HOW Art Museum (Shanghai) is pleased to announce that it will host a large-scale solo exhibition of the Italian artist Quayola titled "Quayola: Asymmetric Archaeology - Gazing Machines” from March 23, 2019 until June 2, 2019. The exhibition is Quayola’s first large-scale solo exhibition in China, bringing together his artworks covering digital print, video, digital sculpture, and robotic installation.

"Quayola: Asymmetric Archaeology - Gazing Machines" reimagines the past and rediscovers nature through the perspectives of machine. With the theme of “Asymmetric Archaeology”, Quayola uses digital technology to explore and reinterpret classical art forms such as ancient Hellenistic sculptures, old master paintings, and Baroque architecture, thus detaching them from iconographical semantics of the past and regenerating them into digital abstract works. This revisiting of the past completely excludes man’s subjective view, to examine the intricate relationship of the past, the present and the future from a mechanical objective perspective, thus revealing the beauty of asymmetry.

In addition, Quayola's works have a familiar naturalistic visual rhetoric which is transformed into a new artificial landscape created by machinery and computation. Through the reconstruction carried out by peculiar mechanisms and complex algorithms, Quayola leads the audience into a new round of contemplation far away from the original context of art history and the natural environment.

 

HOW Art Museum (Shanghai), as a brand-new cultural institution which boasts multiple functions including contemporary art collection, exhibition, research and education located in Pudong New District of Shanghai, opened to public in September, 2017. The museum spreads three floors for exhibition and cultural activities, covering about 7,000 square meters in total, that is, including nearly 5,000 square meters for the whole exhibition hall area and over 2,000 square meters for the area of official business, storage and service. As HOW Art Museum (Shanghai) opens its doors, it will develop comprehensive communication and exchanges with artists, art institutions, and art projects at home and abroad.

 

HOW Art Museum was founded by the collector Zheng Hao, and Yun Cheagab was appointed as curator of the museum. It enjoys two museums, namely HOW Art Museum (Shanghai) and HOW Art Museum | Wenzhou. The latter opened in early 2013, and has held nearly 20 contemporary art exhibition of great significance as of now, including 1.62M: Lin Tianmiao Solo Exhibition, Misinterpret: Zhou Xiaohu Solo Exhibition, The Moment We Awe - Contemporary Art from Korea, Tour Exhibition in China Pavilion of China at the 55th Venice Biennale, HOW Now-Young Chinese Artists Group Exhibitions, Facebook.

 

As an important art institution emphasizing systematic collection of contemporary artworks, HOW Art Museum has collected more than 2,000 artworks in both Eastern and Western artistic circles. On the basis of existing collections, the museum will collect more contemporary artworks in a continuous and systematic manner. The main collections are listed as follows: nearly 400 representative works and document literature of Joseph Beuys, representative works of Damien Hirst, as well as some significant works of Markus Lüpertz, Anish Kapoor, Darren Almond, Carsten Nicolai, Yayoi Kusama, Chun Kwang - Young, Zhang Xiaogang, Zhou Chunya, Zhang Huan, Ai Weiwei, Zhan Wang and other artists.

 

HOW Art Museum pioneers to create a new model of operating a “Night Art Museum” for the convenience of the public, opening from 1 to 10pm regularly, and 10am to 10pm on the weekends and holidays. Meanwhile, HOW Art Museum also carries out international exchange programs and outdoor public activities, such as the International Curatorial Residency Program, Outdoor Film Festival and Sculpture Park to establish a brand-new art complex and cultural landmark in Shanghai.