Kunstmuseum Bern

Chinese Window: Big Draft Shangha

19 Nov 2010 - 06 Feb 2011

© Shi Guorui
Shanghai, China, 15-16 October 2004, 2004
Schwarzweissfotografie
129 x 440 cm
CHINESE WINDOW: BIG DRAFT SHANGHA: Big Draft Shanghai - Contemporary Art from the Sigg Collection

19 November 2010 - 06 February 2011
Opening: November 18, 2010, 6:30 pm

The exhibition Mahjong: Chinese Contemporary Art from the Sigg Collection took place in the Kunstmuseum Bern in 2005. The media - nationally and internationally - was enthusiastic about the show, and, with over 40,000 visitors, it was an overwhelming success. The show presented a broad panorama of Chinese contemporary art as a lucid introduction to this segment of the art world, which hitherto had been relatively unknown in Switzerland. Initiated in 2006, the exhibition series "Chinese Windows" enables further collaboration with Uli and Rita Sigg, giving spectators the opportunity of regularly viewing these collectors' extensive collection.

The art shown to date in the "Chinese Windows" series included works by Cantonese artists as well as by Liu Ye and Ji Dachun. Following a two-year break in the "Chinese Windows" series, we are happy to now present artistic positions from Shanghai, the metropolis of superlatives.

The Kunstmuseum Bern will present selected works from the Sigg collection revealing the variety of artistic positions found in Shanghai - both formally and regards content. Whereas Shi Guorui engages with outward appearances and proffers a futuristic view of the city with his urban silhouettes of Shanghai, Jin Jiangbo zooms in on the life of a day laborer in an interactive installation. Zhang Qing brings taxis to dance in his video, and Shi Yong evokes the anonymity of urban life with small plaster-of-Paris figures. In contrast, Ni Youyu designs geometrical experimental spaces on canvas in which bizarre landscapes have been inscribed.

Big draft - Shanghai provides a view of the city's multifarious and lively art world, an art world that appears to constantly be in the planning stage - continually incomplete, always changing, never final, and thereby infinitely promising.

Curator: Matthias Frehner, Monika Schäfer (assistant)
 

Tags: Ji Dachun, Ou Jin, Li Qing, Lu Qing, Zhang Qing, Liu Ye, Shi Yong, Ni Youyu, O Zhang