Beijing CHAO Art Center's annual large-scale art exhibition "Watching Way" was recently displayed after over a year of discussion and preparation. The exhibition brings together 17 well-known contemporary artists from China and abroad, including many "textbook-style" works of art history, and there are also many classic works that have been publicly published in China for the first time. After more than a year of discussion and preparation, the "Watching Way" intention was extended from multiple angles outside the text of the work, questioning the existing concepts and meanings in art such as innovation and uniqueness, thereby exploring what is the "Watching Way" of contemporary art.
exhibition title "The Way to Watch" is quoted from the book "The Way to Watch" by British art critic John Berger in the 1970s. Since its birth, this far-reaching artistic document has been constantly reminding the world that "the relationship between what we see and what we know has never been fixed" - the words are simple, but in the era of noisy reading of pictures, people who are trapped in visual carnivals always show their awareness after the dust settles. Therefore, when the heavyweight works of 17 contemporary artists break the boundaries of time and space and "arms and arms" stand in the same space, the entire exhibition is like a singing team, and different voices gradually form a synergy, in order to constantly inspire the audience to think, learn and understand contemporary art from different angles, and the appearance it presents.
documentary "The Way to Watch", John Berg, 1972
At the opening ceremony on August 16, exhibition curator Jonas Stampe and co-curator Shogo said that since he learned about the concept of CHAO and its space in 2017, he has always wanted to plan an exhibition here. The winding paths of the space are originally full of plot. In addition, as a platform of diverse collisions, CHAO is not completely art lovers. The encounter is more accidental and will have more diverse feelings and understandings about the exhibition or art. In their opinion, "The Way of Watching is an exhibition about the existence of art and a declaration about art as a form of display." Ms. Xiao Ge said on the spot that "The Way of Watching" is not an exhibition that can be seen at a glance. "We want to do such art. We hope that the viewers of this exhibition will have more feelings and thoughts at the art scene or face the works of art, rather than just taking photos. This is what we believe is the purpose of the "immersive" exhibition." It is also reported that the exhibition will last until October 6.
Special curator Jonathan Stamp, co-curator Xiaogo
"Burning Million Pounds": Marcel Duchamp's spirit is a successor
"Burning Million Pounds"
There is no doubt that most of the works presented in this "Way of Watching" exhibition are almost formed under the spirit of Marcel Duchamp's ready-made art "Foot". For example, the artist group K Foundation's jaw-dropping performance art work "Burning Million Pounds" in 1994, Jimmy Cody and Bill Drummond really burned a million pound note at the end of their performance art work! Their friend Ginpo recorded the entire process with a super eight camera on the spot. This incident is still very controversial. Drummond, one of the parties involved, later admitted that "most of the people who wrote our stories and TV specials made a mistake. They always think that we are using money to express our artistic views, but in fact we are using art to express our attitude towards money."
Banks "Hidden 10 Pounds for Diana 5 Faces", in 2004, in order to pay indirect tribute to "Burning Million Pounds", the famous but anonymous British street artist Banks created his most famous work "Hidden 10 Pounds for Diana's Faces" in 2004 - a 100,000 copies of the ten-pound banknotes, and released it ten years and a week after the K Foundation burned one million pounds."Ten pounds on Diana's face" replaced the original Queen Elizabeth II's avatar with Princess Diana who died mysteriously in a car accident in Paris in 1997; the words "Bank of England" were replaced with "Banksy of England", and the notes on the coin "I Promise To Pay The Bearer On Demand The Sum Of" were replaced with "I Promise To Pay The Bearer On Demand The Ultimate Price". In the lower right corner of the reverse side of the banknote, Banks also replaced Charles Darwin's signature with a short sentence that clearly refers to Princess Diana's accident, "Don't trust anyone."
"Grapefruit"
When it comes to Yoko Ono , people's first reaction is often associated with Lennon , and the behavioral work "Peace Movement in the Bed" she practiced with Lennon... In fact, Yoko Ono has moved to New York since 1953 and began experimenting in the fields of music, poetry, performance art, and visual art as a conceptual artist. The work "Grapefruit" covers a series of very short texts and guides created by Yoko Ono between 1954 and 1964. In his poetic form, it is considered a milestone in conceptual art. The work replaces tangible objects with intangible thoughts and becomes the subject of art. The most famous article in "Grapefruit" is Yoko Ono's performance work "Slice". Since 1964, she has performed on many occasions: she herself sat on the stage facing the audience, and placed a pair of scissors in front of her. Invite the audience to step onto the stage and cut off one of her clothes with scissors.
Eighteen "Military Rules" of Occasional Art
The Chinese "voice" in this CHAO Art Center exhibition should also not be underestimated. As one of the most well-known contemporary Chinese artists, the " Days Book " which made a splash at the "China Modern Art Exhibition" of the Chinese Art Museum 30 years ago established the important position of Xu Bing in the field of art. The "Redbook" exhibited this time is composed of Chinese cigarettes. Xu Bing printed the cigarette paper with English translations of quotes and put them back into the original iron box. Although the work is not large in size, it is a monumental work, an ideological masterpiece. This work is also part of the series "Tobacco Project: Durham ", created by Xu Bing in 1999. He was the resident artist and lecturer at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Durham is a well-known tobacco town. The Duke family, who founded Duke University, once made a big profit by introducing the cigarette trade into China. Ironically, this tobacco capital has created an advanced cancer medical center while conducting tobacco production.
"Redbook", Xu Bing
The famous artist Wang Guangyi in the exhibition "China/Avant-garde" held by the China Art Museum 30 years ago. The work "Popular Anthropology Research" brought this time is in the name of art, a pseudoscientific method, which prompts and unfolds the ambiguity contained in this research proposition.
"Popular Anthropology Research" is divided into three parts: "The Curtain of Ignorance", "Race, Violence, Aesthetics", "Race and Analysis". Among them, the term "the curtain of ignorance" comes from " Theory of Justice" by John Rawls . In this work, Wang Guangyi gives this word a kind of ambiguity, that is, when we do not know the ethnic attributes hidden behind these faces, they only present the universal concept of "people". In the eyes of artists, the feasible way to end the nightmare brought about by "skull politics" is to use quasi-scientific analysis to analyze the differences between the resulting "faces", which empirically proves the complexity and richness of the "human" species when they are created.
"Popular Anthropology Research - Race and Analysis"
Wang Guangyi
On the night of the opening, Xu Bing and Wang Guangyi also visited the scene. In addition to their works, many representative works of Chinese contemporary art were also displayed on the spot. As one of the important initiators of the "Star Painting Association" in the history of art, Huang Rui can be regarded as a pioneer of the contemporary art movement in China.This time, his work "Keyword Inscription" is placed in a corner of the exhibition hall. This artistic creation, which is between the installation and sculpture, is composed of traditional drums from old Beijing in the 1960s and 1970s, juxtaposed with some smaller round cymbals, and is supported by traditional Tibetan carving wooden frames, so the structure is a double-sided three-dimensional installation work. At the scene, the audience can pick up drumsticks and randomly hit the drum face - each drum and cymbal has words or names in English or Chinese, such as Barack Obama, Fidel Castro, the Financial Crisis or the Beijing Olympics, bringing themselves into a conversation about sound: liberate their creativity in the face of history and time.
"Keyword Inscription"
Some people may ask, can the audience pick up the drumsticks improvised on the spot be regarded as an occasional performance art? This is definitely a good question to curator Jonathan Stamp. During the tour, he brought everyone to the art work "How to Create Serious Art" with a vinyl record as a medium. The creator of this work, American artist and educator, played a key role in the emergence and development of avant-garde art such as occasional art, installation art, environmental art, etc. in the 1960s. "How to Create Occasional Art" is a work conceived by the artist in 1965. It is particularly worth mentioning that Capro publicly stated for the first time through this work 11 principles of how to create Occasional Art - at the exhibition site, these 11 principles were translated into Chinese one by one and printed out, and posted on the wall of Qingshui Cement. Article 9 of them is as follows: When you are ready to do it, don’t rehearsal any scenes. Because the framework of “art” will define these ideas as a good show, which will lead to it being expressed less naturally. There is no "occasional" thing that needs to be improved, and you don't need to be a professional actor. Immediately afterwards, Article 10 "Instructions" were posted on the side: "Occasionally" can only be displayed once. Repeated displays will only become stale… Sometimes, some things cannot be repeated.
"How to Create Occasional Art"
"How to Create Occasional Art"
