That Has Been, And May Be Again
June 11th through August 21st, 2016
Para Site Hong Kong
22/F, Wing Wah Industrial Building
677 King’s Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong
Liu Chuang’s “Love Story” is on view in “That Has Been, and May Be Again”, an exhibition curated by Leo Li Chen and Wu Mo and which is the second in a series presented by emerging Hong Kong curators. The show includes new and existing works by Chen Qiulin, Hu Jieming, Jiang Zhi, Leung Chi Wo, Li Jin, Li Jinghu, Liu Chuang, Liu Ding, Ma Liuming, Qian Weikang, Wang Youshen, Yan Lei, Yin Xiuzhen, Zheng Bo, and Zhu Jia.
The exhibition draws the attention to the collective anxiety and unease in China of the 1990s, following the failure of the student movement in 1989. This period in China appears on the surface to be “fractured”, with previous experiences, political, economic, and everyday, gradually losing their significance. Contemporary artists, who had rapidly accomplished their modernistic transformation in the 1980s, had to seek or create brand new experiences. In the process, the forces of globalization and the internal discussions around “modernism/post-modernism” shaped the tensions connected to the production, mobilization, and institutionalization of art. The translation and introduction of the concepts “to curate” and “curator” in this period, added new significance and complexity to contemporary Chinese art.