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16/7/2006

Per Huttner

Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou

Xiao Yao You

Curated by: Guo Xiaoyan and Zhang Wei

Per Huttner is one of Sweden's most internationally acclaimed artists.

"Xiao Yao You" is the first solo exhibition in China of his work, which is entirely devoted to his photographic practice. In his photographs, videos, sculptures and curatorial projects he searches out situations where human vulnerability is laid bare. In his artistic investigations into the the human condition he is going beyond the boundaries of familiarity and draw inspiration from genres as diverse as European romantic painting, documentary photography, performance and psychoanalytic theories and practices.

Huttner often appears in his photographs. He always wears his trademark white attire. But rather than being central he remains an indexal figure often in the background of various events that he has staged and that ever so slightly shift the meaning of seemingly everyday cityscapes. The artist thus becomes like a measuring stick of the reality that surrounds us and that is too familiar to reveal its surreal qualities. Huttner's appearance and his interventions is like the key that unlocks the ambiguities of the cityscape and the hidden strangeness of our everyday lives. Travel is essential in this process, but he travels to find the unfamiliar human details rather than the vast differences of culture, nature and architecture.

For his exhibition at The Guangdong Museum of Art Per Huttner will show nine selected large-scale photographs realised 2004-06 in a number of European, North American and Asian cities and landscapes. The untitled series of work deal with issues related to memory, loss, grief and the boundaries between the private and public and how these change or do not change in various human contexts.

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Per Huttner (b.1967) lives and works in Paris, France. Recent solo exhibitions include Goteborgs konstmuseum in Gothenburg and Chisenhale Gallery in London. Group shows include The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and Centro de Arte de Salamanca. A monograph on the artist with a literary text by Scottish art writer Duncan McLaren was published in 2004. Two more monographs will be published this year. Upcoming solo exhibitions in 2006 include Contemporary Art Gallery, National Museum, Szczecin in Poland and Vacio 9 in Madrid. He will also present his work at the Bucharest Biennale in October.

Guo Xiaoyan is a curator at The Guangdong Museum of Art. She co-curated The Second Guangzhou Triennial with Huo Hanru and Hans Ulrich Obrist in 2005. Other projects include The First Guangzhou Triennial, Living Conditions- Selections From The GDMA Collection Of Contemporary Chinese Art, Wim Wenders "Pictures from the Surface of the Earth", World Touring Photo exhibition in China.

Zhang Wei is a freelance curator and co-founder and co-director of Vitamin Creative Space in Guangzhou. Recent projects include "Small Universe" at Liste 06 and "Through Popular Expression" which is currently touring Europe (both co-curated with Hu Fang) and Institute of Contemporary Agora at the ICA in London.

The exhibition has been made possible through kind support of IASPIS, Stockholm and The Consulate General of Sweden in Guangzhou. A bilingual catalogue documenting the exhibition will be published by the museum with texts by Guo Xiaoyan, Zhang Wei and Bo Nilsson, designed by byboth in London.

*Xiao Yao You or Wandering Beyond is the title of the first chapter in the Daoist classic The book of Chuang-tzu (Zhuangzi) written 300 BC. When we wander beyond, we leave behind everything we find familiar, and explore the world in all its unfamiliarity. We drop the tools that we have been taught to use to tame the environment, and we allow it to teach us without words. We imitate its spontaneous behaviour and we learn to respond immediately without fixed articulations.

Private View July 17, 2006

Guangdong Museum of Art
38 Yanyu Lu, Er Sha Dao - Guangzhou

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