An unlikely space opens up new world of art
The opening of UCCA Edge inside a downtown office building is a bit surprising, as the limits for exhibition space are obvious.
But the "City on the Edge: Art and Shanghai at the Turn of the Millennium" exhibition is even more surprising to for its outstanding design.
Covering 5,500 square meters over three levels of a high-rise commercial tower north of Suzhou Creek, the museum is less than a kilometer away from the People's Square.
Designed by New York SO – IL, UCCA Edge occupies 1,700 square meters of gallery space as well as a wraparound outdoor terrace and public spaces, including a lobby and auditorium.
Some doubts arose about if the height of the ceiling inside an office building was high enough for displaying a daunting piece, or if the capacity of the cargo lift was big enough to house large-scaled artwork.
UCCA Edge has overcome them all.
The museum has a good traffic flow, various functional spaces and – most importantly – impressive space for to showcase overwhelming works.
As one of the top contemporary art museums in China, UCCA was founded in 2007 by Guy and Myriam Ullens as the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art.
In 2017, it evolved into the UCCA Group under the ownership and stewardship of a new group of patrons and shareholders.
The historical core of UCCA Group is UCCA Beijing, housed in the former factory chambers of the 798 art district.
In 2018, UCCA Dune, which was buried under a sand dune by the Bohai Sea in Beidaihe, 300 kilometers east of Beijing, opened to the public.
Joining the "UCCA constellation," UCCA Edge claims to mount exhibitions of leading Chinese and international artists, some developed exclusively for the Shanghai audience, some touring from other UCCA locations.
Curated by UCCA director Philip Tinari, the launching exhibition brings together new and important works by 26 major Chinese and international artists, many with deep connections to UCCA and the development of contemporary art in China.
Participating artists include Matthew Barney, Birdhead, Ding Yi, Fang Fang, Greg Girard, Andreas Gursky, Zhou Tiehai, Zhang Enli and Zhao Bandi.
Stepping into the museum, visitors first encounter a piece of monumental work titled "Bank of Sand, Sand Bank" by Huang Yong Ping (1954-2019) which premiered at the Shanghai Biennale in 2000.
This work perfectly renders a prelude of "City on the Edge: Art and Shanghai at the Turn of the Millennium."
Around the year 2000, amidst emerging markets, reforming institutions, and artist-led organizations, a cluster of exhibitions occurred that would expand the range of possibilities for experimental art in Shanghai.
New art took root everywhere, from industrial warehouses to municipal museums; from retail space in unopened shopping malls to the opening ceremony of a major international summit.
The Shanghai Biennale in 2000, the third edition in Shanghai, was a milestone in China's contemporary art history.
Some of the artworks showcased at this exhibition are making their debut.
Apart from the biennale, the notorious "Fuck Off" exhibition that began alongside the biennale the same year poses a new juxtaposition with the dominant events and memories of Chinese contemporary art, such as He Yunchang's "River Document, Shanghai," a photographic documentation of performance of the process.
The artist extracted 10 tons of water from the lower reaches of the Suzhou Creek with a bucket and transported it 5 kilometers upstream, where he poured it back into the river. He thus made 10 tons of water flow another 5 kilometers.
One of the highlights of the exhibition is Zhou Tiehai's iconic "Buying Happiness/You Can't Grow Healthy and Strong without the Godfather's Protection" (1997).
Born in 1966, Zhou shot to prominence in the late 1990s for his conceptually charged, bitingly satirical paintings.
His work critiqued the new international market for Chinese contemporary art, addressing what he saw as colonial attitudes among foreign critics and collectors, while at the same time questioning the approaches that his peers adopted as they sought success.
This giant work provides an early example of Zhou's paintings of Joe Camel.
On an expanse of collaged newspaper, the towering painting traces a rising stock market chart along the silhouette of an urbane Joe Camel with sunglasses, one hand casually in his pocket, the other loosely gripping a half-painted bag emblazoned with the Chinese characters for happiness. The painting actually announces the arrival of a new and more materialistic era in which wealth was ready for the taking by those willing to play the game.
Zhou Tiehai's "Buying Happiness/You Can't Grow Healthy and Strong without the Godfather's Protection"
The art in this exhibition acts as a witness to the rapidly changing city scenes over the past 20 years.
The transformations in the urban fabric of Shanghai were captured in the photography of artists including Birdhead and Greg Girard.
Birdhead's photographs come from their on-going project documenting urban conditions in a post-industrial neighborhood in Pudong New Area in the early 2000s, presented in one of their signature assemblages, with the characters for "youth" carved atop.
Five images from Girard's "Phantom Shanghai" series (2001-2006) record the last standing houses in old neighborhoods then being demolished to make way for new development.
Another impressive work in this exhibition is "Golden Apple and Injury" created by Ni Jun, an artist born in 1969 in Shanghai who was deeply moved by reading Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex' as a high school student.
Around the year 2000, she was one of the few women contemporary artists in Shanghai. In 2002, she made her installation "Golden Apple and Injury" when she had just entered her thirties.
Many of her female friends were starting to get married and have children, heading to the next stage of their lives.
Observing the scars left by Caesarean delivery, the artist felt confused if childbirth is really a source of complete, fulfilling happiness for women, yet disregarding the physical harm that it can cause.
Shiny golden apples in her installation symbolize all the images of female beauty.
But with the erosion of time, the apples will gradually rot, and the blades inserted into them will also rust, possibly finally melding into the apples.
There is a small glass cabinet on site that displays art magazines books and newspapers from 2000.
The story "Radical art blooms" on page six unwittingly sees the beginning of the thriving of China's contemporary art history over the next 20 years, he said.
"The Fiction Between 1999 & 2000" by Hu Jieming
Exhibition info
Dates: Through July 11 (closed on Mondays), 10am-7pm
Tickets: 100 yuan
Venue: UCCA Edge
Address: 2F, 88 Xizang Road N.
