inaccessibility of The Pavilion—there are no signs indicating its presence, you need to phone up for entry to the building, and the room is un-signposted and unannounced behind a standard white door at the end of a nondescript corridor—serves to place it in strange relation to its aims at engaging with “daily life.” This daily life came up a lot in a conversation I had recently with Zhang Wei, the founder of the space and her staff. On the level of a business, Vitamin seem to place themselves in something of a mid-point between acknowledging their role as a commercial gallery and as something akin to a non-profit space which might allow them to work with the art free from market constraints – something their ethos of “daily life” seems to embody.

Continue reading

ArtSlant: Nooks and Crannies

Review of The Pavilion opening

Vitamin Creative Space, 2503-B- Building 2, Northern District, Pingod Community, No.32 Baiziwan Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100022, China

November 20, 2010 — ongoing

The end of November marked the inception of Vitamin Creative Space’s “The Pavilion” – their third space in China, and second in Beijing – and allowed for a revisiting of their presentation methods in their various spaces. So, what is this “Pavilion” and what purpose does it serve? And how does it relate to their previous space, “the shop”? Coming to grips with Vitamin’s selection of spaces reveals a taste for poetic license in their consistently ambiguous commercial spaces.

Continue reading