Picasso – Birth of a Genius
Curated by Emilia Philippot, Head of Collections at Musée national Picasso-Paris, the exhibition has been conceived and organized specifically for this presentation at UCCA and in China. It includes 34 paintings, 14 sculptures, and 55 works on paper by Picasso (1881-1973). Taken together, this selection of works, predominantly realized between 1893 and 1921, tells the […]
KĀIWÙ. Art and Design from China
In the fifth century BC, the notion of “Junzi” – “good man” or “accomplished human being”, and by extension, the figure of the Chinese scholar – appears with the character of Confucius. The term “scholar” has evolved over the centuries to refer more generally to intellectuals versed in the arts of poetry, calligraphy, music or […]
BING! BING! 砰砰! Contemporary ceramics
In Mandarin, the character 砰 (pēng) is the equivalent of the French onomatopoeia ‘bing!’: which evokes a sound of shock, of clash, and signifies a rupture, a sudden event that modifies reality. In a true East and West encounter, the artists of ‘BING! BING!’ play with the material quality of ceramics – something simultaneously fragile and solid, […]
Flowing Waters Never Return to the Source: Photographers Gazing at the River in China
From the legacy of a Chinese pictorial tradition where an idealized landscape seems suspended in time (“mountain and water” painting) to the accelerations of modernity and their consequences on nature and the environment, through visual narratives that take up its evocative power, the river has been a recurring motif of inspiration for photographers, both Chinese […]
The Stars, 1979-2019. Pioneers of Contemporary Art in China
1979. A small group of self-taught artists calling themselves “The Stars” (Xing Xing) organize an unpermitted exhibition of their works on the railings of the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) after being denied an official exhibition space. China was barely emerging from the Maoist era – with the death of the Great Helmsman and […]
Zhang Xiao for Long Dai
The artist Zhang Xiao, originally from Shandong and whose hometown is only a few kilometers from Long Dai, came to interpret the area by looking for subtle “fragments”. His images captured with Polaroid leaves soaked in water, then scanned and transferred to paper follow a route comparable to that of winemaking; the grain and the […]
