BENTU Chinese artists in a time of turbulence and transformation
Hu Xiangqian, "The Woman in Front of the Camera", 2015 © Hu Xiangqian - Courtesy of the artist and Long March Space
This exhibition will present a limited selection of twelve very different artists, twelve strong individualities.
They share not only the ability to live and work in what is a particularly fast-moving world of “turbulence and transformation,” but also a tendency to use multiple means of expression, combining tools supplied by local traditions with the latest sophisticated technologies. Responding with striking swiftness, their work mirrors the new realities of today’s China, as manifested in the economy, the environment, cities and international relations, showing a strong awareness of the changing relations between town and country after the great rural exodus.
The term chosen for the exhibition title, bentu, meaning native soil, is at the heart of their concerns and of the ideas being explored by contemporary Chinese critics and researchers (see the text by the two curators in the catalogue). In this specific context, bentu evokes the way in which artists have discovered and found their place in countries around the world, the better to return to their “homeland” with a strengthened sense of self.
Liu Wei, Liberation No.16, 2014
© Liu Wei - Courtesy of the artist and White Cube
Qiu Zhijie, Map of the Third World, 2015
© Qiu Zhijie
The video by Hu Xiangqian introducing the exhibition is resonant: graceful and carefree, a woman dances alone in a park, supremely unperturbed by the indi erence of the crowd as she affirmsherself as an individual.
Most of the artists in this show belong to the thirty-something generation. The age di erences (from 28 to 51) are in themselves significant in a country remarkable for the fascinatingly fast rotation of generations and their successive tendencies. The bulk of the works shown in the special hanging of the Collection of the Fondation are by artists from the earlier generation.
That said, there are four artists - Cao Fei, Yang Fudong, Tao Hui, Xu Zhen - who appear in both shows, even if the works in question are o en highly diverse.
Liu Shiyuan, From Happiness to Whatever, 2015
© Fondation Louis Vuitton / Marc Domage
The artists
Cao Fei, Yang Fudong, Hao Liang, Hu Xiangqian, Liu Chuang, Liu Shiyuan, Liu Wei, Liu Xiadong, Qiu Zhijie, Tao Hui, Xu Qu, Xu Zhen.
Curators
Curator: Suzanne Pagé
Co-curators: Laurence Bossé, Philip Tinari and Claire Staebler
Architect: Cécile Degos
