Category: Performance

ArtSlant: Place as Performance

Three Openings of Xiangqian Art Museum: Hu Xiangqian solo show

Taikang Space, Red No.1–B2, Caochangdi, Cuigezhuang, Chaoyang District, 100015 Beijing, China

17 December, 2011 – 17 February, 2012

A projection on one side of the room shows the artist Hu Xiangqian, dressed smartly in white shirt and black trousers, stepping in front of a lone microphone on the raised metal walkway in front of the Guangzhou Times Museum. In the process he inaugurates the opening of the Xiangqian Art Museum, which had previously “opened” as part of the Asia Triennial Manchester 2011 in the UK, and in its first outing, as part of Taikang Space’s excellent series of solo shows under the umbrella title of 51m2 (referring to the area of the space for each of the 16 shows in the series).

In each case, though, this “museum” is not a physical structure, or at least not a building: the institution of Xiangqian Art Museum is embodied by Hu’s own body, in which the artist describes himself as the sole employee. In each of the three instances of the Art Museum on display in Taikang Space’s upstairs room, Hu demonstrates the real and fictional objects in his Museum’s “collection.” This is done through his own movements and simultaneous verbal descriptions. In this way he performs the museum, taking on its duty of public display through the contortions of his body.

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艺术界LEAP Magazine: Cai Guo-Qiang—Saraab

MATHAF Arab Museum of Modern Art, near Education City, Doha, Qatar

5 December, 2011 – 26 May, 2012

Cai Guo-Qiang’s work straddles a sometimes-uncomfortable line between spectacle and meaning. Saraab, the overall title of his blockbuster solo show at MATHAF in Doha, and its “explosion event” in the desert nearby, translates from the Arabic as “mirage” in a wholly appropriate allusion – officially to the subject matter of the works, but perhaps unintentionally to the effect of the heavy symbolism that Cai employs.

The artist had been invited by MATHAF to create a new series of seven large-scale installations. Alongside these a representative selection of older works provided an overview of the artist’s trajectory. The depth of material available in the show created a unique opportunity to fully appreciate the artist’s work, demonstrating in many ways that it has remained remarkably consistent over the years.

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ArtSlant: Nature Calls

Not Only A Taoist Troublemaker! group show

za jia lab, Hong’En Daoist Temple, Doufuchi Hutong, Dongcheng District, Beijing

20 – 23 November, 2011

Not Only A Taoist Troublemaker! was a short-lived exhibition occupying a leaf-strewn room in a small arts space attached to a bar. A bar with a vegetable market behind; sharing a building that housed a screw factory during the Cultural Revolution. A screw factory built inside a Taoist temple, replacing the site’s original Buddhist temple. This overlapping of every kind of ideology provided an ideal backdrop for the six artists’ work in this show curated by forget art.

forget art is an organisation created by artist Ma Yongfeng, about whose “guerrilla” tactics I have written once before on ArtSlant. It has become well-known for the ironic nature of its exhibitions, interventions, and projects. These activities are knowingly aware of themselves and their contexts, and never take these or themselves too seriously.

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ArtSlant: Mall Magic

Urban Play: Site-Specific Public Art Exhibition, curated by Tang Zehui

Landgent Center, No.20 East Middle 3rd Ring Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing

17 November – 25 December, 2011

The many forms of site-specificity have a long history and can be the most complex of contexts for art. This idea of a productive connection with a setting, and by implication the users of that setting, is an attractive option for artists trying to boost their degree of “relevance.” However, the public realm outside of galleries is the critical realm par excellence – works existing in it are forced into competition with all sorts of other, “natural” activities in the spaces, and away from the focus afforded by more sympathetic, privileged spaces.

Often one of the stated aims of the work is to engage with the “everyday.” But the prosaic nature of these situations pricks at an artworks’ status, pointing up assumptions that may or may not coalesce with the world into which it is thrust. And, for me, this is when it gets interesting.

The group show Urban Play sees eleven artists and artist groups hosted by the Landgent Center, a large retail and office development south of Beijing’s Central Business District. This project, curated by Tang Zehui, has seen the artists on-site for the last few months developing a series of site-specific works in the public spaces.

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