Yoko Ono: Golden Ladders

Faurschou Foundation is happy to present the first solo exhibition with the world-renowned Yoko Ono in Beijing. The exhibition will offer the public an opportunity to participate in her interactive art and take part in her honest and utopian, yet forceful, universe and life philosophy.

The exhibition shows a variety of works from Yoko Ono’s extensive artistic career, including important pieces from her early Fluxus and Conceptual work. Ideas, rather than materials, make up the core of Yoko Ono’s art. Based on verbal or written instructions that are utopian, ephemeral and performable, Yoko Ono presents viewers with art which becomes a shared mental or physical experience.

The exhibition begins outdoor with a Wish Tree garden, planted with “Three Friends of Winter”—pine, bamboo and plum trees, symbolizing steadfastness, perseverance and resilience. Specially dedicated to the show in Beijing is Golden Ladders, another participatory concept. Here viewers are invited to bring their own gold coloured ladders of any size, shape and material to join the installation, in which 7 ladders gilded with pure gold leaf are already installed.

To See The Sky, a new work first exhibited earlier in 2015 at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, sends out a message that the journey to the light is accompanied by danger. Visitors who are attracted to climb up to the top of the spiral staircase will soon realize the staircase starts to get shaky, and makes it difficult to focus on gazing up at the sky.

With the pop-up concept work Word Pieces, Yoko Ono’s art is to be spread over the city, as a new word, mostly a verb to motivate thoughts and actions such as “DREAM” and ”IMAGINE”, will appear on billboards, banners and posters every 20 days while the exhibition is running.

Yoko Ono is a present-day living icon. She manages to constantly develop and renew an outstanding artistic oeuvre, making her a pioneer in the field of avant-garde art practice, as well as in the field of music, film and the peace, feminist and environmental movements. Her art is participatory, engaging and carries a subtle sense of humor. It is also life-affirming with a strong social and political reference motivated by profoundly human concerns.

A Chinese edition of Grapefruit, a germinal artwork by Yoko Ono in 1964, will be published in tandem with the exhibition at Faurschou Foundation. Grapefruit is a collection of instructions composed between 1953 and 1964, with additional pieces from the 1970 edition, and bound together in the form of an artist’s book. The texts range from the possible to the improbable, often relying on the viewer’s imagination to complete the instruction.
 

Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono was born in 1933, Tokyo. She now lives and works in New York. Her recent exhibitions include: Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971, MoMA, New York (2015), YOKO ONO: WAR IS OVER! (IF YOU WANT IT), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2013–14), and YOKO ONO—HALF-A-WIND SHOW, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2013), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark (2013), Kunsthalle Krems (2013), Guggenheim, Bilbao (2014).

Faurschou Foundation
Faurschou Foundation is a privately owned art institution with a collection of contemporary art, and with exhibition venues at Copenhagen North Harbour as well as Beijing’s attractive art neighbourhood 798. Faurschou Foundation introduces the visitors to some of the world’s most acclaimed artists. Faurschou Foundation’s collection is constantly developed and expanded.

Over a very short period since its establishment in 2011 Faurschou Foundation has profiled itself as a significant art institution with solo exhibitions of, among other artists, Ai Weiwei, Cai Guo-Qiang, Louise Bourgeois, Shirin Neshat, Gabriel Orozco, Danh Vo, and Bill Viola.

For information about the exhibition and to attend the press preview, please contact:
Pan Di, Faurschou Foundation Beijing, pan [​at​] faurschou.com
or

Katrine Winther, Faurschou Foundation Copenhagen, katrine [​at​] faurschou.com