Upcoming Group Exhibition | Access Through a Detour
Access Through a Detour
19 January to 11 March 2018
Opening: 4:00 - 6:30 pm 19 January
With artists aaajiao, Wong Ping, Liu Yefu, Liu Yin, Nabuqi, Song Ta, Wang Shang, Cici Wu, Lantian Xie, Yu Ji & Yan Jun
‘Access Through a Detour’ is a group show organized by Magician Space. The exhibition explores the discrepancy of what is seen and unseen to the viewer, looking at how artists move beyond the definable boundary of things. To go somewhere via a detour is not the same as losing attentiveness. It is about taking into account something not immediately visible, when there is a certain pleasure in becoming unmoored with a sense that an image can never quite fully capture something in its entirety. In this context, how does distancing help us to produce an effect within this situation? Here, we look at how strategy, allusion, and creating somatic experiences can offer alternatives to discover - and help better articulate - people and objects. Many of the works choose a way to filter or locate a particular signal from a noise of information in order to clarify our way of experiencing a phenomenon.
The filmmaker Krystztof Kieslowski once described the role of a filmmaker as akin to participating in a ski slalom: the skill is to weave between obstacles laid out in advance of the oncoming artist – who moves around to both obscure and resist - looking to find a path in order to arrive back to the audience. He was talking about barriers of Polish filmmakers as a game against constraints. Is there something we can gain by using an indirect approach to engage the world? What if we imagine these poles to be dispersed further away? In other words, is there anything else a detour might grant us access to?
Notes to Editors
Aaajiao (b.1984, Xi’an) lives and works in Shanghai and Berlin. Active as a new media artist, blogger, activist and programmer, aaajiao is the virtual online persona of artist Xu Wenkai. Aaajiao’s works explore new systems of thought, emerging controversies and phenomenon surrounding the Internet – with many specific projects focus on data processing, the blogsphere/wemedia, and the filtration of information. His work has solo exhibitions organized at OCAT Xi’an, Xi’an (2016), Centre for Chinese Contemporary art, Manchester (2016), chi K11 museum, Shanghai (2013). Major group exhibitions including Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Boston (2018); Haus der elektronischen Kunste, Basel (2017); Jewish Museum, New York (2016); YUZ Museum, Shanghai (2016); and chi K11 museum, Shanghai (2016).
Wong Ping (b. 1984, Hong Kong) discusses his observations of society using visual animations and auditory narrations that touch upon the abstract desires, pathos, and stories inspired by the urban conditions and sub-cultures existing in Hong Kong. He was awarded the Art Sanya Award in 2017 and his work has included in institutions including a solo exhibition at Things that can happen, Hong Kong (2015). Group exhibitions include Arts Center Melbourne, Melbourne (2017); Centre for Chinese Contemporary art, Manchester (2016); and M+ Museum, Hong Kong (2015).
Liu Yefu (b. 1986, Beijing) currently lives and works in Beijing. Behavioral traits, visual trends, body gestures, phrases or the intonation of foreign voices fall under his analysis as he explores the migration of language and emergence of new images produced through the unexpected encounters between East and West. Major exhibitions include UCCA, Beijing (2017); Goethe Institute, Beijing (2017); YUZ Museum, Shanghai (2016); Kimberly-Klark, New York (2015); and Vox Populi, Philadelphia (2014).
Liu Yin (b. 1984, Guangzhou) graduated from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, and currently lives and works in Guangzhou. Liu Yin reinterprets a stream of images culled from news feeds, advertisements, as well as masterpieces from art history. They undergo a cartoon-effect as the images are painted again into another parallel reality re-imagined by the artist. She adds another layer to our way of seeing things, playing with our sense of knowing and feeling in this world. Major recent exhibitions include: BANK, Shanghai (2017); Arrow Factory, Beijing (2015); and M WOODS Museum, Beijing (2015).
Nabuqi (b. 1984, Inner Mongolia) graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2013, and currently lives and works in Beijing. Nabuqi works with sculptural forms in bronze and steel whose scale are often exaggerated or miniaturized in relation to the human body. The objects are perceived in an un-fixed state of movement between object and the transformation of its surroundings – a reciprocal process whereby human perception and the form of an object co-constitute one another. Previous exhibitions include: Sadie Coles, London (2017); UCCA, Beijing (2017); 11th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai (2017); and Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2016).
Song Ta (b.1988, Leizhou) louche brand of conceptual art thrives on both the threshold of public tolerance and the emancipatory potential of a good absurd joke. He focuses on the enigmatic or eccentric hallmarks of a particular system, using his own unique form of humor and a series of caricatures to render visible clandestine forms of power and their endless network of bureaucracy. Previous exhibitions include: Times Museum, Guangzhou (2017); Sharjah Biennale, Sharjah (2016); Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern (2016); Para/Site, Hong Kong (2015); Taikang Space, Beijing (2015); and UCCA, Beijing (2013).
Wang Shang (b. 1984, Beijing) currently lives and works in Beijing. Wang Shang is an artist and certified gemologist, whose work examines the convergence of art, geology, and natural history. He graduated from Goldsmiths College and the Royal College of Art. Upon graduation, he founded his own brand, the eponymous S.H.A.N.G. This has allowed Wang Shang work between these two fields in order to explore their possibilities and differences. Solo exhibitions include: Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2017); Art Basel in Basel, Basel (2017); OCAT Shenzhen, Shenzhen (2014); UCCA, Beijing (2011).
Cici Wu (b. 1989, Beijing), generally avoids politics and reaches for the universal. If a fly pays her a visit in a quiet night, she would take that as a message from her lover from afar. Regular consultations with belongings that she can't afford to shed breeds complex narratives. The backlash of nostalgia nudges her towards an interest for plurality. May aged wind bring about an opalescent tomorrow. With love, she strides on in her quest to refute the becoming of fear. Currently based in New York, still growing by the day with other similar-minded artists in PRACTICE!
Lantian Xie (b. 1988) is an artist from Dubai whose works are often allegories of statelessness and belonging. Influenced by his transient connection to this region, he is interested in objects, stories, and situations where a slippage occurs between an image and its projected meaning. Xie holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a recipient of the Sheikha Manal Young Artist Award of the United Arab Emirates. He recently exhibited in the UAE Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale and is editor-at-large at Dubai-based publishing practice THE STATE.
Yu Ji (b. 1985, Shanghai) produces a constellation of work that draws together sculpture, installation, video, and performance. Her practice involves a long-term sculptural concern with volume and temporality, an inquiry that has expanded to an array of influences spanning ecological questions of a landscape, fragments of figures from archaeological ruins, geological features, bodily intervention, and man-made construction materials. She is co-founder of the not-for-profit AM Art Space in Shanghai (2008). This year she was nominated for the Hugo Boss Asia Art award and her work has been exhibited in exhibitions such as Sadie Coles, London (2017); 11th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2016); and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2014).
Yan Jun (b.1973, Lanzhou) is an influential musician and poet in the field of improvised experimental music. His individual and collaborative performances span from an interest in feedback, field recording, voice, and amplifying body movement, silent intervals and the working with background sound in a direct unmediated manner. Other projects include using the homes of audiences as a venue for a tour of impromptu performances. Yan is member of FEN, Tea Rockers Quintet, and founder of the guerrilla label Sub Jam. His projects can be followed on yanjun.org.
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开放时间：周二至周日 10:30 - 18:30
2018-01-13 12:33
