At 3:00 pm on July 19, 2015, in front of Building No.2 at Today Art Museum, Gao Peng, Director of Today Art Museum and Wu Hongliang, Director of Beijing Fine Art Academy held cleaning equipment, seriously making an effort to clean the window of the art museum, which was not a logistical task but the site of the opening ceremony of “2015 Finding Friends: Discover Young Artists Vol.04: Hi, Future”.

“Finding Friends: Discover Young Artists: Hi, Future” is a relaxed art project which was jointly initiated by Gao Peng and Wu Hongliang, using a new way to discover the fresh young artists who have never been involved, using a decentralized model, combined with the Today Art Window, the exhibition doesn’t have a curator, it is al through recommendations from the artists, transferring the power to the artists, using an uncontrolled recommendation mechanism to create and showcase an alive and vivid window show.

First of all, Gao Peng and Wu Hongliang recommended artists to participate in vol.01, then the artists determined the artists who participated in vol.02, thus it naturally produced two main clues, the two artists Chi Chunrong and Tong Kunniao were recommended by the artists Song Yanjun and Peng Xianfeng in vol.03.

Artist Chi Chunrong, graduated from the School of Sculpture, Tama Art University in 2014, with a Masters Degree, who was recommended by Song Yanjun ( Artist from Vol.03), presents the work of the video “With You”. In Tokyo, the artist finds ten pairs of passengers coming from different countries and backgrounds and they have various emotions, including being reserved, shy, restless, relaxed, excited or lost, etc. Visitors can either stay outside the window or enter into it, through pairs of corresponding screens, to experience an expression of feeling from different perspectives. The works have a natural and calm tone, involving audiences in a gentle and smooth feeling. During this situation, audiences re-establish their own feelings in a new way.

Peng Xianfeng (Artist from vol.03) recommended Tong Kunniao who graduated from the School of Sculpture, the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2015, presenting the installation “TODAY”, to suggest the idea and phenomenon that is occurring today. He makes the character "TODAY" through artificially colored catalogues, with the help of trivial things in daily life, to display it on the windows. That is as he thinks, exactly what happens today. Many people think the symbols of culture and memory are in the catalogues and they feel pleasant when they show them to others, ignoring the fact that those catalogues are already changed.

There are a variety of contemporary young art projects at present, Today Art Museum initiated the “Finding Friends” project, exploiting the resource to full advantage, to break the conventional artist recommendation system, breaking “circles”, exploring a new way of discovery, training and supporting young artist talents. After the opening ceremony of the exhibition, the artists, art window stewards and media gathered together for a discussion on the artist recommendation mode, utilization of the window space, the cooperative possibility of the artistic window and business window, looking forward so that the “Finding Friends” project has more possibilities for development.

The exhibition opened on July 16, going through to August 10.

Text by Zhang Wenzhi, Photo by Zhang Wenzhi and Today Art Museum

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

About the Exhibition

Initiators: Gao Peng, Wu Hongliang

Beijing Station: Today Art Museum

Artists: Chi Chunrong, Tong Kunniao

Window Stewards: Qin Jianv, Yao Pinhui

Duration: July 16 - August 10

Location: Today Art Window, 1st floor of Building No.2, Today Art Museum