A group exhibition of artists aaajiao, Ian Cheng, Cheng Ran, Guo Hongwei, Koo Jeong A, Ken Okiishi, and Rirkrit Tiravanija
DATES & VENUE
March 13th through April 17th, 2015; hours: 9am-6pm
Chi Art Space, 8/F, New World Tower 2, 18 Queen’s Road, Central, Hong Kong
OPENING RECEPTION & SPECIAL PERFORMANCE
Thursday, March 12th, 5-8pm, with a special performance by Rirkrit Tiravanija at 6-7pm.
The performance continues from March 13th through 15th, 1-2pm daily.
ARTISTS’ TALK
aaajiao, Cheng Ran, Koo Jeong A and Ken Okiishi with Para/Site executive director and curator Cosmin Costinas
Thursday, March 12th, 2015, 4pm
18/F, New World Tower 2, 18 Queen’s Road, Central, Hong Kong
“The Tell-Tale Heart” is a group exhibition co-hosted by K11 Art Foundation, Pilar Corrias Gallery (London) and Leo Xu Projects (Shanghai). The show features recent and commissioned new works from a lineup of internationally acclaimed artists: aaajiao, Ian Cheng, Cheng Ran, Guo Hongwei, Koo Jeong A, Ken Okiishi, and Rirkrit Tiravanija.
The exhibition takes its title from a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. First published in 1843, “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a first person account of events in which the narrator wavers between the real and the imaginary, his state of mind leading to contradictions and disparate interpretations of the truth and a warped sense of reality. In the story, the sound of his own beating heart betrays the narrator’s inability to distinguish between the unfolding of events and his own interpretation, ultimately confirming the power the mind can hold in the construal of life.
“The Tell-Tale Heart” brings together works, which deconstruct the ways in which experiences are relayed through storytelling: how new technologies and media have altered the way of constructing and representing narratives; how the power of the mind and affect lead the perception and interpretation of reality as well as the recording of daily activities and gestures punctuating mundane life.
New York based Ken Okiishi’s work “gesture/data” (2015) considers the formal properties and the traces of sources of stored memory, along with the new ways we have of reading memory and images through gestures. By processing and transferring footage across different formats, Okiishi questions the very nature of data and its historical makeup – the image breaks down and is corrupted into its jittering essential elements of colour and pixel. The flatscreen surface becomes a support for both the video it transmits from within and the gestural marks of oil paint. Okiishi works in the studio with the flatscreens-as-canvases powered on, with the footage playing while he is painting a constantly mobile ground.
Known for her minimal and poetic installations, Koo Jeong A’s work could be described as a metaphor for existing in the world. Using commonplace objects in precise spatial arrangements, the artist conjures new perspectives, which arise from simple acts of looking, listening or walking. First presented as part of her solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, “Untitled” (2012) is a group of watercolours depicting mountain tops in colorful hues, which the artist made while taking long walks in the Alps. The daily act of walking is revealed through the physical tracing of an experience in time.
Working with data and algorithms, Shanghai artist aaajiao presents the video installation “Meta” (2013). Mounted in a vintage wood frame with electronic components exposed, the video adopts the form of computer representation from 1970s sci-fi pictures to convey an abstract animation of the processing of data. “Anomaly” (2015) is a set of sculptures in the shape of meteors or splitting cells, celebrating the dark fascination of bio and physical mutation shared by sci-fi imagination.
Ian Cheng uses gaming technology to explore the mutation of complex behavioural patterns and the development of human consciousness. First premiered as part of his solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 2015, the animated simulation “Something Thinking of You” (2015) examines the boundaries of intellect. The work addresses the relation between consciousness and intelligence, considering the conscious human mind as the result of an evolutionary process rather than something inherently human.
Beijing-based Guo Hongwei adopts a more analog approach to re-contextualize the new visual and performative presentation in a digital age. “Walking” (2013) is a short film appropriating Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg’s first feature film “Stereo”. Guo Hongwei collaged the original film frame by frame, transposing a former story of commune living that explores sex and life into a psychedelic journey across landscape and architecture. For “It Must be a Good Work” (2013) the artist adopts a similar technique in transforming a manga publication into a theatrical play enacted by performers. During the exhibition a live performance featuring a set of actors will narrate the conversations from the book.
Hangzhou-based Cheng Ran will present “HIT-OR-MISS-IST” (2013), a LP produced using ambient recordings made by the artist during his travel on the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, and in the cities of Amsterdam and Paris. Time and space, carried on the different sounds, are interwoven: day and night, city and wilderness merge into one. Natural sounds are repeatedly amplified and reproduced in real space and in emptiness as an exploration of lost time and kept memories and the relationship between truth and nothingness. “HIT-OR-MISS-IST” is a collection of dreamt-up words by Cheng Ran to describe an aimless state of continuous extension and growth.
Interested in exploring the potentials of human interaction around the ritual of consuming and sharing food, internationally renowned artist Rirkrit Tiravanija transforms the gallery into a convivial space, where each day at lunchtime dim sums will be served. Tiravanija looks at food in an ‘anthropological and archeological way’, approaching the cultural layers that make up a local tradition. The work becomes a platform that fosters an experimental relationship between the audience and the work as lived experience.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Koo Jeong A (b. 1967 in Seoul, Korea) Lives and works everywhere. Her work will be included in the forthcoming exhibition Repetition and Difference, Jewish Museum, New York (March 2015). Major solo exhibitions of her work include: Koo Jeong A: 16:07, Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf (2012); Constellation Congress, DIA Art Foundation, Dia:Beacon, Beacon, The Dan Flavin Art Insitute, Bridgehampton (2010); Koo Jeong A, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2008). Significant group exhibitions include: Burning Down the House – 10th Gwangju Biennale, curated by Jessica Morgan, Gwangju (2014); Real DMZ Project 2014, Cheorwon-gun, Gangwon-do, Seoul (2014); Media Landscape – Zone East, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool (2010); International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, Venice (2009, 2003, 1995); Il tempo del postino, Manchester International Festival, Manchester (2007); On Reason and Emotion, 14th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney (2004); Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated), Guggenheim Museum, New York (2004); Manifesta 3, Ljubljana (2000); Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (1997); Do it, curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Independent Curators Incorporated, New York (1997); Manifesta 1, Rotterdam (1996).
Aaajiao (b. 1984 in Xi’an, China) is the cyber persona of Shanghai-based Xu Wenkai. Teacher of media art at several academies in China as well as creator and owner of various websites for internet interventions and information-sharing, aaajiao has been included in numerous exhibitions with institutions and festivals, for instance, 21st Century Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2014); The National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2014); Momentum, Berlin (2014); The West Bund Architecture and Contemporary Art Biennale, Shanghai (2013); Videotage, Hong Kong (2011); Transmediale, Berlin (2010), etc. He received the Jury Prize from Art Sanya Awards 2014 and was nominated for the first edition of OCAT—Pierre Huber Art Prize in 2014.
Ian Cheng (b. 1984, Los Angeles, USA) lives and works in New York. Cheng graduated with a dual BA in Cognitive Science and Art Practice from UC Berkeley, California, in 2006 and went on to receive his MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University, New York, in 2009. Upcoming solo exhibitions include Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2015); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2015). Recent solo exhibitions include: Ian Cheng, La Triennale di Milano, Milan (2014); Baby feat. Bali, Standard (Oslo), Oslo (2013); Frieze Frame, London (2013); Entropy Wrangler, Off Vendome, Düsseldorf (2013); and This Papaya Tastes Perfect, Formalist Sidewalk Poetry Club, Miami Beach (2011). Recent group exhibitions include: Phantom Limbs, Pilar Corrias Gallery, London (2014); the 12th Lyon Biennial (2013); Freak Out, Greene Naftali Gallery, New York (2013); ProBio, Expo1, MoMA PS1, New York (2013); and A Disagreeable Object, Sculpture Center, New York (2012).
Cheng Ran (b. 1981 in Inner Mongolia) lives and works between cities, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing and Amsterdam. Cheng Ran has exhibited recently at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2014); Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2014); the 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale, Shenzhen (2014); Whitebox Art Center, New York (2014); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2013); Contemporary Arts Museum Houston & Asia Society Texas Center, Texas (2013); Kino der Kunst, Munich (2013); The 26th European Media Art Festival, Osnabrueck (2013); “Video Art in China – MADATAC”, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid (2011); Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2011), etc. Cheng was nominated for “Absolut Art Award” in 2013 and the first edition of OCAT – Pierre Huber Art Prize, and won the “Best Video Artist 2011”of the art magazine Radian.
Guo Hongwei (b. 1982 in Sichuan and currently based in Beijing, China) has shown solo exhibitions at: Leo Xu Projects, Shanghai (2013); Chambers Fine Art, Beijing (2012 and 2009), and New York (2012 and 2010). He has participated widely in group exhibitions, held at such venues as: Tampa Museum of Art, FL (2014); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2013); Yuan Space, Beijing (2013); Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai (2012); Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai (2012); James Cohan Gallery, New York (2011 and 2010), and Shanghai (2009); the Pacific Heritage Museum, San Francisco (2009); Today Art Museum, Beijing (2007); Shanghai Zendai MoMA, Shanghai (2006).
Ken Okiishi (b. 1978 in Ames, Iowa, USA) lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include: Screen Presence, Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Ken Okiishi, Reena Spaulings, New York (2014); gesture/data, Pilar Corrias, London (2013); [List Projects] Ken Okiishi, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2013); The Very Quick of the Word, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard Center for Curatorial Studies (2013); Gino / Marcel Duchamp on Streeteasy.com, Mathew, Berlin (2012); (Goodbye to), Take Ninagawa, Tokyo (2012); (Goodbye to) Manhattan, Alex Zachary, New York (2010); and (Goodbye to) Manhattan, Mehringdamm 72, Berlin (2010). Recent group exhibitions include: Cut to Swipe, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015); Whitney Biennial 2014, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2014); Frieze Projects, Frieze Art Fair, London (2013); Speculations on Anonymous Materials, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel 2013); Version Control, Arnolfini, Bristol (2013); Frozen Lakes, Artists Space, New York (2013); Liebe ist Kälter als das Kapital [Love is Colder than Capital], Kunsthaus Bregenz (2013); Perfect Man II, White Columns, New York (2012); The Log-0-Rithmic, GAMeC, Bergamo (2012).
Rirkrit Tiravanija (b. 1961 in Buenos Aires, Argentina). Tiravanija studied at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto, the Banff Center School of Fine Arts, Canada, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York. He has exhibited at museums and galleries worldwide. Major solo retrospectives have been held at: Museum of Modern Art, New York (1997); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1999); Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo (2002); Chiang Mai University Art Museum (2004); Museum Bojmans Van Beuningen (2004); Museé de la Ville de Paris (2005), and Kunsthalle Bielefield (2010). Tiravanija’s work has been recognised with numerous prestigious awards including the Benesse by the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum in Japan and the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Lucelia Artist Award, the Hugo Boss Prize from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2004) and the 2010 Absolut Art Award.
ABOUT K11 ART FOUNDATION
Founded by Adrian Cheng in 2010, the K11 Art Foundation (KAF) is a registered not-for-profit organisation that supports the development of Chinese contemporary art from greater China by providing a creative platform that nurtures artistic talents and brings them to the international stage.
The foundation has embarked on many international collaborations amongst them the Palais de Tokyo and Musée Marmottan in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Armory Show in New York, to showcase Chinese talents and the voice of the young generation.
With 11 studios for its artist-in-residence programmes in the K11 Art Village in Wuhan, KAF serves as the unique incubating springboard for young and emerging contemporary Chinese artists to create new and meaningful works. Beyond traditional art spaces, K11 Art Village serves as innovative exchange platforms between local and international artists.
Through research, initiatives and partnerships, the K11 Art Foundation offers to the Chinese public a diverse range of programmes and exhibitions fostering appreciation of arts and culture.
For further information of the show, please contact info@leoxuprojects.com or phone: +86-21-3461 1245.