EDIT: Image Fetish and Phobia

Venue: ShanghART H-Space， Bldg 18， 50 Moganshan Rd.， Shanghai

Opening: 5pm-7pm， Sep.5， 2012，

Duration: 1pm-6pm， Sep.6-Oct.5， 2012.

Curators: Colin Chinnery， MadeIn Company， TOF (JIN Feng， DING Li)， YANG Zhenzhong Artists: Colin Chinnery， GUEST， HE An， LIU Wei， MadeIn Company， TOF， WU Shan

zhuan Inga SvalaThorsdottir， YANG Fudong， YANG Zhenzhong， ZHANG Ding， ZHAO

Renhui， ZHOU Xiaohu， ZHU Yu

Ever since photography pushed Western painting away from its reliance on realistic representation over a century ago it has taken over society’s desire to represent their lives and surroundings as a form of facsimile. Today’s non-stop hurricane of photo-images in print and web media is so much part of our physical and psychological landscape that we have almost ceased to recognize them as photographs. Within this field of image saturation， the quest for visual arts photographers has been to create images that stay. This is attested by the millions of spectacular images created in the media everyday that are quickly forgotten compared to images created by artists such as Jeff Wall or Wolfgang Tillmans that are remembered despite their seemingly mundane imagery. For Western artists， their own art history allows access to concepts and techniques going back two thousand years， but the same cannot be said for Chinese contemporary artists. Unlike Western art， Chinese traditional art was not based on realistic depiction， and as such does not offer a vast backcatalogue of visual ideas for artists to access from their own cultural memory banks. Consequently， the ‘weaker’ imagery that Western photography based artists can explore is far harder to exploit for Chinese artists. Instead， they need to find formal or subversive conduits between the worlds of photography， conceptual art， and the media.

Dada achieved this by exploding the materiality of photography and media with conceptual bombs and to use the debris in creating hybrids called collage. While collage is now an established art form in the West， Chinese artists have seldom explored this territory even though it appears to be a language that can resonate with the chaos of Chinese contemporary urban existence. In order to explore new possibilities more actively， a group of Chinese artists not exclusively engaged in photography have proposed a new approach in an attempt to open up a broader vision of photography: Instead of inviting photographers to re-imagine contemporary photography in China， the proposal is for artists working in other media but who explore their visual world using a kind of editorial visual logic can transpose their ideas on to a photo based plane. The result is the exhibition EDIT， for which a curatorial group of four Chinese artists have invited 14 leading artists including art teams working in installation， film and video， painting， and photography to search for new ideas in photo based imagery.

Material-ism

Date: September 30， 2012 - December 20， 2012 Venue: UCCA Great Hall

MATERIAL-ISM is a comprehensive retrospective of the groundbreaking， cross-disciplinary work of China’s first international architect， Yung Ho Chang， and his practice FCJZ/ Feichang Jianzhu. For this exhibition， Chang and FCJZ will transform UCCA’s Great Hall into an updated hutong neighborhood， containing six courtyardlike modules that each address a different aspect or focus of Yung Ho Chang’s practice， including inhabitation， construction methods， urbanism， tradition， percep- tion， and culture. The exhibition also includes several of FCJZ’s installations conceived and originally displayed in the contemporary art context， as well as two new films.

A systematic presentation of FCJZ’s experiments in architecture， design， planning， and art， this exhibition explores the specific predicament of people， the buildings they inhabit， and the cities they constitute in this period of China’s unprecedented growth. FCJZ offers witty， thoughtful， and universal design solutions that are at once distinctly Chinese， deeply humanist， and thoroughly cosmopolitan.

A VISION WITH TWO EYES

Alain Jullien

A VISION WITH 2 EYES Photography Exhibition

Artists: Christopher Taylor， Luo Yongjin

Curator: Alain Jullien

Opening: 16:00 - 18:00 / 15. 09. 2012

Duration: 10:00 - 18:00 / 15. 09. 2012 - 16. 11. 2012

OFOTO Gallery. 2F， Building 13， 50 Moganshan Rd.， Shanghai.

F or the first mission of A.R.P. WHITR-AP chose the “Guizhou Cultural and Natural Heritage Protection and Development Project” a group of several villages in Guizhou province. These villages， where many minorities have lived for as long as we can remember， are spread over a vast area in different counties. So for practical reasons， we asked two good friends to travel together， or separately， as they chose. Luo Yongjin and Christopher Taylor spent some time (not enough， they think!) photographing the soul of these places. As artists they used their mind， their eyes and their heart to convey the history， the culture， the warmth and the feeling of these villages. Although one does not see many people， the two friends， with their vision， make us imagine the men， women and children immersed in this old and generous culture. This exhibition allows this friendship to have walls for expression and hopefully it is the beginning of many different projects in China involving many different artists from very different background for many very different places.