Exhibition explores dialogic space and the unknown
The latest exhibition at the Rockbund Art Museum, “Walking on the Fade Out Lines,” has managed to gather 23 artists to showcase 30 of their works selected from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection, including paintings, interactive installations, photos and videos.
The first thing greeting visitors is a large yellow bear crawling on the floor. Covered in chicken down feathers, the bear art named “Have You Seen Me Before?” was created by Italian artist Paola Pivit, who plays with viewers’ expectation and feeling, erasing the boundary between reality and fiction.
In the painting “Love Is Great,” British artist Damian Hirst has pasted colorful butterfly samples on a turquoise surface, indicating the fragility of life and the conflicts of existence.
A simple conference table and chairs take up a corner of the exhibition hall, turning the area into a three-dimensional model of a city. Built on daily household items, the model “Nocturnal City Scene” by Dutch artist Mark Manders is locked inside a showcase and only open on one side. By changing the direction of observation, viewers get to reflect upon the environment in which they are situated.
According to Larys Frogier, director of the Rockbund Art Museum, the exhibition “voluntarily erases the already made delineations, stereotypes and dichotomies, such as local vs global, in vs out, national vs international, masculine vs feminine, and east-west vs north-south.”
Different perspectives also bring about reflections on numerous issues, such as cultural memory, urban transformations and identity, Frogier said.
Egyptian Hassan Khan, an artistic pioneer in underground music and experimental video art, has made a sound installation named “DOM-TAK-TAK-DOM-TAK,” which brings viewers onto the streets of Cairo through sound and light.
The video “Traveling Amazonia” recounts French artist Marine Hugonnier’s summer journey along the Trans-Amazon Highway in Brazil in 2006. In the film, the process of rail-building alternates with the voices of several inhabitants.
At the exhibition viewers can also find works by Song Tao, whose film “From the Last Century” has recorded the changing urban landscape in rapidly developing Shanghai in the early 2000s.
“We hope to open a dialogic space in the epistemological world and spark processes in which people explore the unknown,” says Hsieh Feng-Rong, the curator.
A series of public events will be held during the exhibition to further explore the issue. For more information, check www.rockbundartmuseum.org.
Exhibition details
Date: Through May 27 (closed on Mondays), 10am-6pm
Venue: Rockbund Art Museum
Address: 20 Huqiu Rd