Guest: Simon Maurer
Date: 2014-09-03 19:00 ~ 2014-09-03 20:30
Address: Chronus Art Center (Room101, Bldg18, NO.50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai)
MODERATOR: Li Zhenhua
LANGUAGE: English (with Chinese translation)
Reservations via membership@chronusartcenter.org (please supply your full name, contact information, and the number of people attending)
YOUR OWN WAY
As Director of Helmhaus Zürich, an exhibition space mainly for art from Switzerland and financed in its entirety by the city of Zurich, Simon Maurer curates his program independently from the art market. He follows his own way with a passion for the local art scene. The town of Zurich in Switzerland, in the heart of Europe, is something like a model of the art world in miniature: key figures of the art world (like Harald Szeemann, Bice Curiger, and Hans Ulrich Obrist) have come from here. And there are a lot of unsatisfied artists who think they deserve more. Network is everything – and there are many forgotten artists who are not such good networkers.
Simon tries to make his own choices. He thinks that the art market, dominated by the Western World, is just a part of the many interesting movements taking place in the arts. Simon would like to encourage Chinese people working in the arts to go their own way, too: not to adapt too much to Western standards, but to develop their own traditions, in their own circumstances; to establish their own criteria of quality; to stay proud and truly Asian – not isolated, but prudently linking the best of every culture. He would like to debate some misunderstandings, to compare the conditions of artists in Asia and in the West. The West, he believes, is not paradise at all. There is no spirituality, everybody is just rushing after the money – which makes people sick. It’s not something to copy. On the contrary: It’s more hell than paradise. The message is: Build up your own art system, your own life, your own world.
ABOUT THE ENCOUNTER:
This new series is initiated and curated by Li Zhenhua, invites several professionals who work for institutions. They will talk about the popular issues including museums, curators and art system. Through the encounters with these professionals coming from the mainstream art industry, we could understand better about how to be independent, autonomous, and free. Through the introduction of these institutions and their ways of working, we could take as reference and think about how to push forward the new and experimental arts. And in the same time, we aim to build more healthy institutional culture in the mainland of China. CAC Encounter is a platform for communication, it wishes to benefit the participants of the growing art system, it bridges between the West and the East, it attempts to think independently and keeping the mainstream in mind, so as for a better future of the art system.
ABOUT GUEST:
Simon Maurer (born 1964), worked as an artist from 1983 to 1990, as an art critic from 1991 to 2001, as functionary and head of the art department of the City of Zurich from 2001 to 2012, and in museums as a (co-)curator from 1983 to the present. Simon Maurer now is the director of Helmhaus Zürich, Switzerland.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR:
Li Zhenhua (CN/CH) has been active in the field of art since 1996. His practice mainly concerns 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. He has edited several artists’ publications (e.g. Yan Lei, Hu Jieming, and Feng Mengbo). A collection of his art reviews was published under the title “Text” in 2013.
