Ocula Conversation Sunjung Kim’s Real DMZ Project Interrogates the North and South Korea Divide Ongoing since 2012, the Real DMZ Project interrogates the demilitarised zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea through annual, research-based exhibitions that bring together the works of Korean and international artists. Sunjung Kim, the independent curator behind the project, conceived the idea of exploring the DMZ while curating Japanese artist...
Ocula Report Sydney Lowdown: Exhibitions to See 6 Sep 2019 : Elyse Goldfinch for Ocula The fifth edition of Sydney Contemporary will take place once again at Carriageworks between 12 and 15 September 2019, with Spring 1883 bringing together a cohort of 27 galleries from across Australia and the region to inhabit rooms at the Establishment Hotel from 11 to 14 September 2019, uniquely presenting contemporary works propped up on...
Ocula Insight | Video Mark Bradford’s Call for Unity at Shanghai’s Long Museum 16 August 2019 Mark Bradford walks through Mark Bradford: Los Angeles Mark Bradford: Los Angeles at the Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai (27 July–13 October 2019) is the artist's largest solo exhibition to date in China. In this video for Ocula, Bradford and Diana Nawi, curator of the show, walk through selected works that convey the artist's concerns with...
I deliberately left very limited time to make these works. After endlessly converting time, energy, thinking and realisation, I almost tossed the works into the space. To me, your own aim and attitude determines the output. An artist defines his own job, and one endlessly undertakes that activity to understand reality and himself.
Presently, my studio lies on the border between the urban and rural environments of Beijing. It is a rather large space. Before my taking over, the space was used as a furniture gallery. People working with me there include excellent graduates, young artists from art academies and workers from all over the country. A number of them worked previously in various fields; now they are using their skills and experiences to assist me creating artworks, or the other way around—me assisting them to create artworks. At the same time, their experiences and ways of working influence my work as well.
To me, Puzzle, Enigma and other works included in the exhibition try first and foremost not to avoid the viewer’s comprehension, but mine. These are related chiefly to my own frustration, confusion and bafflement. To me, artworks do not provide answers, do not educate. It is not that I am not interested in discussions or revealing meanings, it is just that I am with the viewers, in the quest for meaning. To speculate or to submerge in “negative capability” is something I do very often in the face of artworks.
I hope the viewers could use my works as starting points or points of reference in their discussions, contributing to their own thinkings. In this sense, art means freedom. Not only am I free as a creator, the viewers are free as spectators as well. Catherine David commented that my works deceive fetishism; to me this is a very, very important comment. Gao Shiming saw in my works the problematics of equality. My son likes the video installation Shapeshifting a lot, and called this perpetual change of colors a billboard. I like his comment very much.
I do not think it is fair for me to judge my own artworks, especially in a historical context, or to judge others’ evaluations. I just wish to point out that, as a subject, an individual, certainly I am very much concerned with the social and the political, and that artworks that are apparently very formalist could be extremely political as well. I am not living in a void, and I do think the political, the social and the aesthetic are inseparable. To me, to my work, form is the political par excellence, and I do not think the political in art should be presented as politics.
Many years ago, I was surprised by the common forms of dog chew as a pet product. Many dog chews are in fact in the shape of little houses, very architectural. My point of departure back then was this means nothing to the dog. However it is visually, the dog only wishes to consume the product in a very specific, somehow brutal manner. The discrepancy between human’s wishful thinking and the dog’s desire perhaps is very much similar to the discrepancy found in the relationship between the artist and the viewer. If we are to consider the concept of the “artwork”, the specific form of the artwork or where this form originates from is not that important a question to me. What is important is that it is already itself the incarnation of desire and power. I hope a work as such could pave the way for a reconsideration of the concept of the “artwork” for us, what it really is, or how it operates in the relationship between the creator and the viewer.
The books were initially inspired by an imagination of time and knowledge. This unbearable weight itself reminds us of the forsaken lesson: our existences are conditional on omnipresent gravity. This is the purest perception, like a rock, and the first book sculpture was a rock, a meteor in fact. To me, Look! Book is not abstract. It is an imagination of civilisation, and its form reminds me that the real does not come from verisimilitude, but comes from perceptual and spiritual truthfulness. Abstraction processes this perception with reduction, and what is left is the essence of the works.
The paintings work as marks of colors, a change in the look and attitude of the exhibition. Be it the Purple Air series or the Liberation series, the paintings question from the very beginning our ways of seeing. All images are political, as we have already lost our “natural” status. To me, everything on the computer screen is naturally present, and therefore not much intervention or creation is necessitated. I face millions of choices, and choices create reality. This is what abstraction is to me.—[O]
Liu Wei: Colors continues at UCCA until April 17.
Artist Profile Liu Wei In the multidisciplinary works of Liu Wei, dog toys, books and industrial doors are just a few of his inspirations. His refusal to commit to a specific medium has led him to work in a range of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, performance, video and installation. Through his inventive repurposing of everyday objects, Liu distorts our perception of the environment in an attempt to illustrate the impact of urbanisation on modern cities.
Coming of age in the 1990s—a time of rapid urbanisation and ideological instability in China—the transformative power of modernisation has been a long-term interest of Liu's. Rather than focusing on Chinese culture and contemporary life, however, Liu's works often address the effect of urbanisation on a universal level, incorporating objects common to various modern cities. Exotic Lands No. 21 (2013), for example, is comprised of industrial doors and highlights their commercial elements. The abstract, geometric forms in Look! Books (2014) are made of books, while he famously used dog chew toys to construct buildings in Super Structure (2005–2007) and Love It! Bite It! (2005).
Liu's concern with the manipulation of the perception of an environment is especially apparent in Enigma and Puzzle, both completed in 2014. Enigma, shown at his mid-career survey at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2015), features resin blocks that obstructed the survey entrance. Compelling the viewer to negotiate their way into the main floor of the exhibition, the monumental blocks metaphorically represented the Eastern region's ever-growing cities. In Puzzle, mirrors of various sizes and irregular geometric shapes overlap one another. Positioned at various angles, the mirrors offer fractured views of the viewer and the gallery architecture. By disturbing an encompassing view of the gallery, Liu suggested that an all-encompassing view of this world is similarly an illusion.
In a conversation with Ocula Magazine in 2015, when asked if titles such as 'Puzzle' and 'Enigma' evaded the viewer's comprehension, Liu explained that the titles were directed at the artist himself, noting, 'It is not that I am not interested in discussions or revealing meanings, it is just that I am with the viewers, in the quest for meaning'. This statement correlates with his non-partisan attitude toward his works; the works state current conditions of the world but do not return a verdict. For Liu, art functions to generate discussions, wherein both the artist and the viewer may freely shape their own understandings of the world.
Since graduating from the National Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou, in 1996, Liu has exhibited internationally in China, Qatar, South Korea, Europe and the USA. He is familiar with international biennials, having exhibited in Shanghai Biennale (2016, 2010, 2004), La Biennale de Lyon (2015, 2007), Gwangju Biennale (2010), Guangzhou Triennial (2012, 2008, 2005, 2002), and Venice Biennale (2005). In 2015, he also co-curated Nocturnal Friendships for Lehmann Maupin Hong Kong, which featured the works of seven young Chinese artists. Liu currently lives and works in Beijing.
Institution UCCA Center for Contemporary Art
EXHIBITIONS
UCCA’s exhibition program is the most active in China, and among the most ambitious anywhere in the world. Most exhibitions at UCCA seek to make the scope of a particular artist’s vision clear to a largely Chinese audience that may be encountering it for the first time, whether the artist is an internationally recognized figure or an emerging local talent. From time to time, UCCA also organizes group surveys and archival exhibitions, which explore artistic trends, histories, and generations. Exhibitions of different sizes overlap, allowing a visitor to discover several different things at the same time. They follow on each other, building a narrative about contemporary art and culture for a global Beijing context.
CULTURAL AND EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM
Through its more than 500 annual programs—including art talks, exchanges, film screenings, performances, workshops, and public festivals—UCCA creates a creative platform for cultural interaction, which in turn allows its public to explore possibilities in different social fields. These programs allow participants to discover the world from a new perspective, to share their knowledge with the future.
UCCASTORE
UCCASTORE maintains China's leading program of limited editions, having collaborated with more than forty artists to produce specially commissioned works. It also showcases the work of cutting-edge designers, offering a wide range of original products found nowhere else. All UCCASTORE proceeds support the Center’s programs and operations.
/)
/)
/)
