June 15–September 2, 2018
China
Featuring: AUJIK, Pierre Jean Giloux, OPEN Architecture, Neri&Hu, Nabuqi, Michael Najjar, Jacolby Satterwhite, Lore Vanelslande, Maik Wolf, Lebbeus Woods, You Jin
Panel discussion
Saturday, August 25, 2018, 3:30-5:30pm
Basement Building 2, Lane 298 Anfu Road
Xuhui District, Shanghai
Conducted in Chinese and English
Free Admission
“Architecture is war. War is architecture. I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms.” –Lebbeus Woods
In tandem with The Legacy of Architectonic Futurism, a group exhibition in honor of the visionary and fantastical spirit of Lebbeus Woods (1940-2012), BANK will host a panel discussion that probes the vicissitudes of our future urban reality.
Lebbeus Woods was an artist, theorist, educator, and architect whose politically charged and provocative illustrations were designs of systems in crisis. Drawing parallels between society’s physical and psychological constructions, Woods generated a career-long narrative of how these structures transform our consciousness.
While Woods was a constructor of worlds in a theoretical sense, a “paper-architect” as it were, the fantastical future of cities is currently being actualized in China, a country whose rapid urbanization is historically unprecedented. Since the beginning of its momentous economic reform, China has seen the birth of over 500 cities, with a projected 75% of the total population living in supercities by the year 2030. China has also become a site for ambitious and extravagant architectural projects to such a degree that in 2014, Xi Jinping called for an end to “weird architecture” in China, a populist gesture that specifically objected to the notion that Chinese cities were becoming the sites for architectural experimentation.
“Architecture is a political act, by nature. It has to do with the relationships between people and how they decide to change their conditions of living.” –Lebbeus Woods
The panel, moderated by Aric Chen, lead curator for architecture and design at M+ Museum, will examine the future for art and architectural design in a creative environment increasingly swayed by political whim and technological advancement. In a world of diminishing attention spans and an increasing sense of acceleration and impermanence, how does one imagine or create significance for the new? How fluid are the roles of art and architecture in defining the territories of an urban future? How are our notions of the future caught up in historical clichés of progress rather than what Lebbeus Woods called the “limits of convention”? How do we negotiate our surroundings, and how do they define our behaviors, identities, and cultures in turn? This program aims to answer these looming questions and give structure to our increasingly urbanized future.
About the Speakers:
Aric Chen is the lead curator for architecture and design at M+. After his graduate studies in design and decorative arts history at New York’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, Chen began working as a writer, specializing in design and architecture.
Li Hu, the founding partner of OPEN, is an internationally renowned architect, visiting professor at Tsinghua University School of Architecture, former partner at Steven Holl Architects, and director of Columbia University GSAPP’s Studio-X Beijing. Two of his recent projects, the Chapel of Sound and Dune Art Museum are currently on display at BANK.
Lu Xun is the director and owner of the Sifang Art Museum in Nanjing which houses a diverse collection of international contemporary art alongside several architectural pavilions by world-renown architects.
Nabuqi is an artist based in Beijing. Her works have been shown internationally. Departing from a focus on objects themselves, her work extends to the relationship between objects and the human body. Two of her sculptures from her series, A View Beyond Space are currently on display at BANK.
The Legacy of Architectonic Futurism
June 15–September 2, 2018
A group exhibition in honor of the visionary spirit of Lebbeus Woods featuring: AUJIK, Pierre Jean Giloux, LI Hu + HUANG Wenjing | OPEN Architecture, Lyndon Neri + Rossana Hu | Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, Nabuqi, Michael Najjar, Jacolby Satterwhite, Lore Vanelslande, Maik Wolf, Lebbeus Woods, You Jin
About BANK
BANK is dedicated to an exhibition program that engages international issues of contemporary art and culture that are meant to provoke discourse on cultural histories, global interests, and current attitudes. We work with international artists, collectors, curators, and institutions to support our program.
