Liang Yue: Easy Going
Qin Jin: For Those Who Are Superstitious, Sacrifice Is Real
Wang Shang: Mr. Chicxulub
September 20–November 2, 2014
Opening: Saturday, September 20, 2014, 17:30h
OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT)
OCT Loft
F2 Building
Enping Road, OCT
Nanshan District
Shenzhen
China
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10–17:30h
T +86 755 26915100
www.ocat.org.cn
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Support: Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Town Corporation Ltd.
The OCAT Youth Project, begun in 2010, is a program at the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal that focuses on young practitioners and provides a platform for leading ideas and work. The program invites dynamic artists, curators and critics to present their latest work, ideas and imaginings, and provides a professional public context for phases of work, even unfinished yet promising work, so that the creators can exhibit and look back on their own creations outside of their studios and computers.
The OCAT Youth Project turns its focus on young art workers, curators and researchers who possess a spirit of independent thought, presenting multi-perspective research, diverse values and working methods, and expressing them through the multiple dimensions of exhibition, discussion and publication. The 2014 OCAT Youth Project has invited artists Liang Yue, Qin Jin and Wang Shang to hold three separate solo exhibitions within the OCAT Shenzhen exhibition halls A and B. The three solo exhibitions are, respectively, Easy Going, on Shanghai artist Liang Yue; For Those Who Are Superstitious, Sacrifice Is Real, on Guangzhou artist Qin Jin; and Mr. Chicxulub, on Beijing artist Wang Shang.
The works presented in Liang Yue’s solo exhibition, Easy Going, will escape from the logic of categorization and arrangement based on such criteria as date and subject matter. The artist has selected past and recent works and arranged them together so that they provide mutual context for each other. The artist’s focus is on the experience of the viewer in the exhibition, as well as how their mindsets shift as they leave the exhibition. Liang Yue’s works stand up on the “everyday,” constantly drawing material from trends, discovering, excavating and capturing oft-overlooked everyday human behaviors. They extend this focus on the urban everyday into a gaze on the perpetual spectacle of nature, an account and pursuit of spontaneous circumstances and ideas. In Liang Yue’s video works, the artist is constantly simplifying and selecting from different photography and editing techniques, casting doubt on the so called “meaning and value” of art, and treating meaninglessness as the ultimate meaning in her creations.
In her solo exhibition For Those Who Are Superstitious, Sacrifice Is Real, Qin Jin presents video and performance installations she created between 2013 and 2014. The presentation of these works will revolve around Jean-François Millet’s The Angelus, discussing art as faith. “Its god-like light, illuminating the endless filth, decay and indecision. The truth exists in every long-winded statement, every breath of foul air, every trivial detail. It is in an unimportant place. This place can be any place. This conversion can begin anywhere. You can give yourself over at any time.”
Wang Shang’s creations touch on many different mediums, from painting to video, sculpture and jewelry. His solo exhibition at OCAT, Mr. Chicxulub, brings together many of his sculpture works from the past two years. Chicxulub is the name of the meteor that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs 60 million years ago. The exhibition takes this great historical event as the starting point for its ideas, while the different colors of the walls in the exhibition space come from Wang Shang’s everyday life, being the colors of his studio. Wandering through natural history, personal events, religious faith and human civilization, the works in this exhibition examine the three crucial and closely related questions of disaster, fate and faith from multiple angles that are sometimes sunny, sometimes humorous and sometimes serious.
