"Wild Cinema": XU ZHEN®, Lu Pingyuan, Slime Engine, Feng Mengbo

 Wild Cinema 

Exhibition Period： 2020.6.12 - 8.31

Xu Zhen, Untitled, 2007, Steel, tempered glass, fiberglass, silicone, and etc., 296 x 200 x 1012 cm each   

Untitled is an installation of colossal volume, presenting a dinosaur halved and placed into two vitrines (10 × 2 × 3m each) respectively. Modeled primarily with sculpture techniques, the enormous dinosaur was stuffed with animal viscera by the artist, whose design invites his audience to navigate through the work. The existence of this piece, in terms of its art form, refers precisely to the internationally acclaimed contemporary artwork The Shark (as well as Mother and Child Divided) by Damien Hirst. If the British artist has redefined the definition and value of contemporary art by displaying animal specimens preserved in formaldehyde, then it is not unfair to say that the pastiche by Xu Zhen, who follows his visual presentation faithfully, serves as a retort towards the pieces that have gone down in art history. Back in 2007, Xu exhibited Untitled in a show entitled NONO. "I am quite satisfied with the work, for it is so abundantly boring", said the artist commenting on his own production. In this sense, perhaps the articulation of boredom is clearly expressing the “vain” and the uncertainty of value judgment in the rapid development of globalization.

XUZHEN SUPERMARKET is an art project conceived by XU ZHEN®. In the seemingly everyday supermarket space, the items for sale are all empty goods with intact packaging. Initially launched at Miami Art Basel in 2007, the project was featured in several gallery shows, museum exhibitions, and art fairs, including ShanghArt Singapore, Seoul Museum of Art, James Cohan Gallery, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art as well as Long Museum in Shanghai, and has been the subject of an in-depth discussion in the BBC documentary series Pop Art. In 2016, XUZHEN SUPERMARKET was presented on Yuyuan Road in Shanghai, and at Sadie Coles HQ in London in 2017, which both had sparked media attention and public discussion. In the Sotheby’s Hong Kong 2018 Autumn Auction, XUZHEN SUPERMARKET was sold as the first conceptual lot in Asia, with the price of 2 million HKD which was above its auction estimate. 

XU ZHEN®, XUZHEN SUPERMARKET, 2007/2020, Cashier register, counter, shelves, refrigerator, multiple products packages, dimension variable

Exhibition view of "Wild Cinema", TX Huaihai, Shanghai, 2020 

Every item sold in XUZHEN SUPERMARKET is empty, and yet the packages remain intact, which subverts people’s everyday experience and imagination. Through such differences and contrast, the “supermarket” explains the logic behind commercial capital, and is also in hope to awaken people to contemplate the forms of art and the essence of life.

 Lu Pingyuan 

Lu Pingyuan, Saturday-Painted Face Gelato 6.6, 2020, Fiberglass, steel, 677 x 345 x 70 cm

Exhibition view of "Wild Cinema", TX Huaihai, Shanghai, 2020 

Lu Pingyuan has always focused on objects that have been given anthropomorphic aspects, life and spiritual meaning in the contemporary era. In religion, Saturday represents the day when God created man. Nowadays, Saturdays are suitable for consumption. By collecting and magnifying consumer goods in daily life with anthropomorphic characteristics, Lu Pingyuan admires this kind of creational behavior of human beings.

 Slime Engine 

Ocean is a first-person art experience game developed by Slime Engine. In the game, players would soar above the vast ocean and have an astonishing audiovisual experience brought by over a hundred artworks.

 Feng Mengbo 

Feng Mengbo, Long March: Restart Arcade Version, 2012, 156 x 80 x 80 cm

Long March: Restart is a videogame Feng Mengbo created based on Long March: Game Over, which is a series of oil paintings that combined the Long March (a famous Chinese military campaign, from 1934 to 1936, during which Mao Zedong led Red Army troops from Jiangxi to Shaanxi) with elements from popular videogames. The paintings are more like videogame screen with digitized Red Army soldier that throws Coca-Cola cans as grenades at his enemies. Long March: Restart continued this style and became a single-player positioned video game. In 2008, this work was displayed for the first time on an 80-foot-long digital wall in MoMA PS1, New York. Viewers could take over a wireless controller and control the Red Army Soldier through 14 stages, which is familiar to Super Mario Bros. The work on display is Long March: Restart Arcade Version.

 About XU ZHEN® 

XU ZHEN®, founded by artist Xu Zhen in 2013, is the flagship art brand of MadeIn Company. Born in 1977, Xu Zhen is a leading Chinese artist and curator, and the founder of MadeIn Company. XU ZHEN® is committed to art creation and cutting-edge culture development. XU ZHEN® is one such initiative to offer spiritual aspirations and life experiences of the finest quality through the appreciation and collection of artworks and events produced by the brand.

Xu Zhen was born in 1977, and lives and works in Shanghai. Xu Zhen has been considered as an iconic figure in Chinese contemporary art. In 2004, Xu won the prize for ‘Best Artist’ at the China Contemporary Art Award. His practice covers various media such as installations, video, painting and performance, etc. 

Xu Zhen has exhibited internationally, at museums and biennales, such as, Venice Biennale (2001, 2005), The Museum of Modern Art (New York, 2004), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2005), MoMA PS1 (New York, 2006), Tate Liverpool (2007), Hayward Gallery (London, 2012), Lyon Biennial (2013), Armory Show (New York, 2014), Long Museum (Shanghai 2015), Al Riwaq Art Center (Qatar, 2016), Sydney Biennial (2016), Guggenheim Museum (New York, 2017), Sharjah Biennial (2019), The Museum of Contemporary Art（Los Angeles, 2019）, among others. 

Aside from being an artist, Xu Zhen is also a curator. He co-curated together with other artists major exhibitions in Shanghai and was one of the initiators of Art-Ba-Ba (www.art-ba-ba.com), a leading online forum for discussion and critique of contemporary art in Shanghai, in 2006. In 2009, Xu Zhen established ‘MadeIn Company’, a contemporary art creation corporate, focused on the production of creativity, and devoted to the research of contemporary culture’s infinite possibilities. In 2013, MadeIn Company launched XU ZHEN® which is committed to art creation and cutting-edge culture development. In 2014, MadeIn Company established MadeIn Gallery and in November 2016 launched the first “Xu Zhen Store” in Shanghai. 

 About Lu Pingyuan 

Lu Pingyuan was born in 1984 in Zhejiang province, China, lives and works in Shanghai. Lu Pingyuan‘s artworks involve a variety of media, including texts, installations, videos, paintings and others. For a few years, Lu Pingyuan concentrated his practice on the writing of “stories” as a unique type of media for art creation. These short “stories” significantly broaden the artworks’ state of existence in the real world, extend the inherent spirit of art itself. His works have been exhibited extensively in both national and international museums and biennales.

Recent solo exhibitions include: “KOLA”, chi K11 Art Museum, Shanghai, China, 2019; “La Malle aux Trésors”, Mansion de Hermès, Shanghai, China, 2018; “Lost Child”, ONEHOME Art Hotel, Shanghai, China; “HOME ALONe”, MadeIn Gallery, Shanghai, 2017; “Hidden Treasure”, The Galaxy Museum of Contemporary Art, Chongqing, China, 2017; “James Stanley-The Seventh Earl of Derby”, Center for Chinese Contemporary Art, United Kingdom, 2016; “ON KAWARA”, MadeIn Gallery, Shanghai, 2016; “Unexpected Discoveries”, MadeIn Gallery, Shanghai, 2015; “Time Capsule”, Gallery Box, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2011. He participated in numerous group shows among which are “Wild Cinema”, TX Huaihai, Shanghai, China, 2020; “Wild Metropolis”, Powerlong Museum, Shanghai, China, 2019; “Advent: Inventing Landscape, Producing the Earth”, Qianshao Contemporary Art Center, Shanghai, China, 2019; “Extreme Mix-Guangzhou Airport Biennale”, Guangzhou, China, 2019; “Land of the Lustrous”, UCCA Dune, Beidaihe, China, 2019;  “Edge of the Wonderland-Thailand Art Biennale”, Krabi, Thailand, 2018; “Artist is Present”, Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China, 2018; “City Unbounded-China·Shanghai Jing’an International Sculpture Project”, Jing’an Sculpture Park, Shanghai, China, 2018; “This is Shanghai”, Cunard Building, Liverpool, UK, 2018; “Long March Project: Building Code Violations III - Special Economic Zone”, Long March Space, Beijing, China, 2018; “Arts in Urban Cultures”, Taikoo Li Sanlitun, Beijing, China, 2018; “*underground-children-festival”, Para Site x Goethe-Institut Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China, 2018; “Animamix Biennale—Ballade”, Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, Shanghai, China; “PLAY”, MadeIn Gallery, Shanghai, China; “11th Shanghai Biennale”, Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China, 2016; “9th Liverpool Biennale”, Liverpool, England, 2016; “A Beautiful Disorder”, Cass Sculpture Foundation, England, 2016; “Mountain Sites: Views of Laoshan”, Si Fang Art Museum, Nanjing, China, 2016; “3rd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art”, Ural, Russia, 2015 etc. Lu Pingyuan was nominated for the 4th Art Sanya for the Young Chinese Artists Award and the First Porsche “Young Chinese Artist of the Year”.

Slime Engine founded in 2017, operated and curated by Li Hanwei, Liu Shuzhen and Fang Yang. Slime Engine is dedicated to the development of unprecedented art creation, exhibition curating and experience. Through communication and cooperation with artists, the use of virtual worlds that are not limited by time and space,  presenting a profuse contemporary art form.

Since 2017, Slime Engine has been organizing online exhibitions, including: Headlines, 2020; "Territory", 2020; "Slime Airline", 2019; "OCEAN", 2019; "Bysanz x 33EMYBW x Fang Yang", 2018; "Li Jingxiong & ChillChill", 2018; "Remote Sensing", 2018; "The Jurassic", 2018; The Hole, 2018; "Yourcraft", 2018; "James Turrell’s Meditation Space", 2018; "Norsmo Landfall", 2017 ; "The Space Station", 2017; "Baychimo", 2017; "Nuclear Magnetic Resonance", 2017.

Slime Engine has participated in exhibitions including “Wild Cinema”, TX Huaihai, Shanghai, 2020; “We=Link: Ten Easy Pieces”, Chronus Art Center, Shanghai, 2020; “Coordinates: QiaoTou”, Biennales of Urbanism/Architecture, Shenzhen, 2019; “The Process of Art: TOOLS AT WORK”, Power Station of Art, Shanghai, 2019; “Advent”, Qianshao Contemporary Art Center, Shanghai, 2019; “Copernicus”, E.M.Bannister Gallery of Rhode Island College, U.S, 2019; “Extreme Mix”, Guangzhou Airport Biennale, Guangzhou, 2019; “Infinite Games”, HOW Art Museum, Wenzhou, 2019; “Ocean”, MadeIn Gallery, Shanghai, 2019.

Feng Mengbo was born in Beijing in 1966, and graduated from the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1991. He is one of the first Chinese artists to have developed an interest in digital technology. As early as in the 1990s, he started to create interactive art. He participated in two consecutive editions of Documenta in Kassel. Feng is considered as a leading figure in media art in China, especially for the use of electronic games in his works. In recent years, his practice originally consisting of slides, electronic, virtual and digital media has returned to painting, photography and installation, he also collaborated with Wu Na, New Pants and other musicians in live electronic music performances.

Solo exhibitions include: "The Loudest is Silence", Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong, 2015; "My Private Museum", Shanghai Gallery of Art, 2012; "Not Too Late", Chambers Fine Art Gallery, Beijing, 2012; "Mengbo 2012", Today Art Museum, Beijing, 2011; "Feng Mengbo", PS1, New York, 2010. He has participated in: "Wild Cinema", TX Huaihai, Shanghai, 2020; "Infinite Games", HOW Museum (Wenzhou), Wenzhou, 2019; "One World Exposition 2.1: #like4like", K11, Hong Kong, 2017; "Information Sculpture Superhighway", MadeIn Gallery, Shanghai, 2016; "Gameplay", Num June Paik Art Center, Seoul, Korea, 2016; "Turning Point: Contemporary Art in China Since 2000", Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, 2016; "Gameplay", ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2013; Documenta XI, Kassel, Germany, 2002; Documenta X, Kassel, Germany, 1997.

 About MadeIn Gallery 

MadeIn Gallery was established in 2014 in Shanghai by the contemporary art creation and curating platform MadeIn Company, a corporation founded by international influential artist Xu Zhen.