Time: May 9 -- 28 November, 2014
Venue: Chronus Art Center, Bldg.18, No.50, Moganshan Road, Shanghai
Art Director: Li Zhenhua
Curators: Richard Castelli, Edward Sanderson, SenSend, Art Yan
Artists: Jeffrey Shaw, Hu Jieming
Collaborative Artists: Thierry Arredondo, Neil Brown, Jean Michel Bruyère, Dennis Del Favero, Sarah Kenderdine, Ulf Langheinrich, Elizabeth LeCompte, Bernd Lintermann, Matthew McGinity, Davide Quadrio, Lothar Spree, The Wooster Group, Edwin Nadason Thumboo, Delphine Varas, Peter Weibel, Zhu Xiaowen (No particular order)
OPENING CALENDAR:
4pm, May 9:
Grand Opening and Preview at Chronus Art Center
2pm, May 10:
Artist Talk, on Mediating Cultural Memory -New Media, Cultural Heritage and Museums
Moderator: Hans-Georg Knopp
Artists: Sara Kenderdine, Jeffrey Shaw
2pm, May 11:
Round-table Tour, on Mediating Cultural Memory–Information Walls, Media and History
Moderator: Zian Chen
Participants: Hu Jieming, Shi Yong, Lu Leiping, Richard Castelli
EXHIBITION CALENDAR:
Jeffrey Shaw Exhibition
May 31– June 17:
T_VISIONARIUM – Neil Brown, Dennis Del Favero, Matthew McGinity, Jeffrey Shaw, Peter Weibel
June 20– July 9:
LA DISPERSION DU FILS– Jean Michel Bruyère, Matthew McGinity, Delphine Varas, Thierry Arredondo
July 11– July 26:
ALLUVIUM–Ulf Langheinrich
August 8– August 27:
UTOPIA TRIUMPHANS– Bernd Lintermann, Jeffrey Shaw
August 29– September 17:
40 +4 ART IS NOT ENOUGH - Davide Quadrio, Lothar Spree, Zhu Xiaowen
September 23– October 11:
THERE IS STILL TIME BROTHER–Wooster Group, Jeffrey Shaw
October 17– November4:
SCENARIO – Dennis Del Favero, Stephen Sewell, Maurice Pagnucco
November 7– November 28:
THE INFINITE LINE – Edwin Nadason Thumboo, Jeffrey Shaw, Sarah Kenderdine
Hu Jieming Exhibition
May 9– Sep 14:
OVERTURE– Hu Jieming
Sep 26– November 28:
TAICHI–Hu Jieming
Jeffrey Shaw and Hu Jieming Twofold Solo 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.
Jeffrey Shaw is a leading figure in new media art and has been active since its emergence from the performance, expanded cinema, and installation paradigms of the 1960s, to its present day technology-informed and virtualized forms. Having moved away from traditional drawing, his early interest in making artistic experiences and possibilities liberated from objects such as paintings, led him towards a more radical approach. That approach is to focus on the relationship between the artwork and the viewers, especially the cinematic experience and the interplay between the virtual and the real, things for which he is best known.
Chronus Art Center will present 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. 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 solo exhibition, the Chronus Art Center will simultaneously present 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.
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. The newly created artwork Tai Chi, will be unveiled for the first time to the public at CAC, in the form of a bipartite narrative with the artwork Overture, the former launched on May 9, while Taichi is launched on August 8. Taichi will be both a review and an extension in the artist’s journey of historical reflection.
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.”
Visitors will for the first time see all the major works created for AVIE in one location, featuring collaborations with artists from diverse backgrounds and disciplines. In addition, visitors are also invited to look through and play with two individual timelines for each artist, Hu and Shaw, by operating a touch-table placed on-site, to discover how their practice intersects at certain points amongst a web of different artistic categories.
The exhibition will be accompanied and expanded upon by a series of seminars and round-table discussions on the weekends, on various artistic, technological and academic topics encountered and inspired by the artistic works showcased in the exhibition.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Jeffrey Shaw (b. 1944) has been a leading figure in new media art since the 1960's. In a prolific body of internationally exhibited and acclaimed works, he has pioneered and set benchmarks for the creative use of digital media in the fields of expanded cinema, virtual and augmented reality, immersive visualization and interactive narrative. Shaw was co-founder of the Eventstructure Research Group in Amsterdam (1969-1979), and founding director of the ZKM Institute for Visual Media Karlsruhe (1991-2002). In 2003 he co-founded and directed the UNSW iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research in Sydney, and in 2009 Shaw was appointed Chair Professor of Media Art and Dean of the School of Creative Media at City University in Hong Kong, where he is also Director of the ACIM and ALiVE research centres. In 2014 Shaw was appointed Visiting Professor at the Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London.
Hu Jieming (b.1957) was born in Shanghai. He is one of the pioneers of digital media and video installation art in today's China. One of his primary themes is the co-existence of the old and the new in a modern society. In his art he constantly comments upon, and questions, this concept with a variety of media including photography, video, digital interactive technology. He continuously conducts creation and experimentation, and his works were exhibited and collected widely at home and abroad.
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. He has edited several artists' publications (e. g. Yan Lei, Hu Jieming, and Feng Mengbo). A collection of his art reviews has been published under the title "Text" in 2013.
http://www.bjartlab.com, http://www.msgproduction.com
ABOUT THE CURATORS
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).
