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👉 Free entry for children below 1.2m
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You as Me,Hold the Gaze
Duration:Feb. 17, 2023 – Oct. 8, 2023
Artist:aaajiao, Carsten Nicolai, Darren Almond, *LLND, Oreet Ashery, Hu Yun, Tobias,Tobias Rehberger, Li Liao, Lee Bul, Lee Yongbaek,Li Binyuan, Lin Ke, Lin Tianmian, Liu Wei, Lu Lei, Markus Lüpertz,Shi Yong, Tong Wenmin, Yang Jiechang, Ye Linghan, Yu Ji, Zhang Peili, Zhou Wendou, Zhou Xiaohu
Curator:Xu Tianyi
Venue:F1, HOW Art Museum (Shanghai), #2277 Zuchongzhi Rd., Pudong, Shanghai
Organizer:HOW Art Museum
HOW Art Museum is pleased to announce that the exhibition You as Me,Hold the Gaze will be on view from February 17th , 2023.
My age, my beast, who will ever
Look into your eyes.
And with his own blood glue together
The backbones of two centuries?
Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) wrote down the poem The Age (1923) at the beginning of the 20th century. While expressing his visions and hopes for the age, it also shed light on the conflicts between “poet and his time”. In another poem he wrote later, it read: “No, I am no one's contemporary”. (1924)
The Age as quoted in Giorgio Agamben’s What Is the Contemporary? and Alain Badiou’s The Century . In What Is the Contemporary?, Agamben explained “The contemporary is he who firmly holds his gaze on his own time so as to perceive not its light, but rather its darkness. All eras, for those who experience contemporariness, are obscure.” Badiou, when quoting the poem at the end of the 20th century, pointed out that Mandelstam’s “beast” as a newborn and fragile presence was doomed to be transient. What Badiou was trying to break was exactly this “backbone”.
It is widely acknowledged that the 20th century was a century of division. And to gain insights into such “division” takes not only knowledge of what happened in this century, but also of what the people of this century were thinking. If we merely label things that happened without probing into what the people of the century were thinking, we can neither get to truly know the present nor prevent things from repeating themselves. In this same logic, this century would have nothing to with the “future” since its very beginning.
You and I as people of some experience of the contemporary are the minimum unit to constitute the complex and multi-layered veins of time of contemporaneity. Hence we shall not follow linear time to describe the nature of things. The exhibition on view, as celebration of the fifth anniversary of the HOW Art Museum (Shanghai), features 37 installations and videos by 24 artists both at home and from abroad including Lee Bul, Liu Wei, Zhang Peili, Tobias Rehberger, Lin Tianmiao and Carsten Nicolai,Markus Lüpertz. Different from the usual curatorial approach that follows a linear timeline to present the works within museum collection, the exhibition follows the principle of “contemporary is he who firmly holds his gaze on his own time”. Under the title “You as Me”, “you” and “I” are the core of the dialogue with the space, to fill up the absence of subject and scene, reflect upon the tragedies of the century, build connections between contemporary events and past reference, define time from a sociological perspective, treat the “contemporary” as a dividing point between the past and the future, disrupt and reverse language on the cultural level through social installation, rethink of the cultural representations beyond the physical body to confront the fragmented digital world, and morph into an organic life form that cannot be written off in this digital world.
However, the attempt to construct non-linear histories through creative reassemblages of time is in itself trapped in the modern view of history. The underlying narratives among different works are merely judgements based on information fed to us from the outside. You and I need to firmly hold our gaze so as to perceive not its light, but rather its darkness.
Ticket Prices
Single full price ticket: RMB 120
Single concessionary ticket: RMB 90
*Concessionary tickets
Only available to full-time undergraduate students or senior citizens aged 65 or above, who must bring relevant documents to purchase tickets at the Hao Art Museum
*Free tickets
Free tickets for senior citizens over 75 years old, children under 120cm in height and disabled persons with valid documents
Warm Tips
1. The Hao Art Museum will resume night-time operation and will be open from 12 noon to 8.30pm from Tuesday to Friday, and from 10am to 8.30pm on weekends and public holidays, and will be closed on Mondays.
2. The Hao Art Museum reserves the right to adjust the opening hours and activities of the exhibition hall.
3. Children under 1.2m are free of charge; senior citizens over 75 years old and people with disabilities are free of charge with valid documents (valid documents must be presented at the front desk of Hao Art Museum); full-time undergraduate students or below and senior citizens over 65 years old can purchase discount tickets, which must be purchased at the front desk of Hao Art Museum with valid documents.
4. Please keep your tickets in a safe place and keep them for inspection and other use after entering the museum.
5. Once sold, tickets are non-refundable and are valid for one entry during the exhibition period.
6. No food, water, drinks, lighters, prams or tripods are allowed.
7. Large backpacks and duffel bags must be stored.
8. No video or audio recording is allowed without permission, and no strong flashes are allowed for photography.