GROUP EXHIBITION

Dr. Sigg followed the Chinese art scene from its beginnings in the late 70s continuingthroughout the 1990s while serving as Switzerland’s ambassador to China, Mongolia, andNorth Korea. Over the years, he has built the world’s leading collection of Chinesecontemporary art with an encyclopaedic approach. In 2012, Sigg donated 1,463 Chinesecontemporary artworks to M+ in Hong Kong, under The M+ Sigg Collection. Today, thisnew landmark museum presents exhibitions showcasing the artistic developments inChina over the past four decades at its Sigg Galleries.

SIGG: Chinese Contemporary Art from the Sigg Collection is the first-ever introduction ofSigg’s personal collection to the Korean audience and encompasses internationallyrecognised artists such as Ai Weiwei, Shen Shaomin, Ji Dachun, Yan Lei, and He Xiangyu,along with recent works of the next generation of emerging Chinese artists to offer aglimpse into the present and future of Chinese art. We look forward to welcoming youto this first exhibition of Uli Sigg’s collection in Korea.

SIGG: Chinese Contemporary Art from the Sigg Collection

Uli Sigg is undoubtedly the largest and influential private collector of contemporaryChinese art in the world. He has contributed to the founding collection of the renownedM+ Museum in Hong Kong and is currently a member of the International Council of theMuseum of Modern Art in New York City as well as the International Advisory Council ofthe Tate Gallery in London. In 1998 he established the Chinese Contemporary Art Award,which is now known as the Art Critic Award. Moreover, he was the one to introduceHarald Szeemann to contemporary Chinese art; Szeemann was a legendary Swiss curatorwho presented many Chinese artists in his coordination of the 1999 Venice Biennale,catalysing the movement and influence of Chinese art on the Western market.

Uli Sigg started his career as a business journalist. He arrived in Beijing in the late 1970sfor his work at the Swiss company Schindler Elevators to establish what would laterbecome the very first joint venture between China and international markets. This periodmarked the end of Mao’s dictatorial regime with Mao’s passing in 1976 and the end ofthe Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), launching the start of Deng Xiaoping’s marketeconomy reforms in 1978. This autonomous policy gradually allowed for more criticismto emerge, eventually leading to the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Alongside thepolitical reform, cultural transformations were also taking place resulting in many newforms of artistic expression.

Artists who had lost their status’ as state employees started to emancipate themselvesfrom social realism, and as time went on, from the imbedded structure of the Westerncontemporary art models. This period undeniably proved to be a highly challenging yetpivotal moment in time. Uli Sigg eagerly followed the art scene and its undergroundmovements, and started to collect works from the 1990s. He gradually developed asystematic approach: ‘I decided to do what a national institution ought to do but neverdid: to collect Chinese contemporary art in a systematic way from the late 1970sonwards, mirroring Chinese art production across all media in its width and depth fromits very beginnings. I must have met close to 2,000 artists over the years. I mostlypurchased directly from the artists themselves, due to- at least initially- sheer necessity;there was not yet an art ecosystem with functioning galleries or dealers as there istoday’. Uli Sigg served as the Swiss Ambassador to China, North Korea and Mongolia from 1995 to 1998, during a time in which contemporary Chinese art gained globalrecognition and simultaneously discovered its cultural roots. ‘The more we understandthe West, the more we cherish our own culture. Our traditional culture, socialist cultureand even Cultural Revolution and Maoism are valuable. Only if and when we are able tocombine these traditions with the Western culture, can we create art of the future...’,writes Xu Bing in his 2007 retrospective.

Uli Sigg had always cherished his wish to hand his collection back to China. Theinstitutions and policies in Hong Kong at the time seemed to provide the appropriatecontext for this endeavour. Thus, in 2012, Uli Sigg donated 1,453 works and sold a further47 works to M+ Museum in Hong Kong, which makes it one of the largest donations toa museum ever to be made by a private collector, positioning M+ as the world’s numberone museum for Chinese contemporary art. He kept around 300 works for himself butfelt the urge to continue to collect, currently owning more than 600 Chinese works, aselection of which is now on view at SONGEUN in Seoul.

This selection cannot serve as a full representation of the entire collection. Nevertheless,the chapters of the exhibition exemplify a broad scope of works alongside a variety ofviewpoints and sensitivities. Pure Painting – Towards Abstraction and a new installationby Han Mengyun can be found on Level 2. Body – The Revenge of the Female andNature – Acculturated are presented on level 3. The chapter Material Stories bringstogether a series of sculptures. An immersive video installation can be discovered in thebasement.