Duo solo Monet Garden. 96 Dist. by Yang Guangnan and Almost Unmeant by Guo Cheng had just opened yesterday at Magician Space, the exhibition last till October 17th. Welcome to our gallery to see the fascinating works of the two artists.
Yang Guangnan: Monet Garden. 96 Dist.
Monet Garden is an ongoing thread in Yang Guangnan's art practice. Similar to 'Sunny Venice', 'Roman Garden', 'Central Park' these western names have been widely used in residential real estate and urban constructions in China. As a product of China’s economic reforms and market economy, ‘Monet Garden’ was particularly popular between the 1990s to 2000. This hybrid ‘Continental style’ mixed classical forms with modern architecture, that aspired to and imitated Western civilization, and even more so resolutely disregarded the collective and standardized aesthetics. These bootleg and unsophisticated generic construction are, in fact, fitting to the demands of the emerging Chinese middle class, where the barren landscape underscored broiling desires and the absence of spirituality. Driven by the individual’s or even the epochal desire for fortune and style, the one-dimensional imagination of what is considered 'international' manifests in a post-socialist reality where reverence for foreign things and respect for antiquity are in tandem.
Guo Cheng: Almost UnmeantThe exhibition Almost Unmeant comprises of artist Guo Zheng's most representative works from recent years and the latest. Among his sculptures and installations, the technology always plays the role of basic principle. More precisely, it’s a deduction of the program or rules. In this process, the logic behind the technology has been mostly simplified. The overlap between human intervention and the material life manifests in an austere way. This makes science no longer an abstract principle, but a perceptible reality. By exposing the nature of the technical tenets, materiality, and natural relationships' essence to the viewer, Guo Cheng highlights the skepticism on technological determinism and its values.
Monet Garden, accompanied the rise of Chinese society in the 1990s, was a temporary product formed spontaneously when the system and the economy sought alternatives. It was crass and crude, and a failure apparently. On the other hand, Yang Guangnan’s Monet Garden is akin to the scraps gleaned from collective memory and imagination. They are partial objects of a particular building or fossils that have been magnified several times, seen under the microscope. Through Yang Guangnan’s profiling and zooming-in approach, those grand landscapes projecting a variety of desires highlight the remaining aspirations abandoned by the times in the ruins and the reflections of the current dilemma of value judgment.
About the Artist
Yang Guangnan
Born in 1980 in Hebei, China, Yang Guangnan graduated from the Sculpture Department of the China Academy of Art with B.A in 2006, and the Sculpture Department of Central Academy of Fine Arts with M.A in 2009. Currently she lives and works in Beijing. Her works have been shown at Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester, UK; FRAC, Nantes, France; The France Art Center, Melbourne, Australia; Macao Museum of Art, Macao; International Art village, Taipei; UCCA, Beijing; Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai; National Art Museum of China, Beijing, etc..Selected solo exhibitions include: Nothing, C5CNM, Beijing, 2020; Blind Spot, Fingerprint Gallery, Beijing, 2019; Dyspepsia, Taikang Space, Beijing, 2016. Selected group exhibitions include: Cold Expansion, Nanshanshe, Xi’an, 2019; Inner Scapes, Galleria Continua, Beijing, 2018; NOW: A Dialogue on Female Chinese Contemporary Artists, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester, UK, 2017; Turning Point: Contemporary Art in China Since 2000, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, 2016.
Born in Beijing in 1988, Guo Cheng currently lives and works in Shanghai. He was graduated from MA Design Products at Royal College of Art (London, UK) and obtained his BE in Industrial Design at Tongji University (Shanghai, China). His practice mainly focuses on exploring the interrelation between mainstream/emerging technologies and individuals under the context of culture and social life. His recent exhibitions include: Almost Unmeant, Magician Space, Beijing, China (2020); Downto Eearth, Canton Gallery, Guangzhou, China (solo show, 2019); How Do We Begin?, X Museum, Beijing, China (2020); The Eternal Network (exhibition of Transmediale 2020), HKW, Berlin, Germany (2020); The Process of Art: TOOLS AT WORK, Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China (2019); Notes from Pallet Town, UCCA Dune, Qinhuangdao, China (2019); Dejavu, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (2019); Open Codes. Connected Bots, Chronus Art Center, Shanghai, China(2019); Free Panorama, PingshanCulture Center, Shenzhen, China (2019); Tracing the Mushroom at the End of the World, Taikang Space, Beijing, China (2019); Bath of Caracalla, Canton Gallery, Guangzhou, China (2019); Shanghai Beat, Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, Japan (2018); Machines Are Not Alone: A Mechanic Trilogy, Chronus Art Center, Shanghai (2018); Life Time, Mu ArtSpace, Eindhoven (2017); The Ecstasy of time, He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen (2017), etc..He obtained the Prix Arts Electronica (2020), Digital Earth fellowship (2018-2019), the Special Jury Prize of Huayu Youth Award (Sanya, 2018) and the BADaward (TheHague, 2017). Guo's works are collected by M+ (Hong Kong), Sigg Collection (Switzerland), and International Art & Science Research Institute (China).更多信息请联系 For further information please contact:孙逊志 Xunzhi Sun
86 13629642754
xunzhisun@magician-space.com
Images courtesy the artists and Magician Space
798 East Road, 798 Art Zone, 2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing
Email: info@magician-space.com
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开放时间：周二至周六 10:30 - 18:30
Hours: Tue-Sat 10:30-18:30
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