Since William Kentridge (b. 1955, Johannesburg) first showed in the groundbreaking 2000 Shanghai Biennale, artists and critics throughout China have looked admiringly to his distinctive style of addressing social and historical themes through a particular formal, imagistic, and thematic language. Kentridge, for his part, has moved from an initial body of work addressing memory and history in his native South Africa through a wide-ranging set of meditations on themes including Enlightenment philosophy, revolutionary utopianism, and empiricist temporality.
“Notes Towards a Model Opera” is a constellation of key pieces spanning 25 years of William Kentridge’s output, allowing viewers to understand the range and trajectory of both his artistic sensibility and humanistic concerns. From seminal early films and drawings featuring the semi-autobiographical figure of Soho Eckstein, the exhibition moves on to encompass major recent multimedia installations including I am not Me, the Horse is not Mine, The Refusal of Time, recent animations and paintings, and finally the titular project Notes Towards a Model Opera, a new work related to the particular aesthetics and ideals of socialist China. Originating at UCCA, the exhibition will subsequently travel to the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, and other venues throughout East Asia. As Kentridge’s largest exhibition in East Asia to date, this comprehensive overview offers a pathway to understanding his work particularly suited to the Chinese context and its unique experience of modernity.
About the exhibition
Duration: 2015.6.27 - 2015.8.30
Venue: Great Hall of UCCA
Courtesy of the artist and UCCA, for further information please visit http://ucca.org.cn/en.
