January 18, 2009 Shanghai, China

January 20, 2009 Beijing, China

Ten Year Reunion

Artists, critics, and curators

STATION V: BEIJING, CHINA

“Zooming into Focus is the first retrospective show of Chinese contemporary photography and video ever held at the National Art Museum, Beijing. It reveals the changes in social notions and technology in Chinese contemporary art from a different angle. The exhibition showcases the most outstanding and symbolic works from the late 1990s and 2000s which directly reflect the changing cultural and social environment and values of the Chinese people in a booming economy”. -Feng Yuan, Director of the National Art Museum, of China, Beijing

China’s National Art Museum is currently hosting what some are calling ‘its best exhibit ever.’ It’s a stronghold of landmark artworks from the breakout period of the early 90s, and this is a ‘once in Beijing’ opportunity to see them all in one place. Go at once to the art museum, but make it before the 20th of November, when the show ends and art fans sadly walk back to the distant 798-Dashanzi district. – Published in That’s Beijing

The National Art Museum of China presented the exhibition Zooming Into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography From the Haudenschild Collection. The exhibition highlighted the remarkable photography and videography works currently being created in China. The swift transformation of Chinese culture is reflected in the work of each of the participating artists, who comment on contemporary Chinese urban life with intelligence, wit, apprehension and nostalgia.

Noted American art collectors Eloisa and Chris Haudenschild have created one of the most important collections of contemporary Chinese art in the world. Focusing on the work of experimental artists from Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai, the collection makes groundbreaking contributions to the field of international contemporary art. The National Art Museum of China, which is China’s national museum for the visual arts, focuses on collecting, studying and exhibiting China’s modern and contemporary works of fine art based on people’s daily life.

Shi Yong, one of the participating artists has his own opinion about getting some local exposure, “I feel very lucky that we can do this exhibition in our home country today. Actually many Chinese artists care more about domestic exhibitions then overseas ones.” – Published by the Siemens Art Program for Culture Times Beijing

ExhibitionNovember 5 – 20, 2005, National Museum of China, Beijing, China

Organized by Laura Zhou and Zooming into Focus catalog and installation design at the National Museum of China, Beijing by Shi Yong.

About Laura Zhou

Laura Zhou is co-director and co-founder of ShanghART in Shanghai, China. The gallery was initiated in 1996 and it has since grown to become one of China’s most influential contemporary art institutions. ShanghART has established itself as a leading gallery representing established figures whilst continuing to support the work of innovative younger artists. As a gallery, producer, supporter, and point of reference ShanghART contributes as a vital resource to the development of contemporary Chinese art. Being recognized for its importance ShanghART became the initial gallery from China participating in major international art fairs like Art Basel and Fiac, Paris. Since its inauguration the gallery has established more than 70 exhibitions, and it enjoys the great respect of being among the 75 international galleries selected in Thames & Hudson publication international Art Galleries that features 75 of the most acclaimed galleries from post-war to post-millennium (2005). ShanghART represents over 40 of China most talented artists working with different media ranging from painting and sculpture to video art and performance.Today ShanghART works out of three spaces in Shanghai (Moganshan Rd and Huaihai Rd )and one space in Beijing (Cao Changdi).

About Shi Yong

Shi Yong’s work embraces modernization and the ideology of consumerism as the basis for self-imagination and creation. He has produced a series of photo-based works around the concept of the ideal Shanghai citizen. It is an ongoing multifaceted project that explores images of consumption, commodity and the development of the culture industry. One series, entitled “Made in China – Welcome to China” (1999), consists of hand-painted plaster models of a young businessman in a Mao suit, sunglasses, briefcase and waving. The image of the ideal citizen used for the statue was the outcome of an Internet project through which Shi Yong asked volunteers to vote for the ideal way of looking. The individual now transforms the identity of his or her self by following the logic of commodity market surveys. It is a composite image that Shi Yong has repeatedly used in other pieces such as “Longing For” (2000) and “You Cannot Clone It, But You Can Buy It” (2001). The iconic figure is morphed through the agency of the marketplace.

Recently, Shi Yong has focused his attention on large-scale installations and architectural models imbued with an absurd twist of humor. Most notably, his mixed media installation “Flying Q” is of a UFO built with the purpose of opening up the sky. The flying object comes with no additional explanation, but might be recognized as just another signature vision of and interventions into the imaginary world of Shi Yong. His subversive approach pokes fun at architecture based on rules and pre-established schemas. Shi Yong fabricates a colorful and ironic architectural structure that is at once a parody of serious design and its synthesis. In short, his work is an amalgam of Shanghai’s eclectic ‘anything goes’ attitude towards the built environment.

Shi Yong was born in Shanghai in 1963. He graduated from Light Industrial School, Fine Art Department. He resides and works in Shanghai. Shi Yong has exhibited widely since the early 1990’s. Recent shows include Follow Me!, Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2005), Second Guangzhou Triennale, Guangsong Museum of Art (2005), Zooming into Focus, China National Art Museum (Beijing, 2005), Felicidad Indecible, Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art (Mexico, 2005), The Heaven, The World, ShanghART & H-Space (Shanghai, 2004), Shanghai Biennale (2002), Bienal de Sao Paulo (2002) and Bienal de Maia (1999). (ShanghART; Shanghai, China)

STATION II: SHANGHAI, CHINA

“This exhibition explains the importance of re-acknowledging and re-evaluating this hot spot of contemporary art. From the very beginning, contemporary Chinese photography has been closely related to the daily lives of Chinese people. The quickly growing and changing social environment has focused on the created objects of the artists. From these vivid and graphical works, we can witness the exciting poles of this age, experience the active interaction between art and society, and understand the new and unique exploration of these pioneers. Shanghai has always been the essential window to contemporary Western cultural patterns.

From oil painting to photography, from industrial design to video art, Shanghai plays a critical role during this process of communication and incorporation. Therefore, the opening of Zooming into Focus, a preliminary review of Chinese contemporary photography and video, is not only an occasion of chance but a necessary consequence of history. The importance of the exhibition is in no doubt: it showed some truth of Chinese contemporary art to the public and to the cultural circle, and it prodded the Chinese art museum circle to start collecting contemporary video and photography works.” -Li Xu, Curator, Shanghai Art Museum

“Different from traditional art, such as painting and sculpture, photography includes video, together with film and animation. Focusing on photography, this exhibition introduces the history of recent contemporary Chinese art….Furthermore, this collection can be regarded as an objective review on the current situation of Chinese photography. The Shanghai Art Museum is dedicated to the promotion and development of contemporary Chinese art. This exhibition is the first time contemporary photography and Chinese artists are introduced to the public.” -Li Xiangyang, Executive Director, Shanghai Art Museum

Exhibition

[slidepress gallery='rooftop-video']

February 18 – March 30, 2004, Shanghai Art Museum

Organized by Li Xu, Laura Zhou, and Eloisa Haudenschild.

Roof Top Performance by Song Tao
February 18, 2004, Shanghai Art Museum

Following the opening of the exhibition Song Tao with other contemporary Chinese artists, presented a multimedia sound and video performance on the roof of the Shanghai Art Museum.

Symposium
Envisioning the Future of Contemporary Art From Different Glocal Positions

March 25 & 26, 2004 – China Art Academy, Hangzhou
Organized by Zhang Peili (Artist and Director of New Media dept., China Art Academy, Hangzhou), Laura Zhou (Director of ShanghART, Shanghai, China) and Eloisa Haudenschild. All participants toured Zooming into Focus at the Shanghai Art Museum and were then transported via bus to Hangzhou.

Moderated by Hou Hanru (Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs, SFAI and Independent Curator) and Pi Li (Independent Curator and Founder, Universal Studio, Beijing) with works shown by Bill Voila (courtesy of Britta Erickson; presented by Eloisa Haudenschild), Wang Gongxin, Qiu Zhijie, Zhang Peili, and Yang Fudong.

Presenters included:
- Fan Di’an (Director, National Art Museum of China) Meeting and Traffic
- Hans Ulrich Obrist (Curator, Paris) The Museum of the Future – Art, Architecture, Science and Technology
- Mami Kataoka (Senior Curator, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo & International Associate Curator, Hayward Gallery, London) New Media as New Experience
- Li Xu (Curator, China) The Relationships Between New Media Art and Museum Systems in China
- Huang Du (Ph.D., China) New Events and Culture Space
- Zhang Zhiyang (Professor, China) Where is the Space for Art in the Era of Technological Globalization?
- Rudolf Stoert (Curator, Germany) Switch Media Project in Thailand
- Gridthiya Gaweewong (Curator, Thailand) Regional Strategies and Global Impacts: A Southeast Asian Perspective
- Hu Fang (Writer, China) Pseudo-Machine of Writing
- Evelyn Jouanno (Curator, France) Under the Earth, There is the Sky
- Martina Koppel-Yang (Art Critic, Germany) The Pingpang Policy of Chinese Contemporary Art
- Zheng Shengtain (Curator & Managing Editor, Yishu Journal, Canada) Non-Local and Non-Mainstream
- Karen Smith (Art Historian, UK) The Future: In Whose Hands?
- Waling Boers (Curator and Founding Director of Buro Friedrich-Berlin and Universal Studios-Beijing) Art Between the State and the Market, A Challenge?

March 25 – 26, 2004

China Art Academy, Hangzhou, China

Envisioning the Future of Contemporary Art From Different Glocal Positions

Marking many important milestones, Zooming into Focus: Chinese Contemporary Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection (2003 – 2005) was the first exhibition of its kind in San Diego and Singapore and the first contemporary Chinese photography exhibition at the Centro Cultural Tijuana, Mexico. It was the first time the Shanghai Art Museum exhibited works on contemporary Chinese video and photography from a private collection and most importantly, it was the first retrospective exhibition of Chinese photography and video ever held at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing.

Zooming into Focus investigated the effects of accelerated change in China through the work of the country’s most talented emerging artists. The swift transformation of Chinese culture is reflected in the work of each of these represented artists who comment on contemporary Chinese urban life with intelligence, wit, foreboding and nostalgia.

The works of Cao Fei, Chen Shaoxiong, Feng Mengbo, Geng Jianyi, Hong Hao, Hu Jieming, Kan Xuan, Lui Wei, Lu Chunsheng, Shi Yong, Song Tao, Tang Maohong, Wang Youshen, Weng Fen, Xiang Liqing, Xu Zhen, Yang Fudong, Yang Yong, Yang Zhenzhong, Zhao Bandi, Zheng Gougu and Zhu Jia were included in this exhibitions. Other artists in the collection include Gu Dexin, Hai Bo, Wang Jin, Zhou Tiehai, Yu Youhan, and Zhao Nengzhi.

Lorenz Helbling and Laura Zhou supported all exhibitions and organized the Hangzhou symposium at the China Art Academy. Shi Yong was responsible for designing the Zooming into Focus catalog and the installation design of Zooming into Focus at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing.

In addition to the traveling exhibitions, two symposia were held: An International Discourse on New Chinese Video and Photography at the San Diego Museum of Art and Envisioning the Future of Contemporary Art from Different Glocal Positions at the China National Academy of Art in Hangzhou, China. Participants included Xu Bing, Waling Boers, Fan Di’an, Huang Du, Britta Erickson, Hu Fang, Yang Fudong, Gridthiya Gaweewong, Wang Gogxin, Hou Hanru, Betti-Sue Hertz, Xu Jiang, Evelyne Jouanno, Mami Kataoka, Martina Koppel-Yang, Pi Li, Barbara London, Zhang Peili, Christopher Phillips, Zheng Shengtain, Karen Smith, Rudolf Stoert, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Li Xianyang, Li Xu, Mo Zhelan, and Qiu Zhijie.

The haudenschildGarage launched their residency program in 2003 which invited Chinese artists and curators for the first time to the United States. Shi Yong and Yang Zhenzhong were the first artists in residence and Hou Hanru, Cao Fei, Yong Fudong, Laura Zhou, Lorenz Helbling, Evelyn Jouanno, and Victoria Lu were also invited to the Garage. Both Shi Yong and Yang Zhenzhong produced new works commissioned by the haudenschildGarage while in residence.