Hu Xiangcheng: Asking Every Day

From April 14 to June 9, the Power Station of Art (PSA) will present Asking Every Day, the largest solo exhibition of Chinese artist Hu Xiangcheng in recent years. The exhibition will not only feature a selection of the artist’s paintings, videos, sculptures, and archives from the 1970s to the present day but also highlight several large-scale installations realized in adaptation to PSA’s architectural history and spacial characteristics. Through these works, Hu Xiangcheng, with his passion for creation, keeps asking questions and thinking about the present and the future in different ways, considering the museum as an experimental space for “generative exploration”, and as a “field” that connects the public with various disciplines.

The exhibition title Asking Every Day is inspired by the artist’s quest for the truths of the world. Born in Shanghai in 1950, Hu Xiangcheng has shown strong curiosity in the world since his childhood observation of insects. That curiosity has then become the primary impetus behind Hu’s attempts to understand and experience the world, urging him to seek answers to everything while allowing him to generate infinite imagination. In 1973, Hu was admitted to the Shanghai Theater Academy (STA), where tutors were celebrating varying painting styles and never confined themselves to creative mediums like sound, light, and electricity. The teaching approach, being both diverse and inclusive, fostered Hu’s eclectic creative practice that strives to uncover the mystery of art, and has been passed on in his teaching methodology for more than a decade.

After graduation, Hu Xiangcheng became a tutor at STA and was later assigned to teach in Tibet. Upholding a philosophy of “helping students discover their native abilities”, Hu Xiangcheng, who was only a few years older than his students, has developed together with the students in the exchange of ideas. In 1986, Hu went to Japan for further study, majoring in plasticism, folk craft art and contemporary art, before living in Africa, Europe, America and other parts of the world for research and creative practice. As Hu Xiangcheng noted, “To understand a box, we need to observe it from the inside out to gain a clearer picture.” His deep engagement with different cultures has prompted him to create art that transcends the boundaries of culture, region, material, and form.

This time at PSA, the eponymous sound installation Asking Everyday takes the lead in striking the theme. The hand-cranked mechanical device juxtaposes 365 objects of production and life, which are made with natural materials from ancient and modern times as well as from home and abroad. Its mechanical rotation causes the objects to give off sounds of percussion and vocal improvisation that are both familiar and strange, pointing to the reality that mankind is questioning everything every day. Another large-scale installation 100,000 10-Year Plans showcases an imagination of one million years, revealing the artist’s detachment from reality, future, and destiny. In addition, the exhibition will also include several immersive installations crafted by the artist drawing on the history of PSA’s architecture as a power plant. For example, in Spiral Pattern, the artist sets up at the exhibition hall a scrapped coal conveyor belt, on which people and animals shuttle between spiral-shaped structures that symbolize cosmic energy.

The exhibition serves as the continuation of the “PSA Collection Series”. By shedding light on the Shanghai-born artist who has travelled around the world and dived into folk cultures, the exhibition seeks to provide a deeper reflection on Chinese contemporary art and to open up more possibilities for further dialogue.

Hu Xiangcheng: Asking Every Day
Curator: Fumio Nanjo
Dates: April 14–June 9, 2024
Venue: 1F, Power Station of Art
Organizer: Power Station of Art
Admission: Free