Upcoming Exhibition | John Armleder: Again, Just Again

Born in 1948, Geneva, Switzerland, John Armleder has been defining figure across many different fields and discourses related to art through an influential career that has continually involved interchanging fluidly between the roles of painter, performance artist, sculptor, archivist, collector, curator, editor, and sometimes gallery owner. In 1969, he co-founded the group ECART (écart means “gap,” “interval,” “divergence” in French) in the spirit of the Fluxus movement. During the 1970s and 1980s, ECART were prolific as a bridge between Switzerland and the outside world, which involved a prolific output of multi-faceted activities and collaborations with a large number of leading artists of the era, including Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol. Exhibitions and performances were participatory and experimental, created at a time with a strong collective desire to transform the world. The structure of ECART functioned as a hybrid alternating between functions as a publishing house, bookstore, and gallery, a pioneering model whose influence provided a vital blue print for ideas still used in institutions and alternative spaces today.

Leslie Zhang is a photographer based in Shanghai. Born in 1992, Zhang’s photographic works is devoted to examine and reinterpret Chinese contemporary culture with concrete traditional inheritance and poetic new narratives.

Fashion work by Leslie has been published in international and domestic publications including Vogue, Marie Claire, T Magazine, LOVE and in close cooperation with world-wide fashion brands naming Gucci, Prada, Thom Browne, Moncler, etc. The photographer is included in the 2019 editions of BoF 500 and Dazed 100, the global searches of leaders and talents shaping our culture today. He is included by Forbes Asia in a 30 under 30 list for the arts.

Post-gratuated in Art History, Larys Frogier was also a researcher at the Archives for Art Criticism (Rennes) and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS Paris).

For many years, he has taught contemporary art history and curatorial studies in different academies.

From 2000 to 2010, he was the Director of the contemporary art centre La Criée France.

In 2010-2011, he has been selected by the British Council as Cultural Leader inside their “Cultural Leadership International” program.

In 2011, he made successful the funding for Culture from the European Commission for conceiving and unfolding the researches, residencies, exhibitions programs  Art Cooperation Transmission (A.C.T.)  Democ(k)racy in Belgrade (Serbia), Eindhoven (Netherlands),  Rennes (France), Cluj-Napoca (Romania).  

He has been the Director of Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) in Shanghai since 2012.

Since 2013, he has been the Chair of the HUGO BOSS ASIA ART jury and he conceived this new award, exhibition and research program as an evolving platform to question Asia as a construction to investigate rather than a monolithic area or fixed identities.

In 2020, he engaged Rockbund Art Museum in the long term research program conceived by the independent curator Biljana Ciric As you go... roads under your feet, towards a new future.

He facilitated multiple partnerships with international institutions such as Berardo Foundation Lisbon, Dancing Museum-Boris Charmatz Rennes, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Torino, Department of Chalcography Louvre Museum Paris, NTU CCA Singapore, Maumaus School of Visual Arts Lisbon, Palais de Tokyo Paris, Para Site Hong Kong, Tramway Glasgow, Portikus Frankfurt...

Around the international Atlantic arc, Larys Frogier has curated long term artistic projects (residencies, exhibitions, publications) exploring the links and ruptures between Africa, Europe, and the Americas: Just A Walk (2006), Pipedream (2007-2009), Social Landscape (2010), Allan Sekula (2011-2012), Algerian openings (2003).

He (co)curated exhibitions with international artists: Adel Abdessemed (2021, 2003), Felix Gonzalez-Torres (2016 with Li Qi), Paola Pivi (2012, 2007) , Philippe Parreno (2017), Trinh T. Minh-ha (2021-22), Ugo Rondinone (2014, 2003 with Odile Lemée, David Perreau), Tobias Rehberger (2019 with Billy Tang), Barthelemy Toguo (2000), Yang Jiechang (2011)... as well as research projects and group exhibitions such as Curtain (2020-22 with Cosmin Costinas, Celia Ho, Anqi Li, Billy Tang, Xu Tiantian), Walking on the Fade Out Lines (2018 with Hsieh Feng Rong), From Gesture to Language (2013 with Pascal Torres Guardiola), Risk The Real (2009), Campy Vampy Tacky (2002 with Alain Buffard), Ex-Change (1999).

He has organized different symposiums like the following :

. Contemporary art, Curating and Social Engagement in XXth Century China, 2014, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China.

. Asia Art Mutations, Language and Social Practice, 2013, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China.

. Contemporary art and history of the arts : Anachronisms, References & Documents, Archives for Art Criticism, Rennes, France.

. Ex-Tensions, African creations and post-colonialism, 2009, Champs Libres, Rennes, France.

. Acting on AIDS, Cultural and Political Activism in France, 1996, Institute for Contemporary Art, London, United Kingdom.

. Art History and Art Criticism : The task of Description, 1994, Archives de la critique d’art, 1994, University of Rennes, France.

. Images of Disease 1790-1990, 1995, Musée d'art Moderne, Saint-Etienne, France.

In 2020, with Alfie Chua, he founded the duo artists Ocean & Wavz engaged in text, sound and image creation.

Billy Tang is Senior Curator of the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) in Shanghai. He joined the museum in Spring 2018. His previous projects have helped to introduce moving-image artists to new audiences in China, commissioning large-scale works of young artists, and curating projects that look to disrupt the architectural function and experience of the exhibition space. Other projects involve curating daily interventions that explore how art appears or is consumed by visitors—most recently at a restaurant in London. He has worked collaboratively with curators and writers to realize exhibitions of works by among others, Wang Bing, Liu Chuang, Lav Diaz, Li Jinghu, Yu Ji, Nabuqi, Yao Qingmei, Song Ta, and Trevor Yeung. In March 2019, he recently co-curated with director Larys Frogier the first institutional solo exhibition in China for the German conceptual artist Tobias Rehberger.