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24/4/2013

Mobile M+: Inflation!

West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, Hong Kong

Inflatable Sculpture Next to the Future Site of Hong Kong's Museum for Visual Culture

Participating artists: Cao Fei (China); Choi Jeong Hwa (South Korea); Jeremy Deller (UK); Jiakun Architects (China); Paul McCarthy (USA); Tomás Saraceno (Argentina); Tam Wai Ping (Hong Kong)

(11 April 2013, Hong Kong) The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority announced today a major exhibition which will see six giant inflatable sculptures on the site of the Park at West Kowloon Cultural District, next to M+, Hong Kong’s future museum for visual culture from 25 April – 9 June 2013.

Monumental artworks of this scale have never been presented alongside one another in Hong Kong, making “Mobile M+: Inflation!” one of the largest contemporary art exhibitions ever mounted in the city to date. It brings some of the most important works of public sculpture created in recent years to the city for the first time, and features selections by internationally renowned artists as well as newly commissioned artworks by local and regional artists Tam Wai Ping and Cao Fei. The six works will be accompanied by a performance piece by Tomás Saraceno (Argentina) which will be staged on 4 and 25 May and 8 June 2013.

Inviting members of the public to interact firsthand with large-scale inflatable sculptures, “Mobile M+: Inflation!” aims to pose questions about the nature of public art and the ways in which audiences might engage with it. Several of these are derived from everyday objects that have been inflated to outsize proportions as a way of rendering the familiar unfamiliar, more tangible, and uncannily touchable than ever before. Other works in the exhibition question the nature and potential of art and architecture in public space through installations that evoke ephemerality and reflect on human relationships to built environment and to the natural world.

By exploring the ever-shifting notions of nature and artifice, intimacy and monumentality, temporariness and permanence, as well as beauty and the grotesque that characterise these exhibits, “Mobile M+: Inflation!” will create a diverse experience that probes the role of public art in the context of an evolving and endlessly mutating constructed landscape. The exhibition acts as a prelude to the opening of the Park in 2014, highlighting the future possibilities for multi-disciplinary arts programming in the fourteen hectare site, planned to include music festivals, large-scale sculpture and installations. The Park will provide green open space and gardens, contributing parkland to the heavily built up cityscape for residents to enjoy.

Inflation! is a part of Mobile M+, a series of pre-opening ‘nomadic’ exhibitions curated by M+ that aim to engage the public ahead of the opening of the museum, scheduled for completion in late 2017. By initiating and realising projects that would not be possible in a single museum building, Mobile M+ seeks to turn the perceived disadvantage of being “rootless” into a strategic advantage by organizing events that embrace a multi-disciplinary approach.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of on-site events ranging from artist talks, workshops, guided tours to performances.

Dr Lars Nittve, Executive Director of M+ said, “Inflation! is an example of the numerous possibilities that the future park will offer for our exhibition programming. It represents our ambition to display the full spectrum of visual culture from a Hong Kong perspective that incorporates a global vision, from now till the future M+ building finally opens and is operating in all its glory.Inhabiting the future site of the Park of West Kowloon Cultural District, ‘Mobile M+: Inflation!’ also broaches the possibilities of how art might play an integral role in this park as we go forward.”

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

Cao Fei (b.1978, Guangzhou, China; lives and works in Beijing)
Cao Fei’s photography, video installations and new media works look at aspects of role play, fantasy and simulated reality within today’s media-saturated society. Her artistic practice poignantly captures the ways in which others imagine themselves amidst the hyper- transformative and often disillusioning context of contemporary China. Her recent project RMB CITY (2008-2011) has been exhibited in Deutsche Guggenheim (2010), Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2009), Serpentine Gallery, London (2008), and Yokohama Triennale (2008). Cao Fei also participated in 17th & 15th Biennale of Sydney (2006/2010), 52nd Venice Biennale (2007), Chinese Pavilion, Moscow Biennale (2005), Shanghai Biennale (2004), 50th Venice Biennale (2003). She also exhibited video works in Guggenheim Museum (New York), the International Center of Photography (New York), MoMA (New York), P.S.1 (New York), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Musee d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris (Paris), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo). She was the finalist of Hugo Boss Prize 2010, and won the 2006 Best Young Artist Award by CCAA (Chinese Contemporary Art Award).

Choi Jeong Hwa (b.1961, Seoul, South Korea; lives and works in Seoul)
Choi Jeong Hwa is an artist and designer whose work moves between the disciplines of visual art, graphic design, industrial design and architecture. Best known for his large-scale inflatable sculptures — notably lotus blossoms — Choi’s practice is marked by an irreverent take on cultural icons and materials that permeate our daily life. Using a broad range of media including video, moulded plastic, shopping trolleys, real and fake food, lights, wires and kitsch Korean artefacts, Choi’s celebration of seemingly superficial objects honors the beauty of nature, and the need for imagination when living in urban cultures with a diminishing natural aesthetic. His playful practice comments on the privileged environment of art institutions and questions the prized status of artworks amidst a consumer-frenzied world. Choi has executed numerous public art commissions and has exhibited in museums and galleries around the world including Marunouchi HOUSE, Tokyo, The Hayward Gallery, London, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, 17th Biennale of Sydney, Ilmin Museum, Seoul, 2005 Korean Pavillion, Venice Biennale, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco.

Jeremy Deller (b.1966, London, UK; lives and works in London)
Over the past two decades, UK-based artist Jeremy Deller has been highly influential and instrumental in pioneering new methods of making art collaboratively. His interactions with artists, musicians, historians, collectors and performers have yielded multi-layered video and installation works that push our understanding of social and cultural phenomena, as well as transgress the divide between the artist (or artwork) and the audience. In 2004, he won the Turner Prize. He has presented solo exhibitions worldwide, including the Barbican Art Gallery; London (2005), the Palais de Tokyo; Paris (2008), and The Hayward Gallery; London (2012). In 2010 he was awarded the RSA Albert Medal, Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, for 'Procession', Manchester 2009. In 2012 his monumental artwork ‘Sacrilege’ toured the United Kingdom, commissioned for the Cultural Olympiad – planned to coincide with the London 2012 Olympics. He will represent Britain at the 55th Venice Biennale, opening 1 June 2013.

Jiakun Architects/Liu Jiakun (b. 1956, Chengdu, China; lives and works in Chengdu)
Liu Jiakun is founder and principal architect of JIAKUN ARCHITECTS. Liu’s architectural practice is characterized by an exploration of constraints — of materials, construction skills and building processes. Active in China since the mid- 1990s, Liu embraces a stripped- down, rugged sensibility in his work as a way to counteract the high gloss of most commercially oriented structures. Projects he has designed have been selected by "Chinese Young Architects’ Work Exhibition" in Germany, "Chinese Contemporary Architecture Exhibition" in France, "NAI China Contemporary Architecture", "International Architecture Exhibition in Russia", and "International Architecture Exhibition" in Venice Biennale, and many other international exhibitions. He won the Honor Prize of the 7th ARCASIA, Chinese Architecture & Art Prize 2003, Architectural Record Magazine China Awards, Far East Award in Architecture and Architectural Design Award from Architectural Society of China. The projects have been published by architectural magazines such as A+U, AV, Area, Domus, MADE IN CHINA, AR, GA, etc., and he was invited to give lectures at MIT, Royal Academy of Art, Palais de Chaillot in Paris and many universities in China.

Paul McCarthy (b.1945, Salt Lake City, USA; lives and works in Los Angeles)
Paul McCarthy is arguably one of the most celebrated and influential American visual artists working today. As an educator, McCarthy has been profoundly influential to multiple generations of artists through his more than two decades of teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles(1984–2003).. His groundbreaking oeuvre has been central to discourses on American performance and video art in the 1970s and 1980s, and has helped to pioneer the use of satire and sarcasm in the global language of contemporary art. He received degrees from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City (1968–69); the San Francisco Art Institute (1969) and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles (1972). His work has been shown in major exhibitions at California College of the Arts, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2009); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008); Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, 2007; Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2006); and Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2005; among others. He has participated in many international events, including the Berlin Biennial, 2006; SITE Santa Fe, 2004; Whitney Biennial, 1995, 1997, 2004; and the Venice Biennale 1993, 1999, 2001. Paul McCarthy lives and works in Altadena, California.

Tomás Saraceno (b.1972, Tucumán, Argentina; lives and works in Frankfurt)
An artist trained as an architect,Tomás Saraceno is an internationally recognised artist who creates inflatable structures and sculptural installations as speculative models of experiencing the built environment. He deploys theoretical frameworks and insights from engineering, physics, chemistry, aeronautics and materials scienceto create inflatable and airborne biospheres with the morphology of soap bubbles, spider webs, neural networks, or cloud formations. Tomás Saraceno is currently the inaugural Visiting Artist at MIT’s new Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST). Saraceno has exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma, Italy, Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Walker Art Center, USA and the 2009 Venice Biennale. He has held residencies at the Atelier Calder in France and participated in the NASA International Space Studies Program.

Tam Wai Ping (b.1967, Hong Kong, China; lives and works in Hong Kong)
Tam Wai Ping works in a variety of media ranging from photography and video to outdoor installations that juxtapose notions of reality and fiction, home and identity. His measured process and embrace of elemental forms emerge from the artist’s interest to uncover new or unexpected relationships between land, environment and community. He obtained his BA (Hon) in Fine Art from University of Reading in 1991, and completed his postgraduate study with distinction from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College of London, UK in 1995. He is the chairman and one of the founders of ArtMap. He serves as a BA Programme Coordinator and Lecturer at Hong Kong Art School. Tam works in various media, and is notable for his photography, installation and environmental art works Tam has participated in various international exhibitions such as “Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2006” and “Kaohsiung International Container Arts Festival, 2001”. His works have been exhibited in Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Macau, Japan, Sir Lanka, United Kingdom, France and the United States.

The West Kowloon Cultural District
The West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong is one of the largest arts and cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to provide a vibrant cultural quarter for the city; a vital platform for the local arts scene to interact, develop and collaborate; and major facilities to host and produce world-class exhibitions, performances and arts and cultural events. The District will include 17 core arts and cultural venues and over 30,000 square metres of space for arts education. It will be a low-density development, providing ample open green space and embracing two kilometres of a vibrant harbour-front promenade, 23 hectares of open space and a green avenue, closely connected with its neighbourhood.
The project will be developed in phases with construction scheduled to commence in 2013. The venues to be commissioned include the Xiqu Centre, M+ (20th and 21st century visual culture museum), a 14 hectare art park incorporating Freespace with an outdoor stage, a Lyric Theatre, a Centre for Contemporary Performance, Medium Theatre I, a Music Centre with a Concert Hall and a Recital Hall, a Musical Theatre, a Mega Performance Venue and an Exhibition Centre. A host of ancillary facilities including a Resident Company Centre, other creative learning facilities and a number of Arts Pavilions for visual arts exhibitions will also be constructed.

The Park
The Park covers 14 hectares of landscaped public space devoted to the arts and culture, which will open by phases starting from 2014/15. Conceived as a cultural destination, the sculpted terrain with abundant planting will provide a new green open space in the heart of the city and a vibrant venue for music, dance, theatre, art exhibitions and other free outdoor cultural programmes.

M+
A centrepiece of Hong Kong's future West Kowloon Cultural District, M+ is the new museum for visual culture, encompassing 20th and 21st century art, design, architecture and the moving image from Hong Kong, China, Asia and beyond. From its vantage point in one of the world's most dynamic regions, M+ seeks, through its exhibitions, programming and permanent collection, to document the past, inform the present and contribute to the future of visual culture within an ever more interconnected global landscape. With the ultimate aim of exploring new ways of seeing, the museum will take a multidisciplinary approach that both challenges and respects existing boundaries while creating a meeting point for a diversity of perspectives, narratives and audiences. M+ has already embarked on a number of public programs and exhibitions, and has begun to assemble its permanent collection, in the run-up to the planned 2017 opening of its 62,000 square-meter (670,000 square-feet) building overlooking Victoria Harbour. M+ will be responsible for integrating and curating art within the park design.

Image: Jiakun Architects - With the Wind, Shenzhen, 2009

PRERSS ENQUIRIES:
Debbie Ho, Assistant Public Relations Manager, WKCDA
Tel: (852) 2200 0210/ (852) 6608 0909
Email: debbie.ho@wkcda.hk
Tamsin Selby/ Phoebe Moore, Sutton PR Asia
Tel: (852) 2528 0792
Email: tamsin@suttonprasia.com / phoebe@suttonprasia.com

West Kowloon Cultural District Authority
West Kowloon Cultural District Promenade - Hong Kong
Tues – Thurs: 12pm to 7pm
Fri – Sun: 11am to 8pm
Closed Mondays
During Art Basel Hong Kong: 10am – 8pm
Free of charge

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