Double Infinity: Collaboration between Van Abbemuseum and Arthub Asia
Press preview: April 29th at 3:00 pm
Opening: April 29th at 4:00 pm
Location: Dutch Culture Center
800 Changde Lu, Shanghai
“Today, tomorrow, but not too far”
Double Infinity, a joint initiative by the Van Abbemuseum and Arthub Asia, will open at the Dutch Culture Center in Shanghai, parallel to the World Expo 2010. Double Infinity is a collaborative encounter between a north-western European art museum and an Asian art initiative; it will comprise of an exhibition, a performance series, a lecture program and a publication. Double Infinity marks the first time that a European museum opens itself and its collection to the responses of artists living and working in China–responses that form a host of enriching, humorous and critical insights.
The festive opening of the program on the 29th of April, 2010, will be conducted by Eric Verwaal, the Consul-General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Shanghai and will feature a performance by Zhou Xiaohu. On the 15th and 16th of May, an extensive public program with discussions and performances by Julika Rudelius and Surasi Kusolwong, among others, will be held at the theater in the Dutch Culture Centre, Shanghai.
Exhibition and Performances
The Double Infinity project loops around and crosses over itself time and again. It is at one and the same moment an exhibition, a performance series, a lecture programme, a publication, a promotional tool, a celebration, a collaboration and a playful look at international relations.
The project is organised on occasion of John Körmeling’s design of the Dutch Pavilion, Happy Street, at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. It seeks to bring two states and cities–China and the Netherlands, Shanghai and Eindhoven–into an imagined dialogue with each other, drawing on their everyday realities and uniqueness. Simultaneously, Double Infinity focuses on artists’ visions of cities and citizenship, real and imagined architecture and the claims of cosmopolitanism made by world exhibitions throughout history and across continents.
Double Infinity is the result of a collaborative encounter between a European museum, the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and the Shanghai-based art initiative, Arthub Asia. The works exhibited are in part drawn from the Van Abbemuseum collection and in part produced by artists at the invitation of Arthub Asia.
The original inspiration for Double Infinity lies in the artistic approach of John Körmeling. His wide-ranging, cross-disciplinary, unconventional stance towards architecture, urban planning and design has led to a particular selection criteria for the works from the Van Abbemuseum collection and from the participating artists from China and the rest of Asia.
The work of Thai artist, Surasi Kusolwong, for example will transform the exhibition space into a playground for a peculiar “treasure hunt.” The back of the gallery will be filled with tons of thread waste, into which a gold necklace with the Chinese symbol for “Double Happiness” will be hidden every week–available to only a few lucky members in the audience, who manage to find it. Kusolwong uses the current world economic crisis as the underlying motive for developing this installation, which connects the traditional value of gold and Chinese culture, to shifting the focus of the media from economic affairs to art.
Another example is Comfortable Collective, an artist collective based in Shanghai set up by young Shanghainese artists and in this edition includes Gao Mingyan, Jin Shan, Li Mu and Maya Kramer. Together, they focus on the cultural conflict that is inherent to artistic methods of working site-specifically, inciting viewers to participate by physically experiencing the works of art. Comfortable is concerned with relational aspects of art-making and the role of the collection within an art system. In this case, the group has responded to the Van Abbemuseum’s collection by manipulating, copying, molding and dropping works from the collection, while laboriously adding further layers to the finished art objects. Their actions make us wonder, how can an artist’s attitude influence the perception of an entire collection?
Lectures and performances
The performance and lecture programs present a mix of European and Asian responses to the project’s main concepts.
The weekend of the 15th and 16th of May (11:00 am to 5:00 pm) is dedicated to the extensive public program the Last Two Decades Revisited, which takes its inspiration from the alternative timeline of Chinese art history and the historical significance, but also current fragility of cultural exchanges. Participants include: Zhang Peili, Fei Dawei, Charles Esche, Li Zhenhua, Alexander Brandt, Hu Jueming, Davide Quadrio, Song Haidong, Carol Lu, Jin Shan, Defne Ayas, Chen Shaoxiong and more.
Performances will take place at several periods during the Double Infinity exhibition:
April 29th: The Party Camp Project by Zhou Xiaohu
During the opening of the exhibition Zhou Xiaohu invites all local and international guests as well as party waiters and technical staff to join the opening, if they follow a series of orders made by the artist.
May 15th: Rites of Passage by Julika Rudelius
Originally conceived as a film, Rudelius will organise a live performance around the notion of translation. Her work will be simultaneously translated into Chinese, Dutch and English, in the live context of the performance, creating a continuous shifting of meaning in the work.
May 16th: Golden Ghost (Double happiness comes to the door) by Surasi Kusolwong
Surasi Kusolwong installs a whole room full of waste thread material in which a golden necklace is hidden every week and can be found by lucky visitors. The finder is able to keep the necklace, making the “game” a truly worthwhile experience, playing with the extremes of value within society.
Opening hours:
Tuesday through Sunday from 11:00 am to 7:00 pm
Location: Dutch Culture Center
800 Changde Road, Shanghai
The Publication, designed by Dutch designer, Joost Grootens, seeks to map a world of crossovers and collisions between art and urban design starting from both Eindhoven and Shanghai. Through photographic essays Jiang Jun and Ingmar Swalue conceptually and aesthetically locate these strange, but close sites for our comparison.
The book includes contributions by the artists and curators of Double Infinity and an interview with Pieter van Wesemael, an urban designer and Professor at the Technical University Eindhoven in Architectural Design and Urban Culture. “Today, tomorrow, but not too far” is a quote by Van Wesemael, which he considers a more pragmatic realism in the 21st century World Expo, than the focus on history in the 19th century and the focus on the future in the 20th century.
Publication Participants: Joost Grootens (design), Clare Butcher (editor), Ingmar Swalue (photography), Jiang Jun (text and photography), texts by the curators Charles Esche, Defne Ayas, Davide Quadrio and Remco de Blaaij
Participating Artists: Lara Almacergui, Johanna Billing, Stanley Brouwn, Comfortable Collective (Jin Shan, Gao Mingyan, Li Mu, Maya Kramer), Cao Fei, Alicia Framis, Liu Gang, HHD_FUN (Wang Zhenfei and Wang Luming), Job Koelewijn, John Körmeling, Surasi Kusolwong, El Lissitzky, David Maljkovic, Julika Rudelius, Speedism, Xu Tan, Zhou Xiaohu, Xijing Men (Chen Shaoxiong, Gimhongsok, Tsuyoshi Ozawa)
Performances by:
Surasi Kusolwong, Julika Rudelius and Zhou Xiaohu
Curators:
Charles Esche, Defne Ayas, Davide Quadrio and Remco de Blaaij
Partners:
Netherlands China Arts Foundation, Gemeente Eindhoven, Dutch Culture Centre, DutchDFA (Dutch Design Fashion and Architecture) and Shama Xujiahui
The Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven is one of the first public museums for contemporary art to be established in Europe. The museum’s collection of around 2,700 works of art includes key works and archives by Lissitzky, Picasso, Kokoschka, Chagall, Beuys, McCarthy, Daniëls and Körmeling. The museum has an experimental approach towards art’s role in society. Openness, hospitality and knowledge exchange are important. They challenge themselves and their visitors to think about art and its place in the world, covering a range of subjects, including the role of the collection as a cultural ‘memory’ and the museum as a public site. International collaboration and exchange have made the Van Abbemuseum a place for creative cross-fertilisation and a source of surprise, inspiration and imagination for its visitors and participants.
Van Abbemuseum
Bilderdijklaan 10, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
For more information, please visit here.
For the editors:
For more information and photographs, please visit here.
Or contact:
Ilse Cornelis, Marketing and Communication
Phone: +31 (0)40 238 1019
Mobile: + 31 (0)6 12995794
Mail: i.cornelis@vanabbemuseum.nl
