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5/7/2007

Shangri-la on the horizon

Frac Lorraine 49 Nord 6 Est, Metz

Shangri-la on the horizon

The Silk Road, the Land of the Rising Sun, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall of China, so many evocations of a Far East redolent of adventure and mystery. Down the centuries, travellers' tales have helped to uphold an idealized, fantasy view of a fabulously wealthy and impenetrable Asia, whose thousands-year-old traditions were jealously guarded and perpetuated. The Utopian city of Shangri-La, a Tibetan enclave somewhere in the middle of the Himalayas, is emblematic of this fanciful view forged by the West. The country of the sacred and of peace, Shangri-La is the ideal city, surrounded by magnificent landscapes, where time seems to slow down and the inhabitants live in the most perfect harmony. Described in western literature (Edgar Allan Poe, James Hilton), the city focuses the ideal of purity, peace and spirituality embodied by Tibet. This Elsewhere is where everything becomes possible, every Utopia, and this view was copiously passed on by all manner of explorers and adv enturers setting out to conquer these lands, by hippies looking for spiritual meaning, then by artists who went out to challenge these outsize landscapes and constructions.

Following in their footsteps, we are inviting you to tread the paths leading to Shangri-La and to look out from the city to see if the Utopia is still alive and peace flourishing. Let's head off due East! And to help us on this quest for Shangri-La and the mythical Asia, we'll begin by brushing up on its geography.

Su-Mei Tse, following Chinese conventions, turns the cardinal points the other way round and offers to take us on the journey from the East. A simple but tremendously effective switch that invites us to relativize our way of looking at and seeing things. But does the Utopian city really lie in that direction? This is the quest we invite you to embark on with a few artists who deconstruct current clichés, rethink and take over this historical and philosophical Asian heritage (Kimsooja), even when it drifts towards Utopian and revolutionary ideas. They invite us to follow their tracks across the preserved land of Tibet (Qui Zhijie) up to the top of Mt Everest (Xu Zhen), to go on the "Long March" undertaken by Mao's troops (Qin Ga), confronting us on the way with the ideological and exotic dimension of our view, with this eternal western model through which we attempt to understand the world.

Crossed horizons: the quest for adventure continues in the steps of a few artists, travellers and land surveyors for whom the very act and process of walking, the transient inscription within the landscape form a work (Hamish Fulton, Marco Godinho). But watch out, exploration and adventure are not necessarily on the other side of the world, they begin exactly wherever we decide, including in the familiar everyday situation! (Tixador & Poincheval).

ARTISTS:
Exhibition: Su-Mei Tse (Frac Lorraine Collection) and Kimsooja, Qin Ga, Qiu Zhijie, Xu Zhen.
Exhibition bis: Hamish Fulton (Frac Lorraine Collection) and Marco Godinho, Laurent Tixador & Abraham Poincheval.
Partners:
Galerie In Situ, Paris
Long March Space, Beijing
ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai
Peter Blum Gallery, New York

Press agency:
Heymann, Renoult Associées / Tel. : 0033 (0)1 44 61 76 76 / Fax : 0033 (0)1 44 617440 info@heymann-renoult.com

The Fonds régional d'art contemporain de Lorraine, member of (( Platform )), is supported by the Lorraine regional Council and the
Regional Cultural Affairs Department (DRAC) at the Ministry of Culture.

FRAC Lorraine
1bis rue des Trinitaires - Metz

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