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Pull Left: Not Always Right

2014.07.26 - 2014.09.06

Artist(s):Cai Dongdong, Gao Weigang, Hu Xiangqian, Liu Chuang, Liu Xinyi, Ma Qiusha, Qiu Xiaofei, Wang Sishun, Wang Yuyang, Xie Molin, Yan Bing, Yang Xinguang, Zhang Shujian, Zhao Zhao

Curator(s):Tang Xin

Reception: August 28, 2014

                 Academic symposium and public education program: August 27 – August 30, 2014

Venue: Urban Arts Space, Ohio State University

           50 West Town Road, Columbus, Ohio State 


Taikang space is pleased to announce the opening of the Pull Left: Not Always Right at the Urban Arts Space of Ohio State University on July 26, 2014.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, Taikang space shifted its focus to a generation of young artists born around 1980. Through a series of collaborations with them, we have made waves for art organizations and commercial galleries in China to pay attention to this generation. Today, although these artists enjoy abundant exhibition and commercial opportunities, yet an exhibition that discusses and displays their artistic practices in systematic, academic and serious fashion seems lacking. Based on our in-depth engagement in the history and happenings of contemporary Chinese art, Taikang Space curated
Pull Left: Not Always Right, and we hope through traveling the exhibition to the art museums of State universities to present the diversity in their creative impulses and the various issues on individual experience, art, social issues and etc.

The collaboration between Taikang Space and these university art museums will effectively promote the artistic practice and concepts of this generation of artists in the Western world. The experience and establishment of art museums in the State Universities play critical roles in its research on art history and the formation of its local art ecology. WhilePull Left:Not Always Right is open to the public, the exhibition also seeks to initiate dialogues and interest on creativity and research for the arts and humanities departments within the universities. During the reception and its programs, the curatorial team of Taikang Space and some of the artists will participate in a series of discussions, talks and workshops with the professors and students in the Art, Art History and East Asian Studies departments of the Ohio State University. 


Pull Left:Not Always Right aims to present artistic practice that deviates from what people usually consider is correct or cliché political correctness, but to encourage a wider, liberal way of thinking and asking questions, rather than using existing ways of looking at contemporary Chinese art. Pull Left: Not Always Right will travel to the Hillstrom Museum of Art of Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota and other university art museums in the next one and half years.


Exhibition Background:

Contemporary art practices in China emerged in the early 1980s, and have caught the attention of the West in the 1990s. Until prior to 2008, whether in terms of the development of art history or the art market, the generation born in the 1950s-1960s became synonymous to “contemporary Chinese artists”. The 2008 financial crisis put a sudden halt to many years of hype, and brought quietude to Beijing’s 798 Art District. In this calm atmosphere, Taikang Space curated a series of exhibitions with the 51m2 project that introduced the practices of a number of artists born around 1980, within two years, we have presented a generation of new artists. In the following series of projects of different spaces such as “Light Pavilion”, “Terrace”, “Painting”, “Art Corridor” and etc, Taikang Space continue to encourage young artists’ creativity and practices. Over these dozen projects, through our collaboration with this generation of artists, we realize their differences in terms of their ideology or attitude on art with earlier generation. They have found new experiences and interests through their artistic practice, who have maintained a valuable ability of control and discipline in their own renewals. In order to let those in the West who are familiar with the history of contemporary Chinese art and its development to under the changes in this generation, we curated the exhibition,Pull Left: Not Always Right will be travelling to art museums of State universities. 

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