What is the role of the public art in a future with endless possiblities?
On the other side of the real space, in the virtual space,
in between our habitual cognition and the physical world,
how is the public art evolving?
On September 16, 2021, the exhibition "Evolution: The Future of the Public" is opened to the public at the CAFAM·Langfang. Directed by CAFAM director Zhang Zikang and co-curated by Chen Che and Duan Shaofeng, the exhibition invites artists who are experienced in the public art field and young artists who showed experimental exploration in the field. From both the perspective of physical cultural space and the virtual Internet space, the exhibition displays a series of artworks that discuss about cutting-edge topics such as the boundary of the public space, visual power and virtual identity.
The Dimension of the Public
The world was suspended in 2020 due to the covid pandemic. People were forced to leave the physical public space to stay in quarantine. The art institutions, too, couldn't help but had to close its doors. However, if the year of 2020 was a year from the public to the individual, the year of 2021 has become a year from the individual back to the public. The world seems to have returned to its original physical public space in 2021. It is also an important year of art museums, because returning to the public means new opportunities and challenges: although the pandemic is under control, the problem is not fully resolved yet. In a time that everything is still unsure, it provides new possibilities to explore the publicity of online art programs.
As an important contemporary art program, the exhibition "Evolution: The Future of the Public" indicates the restart of the museum's publicity progress like a powerful manifesto. From the exhibition's theme to selection of works, they all evolved around the word "public". The exhibition not only showcases works that meet our usual expectations towards public art, but also the public art forms popular among the public recently. It also extends its discussion of public art to the online space. At a time that the physical public space is suspended from time to time, the virtual online space, on the other hand, is exceptionally dynamic: live broadcast, virtual reality, work-from-home, social networking, these functions of the online public space are largely enhanced.
International Horizon
The exhibition invites 20 artists and artist groups from China, Argentina, France, Greece, Thailand, etc. They are all artists active on the international stage. The exhibits include sculpture, large-scale installation, image installation and new media, and can be seen in both the galleries and the public space.
Many artists re-designed their work according to the space of the CAFAM·Langfang. For example, French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot would display the variation of his classic sound installation artwork, Variations (Langfang), while Chinese artist Song Dong creates his large-scale installation One Moment based on the museum's architecture.
What's more, the extension from the physical public space to the virtual public space is a focus of this exhibition. Many young artists used the latest virtual technologies to present imaginative art concepts and their ponderings of our life at the time being. The aritists present their classic work in a new way, to highlight the publicity, interactivity and reflecxivity of their work, and to break the walls of the museum building, using public art to blur the boundary between the internal and external space, and between the physical and virtual space.
Evolution and Future
From ourdoor public space to indoor public space, which seems to have a blurred boundary in the modern urban life, to the artworks in the exhibition that disseminate across new media and the Internet, the exhibition includes three-fold displays of the public form. The works featured in the exhibition are not only public in their forms, but also discuss topics relevant to the public. For example, Chinese director Jia Zhangke exhibits his short film Visit created during the covid pandemic. It talks about people's life during the pandemic, and was released and spreaded across the online space.
Along with the development of our time and increasing experiments and researches on the public art, the concept of public art is no longer limited to visual art that happens in the public space, and its function is no longer limited to beautifying the urban space. It has also become a cultural idea and humanistic power that have positive influence on the development of the society. Open, diverse and developing public art keeps updating the boundary of the concept of self, and exploring the new characters of space, while publicity remains the never-changing core. By exploring the publicity and engagement of public artworks at the present, we may see the future of the public art.
Artists:
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot
Cao Fei
Leandro Erlich
Feng Mengbo
Ge Yulu
Huang Jieyuan
Jia Zhangke
Liu Jianhua
Miao Xiaochun
Song Dong
Su Xinping
Sui Jianguo
Sui Jianguo + Li Feng
Theo Triantafyllidis
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Wu Ziyang
Xu Bing
Art Groups:
CHIJIN
Flatland Guerrillas
SCREENROOM
About the Exhibition
Time: 2021/09/16-2022/02/13
Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00 (Last admission at 17:30), closed on Mondays (except from public holidays)
Venue: Silk Road International Arts Center, West Gallery 2 & 3, East Gallery 1, Public Space
Address: No. 263 Xinkai Road, Guangyang District, Langfang, Hebei Province
Chief Director: Zhang Zikang
Curator: Chen Che, Duan Shaofeng
Organizer: Silk Road International Arts Center
Undertaker: CAFAM·Langfang
Academic Support: CAFAM
2021-12-23