MCLC: Duchamp and/or/in China

Thu Apr 25 08:37:51 EDT 2013

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Duchamp and/or/in China
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Spring Exhibitions at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA)

DUCHAMP and/or/in CHINA
MAP Office: “The Oven of Straw”
Multitude Art Prize and Discourse Series

April 27 – June 16

Ullens Center for Contemporary Art
798 Art District, No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Lu
Beijing, China 
T +86 10 5780 0200
visitor at ucca.org.cn
www.ucca.org.cn <http://www.ucca.org.cn/>

The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art is pleased to present three new
exhibitions opening this Saturday, April 27. The exhibitions deal with a
wide range of themes, but share a common concern with the ways in which
ideas travel across cultural boundaries. DUCHAMP and/or/in CHINA sets 31
works by Marcel Duchamp alongside pieces by Chinese artists influenced by
his output. Recent Sovereign Asian Art Prize-winners, MAP Office show “The
Oven of Straw,” a paean to wheat as the original Marxian commodity, first
conceived for the Kiev Biennial in 2012. Finally, the inaugural Multitude
Art Prize exhibition showcases work from five artists and artist-groups
hailing from different regions of Asia, with a conference running on
Sunday, April 28 addressing the position of art and audiences in different
geopolitical contexts.

These exhibitions follow UCCA’s 2013 opening program, ON | OFF: China’s
Young Artists in Concept and Practice,
http://ucca.org.cn/en/exhibition/onoff/  the most comprehensive survey to
date of the generation of artists born after the death of Mao and the end
of the Cultural Revolution, and at the dawn of the country’s era of
opening and reform. Curated by Bao Dong and Sun Dongdong, the exhibition
featured 50 artists and artist groups from across China. A complete,
bilingual exhibition catalog, as well as an anthology of essays in Chinese
only treating creative collaborative practice in China over the last
decade, is now available from the UCCA bookstore.

***

DUCHAMP and/or/in CHINA http://ucca.org.cn/en/exhibition/duchamp/  is the
most comprehensive exhibition in China of Duchamp’s works to date, as well
as an investigation into his impact on the development of contemporary art
in China. Presented in partnership with the Institut Français de Chine as
part of the 2013 Croisements festival, Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise, a
“portable museum” consisting of miniature reproductions of his key works,
serves as a centerpiece to the exhibition. Related works by Duchamp as
well as a special selection of works by Chinese artists who have been
influenced by him provide an opportunity to observe the ways in which
Duchampian themes and questions have played out in the particular context
of contemporary art in China. The exhibition is curated by Francis Naumann
and John Tancock, with featured Chinese artists including: Ai Weiwei / Cai
Yuan + Xi Jianjun / Huang Yong Ping / Lee Kit / Polit-Sheer-Form / Song
Dong + Yin Xiuzhen / Taca Sui / Wang Jun-jieh / Wang Xingwei / Wu
Shanzhuan / Xu Zhen / Zhao Zhao / Zheng Guogu. The exhibition is
accompanied by a bilingual exhibition catalog. Support for this exhibition
also comes from EDF, Groupama, and Hainan Airlines.

For more information: www.faguowenhua.com/croisements
<http://www.faguowenhua.com/croisements>,
croisements at institutfrancais-chine.com

MAP Office: “The Oven of Straw”
http://ucca.org.cn/en/exhibition/map-office/ draws a sharp parallel
between the productive systems of agriculture and the sterile accumulation
of capital. With a straw exterior resembling both an oven and a bank, and
an interior that functions like a cinema, Hong Kong-based artist/architect
duo, MAP Office present an installation first conceived for the Kiev
Biennial in 2012, now updated for a second showing in China. In the video
installation at the center of the piece, films from various historical
moments that touch upon the production of grain run side by side in a
melancholic loop. Documentary footage and clips from both propaganda films
and feature films rub together in a two-channel video that pits the labor
of the farm worker against the speculative activity of the trader or
banker. Featured directors including Sergei Eisenstein, Michelangelo
Antonioni, and China’s own Ping He, while a new Part III to the film has
been added, titled, “When Banks Reaped Losses.” MAP Office is a
multidisciplinary platform devised by Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie
Portefaix.

For more information: www.map-office.com <http://www.map-office.com/>

The inaugural Multitude Art Prize
http://ucca.org.cn/en/exhibition/the-multitude-prize/ exhibition features
five artists or artist groups representing the most creative, critical
minds in a rising Asian contemporary art scene. Presented by the Multitude
Foundation, a Hong Kong-based charitable trust, and the Wuhan Art Terminus
(WH.A.T.), a new contemporary art institution in Wuhan, the Multitude Art
Prize examines the role of art and its relevance in different regions of
Asia. Grounded in Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s concept of the
“multitude,” in which the extraordinary (re)emerges from a social group
undergoing a geopolitical change, the exhibition will be held annually in
a different Asian city, and accompanied by a discourse series. In this
year’s conference on April 28, invited speakers, including leading Asian
curators and scholars as well as Western museum directors involved in the
institutional collaborative “L’Internationale,” will provide an eclectic,
academic analysis of the present and future of contemporary art in Asia.
This year prize-winners are as follows:Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan,
Philippines / Ha Za Vu Zu, Turkey / Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho, Korea /
Raqs Media Collective, India / Yao Jui-chung, Taiwan
For more information: www.multitudefoundation.org
<http://www.multitudefoundation.org/>, info at multitudefoundation.org,
info at what-center.cn

***

2013 Multitude Art Prize Discourse Series
Shifting Targets: Approaches to Art and Multitude in Asia
http://ucca.org.cn/en/program/2013-multitude-art-prize-discourse-series-shi
fting-targets-approaches-to-art-and-multitude-in-asia/

April 28, 2013   10:00 – 18:30   UCCA Auditorium

The Multitude Art Prize Discourse Series is an annual program of
discussions that travels with the exhibition program across Asia. As a
starting point for a long-term conversation, this year’s inaugural
conference explores questions fundamental to the project’s inception. The
scale of geopolitical change taking place across Asia can make
contemporary art seem powerless to intervene or even participate. As
globalization has arguably taken over from where colonialism left off,
contemporary art’s often-complicit relationship with this new cultural and
economic order complicates or perhaps compromises its role in society.
Within this backdrop, how do contemporary artists and institutions help to
make culture relevant for society in different parts of Asia? Do they
constitute a ‘multitude,’ and what meaning can be generated as their
identities continuously evolve with their contexts?

10:00 – 10:20
Welcome & introduction
Philip Tinari & Colin Chinnery

10:20 – 11:35
Kate Fowle in conversation with the Multitude Art Prize jury on what it
means for art to be ‘relevant,’ and how relevance expresses itself as
potentiality in different geopolitical contexts.
Panel: Zdenka Badovinac, Patrick Flores, November Paynter, Jack Persekian,
Ravi Sundaram

11:35 – 11:45
Break

11:45 – 13:00
Bart De Baere in conversation with curators from different kinds of
institutions on “Engagement: Do audiences constitute a ‘commons’ or a
‘multitude’?  To what end do institutions engage their audiences?”
Panel: Kate Fowle, Mami Kataoka, Jack Persekian, and Bartomeu Marí Ribas

13:00 – 14:30
Lunch

14:30 – 15:45
Zdenka Badovinac in conversation with L’Internationale speakers on the
meaning of constructing institutional networks, how dialogues in Europe or
the US can connect with wider dialogues, and whether/why we need to do so.
Panel: Bart de Baere, November Paynter, Bartomeu Marí Ribas, Georg
Schöllhammer

15:45 – 17:00
Philippe Pirotte in conversation with Asian curators on institutional
networks in Asia, whether they should be expanded, and why.
Panel: Patrick Flores, Mami Kataoka, Jack Persekian, Gao Shiming, Ravi
Sundaram, Phil Tinari

17:00 – 17:10
Break

17:10 – 18:00
Response to ideas of the day
Panel: All speakers
Moderator: Colin Chinnery

18:00 – 18:30
Q&A from audience

***

For inquiries relating to UCCA exhibitions or events, please contact
Amanda Halliday at amanda.halliday at ucca.org.cn. To purchase UCCA
publications, please contact UCCA bookstore manager Xie Yindi at
yindi.xie at ucca.org.cn.

Amanda Halliday
PR Officer and Editor
Ullens Center for Contemporary Art