Posts tagged Chinese contemporary art

Yesterday, my supervisor, our gallery curator and I visited four exhibition openings in or near the art district I work in. They were all fabulous, but by far the best was “Unmoved” at Galleria Continua. This is a shining example of the unexpected aspect of what makes ideas stick in the book “Made to Stick.”

A sign displayed in the front window of the gallery read, “Enter gallery at your own risk.” I thought, “What the heck is going on? Since when is it risky to enter a gallery?”

Shortly upon entering the building, we saw two perpendicular white walls about 20 feet tall joined at a banged up corner. Small pieces of drywall lingered below. Other parts of the two walls showed damage, but not as much as the corner. I thought, “Did they damage the wall during the exhibition construction and not have time to fix it?” Then I realized this must be deliberate; maybe it was an installation meant to comment on the rapid combination of destruction and construction in China’s cities, a common motif in Chinese contemporary art.

After obtaining a glass of delicious, chilled champagne – alas, the gallery had run out of the Italian food I’d heard would be there – I returned to the same area to notice a metal sculpture of a dumpster about twice the size of the ones outside my apartment complex this past school year sitting in the middle of the gallery. The dumpster wheeled about 20 feet to crash into the damaged corner then returned to approximately its original position. I then noticed the light track marks on the floor from the dumpster’s many trips, and noticed that the wall had been painted several layers of different colors of paint to systematically show the wear. Sun Yuan and Peng Yu created this installation called “Barbarossa.”

The walls were part of a box that had been built specifically for this exhibition. I waited in a long line to see what was inside the box, ten to fifteen hyper-realistic sculptures of elderly men in automatically moving wheelchairs. Tourists took pictures with the sculptures. I examined each one carefully. I could see why the line was so long; this installation was nothing short of brilliant. I checked the catalogue to discover that it was “Retirement home” by the same artists as “Barbarossa.”

The gallery’s architecture was fabulous; most of it was a three-story, one floor room, but one side contained a three-floor section of the same height. I ventured up the stairs to discover some art that was still great, including a video that made me dizzy due to its rapid movement, but nowhere near as breathtaking as “Retirement home” or “Barbossa.” The third floor revealed a new perspective on the two works, the top angle. I could look down into “Retirement home,” which made it seem much more like a performance piece with the visitors inside as integral elements.

This exhibition proves Galleria Continua’s understanding of sculpture as a three-dimensional form; I’ve visited too many galleries with sculptures in corners. “Retirement home” and “Barbossa” also blur the line between sculpture and performance art, which fascinates me.

So why all this moving art in an exhibition titled “Unmoved”? An excerpt from the exhibition description answers my question:

“Nowadays, it rarely occurs to us to slow down, to stop to extrapolate ourselves from our frenetic lives and observe the world from the privileged position of tranquility and immobility. 21st century humanity is characterised by a deceptive immobility, a stasis hiding behind a veneer of indifference and carelessness.

In the current exhibition, the selected artworks generate an almost uncomfortable situation where time has atypically slowed its rhythm, to the point of almost standing still. All the artworks are either in semi-statis, in some cases quite still, and in others in constant slow movement, inviting the viewer to stop longer in their contemplation, both on a rational and emotional level. In a way, the viewer is unconsciously waiting for something to happen or to be revealed.”