2015.01.14 Wed, by
Discussion | Do We Deserve Radicality?

Osage Art Foundation presents
JUST AS MONEY IS THE PAPER, THE GALLERY IS THE ROOM
Curated by Biljana Ciric

EXHIBITION PUBLIC PROGRAMME

Discussion | Do We Deserve Radicality?
Speaker: Birdhead collective and  Yu Ji

24.1.2015  Saturday
15:30-17:30
Language: Chinese

discussion

Just as money is the paper, the gallery is the room

“Radicality” is one of the most arresting parts of modern and contemporary art. The discussion will ask where radicality is nowadays within the contemporary art context and whether we need it, in addition to questions such as what the possible status of art objects are today beyond their commercial values, what exhibition making means for artists and what the current urgency is for responses to these issues.

Speakers will introduce their practice in recent years, trying to re-frame reading of radicality within their own contexts from individual practice to running institution or acting as collective. Second part of the talk will be followed by discussion.

All public programmes are free of charge. Please RSVP to elvaxie@osagegallery.com.

The talk is part of the public program of Just as money is the paper, the gallery is the room curated by Biljana Ciric

ARTISTS FEATURED:

3-PLY (FAYEN D’EVIE, MATT HINKLEY & NICHOLAS TAMMENS) | CHARDA ADYTAMA

YASON BANAL | GONG JIANHUA | HU YUN | IRWIN

 MARYSIA LEWANDOWSKA | LI RAN

SHI YONG | LUKE WILLIS THOMPSON | MONA VATAMANU & FLORIN TUDOR

YU YOUHAN with contributions from DING YI, FAN JIMAN, FENG LIANGHONG, QIN YIFENG, SHEN FAN and ZHANG JIAN-JUN | ZHANG PEILI | ZHOU ZIXI

 

EXHIBITION PERIOD: 20.11.2014 – 28.2.2015

 

VENUE: Osage Shanghai

Room 101, Block 5, Wang Zu City, 251 Cao Xi Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai

(Gallery entrance at Caodongsan Road)

EXHIBITION OPENING HOURS: Tue – Sat: 10.30 am – 6.30 pm

Sun: 2:30 – 6:30 pm

Open to special appointments outside of these times.

Closed on public holidays. 

Just as money is the paper, the gallery is the room takes as its focus artist-organized exhibitions between 1979 and 2006 in Shanghai. The role of artists as “curators” in today’s terminology, has since more or less vanished from the scene due to the commercialization of art and exhibition making and viewing methods; this exhibition thus attempts to re-activate this local knowledge and practice through involving a number of local and international artists, hoping to bring together common threads from the larger context of exhibition-making practices across the region to explore exhibitions as an epistemological engine and to re-think the rituals within the art system. The structure of the exhibition will be dynamic and will be developed in conversation with these local and international artists and curators.

The visual experience of the exhibition is conceived in collaboration with architect Ségolène Dubernet.

Special thanks to Qian Weikang, Shi Yong, Tang Guangming, Zhang Jian-Jun, Zheng Shengtian and Zhou Zixi for providing archival materials and works.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Yu Ji

Yu Ji was born in Shanghai and graduated from the Sculpture Department of the Fine Arts College of Shanghai University in 2011 with a MFA degree. She now lives and works in Shanghai.  Her works consist mainly of sculptures and installations, and also include performance and videos. Paying particular attention to nature and the movement reflection of the human body, her works endeavor to explore the relationship between time and nature, looking at the vital yet mysterious connection between body, spirit and the world. To Yu Ji, work and acts of creation are important everyday life practices. Being an artist is more of a spiritual journey of transforming things into life experiences rather than a mere career title.

Apart from her role as an artist, in 2008 Yu Ji co-founded “AM Art Space”, one of the few active non-profit experimental art spaces in Shanghai.

Birdhead collective

BIRDHEAD is an artist collective (Song Tao & Ji Weiyu) whose oeuvre consists of photographic images of everyday life in their native city of Shanghai. The snap-shot aesthetic of their extensive and accumulative photo-series (black and white as well as color) delivers a subjective and organic take on today’s urban reality.

“I often feel that November is a boy with his trouser pockets filled with roasted chestnut, wearing a thin shirt in the chilly wind, and walking aggressively and bravely. A long time ago, before Starbucks, McDonald’s and Dolby-surrounding cinemas, in numerous sunny November days, the idle boys had to wander in groups across the streets, fiercely and energetically. And seemingly, our Shanghai grows in their wandering and repeated stare. The dark-green scaffolds are removed and mounted; the cement columns of the viaducts silently form the shade over our heads; large landscape expands across the old houses that have once witnessed our birth; during typhoon season, the ferry dock trembles in Huangpu River; at midnight, earthwork trucks run across the void roads. Tank cars, Roses, Ruins, Fountains, Fireworks. It takes too long and the night is looming. They almost cross the entire Shanghai, when the columns of the viaducts are occupied by green Boston ivy.

Our hearts are filled with a huge amount of love and sadness.

Afterwards, there are metro and light rail, crossing through Shanghai under the ground or in the sky. Time passes too quickly for us to make a revolutionary posture. No time for questions and hesitation. There’s a voice pushing us, following the boy with chestnuts, wandering aggressively and aimlessly, to witness what shadow our Shanghai will create and when the ivy will cover all the roads.”

JI Weiyu (1980) and SONG Tao (1979) were both born in Shanghai, where they also reside and work today. The artists graduated from the Shanghai Arts and Crafts School in 2000. Recent exhibitions include: New Photography 2012, MoMA, NewYork, U.S.A.(2012); Reactivation – 9th Shanghai Biennale, Power Station of Art, Shanghai(2012); The 54th Venice Biennale – ILLUMInations, Venice, Italy (2011); China Power Station – part 4, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Torino, Italy (2010); The World of Other’s: A Contemporary Art Exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai (2008); China Power Station II, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway (2007). And their solo exhibitions include: Welcome to Birdhead World Again-Beijing 2012, ShanghART Beijing, Beijing(2012); Birdhead: New Village, EX3 Centro per l’arte Contemporanea Firenze, Florence, Italy (2011); Artist File 2011 The NACT Annual Show of Contemporary Art, National Art Center, Tokyo, Japan (2011); Welcome to the World of Birdhead Again-2010, Guangzhou; Lianzhou (2010); Birdhead 2006+2007 Photography Show, BizART, Shanghai (2007).

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Biljana Ciric is an independent curator based in Shanghai. Her recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition featuring Tino Sehgal held at the UCCA Beijing, an exhibition hosted by Times Museum titled One Step Forward, Two Steps Back—Us and Institution / Us as Institution and Alternatives to Ritual presented by Goethe Open Space and OCAT in Shenzhen. In 2013, Ciric initiated From History of Exhibitions towards Future of Exhibitions Making, an ongoing seminar platform that proposes to revisit the importance of exhibition making; the seminar platform will specifically be looking at the history of exhibitions in China, South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. In 2011, Ciric initiated the project Taking the Stage OVER, a year long, ongoing investigation related to the performative aspects of art. She was co-curator of the Asia Triennial in Manchester (2011) and presented the exhibition Institution for the Future. Upcoming publications include Active Withdrawal: Weak Institutionalism and the Institutionalization of Art Practice co-edited with Nikita Yingqian Cai, to be published by Times Museum and History in the Making: Shanghai 1979-2009 published by Black Dog Publishing. Ciric is a regular contributor to Broadsheet and Yishu Journal. She was nominee of the Independent Vision Curatorial Award by Independent Curators International in 2012 and was on the jury for the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award in 2013.

ABOUT OSAGE ART FOUNDATION

The Osage Art Foundation was established in 2004 with three main goals – Creative Communities, Cultural Cooperation and Creative Capacity and has since played an active role in developing education and training of young people, broadening cultural awareness and participation in artistic endeavours, nurturing creativity and critical thinking and fostering international cultural exchange. The Osage Art Foundation is now widely recognised by the local community and internationally as having initiated many pioneering projects of international calibre.

The current focus of the Osage Art Foundation is on developing deeper discourse in and around the arts in the wider community. We believe that research, analysis, examination and promulgation of issues pertaining to society, contemporary culture and value by artists, writers, critics, curators and commentators will build better understanding of regional perspectives throughout Asia and beyond.

In order to better contextualize the work of the current generation of Asian contemporary artists, the Osage Art Foundation has helped to introduce a number of seminal contemporary Asian masters to the wider international art world. For example, Roberto Chabet (1937 – 2013) made an unparalleled contribution to Philippine contemporary art as an educator, mentor, visionary, conceptualist, innovator, alchemist, poet and tireless promoter of younger talents, but until recently was not as well known internationally.

In 2014, Osage Art Foundation co-presented Market Forces | Erasure:  From Conceptualism to Abstraction, curated by Charles Merewether with the City University of Hong Kong, and Just as money is the paper, the gallery is the room, curated by Biljana Ciric. In 2013, OAF presented It’s Me, Goodbye: Andy Warhol’s Cinema, jointly presented by The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.  Osage also presented the second in its series of non-profit Market Forces exhibitions that draw attention to the non-commercial intrinsic values of art: The Friction of Opposites, which opened in Hong Kong in May 2013, coinciding with the commercial art fair Art Basel Hong Kong. In May 2013, The Osage Art Foundation was honoured at the Hong Kong Arts Development Awards with an Award for Arts Sponsorship.

For more information, please visit the website www.oaf.cc.