Art Is Still Here: A Hypothetical Show for a Closed Museum
2020 FEB 13 – ONGOING
Art Is Still Here: A Hypothetical Show for a Closed Museum
2020 FEB 13 – ONGOING
M WOODS Online Schedule (CST Beijing Time):
Weibo:
Everyday @ 12.00 pm
WeChat:
Every Thursday @ 6.00 pm
Instagram:
Every Thursday and Friday @ 10.00 pm
Weibo: Everyday @ 12.00 pm
WeChat: Every Thursday @ 6.00 pm
Instagram: Every Thursday and Friday @ 10.00 pm
For the first gallery in the exhibition ‘Art Is Still Here: A
Hypothetical Show for a Closed Museum’, we present three contributions by
artists:
aaajiao
Annika Eriksson
Cerith Wyn Evans
Colectivo Los Ingrávidos
Here our contributions move between the different themes of
ecology, nature, extinction, isolation, fake news, and kinship. Each
contribution for this gallery was originally made using different formats: one
being interactive, another done through an IPhone, and the other a collective
video work.
We begin this project in our M WOODS 798 location, opening with
our Central Hall gallery. These works would be installed in this space.
aaajiao,protester/cursor/emoji, 2019, Website, Dimension variable, Code base on https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html
https://github.com/tholman/cursor-effects
Courtesy the artist
Biography:
Active online as
a media artist, blogger, activist and programmer, aaajiao is the virtual
persona of Shanghai- and Berlin- artist Xu Wenkai. Born in 1984 –the title of
George Orwell’s classic allegorical novel – and in one of China’s oldest
cities, Xi’an, aaajiao’s art and works are marked by a strong dystopian
awareness, literati spirits and sophistication. Many of aaajiao’s works speak
to new thinkings, controversies and phenomenon around the Internet, with
specific projects focusing on the processing of data and the blogsphere.
aaajiao’s recent projects extend his practice to various disciplines (among
them, architecture, topography, and design) to capture the pulse of the young
generation consuming cyber technology and living in social media.
aaajiao’s work has been featured in numerous
exhibitions around the world, upcoming and recent shows include Art in the
Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, The Institute of Contemporary Art
Boston, Boston (2018); unREAL, Haus der elektronischen Künste, Basel
(2017); Shanghai Project Part II, Shanghai (2017); Temporal Turn: Art
and Speculation in Contemporary Asia, Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas (2016);Take Me (I’m Yours) (curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jens Hoffmann and
Kelly Taxter), Jewish Museum, New York (2016); Overpop, Yuz Museum,
Shanghai (2016); Hack Space (curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Amira
Gad), K11 Art Foundation Pop-up Space, Hong Kong and chi K11 art museum,
Shanghai (2016); Globale: Global Control and Censorship, ZKM | Centre
for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2015); Thingworld International Triennial of
New Media Art, The National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2014); and
Transmediale, Berlin (2010). His solo exhibition includes: Remnants of an
Electronic Past, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester (2016);
OCAT Contemporary Art Terminal Xi’an, Xi’an (2016), among others.
He was awarded the Art Sanya Awards in 2014 Jury
Prize and was nominated for the first edition of OCAT-Pierre Huber Art Prize in
2014.
aaajiao lives and works in Shanghai and Berlin.
Work Synopsis:
With the oversaturation of information, false media, and news online, artist aaajiao shares a new interactive work titled ‘protester/cursor/emoji’ (2019).
Reflecting the constant confusion and chatter online, which the artist associates with these emoticons, and how they influence the psychology of people.
Viewers are invited to click the link below to try out this work by the artist.
Annika Eriksson, I am the dog that was always here (loop), 2013, Digital Video (color), 9 min
Courtesy the artist
Biography:
Annika Eriksson, born 1956 in Sverige, Sweden is a Swedish
artist living in Berlin. At the center of her artistic practice is an interest
in social interaction: how do we live together, what kind of societies do we
create, and what happens in the margins or in the transition from one social
order to another? Her
project also engages with the relations between humans and animals; of our
interdependence, slippages and connection, but also registers of violation, and
the animal as a distinctively human projection surface.
Eriksson’s recent solo
exhibitions and projects include in 2019, As we passed them, a commission for the Sinop Biennial
7: Here
and Where/A Politics of Location, and ANIMAL, Tate Liverpool and St
John’s Market, Liverpool. In 2018, Cat Portrait and Other Works at Kunsthall Oslo. In
2017, The Social at Moderna Museet Malmö and Geese Rule (for the
brave and frustrated Geese of Avanos) a commission for the Cappadox
Festival, Kapadokya, Turkey.
Recent group exhibitions include in 2019, Part of the Labyrinth, Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art.
In 2018, Stories of
Belonging at Tartu Art Museum, Shopsat Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, A
Screening program by Birbucuk, Recontre Avec, Nice, I am the dog that was always here
(loop), screening, X-berg Pavilion, and Video Art After Midnight, screening
festival, Babylon Kino, Berlin. In 2017, After the Exhibition at HKS,
Bergen, 298 111 OFF Museum Programat Museum Slaskie, Katowice. Survival
Kit at the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga, and Show and Tellat Malmö Konstmuseum.
Work Synopsis:
Originally commissioned for KIOSK, Ghent and 13th
Istanbul Biennial, Mom, am I a
Barbarian? Curated by Wim Waelput (KIOSK) and Fulya Erdemici
(Istanbul Biennial).
The
video is set in the outskirts of Istanbul, focusing on moments of transition
and marginalized experiences of time, seen through the lens of a street dog.
Having been moved by the authorities to peripheral pockets outside the
expanding
city, the dogs are continuously moving along lines of gentrification and
corporate city making. Through looping and repetition, the video relates this
process to an experience of time: exploring the present as a complex gap
between past and future, one in which an increasing process of erasure, also
removes other registers of being and seeing.
Cerith Wyn Evans, R=I=T=U=A=L, 2020, Vide
o, 0:18 min
Courtesy the artist
Biography:
Cerith Wyn Evans was born in 1958 in
Llanelli, Wales, and currently lives and works in London. He made an array of
short, experimental films throughout the 1980s, which he personally referred
to as ‘sculptures’. Since the 1990s his works have employed a variety of
media such as neon, sound, mirrors, and fireworks, with their fundamental and
consistent characteristic resting upon the artist’s ingenious use of
citation. Wyn Evans’s works are mediating vessels that connect sources of
reference and the viewer, and often function as catalysts for indication. The
citations within his works is informed by a diverse range of cultural and
academic spheres in the manner of literature, philosophy, film, music,
further extending to realms of astronomy and physics. Adorned with the
artist’s profound intellect, melancholy, and affluent wit, Wyn Evans’
sculptures and installations have been highly refined into sublimated
esoteric mediums of expression that are imbued with a meditative air of
sophistication.
He has exhibited extensively including solo exhibitions
at Pirelli HangarBicocca (2019);
Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2018); Tate Britain, London (2017); Museion,
Bolzano, Italy (2015); The Serpentine Gallery, London (2014); TBA-21
Augarten, Vienna (2013); Bergen Kunsthall, Norway (2011); Tramway, Glasgow
(2009); Inverleith House, Edinburgh (2009); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de
Castilla y León, Spain (2008); Musée d’art moderne de la ville
de Paris (2006); and Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2005). He has participated in
the 57th Venice Biennale (2017); 4th Moscow Biennale (2011); 12th Venice
Biennale of Architecture (2010); 1st Aichi Triennale, Japan (2010); 3rd
Yokohama Triennale, Japan (2008); 9th Istanbul Biennial (2005); and 50th
Venice Biennale (2003).
Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, Coyolxauhqui, 2017, 16mm Digital, 10 min
Courtesy the artist