Interactive Performance Art Piece & Installation Of Sculptures Curated By Martina Ziesse#
Running for three months in the atrium of the Opposite House in Beijing (previously on Jing Daily), the performance art piece and sculpture installation "I-Ching Together" brings guests face-to-face with new work by one of China's preeminent contemporary artists, Huang Rui. Co-founder of the short-lived but highly influential Stars (星星) group of artists, which formed in 1978 and included members like Wang Keping and Ai Weiwei, Huang remains a key force in Beijing's art world, continually pushing the boundaries between performance, painting, installation and sculpture, taking several art forms on at once.
The culmination of years of preparation, I-Ching Together is one of Huang Rui's most ambitious efforts. Deriving from Huang's study of the I-Ching (Book of Changes) since the 1980s, the exhibition represents Huang's interpretation of the divinatory symbols of the work, presented in a multifarious range of visual forms. Ranging from two-dimensional pieces to sculpture and idiosyncratic performance, the exhibition on show through April follows Huang's performance last month at the Opposite House. At this stop on the traveling I-Ching Together "tour," Huang invited 64 volunteers to take part in an interactive art piece representing the symbolic hexagrams found in the I-Ching text, culminating in installation pieces constructed from black-and-white umbrellas. In addition to Beijing, last year Huang held similar "performances" in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Shenzhen.
Along with umbrella assemblages, I-Ching Together at the Opposite House will include installations of Huang's three-dimensional representations of the Chinese characters for "woman" (女人) and "all for one" (我为人人), originally created in 2006.
Infused with the combination of high-brow intellectualism and irony that characterizes much of Huang Rui's canon, I-Ching Together is curated by Beijing-based art historian and writer Martina Ziesse, whose previous work includes the 2009 “Käthe Kollwitz and her Influence on Chinese Art” exhibition and the 2010 Lucien Clergue exhibition at ARTMIA Foundation in Beijing.
I-Ching Together at the Opposite House#
Running through April 2012
Building 1, 11 Sanlitun Beilu, Chaoyang district, Beijing
北京市朝阳区三里屯北路11号
