Fall Exhibitions at UCCA
Kan Xuan, Yung Ho Chang + FCJZ,
Teppei Kaneuji, SEE / SAW
September–December 2012
Ullens Center for Contemporary Art
798 Art District, No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Lu
Beijing, China
T +86 10 5780 0200 / 5780 0201
The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art is excited to announce the following four exhibitions opening throughout Fall 2012.
Kan Xuan: Millet Mounds
Central Gallery, Long Gallery, The Nave
September 16–November 10
Kan Xuan: Millet Mounds is at once a meditation on China’s imperial past and a broad survey of its present, in the form of 164 stop-motion videos, each of which unfolds before one of China’s known extant imperial tombs. Kan Xuan’s (b. 1972) largest and most significant project to date, Millet Mounds is the result of over 100 days and 28,000 kilometers of continuous, on-the-road research and shooting in early 2012. Kan Xuan’s lens claims, catalogues, and personalizes a centuries-long lineage of history and power. Through the process of searching out and recording these ancient sites—some of which are major tourist sites while others linger in disrepair—Kan Xuan engages with contemporary rural China in all its twenty-first century complexity, as a persistent past incorporates itself into the quotidian realities of the present. The exhibition takes its title from the name used by villagers in Northern China to refer to tomb mounds that resemble piles of their staple crop at harvest time. Curated by Philip Tinari.
Yung Ho Chang + FCJZ: Material-ism
Great Hall
September 30–December 2
Yung Ho Chang + FCJZ: Material-Ism is a comprehensive retrospective of the groundbreaking, cross-disciplinary work of China’s first international architect, Yung Ho Chang, and his practice FCJZ/Feichang Jianzhu. For this exhibition, Chang and FCJZ will transform UCCA’s Great Hall into an updated hutong neighborhood, containing six courtyard-like modules that each address a different aspect or focus of Yung Ho Chang’s practice, including inhabitation, construction methods, urbanism, tradition, and perception. The exhibition also includes several of FCJZ’s installations conceived and originally displayed in the contemporary art context, as well as two new films. A systematic presentation of FCJZ’s experiments in architecture, design, planning, and art, this exhibition explores the specific predicament of people, the buildings they inhabit, and the cities they constitute in this period of China’s unprecedented growth. FCJZ offers witty, thoughtful, and universal design solutions that are at once distinctly Chinese, deeply humanist, and thoroughly cosmopolitan.
Teppei Kaneuji: Towering Something
Central Gallery, The Nave
November 18–December 29
Teppei Kaneuji: Towering Something marks the first solo exhibition of Japanese artist Teppei Kaneuji (b.1978, Kyoto) in China. Kaneuji seeks out symbol-object relationships and then intentionally smothers their projected meanings by connecting lines, turning shapes inside out, and flip-flopping roles of “inner” and “outer.” By gathering everyday objects—hula hoops, shopping carts, plastic dinosaurs—and assembling them into sculptural and cut-paper collages, Kaneuji creates Frankenstein structures in an effort to separate purpose and form. White plastic resin, which is poured over the mass of objects, drips down to cover some pieces entirely, harden into stalactites, and pool on the ground, further obscuring the individual meanings of the sculpture’s components. In this underlying concept of “white discharge,” resin—a liquid intended to fill a mold—instead acts as a shell and organically defines a new, independent monster. In Towering Something, Kaneuji’s questions of function and form, explorations of ambiguity, and confrontation and embrace of the meaningless seem to hover—pervading icons of modern culture and effortlessly rendering them incoherent. All of the works have been created exclusively for this exhibition during a summer residency at UCCA.
SEE/SAW: Collective Practice in China Now
Long Gallery
November 20–December 30
SEE/SAW: Collective Practice in China Now will examine the production processes and decisions involved in creative collaborations, which have become a major trend in the Chinese context during recent years. A prologue to UCCA’s upcoming 2013 exhibition ON|OFF: China’s Young Artists in Concept and Practice, SEE/SAW presents many of the individual artists who will be included in ON/OFF within the context of Chinese contemporary art’s most recent collaborative efforts. For this iterative project, at least thirteen invited artist collectives will rotate in and out of UCCA’s Long Gallery, which will be divided into two spaces. The collectives will be paired and then take turns filling their space in the gallery, each independently conceiving a week-long exhibition. In focusing on the concept of the “group,” SEE/SAW explores the notions of co-dependence and reaction; viewers will, with the exhibition’s weekly reincarnations, be urged to observe how the exhibitions may or may not play off one another. Participating collectives include 8mg, A Diaodui, Art Praxis Space, Cell Art Group, Company, Double Fly Art Center, Guest, Hexie Baroque, Independent Workshop, Irrelevant Commission, LVXIAO, Nanshan Painting Group, North Village, and TOF. Curated by Paula Tsai.
Editorial contacts:
Sybella Chow, UCCA: sybella.chow@ucca.org.cn
Tamsin Selby, Sutton PR Asia: Tamsin@suttonprasia.com