Opening: 4 pm, December 17th, 2011 (Saturday)
Beijing 15th May,2010
Manchester 30th September, 2011
Guangzhou 30th October, 2011
It has been more than one year since the debut of Hu Xiangqian’s performance art project of a conceptual art museum Xiangqian Art Museum on May 15th, 2010. During this period of time, this body art museum that only has one staff and owns a mysterious collection opened respectively in Manchester (UK) and Guangzhou again. Three openings were all chosen to be in public spaces: the Red No.1 Art Zone in Caochangdi where Beijing Taikang Space is, the public recreation area near Manchester Chinese Art Center and the road outside Guangzhou Times Art Museum.
Hu Xiangqian travels among different art institutes and museums to realize the openings of “Xiangqian Art Museum” time and time again, but refuses to realize this “non-material production” in regular exhibition spaces-through exhibiting works of languages, body movements and public communications. Some of these works do exist in reality, but others are made up by Hu Xiangqian. “Xiangqian Art Museum” challenges the value system and power of discourse of classic art museums, meanwhile, it also shows Hu Xiangqian’s agile strategy of presenting the space: does the space of an art museum really exist or is it a structure of imagination?
Taikang Space is honored to present to the audience Hu Xiangqian’s three brilliant performances in Three Openings of Xiangqian Art Museum in the form of video work. According to the artist’s plan, as a concept, “Xiangqian Art Museum” will be carried on, but the form of speech and body movement performance will be restricted to those three openings only. The unusual video work pursues the ultimate high definition quality of the devices and files. Hu Xiangqian’s attitude towards presenting a video work is similar to the unique understanding of parents towards the personalities of different children. Based on different understandings of different editions of the same video work, he adopts different ways of playing them. You may discover the distinct presenting ways of the three openings on the site.
Relevant Report
Dec,2010-Art Forum - Best of 2010
July 20,2010 - Yishu Journal - Interview
2012-5 - Art Slant - Interview
