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Tai Chi

kinetic video installation, 2014

Artist: Hu Jieming

Materials: projectors, motors, mechanical drives, sensors, fiberglass, aluminium

Size: 8m x 3.7m x4.2m (H)

Duration: 26th Sep-28th Nov, 2014

Venue: Chronus Art Center (101, Bldg18, NO.50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai)

Tai Chi is presented as part of Jeffrey Shaw and Hu Jieming Twofold Exhibion. It will be shown at Chronus Art Center from 26th Sep to 28th Nov. Tai Chi will be both a review and an extension in the artists’s journey of historical reflection.

Tai Chi is a mixed media work that combines images with mechanical apparatuses, in an installation with the attributes of an organism. This device like a creature is made up of more than 220 human bone-like structures, which are scaled up in size. The creature is free to slowly walk around the exhibition hall under the control of an automatic system. Sensors, which detect specific points in the space, control the trajectory of the installation. 108 projectors projecting images from the past and present are installed inside the bones of the creature. These images have been processed and changed subjectively, just as historical materials that enter our memories. After being ‘filtered’ in this way, these images are played back from the bones, and form a narrative relationship with the slow movement of the creature. In this way a particular realm of vision is generated within the space.

The inspiration for Tai Chi relates to the extent to which a reality that exists through memories and an actual reality relate to each other. Through memories, we can readily approach reality in the form of political allegories, and in this way enter a particular ideological narrative system. From the perspective of the use and presentation of materials, Tai Chi forms the basis of an experiment in how more effectively to transform a gravitational attraction implied by the work into a boundless imagination. For the audience, the physical presence of the work, the power implied in the slowly moving bones and motors, and the large quantity of virtual image fragments of the videos interact with each other and result in an integrated sense of the piece – this is the most straightforward context that Tai Chi brings. Given this situation, will we become the objects produced by Tai Chi, as we have already been affected by the power of it?

About Artist:

As one of the foremost pioneers of new media art in China, Hu started to experiment with new technologies in his works in the 1980s. Constantly concerned with subjects such as time, human history, and cultural memory, Hu intended to illuminate the boundaries between the ‘passing-by’ and the ‘going-on’ and by doing so he set viewers free from the chronological way of seeing historical events, onto a more accidental reconstruction. His works are widely exhibited at Power Station of Art , Shanghai; Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai; National Art Museum of China, Beijing; V2 Institute for the Unstable Media, Netherlands; SanFrancisco Museum of Modern Art; MoMA PS1; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; V&A Museum, London; Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary Art, Berlin; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai; Centre of Contemporary Art in Torun, amongst many other venues.

About Jeffrey Shaw and Hu Jieming Twofold Exhibiton:

Jeffrey Shaw and Hu Jieming Twofold Exhibition focuses on these two artists who have both developed individual approaches to new media art, and contributed each in their own way to the practice and context of this new art form as we experience it today.

Chronus Art Center is presenting this major retrospective of the AVIE (the Advanced Visualization and Interaction Environment) system since year 2000. AVIE is the world’s first artistically-conceived 360-degree stereoscopic interactive visualization and audification environment. Jeffrey Shaw created this and been conducting research with in efforts to embody new forms of creative content and new types of interactive and immersive experience and opportunities. The exhibition will feature a comprehensive collection of artworks that Shaw built for the AVIE in collaboration with other artists.

Set out as a twofold exhibition, the Chronus Art Center is simultaneously presenting a new art piece by Hu Jieming: Tai Chi with Overture. This has been created not only as a response to the influence of Hu’s old master, but also to Hu’s own artistic achievements over the past years.

Li Zhenhua, Art Director of this exhibition, says: “This exhibition of Jeffrey Shaw’s collected works marks a farewell to the field of international new media art which arose in the 1960s, and film is the link. Like any other farewell, art revives itself after the end of each media and concept, to gather and extend itself into its future. Hu Jieming’s project is evidence of this revival, exploring the existence of ‘humans’ by intervening in reality, contemplating history, body and time, and pursuing a perfect system and an innovative technique.”

About the art director:

Li Zhenhua, has been active in the artistic field since 1996, his practice mainly

concerning curation, art creation and project management. Since 2010 he has been the nominator for the Summer Academy at the Zentrum Paul Klee Bern (CH), as well as for The Prix Pictet (CH). He is a member of the international advisory board for the exhibition “Digital Revolution” to be held at the Barbican Centre in the UK in 2014. Also, he has been curating the Art Film, film program of Art Basel Hongkong,

Richard Castelli, is the director of Epidemic and curator of exhibitions a. o. in Berlin (Berliner Festspiele, Martin-Gropius-Bau), in Shanghai (3 exhibitions), in Roma (three exhibitions with Romaeuropa, one at MACRO), in Istanbul (twice at Borusan Foundation) and in France (last one in Paris until January 2015 about Robotic Art). He is the producer of Bruyere, Du, Dumb Type, Granular Synthesis, Hentschl?ger, Langheinrich, Lepage, Shaw, Takatani and Teshigawara. He produced several 360°, immersive, interactive or 3D artworks. He directed several films broadcast worldwide and got several awards (Brazil, Spain…). He was the Senior Curator of Lille 2004 Cultural Capital of Europe.

Edward Sanderson is an art critic and curator living in Beijing, China, with an interest in alternative cultural practices, and contemporary artists working outside of the art/gallery systems. He is a contributor to ArtSlant.com, Yishu Journal, Flash Art, ArtAsiaPacific, LEAP, ArtReview Asia, and Artforum.com.cn.

SenSend, is a program director and organizer in professional art field. Sensend has been devoting herself to the study and creation of contemporary art. In 2006, she established“The Core”. From 2008 to 2011, she conducted to establish the overall art and culture system program in “Shanghai Tower”. In 2010, she was the director of V Art Center (former Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts, Fudan University). From 2011 to 2013, she conducted to establish the overall art and culture system program in “Mausoleum of Yellow Emperor”. In 2011, she established the “International Art and Science Research Institute”, an institute seeking to promote the research, interaction, development, and organization of new media art, as well as the establishment of international cooperation program and the discipline joint association in new media art.

Art Yan, has been Executive Director of Chronus Art Center (CAC) since December 2013. After graduating from East China University of Science & Technology with a Masters Degree in Art & Design in 2006, Yan worked with various art institutions, including: the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai as Assistant to the Chief Educator (2006–2007); Shanghai eARTS Festival as In-house Curator & Producer (2007–2010); Videotage (Hong Kong) as General Manager (2011–2012). Since 2008 Yan has curated many projects including: “Horizon – Interactive Media Installation Outdoor Exhibition,” Shanghai eARTS Festival (2008); “Fantastic Illusions – Media Art Exhibition of Chinese and Belgium Artists,” MoCA Shanghai, Art Centre BUDA Kortrijk, Broelmuseum Kortrijk, Belgium (2009–2010); “Augmented Senses – A China-France Media Art Project,” OCT Suhe Creek Gallery, Shanghai, OCT Art &

Design Gallery, Shenzhen (2011). Yan was also invited to be a jury member for many international media art awards, including “UPDATE III, New Media Art Award,” in Belgium (2009).

About CAC:

Chronus Art Center (CAC) is the first non-profit art organization in China to focus on new media art experiments, production, exhibition and education. It was co-founded by entrepreneur Dillion Zhang, independent curator Li Zhenhua, and Hu Jieming, who is a pioneer artist in Chinese digital media and video installation. Founded in the autumn of 2013, CAC gives the direct support to the creation of new media art,and education on this subject, in China and abroad through residency and fellowship programs, exhibitions, public education activities, publications, and new media documentation.

CAC is located in the M50 Creative Park near the Suzhou River with a space of 836 square meters. Since its foundation, CAC has held exhibitions and lectures such as “Extra Time” and “The Best of Times, The Worst of Times”, etc., has cooperated with the Cross Media Department of China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, and MOMENTUM, Berlin where Pandamonium curated by David Elliott and Li Zhenhua.

As an attractive innovation platform, CAC aims at providing a communication space for artists, curators, and scholars from different areas, where the public can also experience the artists’ creative ideas; understand the social, cultural and political significance of new media, and find new point of views with which to contemplate contemporary society.