About Surrealism and Beyond —— The Collection of the Pompidou Centre

This exhibition is organized by the Power Station of Art in collaboration with the Pompidou Centre. It consists of six chapters, guided by a series of surrealist masterpieces for each of the chapters. Each of the masterpieces represents a theme and defines the key elements for each chapter, followed by other art works. For each chapter, there will be at least one video installation, a painting, a piece of sculpture, a photographic work, an architectural model as well as a manuscript.

The exhibit will be divided into six categories, each starting with a masterpiece in different themes of Surrealism, including the artwork of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), the father of Dadaism, according to Xiang Liping, spokeswoman of Power Station of Art.

The exhibit takes its name from its venue, a former electric power station, and the first work of literary surrealism, “The Magnetic Fields,” written by Andre Breton and Philippe Soupault in 1919. Surrealists frequently use the electric arc and short-circuit as metaphors to illustrate their aesthetics of bringing together ideas or images that reason sets apart.