"Bordercrossing: Possibilities and Interactions", installation view at Yuz Museum, Shanghai, 2023
The wrestling between living and non-living things has continuously been explored in artistic practices throughout the post-20th century era since Marinetti declared the "metallization of the human body"1 . In contrast to the age of mechanical reproduction, this confrontation has quietly diffused in our lives with the technological singularity looming. Thoughts are constantly materialized into flowing data and instant images. Bodies are activated between tabs and windows. The invisible energy flow of the material world is called into being through a new "skin". Never before have we reflected upon our milieu with such a prismatic gaze, and humanity has never been so interested in its own "contemporaneity". The only certainty of today is that we are moving from "certainties" to "possibilities". Among these "possibilities", we transcend the physical body through technology and gain the dual vision of Janus, looking both forwards and backwards.
"Bordercrossing: Possibilities and Interactions", installation view at Yuz Museum, Shanghai, 2023
As an observation and response to the aforementioned trends, this exhibition at Yuz Museum seeks to explore the idea that "as we write today's history, we are writing tomorrow's" and also aims to investigate the concept of "Yuz Flow", transforming the museum into a "place where the events flow", and exploring the potential of art institutions in terms of its functional extensibility. Through this experimental collaboration with Forbes China, "Bordercrossing: Possibilities and Interactions" aims to present the outward exploration by the art world and the examination of the art world by others, thus, gaining a deeper understanding of the art scene in the present day.
"Bordercrossing: Possibilities and Interactions", installation view at Yuz Museum, Shanghai, 2023
Thirty groups of artists born between the 1980s and 1990s present their process of crossing the boundary between reality and imagination, garden-crafting the current social landscapes and the inner world of the modern individuals. This exhibition offers a panorama of expressions by the younger generation in the context of globalization. The artworks manifest an expansion across multiple dimensions such as themes, mediums, audiences; the trend of decentralized creation that focuses on human "commonality" and how contemporaneity shifts between the past and the future. Viewers can launch their personalized "fieldwork" involving notions of nature, ruins, artifacts, and digitization, witness the encounter between the lingering spirits of giants and the emergence of new forces and observe how human beings navigate the modern jungle through the means of art.
1 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, “The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism,” in Art in Theory 1900–1990. Charles Harrison & Paul Wood, eds., (Oxford: Blackwell, Publishers, 1992), 147- 148.
About the Exhibition
Academic Adviser: Wu Hung
Dates: September 3rd- October 8th, 2023
Venue: Yuz Museum
Address: No.8, Lane 123, Panding Road, Qingpu District, Shanghai
Contect: info@yuzmshanghai.org
Courtesy Yuz Museum.
