On the afternoon of January 15, 2015, the 2nd “CAFAM Future” Exhibition: Observer-Creator/The Reality Representation of Young Chinese Art grandly openedat CAFA Art Museum. The exhibition was hosted by the CAFA Art Museum, jointly sponsored by K11 Art Foundation, Beijing 798 Cultural Creative Industry Investment Co., Ltd. Professor Xu Bing from CAFA and Jean de Loisy, Director of Palais de Tokyo served as the Chief Curators, Wang Huangsheng, Director of CAFA Art Museum serves as the Art Director, Zheng Zhigang, founder of K11 Art Foundation serves as the Art Advisor, while the curatorial team is composed of Wang Chunchen, Sheng Wei, Li Zhenhua and Cai Meng. After the first Future Exhibition “Sub-Phenomena” describing and thinking about young art, the 2nd session makes use of “Creator” to directly reveal the core reality in representations of young art.

The Responsibility of the Art Museum of the Academy

The opening ceremony brought together the directors of the major national art museums, the domestic and foreign well-known artists and curators, art lovers, media, and other insiders of the art circles. Fan Di’an, President of CAFA initially addressed the group, he said the art museum today should pay special attention to the relationship between university and the art museum, think highly of the value of the art museum. CAFAM Future Exhibition embodied the broad vision, the positive attitude and the confidence inmeeting the challenge, and the academic attitude to answer the difficulties of the art museum of CAFA.

As an art institution in the university, as an art museum manifesting academic research, observing history and change, CAFA Art Museum positively advocates participating in the change of current young art. Curator Cai Meng used an interesting metaphor to describe it, and he said CAFA Art Museum was like a flowing river composed of young people, a museum constantly experiencing scouring, beating, washing away; we were immersed in it, finishing our own process of metabolism. Then, how to phonate for the youth and represent the future in such an art museum? How to understand the ideas ofyouths? How to more pertinently plan an exhibition for youths?How to break the internal and inherent self circulating style of art education in virtue of an exhibition; and then through more extra corporeal circulating ways, to develop a contemporary art pattern, at the same time, to realize a new and larger internal and external interactive circulating system? Cai Meng said, “It is on the basis of the thinking of these problems, we start to open the ‘CAFAM Future Exhibition’ project, based on which we start the exploration.”

“Creator” - Innovation of the Artistic Boundary

Xu Bing wrote in the preface: Once, humans had a clear understanding and concept of “Art”, but humans had been continuously exploring the boundaries of art andwhat was art … Today it has entered the period that is impossible to define “what art is”, which is like the meaning of “creator”, referring to the unclassified creative behaviorsunder the existing concepts of human.

“‘Creator’ doesn’t concern the change of ‘content’, but the innovation of ‘system’. Therefore, in the field of current contemporary art, ‘creator’ refers to neither the change of style and theme, nor the renewal of the media or the material, but a new organization and productionthus sharing the mechanism and system that is consistent with the era,”stated by curator Sheng Wei.

“Creator Culture” and the Young Art

Under the thematic concept of “Creator”, the Future Exhibition, according to the identification and analysis of the reality of young art, sums up several representations including the Intelligence Field, the Source Code, the Cloud Production, E Cycle, which are the basic arrangement of the exhibition.In addition, it adds a new section entitled Future Formula – The 2nd CAFAM Future Exhibition Tracking Project, to present the artists who continue to go ahead and have outstanding performances after participating in the first Future Exhibition.

At the opening ceremony, Xu Bing said: “The young artistic phenomena and ecology is most noteworthy, because it is the most sensitive part of the art and culture circles, it is also the most uncertain, the most vital part, and the part most worthy of discussion. Most importantly, they represent the future. If we want to analyze what art in the future is, we must pay close attention to young artists.”

For this exhibition, “Creator” is actually the point connecting the “reality” of young Chinese art and “the future”. As Wang Huangsheng said, CAFAM Future Exhibition is aimed at abandoning the aesthetic dominance of the classical art museums, to open the vision and get involved in the new process of young culture, we hope to realize the purpose:showcasing the positive, lively and particularly sharp elements of the changing young Chinese art, taking it as the visual text to enlighten the history of the future.”

Text by Lin Jiabin, Photo by Yang Yanyuan/CAFA ART INFO

Translated by Chen Peihua and edited by Sue/CAFA ART INFO