A Spring Breeze
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Emerging Curators Project 2022 | Teamwork!
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As part of the Museum's
10th Anniversary Program
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Collaboration & Negotiation
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Focuses on Seeing
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Relinquish Thematic Narratives
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Exhibition as Experience
Background:
Emerging Curators Project (ECP) 2022 invites all past rewarded curators around the world to renew their efforts in teamwork and revisit all winning projects since 2014, echoing the initiative’s principles of setting no limits and highlighting all kinds of adventures.
As a preliminary section of ECP 2022, there have been 17 selected curators submitting six exhibition proposals to the Emerging Curators Project 2022. The curators have experimented with a more immediate and nomadic approach to teamwork. Via collaboration and negotiation, they jointly present topics of common concerns as well as their achievements of recent practices and research through mini exhibitions scattered across the exhibition hall on PSA’s seventh floor.
The exhibition sample provided by the six teams, initiates the discussion on “can curation be teamwork?” In the following months, other curators who have not participated in the exhibition will also join the upcoming events in various forms. Through a series of guest talks, writing publications, and video interviews, ECP 2022 continues to focus the current development of young curators, understand their shared concerns and specific difficulties, and jointly explore a way to break through and move forward.
more info:
https://www.powerstationofart.com/whats-on/exhibitions/ecp-2022
complete videos: link
Artist Talk
A Spring Breeze
一阵春风
上海当代艺术博物馆
策展人: 张营营 吴月
2022.12.17 - 2023.03.19
四月是最残忍的月，荒地上
长看着丁香，把回忆和欲望
参合在一起，又让春雨
催促那些迟钝的根芽。
——T·S·艾略特《荒原》
四月怎么会是最残忍的？那盼望里的东风，欣欣然的春天。
展览无意探寻诗人的答案，只愿化为一阵春风，轻拂观者纤细而敏感的神经，让人会心一笑。展览中的作品看上去自由、天真、温柔，如春风漂浮，悬置意义，消散一切严肃阐释。
春风是透明的，它显形于物，将季节的变换隐藏又宣明在细节。展览作品同样如此，将虚无、难以言说的情感转译成可被观察的符号，却暧昧如春风，令人莫辨虚实。AR幻象将无形的“压力”化为“鸭力”，似是而非的笑容成为艺术选秀综艺中的“战术性妥协”，猛汉开始穿针引线，白墙上生长出铁做的绿叶。
人们总说艺术源于生活，高于生活，而展览中的艺术平行地吹拂过创作者的生活，虽并未能对任何人的处境带来实质改变，却带来轻松的心境。很多事无法依靠个人力量解决，微弱的个体只得等待一阵看不见的春风，降临甘霖，消融冰雪——那被寄托了期待的春天。
一阵春风，它吹来，又吹走。
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, and stirring
dull roots with spring rain.
— T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
What makes April the cruelest month? Just imagine the feelings of the expected east wind and the cheerful spring.
The exhibition is meant to turn itself into a spring breeze that tickles the audience's sensitive nerves and makes them smile from the heart. Every piece of work seems free, innocent, and tender. The artworks are undefined and suspended in their meaning, alleviating all kinds of serious interpretations.
The spring breeze is transparent, only manifested in things, hiding and declaring the change of seasons in the details. The works in the exhibition are in the same vein, as they translate the ineffable perceptions into observable symbols. Yet like the spring breeze, one cannot tell the true meanings of the artworks due to ambiguity. For instance, AR transforms the invisible pressure into pressure-relief toys, a fake smile becomes a strategic compromise in the talent show of art, a tough guy starts embroidering, and the green leaves made of iron climb on the white wall.
It is always said that art comes from life but goes beyond, while the works in the exhibition are like a blast of spring wind that passes through creators' lives without making any solid changes to their situations. Nevertheless, art cheers up the mood. There are many pressing issues beyond the capabilities of any individual. The only thing to do is wait for the invisible spring wind that brings fresh drops of rain and bids farewell to winter. The spring is in our sincere expectation.
A spring breeze: it comes, then goes.