Arthub Favorite: Week 32
The Grand Voyage: A Man Upside Down
Duration: August 20 – November 20, 2016
Opening: August 20, 2016 16:00
Venue: OCAT Shanghai, Space C, 30 Wen’an Road, Shanghai
Artist: Guo Xi and Zhang Jianling
The Grand Voyage ended almost four centuries ago. It is hard to imagine that at that time humans were able to build such extensive networks and vessels for passage. Now we have embarked on a “New Grand Voyage” – society’s exploration into space; and yet, we seem to have tapped into so little of the vast universe beyond us, despite civilization’s advanced technological capabilities. Upon first reading GUO Xi and ZHANG Jianling’s title, we at Arthub thought they might be exploring the complexities of the stars and the universe above us. But the duo has returned to the sea – a feat few choose to now take.
Join the artists for the opening of The Grand Voyage: A Man Upside Down at OCAT Shanghai next week. The exhibition will recreate the mesmerizing vertigo of space – the feeling of a man upside down – through multi-channel videos and mechanical installations.
In the summer of 2014, supported by Imagokinetics, Guo and Zhang began a long-term collaboration: The Grand Voyage, which unfolded in an 86 day world cruise on “Costa Atlantica” from March to May, 2015. Before departure, they wrote and released twelve prophecies that they believed would happen along the route; the stories not only reflect potential routes to the theme, but also serve as an index leading to infinite texts and endless interpretations. From March to May, tracing the sensory experience and mysterious disappearance of Bas Jan Ader and Arthur Cravan, their journey searched for vanished gazes and solitary figures that once reached out to tangible infinity then disappeared in the ocean. As witnesses, the artists brought back to the continent visual testimonies that they collected along the way.
Since 2014, the unfolding of The Grand Voyage stems from a literary approach, that tested the waters at various venues such as, the 80 WSE Space in New York, Chronus Art Center (online project), Shanghai ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai Rockbund Art Museum, and Hanart T.Z. Art Gallery.
At these different exhibition spaces, the artists gradually unveiled the labyrinth-esque narrative in presenting the “constellation” among texts, images and objects unpacked through the stories of one thousand characters and their respective parcels. The various exhibition sites are comparable to the chapters in a travel novel, where fragments of the countless pieces of figures and artworks are dispersed and may be identified by the naked eye; at the same time, the artists have embedded various invisible clues in each exhibition and among themselves, building liaison between the works of art and the exhibition, allowing them to reflect and resonate with each other. In which, the characters are the evidence and ramification of their predictions, manifested through various incarnations, in particular, “obsessions” have come forth as one of the embedded clues. These invisible clues connect the dots among the stars scattered in a “constellation” that produce meaning. The exhibition welcomes the viewers to embark on a game of puzzles through their experience of the works of art, and through their arbitrary guesses, part of the hidden clues may be revealed for future exhibitions.
Support: New Century Art Foundation
Object List from A Man Upside Down:
1. Furniture moves with the ocean waves in his cabin, sliding attentively and crashing violently in the three meters long video projection.
2. He lost consciousness next to different furniture then woke up leaning on different wooden legs, uncertain of his position in the space of a two meter long video projection.
3. An armchair is approaching super typhoon “Dolphin”; a red curly hair is quivering in the cushion woven with orange and brown fiber.
4. A transparent wine bottle adorned with blue English letters is lit up by a beam of a mini projector.
5. In his telephone recording with the night shift telephone operator every time he was drunk, he repeatedly emphasized his fascination with dizziness, until both of them came up with an unconventional story.
6. A black and white photograph is the only historical record, according to reports from that time, the deflected light transformed from deep blue, golden yellow, and eventually culminated in brilliant creamy white.
7. A swinging light.
About the Artists
Guo Xi
Guo Xi’s practice draws upon the ideologies through which people perceive and interpret their world, most specifically, the toughest-to-crack nut, grown out of the convergence of these ideologies. By means of a dramatized sense of humor, Xi attempts to soften, or even break open this nutshell, such that a trace of absurdity and uneasiness is introduced into his viewers’ everyday lives. He likens an artist’s work to the act of “piercing”, creating pores on the hard husk of ideologies, through which people are given a chance to glimpse the truth hidden within. In Guo’s point of view, visual form is but a medium for the transmission of messages. He utilizes an extensive variety of artistic forms, including installation, painting, performance, sculpture, text, etc. in the attempt to convey his messages as faithfully as possible.
After graduating from the Department of New Media at the China Academy of Art in 2010, Guo joined a two-year program at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, Netherlands as an artist-in-residence. In 2015, he graduated from New York University with an MA in Studio Art.
Zhang Jianling
Zhang Jianling graduated from Wuhan University in 2008, and then studied at the Institute of Contemporary Art and Social Thoughts within the School of Intermedia Art at the China Academy of Art, where she obtained her MA in 2013. She now lives in Shanghai. Zhang has taken on many curatorial roles, among them: Tales from the Taiping Era,co-curator, Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing (2014); One Meter Theater,executive curator, Imagokinetics, Hangzhou (2013); Limited Knowledge,executive curator, City University of Hong Kong, HK (2013); Greenbox:Remapping—the Space of Media Reality, co-curator, Media City Research Center, Hangzhou (2013); The Surprise of Existence—A Moment of Youth Image,executive curator, Lianzhou Foto (2012); Limited Knowledge, executivecurator, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou (2012).