LIU CHUANG, "Buying Everything on You – Huang Wei", 2006-2007, found objects, 240 x 120 x 20 cm
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.
About the artists:
CHEN WEI, "The Stars in The Night Sky Are Innumerable", 2010, archival inkjet print, 100 x 130 cm
Six of Chen Wei’s photographs are included in 28 Chinese, transforming daily images to elaborately staged scenes. Chen Wei (b.1980 Zhejiang, China), based in Beijing, explores the medium of photography per se through his surrealistic imagery. He forges idiosyncratic languages inspired by modern literature and conceptual photography of the late 20th century. Working with cinematic settings, Chen Wei’s photos create dreamscapes and capture improbable-feel moments of everyday life and even residues of history and memory. Chen Wei has exhibited extensively around the world, including Seoul Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Pingyao International Photography Festival, Poznan Biennale, etc.
Three found-object works by Liu Chuang from the series “Buying Everything on You” are also on view, which present possessions—underwear, ID cards, knives, lighters, combs, toothbrushes, band-aids, etc.—Liu acquired from individuals he encountered in Shenzhen’s migrant job-market. Liu Chuang’s work integrates intervention with institutional critique to examine China’s social realities, particularly Shanzhai-the phenomenon of piracy and plagiarism in mass manufacturing and culture. Working across disciplines that include video, installation and architecture, Liu uses banal ready-mades and intervention techniques with a subtle, wry sensibility and an awareness of absurdity. Liu Chuang (b.1978 in Hubei) has exhibited at many internationally renowned exhibitions, such as Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Whitechapel Gallery, London; National Art Museum of China, Beijing; New Museum, New York and Astrup Feamley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, etc.
LI SHURUI, "Inner Rainbow", 2011, acrylic on canvas, 180 x 240 cm
Landscape is reduced to the abstract, and the abstract to sheer light. And the light is the passion of the Op-artist Li Shurui. Stemming from her first a few abstract pieces that documented the mesmerizing illuminations in urban nightlife, Li Shurui’s paintings keep portraying the lights that she encounters and envisions. Phenomenal and fleeting, the polar light is the most spectacular of all kinds, Li comments. Li Shurui (b. 1981 in Chongqing) graduated from Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. She has exhibited at various institutions and galleries, such as Today Art Museum Beijing, James Cohan Gallery Shanghai, PKM Gallery Beijing, etc. She is included in the new edition of “Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting” (Phaidon Press).
For further information, please visit website rfc.museum/current-exhibitions/28-chinese
PRESS
The New York Times, “Art Collectors Show Their Chinese Prizes”, December 2013 [download pdf]
