Opening: May 13, 2016 16:00-18:00
Duration: May. 14, 2016 to July 3, 2016
Location: ShanghART Gallery H Space, Bldg 18 Moganshan Road, Shanghai
Preface
Surveillance devices have been invariably seen as the representative of the will to power. The unreserved filming lens however objectively sustain daily experiences and social relationships when circumstanced as video art. Its panoramic view is the indispensable supplement in terms of individual psychology: becoming the loops of the social collective consciousness and personal psychology, aiding the contemporaries to enrich the fringe of self-introspection and more performatively to grip on reality. ZHANG Qing’s solo exhibition, Boundary, aims to unearth the thrilling complement lied between sociality and privacy with this series of surveillance artworks.
— LU Xinghua
Press Release
“The installation of surveillance is an excellent experiment of die soziale Plastik (social sculpture). Initially it did not exist in society but after creating it, the reality gets looped into the system. ZHANG Qing’s work, I suppose, is talking about the possibility of constructing a certain reality. “ LU Xinghua
(LU Xinghua, Professor in SIMA, China Academy of Art, School of Humanities of Tongji University. His research mainly engages in Contemporary French Philosophy and Contemporary Art Theory. )
ZHANG Qing’s solo exhibition Boundary will open on 13th May in ShanghART Gallery H Space. The exhibition collectively presents artist’s in-depth exploration in Surveillance psychology field in recent years. Surveillance art, as his primary form deployed in the early stage, has been gradually developed into probing and broadening the psychological state under monitoring circumstances in association with multimedia. Six latest art works will be debuted with this occasion. The exhibition continues through July 3rd.
Oriented by personal physical experience in initial stage of creation, artist concentrated on the relationships among gender, body and consciousness. In the meantime, he delved into social reality and psychological state of particular ideology through public interactive performance art. Progressively, a mature art presentation of surveillance has formed after several endeavours in multimedia ranged from performance, installation, photography to video etc.. “Psychological monitoring”as the focal point of artist’s creation evaluates the cognitive ideology between the observer and the observed by interpreting daily monitoring activities. The development which evolved from the tangible study of participant’s behaviour under surveillance camera dispersing to a potential psychological ideology, provides multiple opportunities to broaden the depth of the monitoring context.
The Art works will be exhibited by monitoring video work and video installation. 886 Boylston Street, Boston, MA, United States casts the historical event as a clue, signifying the roles of surveillance in daily life. Scoped from “peripheral vision”, the latest work Boundary presents incomplete images which elicit observers to “spy” on the monitor screen. Video installation works disassociate from conventional aesthetical definition by unbalancing the relationship of physical force. ‘Unbalanced’ installations lose the dependent relationship in the space while the released force transmits and impacts on audiences’ psychology. Figures appearing in Don’t be too bizarre behave in hilarious ways, which reinforce watcher’s experience in a monitoring psychology.
Born in 1977, ZHANG Qing is one of the prominent Shanghai experimental artists, now he works and lives in Shanghai.
His recent exhibitions include, Move on Asia, Video art in Asia 2002-2012, ZKM Media Museum, Germany (2013); China Onscreen Biennial, Los Angeles and Washington D.C., USA (2012); Abandon Normal Devices Festival 2011, FACT, Liverpool, U.K. (2011); cctv, ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai (2011); Room without a View, Freies Museum Berlin, Berlin, Germany (2010); Don’t Go So Fast, ShanghART Beijing, Beijing (2009); Trans Local Motion – 7th Shanghai Biennale in 2008, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai (2008) etc..
ZHANG Qing rewarded Asian Cultural Council Fellowship (USA) in 2013.
