Art news: UCCA

 The UCCA's upcoming exhibitions and its future with multiple funders


This Saturday, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) will open its first exhibition Inside a Book a House of Gold: Artists' Editions for PARKETT with new director Phil Tinari as curator.  He has brought together a wide range of works commissioned by the Swiss journal Parkett, results of a collaboration between the publication and various artists.  As the founder of the Chinese bilingual arts magazine Leap （艺术界） an interest in recording, assessing and archiving is clearly one that can be seen in his own visions for the future of the UCCA.  A retrospective of works made in collaboration with Parkett was held at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) back in 2001, featuring giants like Andy Warhol. This time round, there will be 192 artists including the likes of Yang Fudong and other Chinese peers who have more recently been launched into the international art scene.

 

The upcoming Gu Dexin exhibition will follow a similar trend. It represents an attempt to gather as comprehensively as possible a group of works in the possession of various private collectors. And the UCCA will certainly be dipping into the Guy and Myriam Ullens collection for this one.

 

But what about the art centre itself? The role of director is not just one of curating. After last year's Sotheby’s auction, caused many to lament the partial breaking up of the Ullens’ art collection, doubts about the future of the UCCA were also circulated. That the centre was also looking for local patrons such as banks and businesses to replace the Ullens family did nothing to quell rumours that the Ullens were abandoning China.

 

Happily the UCCA is restructuring with both its space and staff becoming more 'localised,’ according to Tinari. If you’ve been to 798 recently you might have noticed that Switch, the short-lived UCCA-owned restaurant has now shut down. ‘The UCCA’s resources are perhaps not best spent operating a restaurant,’ says Phil Tinari. ‘Reshaping the UCCA is not about ego or a curatorial vision’ - Jérôme Sans, Tinari’s predecessor, helped to determine how the UCCA’s space would be used from the beginning of his own tenure until he left last year - ‘It’s about making who we are manifest itself onto the street.’ Work is being undertaken to move the old UCCA shop, a small space near the hidden main entrance, to where Switch was, facing 798’s central road. The old shop space will then become another exhibition room, which You Yang, the centre’s new assistant director, says will be used to showcase parts of the Ullens collection.

 

And there’s more. What about the lease that we heard would be running out in 2013? ‘Different areas of the centre actually have different leases, so it’s down to details at this point. We have no plans to move,’ says Tinari, before moving on to telling us a little bit about the board of Chinese patrons the UCCA is developing. He’s not giving us the numbers yet, but says, ‘We are moving away from a single-funder situation to one like any international museum…about half of the patrons have subscribed at this point, and they are people who are very influential in the art world.’ Clare Pennington

 

 

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

Zhan Wang: My Personal Universe

While scientists turn to the Large Hadron Collider to examine the universe’s origins, 39-year-old Beijing artist Zhan Wang takes a more contemplative approach. The love child of the artist and his backer, Louis Vuitton, 'My Personal Universe' marks a new point in what Zhan calls his artistic ‘road’, surpassing anything he has done before. And yet, in the last month, it has undergone something of a devolution.

Dominating the interior of one of the UCCA’s halls until mid-January stood four wall-like screens. Inside this enclosure (subtitled ‘Outer’), visitors were greeted by 7,000 glittering, meteorite-like steel rocks, strung out like a giant baby mobile. The only light came from the screens, which showed a super-slowed video of a boulder Zhan had blown up somewhere in Shandong; six screens played out the blast from different angles. It reached into your chest in a deep, drawn-out rumble – this was the dawn of the universe.

Now the hall is silent. Gone are the screens, which expanded the six-second explosion to three minutes. The sculptures, however, which were moulded upon actual debris from the explosion, have been re-arranged to resemble the first millisecond of Zhan’s man-made Big Bang (subtitled ‘Inner’). The arrangement still links it to the demolition – the fine details from the fragments visible on the moulded metal – but by reference only.

Before, this piece engulfed the viewer with image and form. Now the rocks stand alone, capturing the exact moment they were broken apart by tremendous forces. On the surface, at least, this piece now gets much closer to the simplicity it strives for. Less fun for the casual viewer, perhaps, but there’s a purity to the work now, which the screens to some extent obscured. After all, the aim was always to induce contemplation – amid the pizzazz there was little room for thought.

Yet this exhibition still remains impressive. The sheer scale and glittering, eye-catching blues and silvers are unprecedented in the artist’s work. Zhan has never shied away from using contemporary, flashy materials, even celebrating them to some extent; here, his use of steel draws us back from the dawn of time to the modern age. If this kind of scale and use of mixed media marks a new path in the artist’s journey  – or ‘road’ – it will be interesting to see what he does next. Clare Pennington



Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

Developing Phantom

China is developing at breakneck speed. Social practices and landscapes are being eroded, warped and torn down – yet few have had the guts to tackle this with as much thought as 'Developing Phantom', a group exhibition bringing together the work of two young artists and two collectives, which holds more than a few shocks.

Photography and film by WAZA, the Wuhan-based artist collective founded by film director Hu Ge, both ushers you into the exhibition and marks your exit. After its 2007 exhibition 'WAZA KUZA', the group began involving the public in the art-making process. Here, it continues to include the public (albeit uncredited) in their works, with a series of amateurish photographs that occupy cheap-looking rectangular frames. These shots include everything from installations to a shirtless worker napping on a bench. It’s a chaotic selection, recording WAZA’s collaboration with what it calls ‘social youths’, although how they’re collaborating is left unclear.

In the room opposite is a far more striking work that immediately resuscitates interest. An eerie soundtrack accompanies 'Social Youth HD Movie' (2011), a gritty depiction of two young men who turn to violent, shockingly premeditated crimes; neither rape nor murder are directly shown, but viewers are left in no doubt as to their occurrence. Shabby apartment blocks and dry countryside merge with sparse dialogue and scenes of bored inaction to form a sinister portrait of disaffected youth in today’s China.

Like WAZA, Jiang Zhi explores issues of violence with 'Let There Be Light' (2006). In the middle of a dark, circular room shines a pale searchlight, which stops with a loud click to project a one-minute film. Anonymous figures confront a powerful spotlight, symbolising divine transformation, fame and brilliance; some try to stare out the damaging rays, others squirm. You come away with a visceral sense of discomfort, enriched by a cold contemplation of the human need to be heard.

Also on show are works by new collective Hexie Baroque that bring China’s development into a wider context with pieces such as 'Right Now' (2011). An artistic one-liner, it features an old TV looping a clip of President Obama announcing America will not accept anything but first place. On top stands a worn, upside-down table. Their work injects a dark humour into the exhibition, although it perhaps lacks the depth of WAZA and Jiang's.

One issue here is the utter lack of information, which leaves most visitors at a loss as to whose works belong to who (this has since been slightly improved). Nevertheless, they possess an uncanny ability to disturb, being visceral and, at times, unforgivingly satirical. Placed together, they lead visitors through changes in both China’s landscape and its people, enriching each other and forming a first-rate group exhibition. Clare Pennington




Originally posted in Time Out Beijing