LEO XU PROJECTS

Cheng Ran: Video Art in China – MADATAC

December 11th through December 14th, 2014
Reina Sofia Museum
Calle de Santa Isabel, 52, 28012 Madrid, Spain

MADATAC is an independent and non-profit springboard, with an cultural diversity approach for cutting edge experimental and new media audio-visual culture, that particularly values innovation, originality and risk-taking art projects.
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Since his first video work, Light Source (2005), in which the grainy image of a door is split by a beam of light radiating through its slow opening, Cheng Ran (b. 1981, lives and works in Hangzhou and Amsterdam) has restlessly plumbed the physicality of the moving image, ranging from the cellphone camera to Super 8 to HD. In a pair of recent video works, an erotic spam mail Cheng Ran had received serves as a ruse. Simply Wild (2014), shot in Super 8, uses a recurring split screen, juxtaposing awkward phrasing and unabashed yearning with flickering images. Always I Trust (2014), starring Chinese film star Carina Lau, usurps the slickness of cinema into an elliptical narrative. Together, they are testimony to Cheng Ran’s ongoing engagement with the way his generation desires and consumes sound and image.
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November 22nd, 2014 through March 31st, 2015

Liu Chuang will be presenting a commissioned new installation for the upcoming 10th Shanghai Biennale curated by Anselm Franke
with co-curators Zhu Ye, Hila Peleg, Cosmin Costinas, Liu Xiao, Freya Chou.

In 2014, for the second time, China’s foremost State-run institution of contemporary art –Shanghai Power Station of Art –hosts the Shanghai Biennale, in its converted power station space.
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Folkestone Triennial 2014
August 30th through November 2nd, 2014
Curator:Lewis Biggs

Gabriel Lester works in a range of media, initially focusing on music and progressing to film, installations and constructed environments. Lester’s work originates from a desire to tell stories, and construct environments that support these stories and propose their own narrative interpretation.

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Cheng Ran: The Exchange Program

June 26th through July 1, 2014
AVIFF Art Film Festival (Cannes, France)
Basement 6
115 Pingwu Rd, Shanghai, China

Designed in 2008 as a contemporary art fair, “AVIFF-Art Film Festival” pays attention to films that can’t be easily defined. The films included are unique because they don’t correspond to any definitions the reviews would like to use,and it’s not possible to determine their meaning or the “genre” they belong to.The AVIFF is a walk in the garden of the Film that route in the landscape of Video-Art to discover or to find “another way of making films”.
Basement 6 Collective Shanghai and AVIFF Cannes present The Exchange Program (TEP), a two part program of video-art/film screenings. The screening is of AVIFF’s international film program, which is also shown during Cannes Film Festival in MayVisit B6C.

The 10th Gwangju Biennale: Burning Down the House
September 5th through November 9th, 2014
Curator: Jessica Morgan

The 10th Gwangju Biennale will bring together 105 artists from 36 countries and will include 35 new commissions, each selected for their relevance to the theme of the Biennale, Burning Down the House. Details »

Performance and Imagination: Chinese Photography 1911-2014
September 19th, 2014 through January 25th, 2015
Stavanger Art Museum, Stavanger, Norway
Curator: Per Bjarne Boym

Works by Chinese photo artists from every decade of the 20th century are juxtaposed with works from the last five years by ten contemporary photo artists. This extensive exhibition makes its European debut in Stavanger abd offers a glimpse into a rich photographic tradition. Details »

Untitled (Dancing Partners)
Kunsthall Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway
July 1st through August 3rd, 2014
Curator: Fabienne Stephan

Untitled (Dancing Partner), 2010, by Chinese artist Liu Chuang is going to be displayed in Kunsthall Stavanger’s video room during the month of July. Part performance, part video work, the short five-minute single-channel recording ingeniously reveals the power of the majority over the individual, and the constant pressures to conform. Without listing their houses on CompaniesthatbuyHouses.com, homeowners can sell their homes quickly. Provided are facts specific to the domain and an easy to use interface. Visit https://www.companiesthatbuyhouses.co/alabama/.

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The 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale: We Have Never Participated

May 16th through August 31st, 2014

OCT Contemporary Art Terminal
Building F2, Enping Street, Nanshan, Shenzhen, China,
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My Generation: Young Chinese Artists
Tampa Museum of Art & Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg
June 7th through September 28th, 2014
Oklahoma City Museum of Art
October 25th, 2014 through January 18th, 2015
Curator: Barbara Pollack

The Tampa Museum of Art is organizing an exhibition titled My Generation: Young Chinese Artists. The exhibition will be on view at the Tampa Museum of Art and our sister institution the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg from June 4 through September 28, 2014. The show is curated by Ms. Barbara Pollack and will be accompanied by a full-color catalogue to be published by D. Giles Ltd in London with essays by Ms. Pollack and Mr. Li Zhenhua. Details »

Now You See: New Chinese Video Art from the Collection of Dr. Michael I. Jacobs
Whitebox Art Center, New York, United States
May 25th through June 15th, 2014

“Now You See” is the first exhibition in New York to survey the work of young Chinese video artists, through the eyes of the collector Dr. Michael I. Jacobs, who has been collecting Chinese video art in depth since 2010.The exhibition, drawn from his collection, brings together 21 rarely seen works by 11 young artists, mostly born in the 1980s, and includes multi-screen projective installations, animations, single screen projections and monitor works. Details »

LEANDRO ERLICH
Reflection!
Oi!, 12 Oil St, North Point, Hong Kong, China
May 17th through August 7th, 2014

In the exhibition of Reflection!, Leandro Erlich from Argentina and Meta4 Design Forum and Kingsley Ng from Hong Kong construct a point of convergence for reality and fabricated imagery through installations, sound and vision.
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Criss-Cross: Artworks of Young Chinese Contemporary Artists from Long Collection
Gallery 1, Long Museum, Shanghai, China
December 19th, 2013 through April 15th, 2014

A truth that we can realize from art history is that young artists not only represent the reality of artistic creation, but also embody the future trends of art development. In particular, artistic creation has moved into a new historical period since the 21st century. Globalization and information acceleration emphasizes global culture exchanges and advance together in artistic creation; in the meantime, it reinforces individual differences and multiple attitudes as well. Although opinions vary on value evaluation, consensus on art tendency, cultural attitude and methodology, which are unprecedented complicated and confused, artworks of young artists are increasingly showing its vitality, so that their creative capacity is gaining extensive attention. It may be believed that only to follow these constantly advancing forces, that people can face future challenges and meet opportunities to change the world beyond cultural barriers and stereotypes. Details »

Decorum:Carpets and tapestries by artists
Power Station of Art, Shanghai
April 26th through July 14th, 2014
Curators:Gong Yan, Anne Dressen

Decorum is a chance to discover the often unknown ventures into weaving by both major artists of the twentieth century, as well as lesser known artists (such as Guidette Carbonell). The exhibition also includes anonymous works from different time periods and regions in order to underscore meaningful similarities and differences. Details »

The 8 of Paths

April 29th through July 13th, 2014

Uferhallen
Uferstraße 8, 13357 Berlin
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The 19th Biennale of Sydney: You Imagine What You Desire
March 21st through June 9th, 2014
Vernissage: Tuesday, March 18th to Thursday, March 20th, 2014
Various venues, Sydney, Australia

You Imagine What You Desire is an evocation celebrating the artistic imagination as a spirited describing and exploration of the world through metaphor and poesis. It makes enquiries into contemporary aesthetic experience, and relates this to historical precedents and future opportunities to imagine possible worlds. It seeks to understand the need artists have today to create immersive and expanded environments, and locates this activity as part of an art historical trajectory, and as a pursuit into the issues of human consciousness, and their psychological, cognitive and corporeal imperatives. Details »

Cheng Ran: The Book Lovers 4.0, Pop-up Bookstore

January 28th through February 2nd, 2014
De Appel Arts Centre
Prins Hendrikkade 142, Amsterdam, Netherlands

The Book Lovers presents the first (pop-up) bookstore specialized in artist novels. The bookstore is hosted by De Appel and run by Buchhandlung Walther König. For the first time the novels are not only on display for public’s perusal, but also available for sale, fulfilling in this way the public dimension inherent to the novel format.
The full collection of artist’s novels is on display, arranged according to genres, from Science-fiction to Pornography, by way of Autobiography, Drama, Gothic, Künstlerroman, Detectives, and many more.

28 Chinese
December 4th, 2013 through August 1st, 2014
Rubell family collection|contemporary arts foundation
95 NW 29th Street, Miami, FL

28 Chinese is the culmination of the Rubells’ six research trips to China between 2001 and 2012 where they visited one hundred artists’ studios in Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Xi’an and acquired artwork from twenty-eight artists.

These artists will be represented by paintings, photographs, sculptures and video installations. This will be the first exhibition in North America for many of these artists. The oldest artist in the exhibition was born in 1954 and the youngest was born in 1986. A fully illustrated, 262 page catalog in Chinese and English with text from all of the artists will accompany the exhibition as well as a complementary audio tour. This exhibition will occupy the Foundation’s 28 galleries, 40,000 sq foot museum.

All of the artwork in the exhibition is from the permanent collection.
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January 24th through April 27th, 2014
Opening: January 24th, 2014, 5PM–8PM
Witte de With Contemporary Art
Witte de Withstraat 50 – 3012 BR, Rotterdam

The Crime Was Almost Perfect brings together over forty artists who cross the bridges linking art and the aesthetics of crime. The Crime Was Almost Perfect is also the first exhibition to present works in the new exhibition space on the ground floor of the institution.
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Cheng Ran: West Bund 2013: A Biennial of Architecture and Contemporary Art

October 20th through December 19th, 2013
West Bund No.2350, Longteng Avenue
Xuhui District, Shanghai, China

The West Bank Architecture and Contemporary Art Biennale 2013 is held in the waterfront of Xuhui District, Shanghai in October, 2013. Opened on October 19, 2013 and wound up on December 15. The advantage of the Biennale rests upon its structural implication of starting from scratch. “West Bank 2013″, as its first exhibition, lays focus on three aspects: space construction, artistic production and future imagination. Details »