Remapping Reality—Selected Video Collection from Wang Bing

Remapping Reality—Selected Video Collection from Wang Bing

Artists: Cao Fei, Chen Zhou, Guan Xiao, He Xiangyu, Hu Xiangqian, Huang Ran, Li Ming, Li Ran, Lin Ke, Liu Chuang, Ma Qiusha, Miao Ying, Shen Xin, Tang Dixin, Tao Hui, Wang Tuo, Xu Qu, Yan Xing, Zhou Tao

Curators: Sun Dongdong, Lu Mingjun

Exhibition Duration: March 23, 2019 to June 16, 2019

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 23, 2:00-7:00pm

Venue: OCAT Shanghai, 30 Wen' an Road, Jing' an District, Shanghai

Organizer: OCAT Shanghai, New Century Art Foundation (NCAF)

Opening Forum

Time: March 23, 2019, 2:00-3:30pm

News Conference and Opening Ceremony 

Time: March 23, 2019, 4:00-4:30pm

Curator's Tour

Time: March 23, 2019, 4:30-5:30pm

"Remapping Reality" marks the first comprehensive presentation of Wang Bing’s collection of Chinese video art from the post-Olympic era. In this moment of historical rupture, the exhibition attempts to take the collection as a point of departure to develop a new narrative framework that, on the one hand, is able to account for the ironies and complexities of China in the age of globalization, while on the other hand addresses the possibilities of "continuity" that is emphasized in China's public discourse as an integral part of the Chinese experience. Developed simultaneously with the advent of modern media technologies, video art is a technological product that embodies at once both the characteristics of modernization and modernity. Its dissemination and transformation within the purview of Chinese contemporary art mirror, precisely, the dialectical relationship between material production (object) and the production and dissemination of cultural knowledge and information (ideology), spawned by China's economic reform. In this light, "Remapping Reality" evinces a shift in focus to the social world, and strives to comprehend the discursive contexts and historical origins of questions concerning China through an in-depth analysis of universally mediated experiences found in contemporary video practices. Meanwhile, amid ongoing global conflicts, the exhibition also highlights the urgent task of "reconstruction" we must bear, at this critical juncture, in order to preserve our collective future.

Wang Bing, founder of New Century Art Foundation, Chairman of the M+ Council for New Art, and donor of several Chinese art museums.

Sun Dongdong

Sun Dongdong, born 1977 in Nanjing, China, is a curator, critic, and freelance writer. He graduated in 2001 from the Nanjing University of the Arts with a degree in Fine Arts. In 2005, he received his MFA in Art History from the Nanjing University of the Arts. Since 2001, he has been involved in criticism and curation of Chinese contemporary art. In 2009, he began working at LEAP magazine as a senior editor, covering scholarship and exhibition reviews. In 2014, he was chosen to be one of seven members of the Pinchuk Art Foundation’s Future Generation Art Prize selection committee. From 2014 to 2018, he served as the jury for the primary selection of the Huayu Youth Award. In 2016, he was the producer of the film The Swim (a film by He Xiangyu). Sun Dongdong currently lives and works in Beijing. 

Notable curatorial experiences are: Notes of Conception: A Local Narrative of Chinese Contemporary Painting at the Iberia Center of Contemporary Art in Beijing (2008); Visual Structure at the Chengdu A4 Contemporary Arts Center (2011); Chen Fei: Stranger at Today Art Museum in Beijing (2011); Young Artist Experimental Season at the Chengdu A4 Contemporary Arts Center (2012); ON | OFF: China’s Young Artists in Concept & Practice at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (2013); Wormhole—Geo-Attraction at Lin & Lin Gallery in Taipei (2014); and No Express: Hu Weiyi at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Pavilion (2015); Shi Qing: Hinterland Project at Times Museum in Guangzhou (2015); The Third Huayu Youth Award Finalist at Baihua Gu Mall in Sanya (2015); Our Painting at Yang Museum in Beijing (2016); The Fourth Huayu Youth Award Finalist at Baihua Gu Mall in Sanya (2016); The Fifth Huayu Youth Award Finalist at Huayu Art Center in Sanya (2017); Well-Wishes at Gallery Vacancy in Shanghai (2018).

Lu Mingjun

Lu Mingjun is currently an associate professor of art history at Arts College, Sichuan University. He holds a Ph.D. in History. Lu is also a curator and the director of Surplus Space. His recent curatorial projects include Frontier: Re-assessment of Post-Globalisational Politics (2017-2018), Assembling (2018), XU ZHEN?: Alien (2018), among many others. His essays have been published in Literature & Art Studies (Wenyi Yanjiu), Art Research (Meishu Yanjiu), Twenty-First Century (Hong Kong). His book projects are Visual Cognition and Art History: Michel Foucault, Hubert Damisch, Jonathan Crary (2014), Logos and Morale：Conception and Social Changes in the Painting Theory of Huang Binhong 1907-1954 (2018) and Post-sense Sensibility, Supermarket, Long March Project: Three Contemporary Art Exhibitions/Projects in 1999 and After (2019). Lu was also the grantee of Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Greater China Research Grant 2015. He received the 2016 Yishu Awards for Writing on Contemporary Chinese Art. In 2017, he was granted The Asian Cultural Council Fellowship. In the same year, Lu won the 6th CCAA Chinese Contemporary Art Critic Award.

OCAT Shanghai 

OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT) Shanghai is the first non-profit art institution focusing on media art and architectural design in China, located in the Suzhou Creek area of Jing’an district, Shanghai. OCAT Shanghai aims to become an influential, socially aware and interactive art institution with exhibitions, research, communication, education, publishing and international artist residencies. Artist Zhang Peili is the current executive director of OCAT Shanghai. 

As the first branch of OCT Contemporary Art Terminals, OCAT Shanghai was inaugurated on 29 September 2012, since then it has already organized a series of influential exhibitions. OCAT Shanghai is hosted in a four-storied, European style building from the 1930s, which formerly served as the China Industrial Bank Depot. It has 1600 square meters of exhibition space, divided into exhibition hall A and B, retaining the original texture and structure of the building. 

New Century Art Foundation (NCAF)

Co-founded by art collectors Mr. Wang Bing and Mr. Xue Bing, the New Century Art Foundation (NCAF) is a non-profit foundation committed to the study and promotion of Chinese contemporary art. NCAF aims to carve out more and better platforms for the promotion of Chinese contemporary art and to imbue more supportive vitality to the development of Chinese contemporary art within the existing art system through insightful observation and research into art.