Two Exhibitions
dal 2/4/2015 al 30/5/2015
Segnalato da
2/4/2015
Two Exhibitions
Ullens Center for Contemporary Art UCCA, Beijing
Zhao Gang presents several new bodies of work based on extensive travels throughout China. The Chinese Photobook explores China's modern history through the singular prism of the photobook.
Zhao Gang: The Road to Serfdom
Zhao Gang (b. 1961, Beijing) was a member of The Stars, China’s first experimental art collective, which emerged in the late 1970s. His later studies and travels took him to Germany and the United States, where he built a career as a painter distinctly conversant with both his Chinese precedents and Western contemporaries. Since returning to Beijing in the mid-2000s, Zhao’s remarkably rich and diverse painterly practice has engaged themes including modern history, revolution, disease, nostalgia, sex, memory, and literati culture.
In this exhibition, Zhao presents several new bodies of work based on extensive travels throughout China, in which he juxtaposes images of early twentieth century Chinese intellectuals who studied abroad and returned to China to join the cause of the motherland with paintings based on photographs taken during a recent exploratory road trip to the homes of these intellectuals. Accompanied by a major monograph, this exhibition continues and elaborates Zhao’s particular method of using painting to interrogate the past and the present it has created.
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The Chinese Photobook
This exhibition explores China’s modern history through the singular prism of the photobook. Part of eminent photographer Martin Parr’s (b. 1952, United Kingdom) ongoing research into the global history of the photobook as medium, this presentation is co-curated with Beijing/Amsterdam-based photographic collective WassinkLundgren and tied to the release of a major book by Aperture. Divided into six sections looking at historical periods including the late Empire and Republic, the Sino-Japanese War, the early years of the People’s Republic, the later Mao era, the Reform and Opening period, and a special section of foreign-produced photo books about China, “The Chinese Photobook” combines a rare collection of original publications presented in vitrines with further materials mounted and projected on walls for more detailed viewing. It offers at once the genealogy of a particular artistic format in a particular geography, and an idiosyncratically compelling glimpse at a society in continued transition.
“The Chinese Photobook” is co-produced by Aperture Foundation and the Recontres d’Arles with the generous support of the China Art Foundation and the British Council. Additional support for “The Chinese Photobook” is provided in part by Sondra Gilman Gonzalez-Falla and Celso Gonzalez-Falla, Marina and Andrew E. Lewin, and David Solo. The exhibition is part of the 2015 UK-China Year of Cultural Exchange program. Additional support for The Chinese Photobook is provided in part by Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla, The Andrew and Marina Lewin Family Foundation, and David Solo.
The China Art Foundation was founded in 2008 to help ensure that the intense global interest in contemporary Chinese art and culture has a sustainable future, and to increase knowledge and understanding in the arena of art and culture between China and the rest of the world.
Image: A selection of covers and spreads featured in “The Chinese Photobook.
Press Contact:
Ling Chen, ling.chen@ucca.org.cn
Opening: Friday 3 April 2015
Ullens Center for Contemporary Art
798 Art Zone, No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Road
Tue - Sun 10am to 7pm