ART-PRESENTATION:William Kentridge

“William Kentridge: Notes Towards a Model Opera,” is a comprehensive retrospective that marks the artist’s largest exhibition in Asia to date. Displayed across a two-story edifice designed by Kentridge’s frequent collaborator Sabine Theunissen in the Great Hall of Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, the show includes works from nearly every major project the artist has undertaken from 1988 to the present.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: UCCA Archive

The exhibition spans a vast array of media: two-dimensional artworks in India ink, charcoal, linocut, and silkscreen print on paper, kinetic sculptures that evoke the ready-made tradition, several multi-channel video artworks comprising dozens of projections and a large-scale installation in the form of an operatic model complete with mechanical puppet actors. The core of the exhibition is its titular piece “Notes Towards a Model Opera”. Rooted in extensive research into the intellectual, political, and social history of modern China, from Lu Xun to revolutionary theater, that Kentridge undertook in preparation for this exhibition, this three-channel projection explores dynamics of cultural diffusion and metamorphosis through the formal prism of the eight model operas of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The piece considers these didactic ballets both as a cultural phenomenon unto itself and as part of a history of dance that spans continents and centuries.  As is true of many of his projects, “Notes Towards a Model Opera” is accompanied by a series of two-dimensional pieces inspired by this course of research and production, in this instance a set of calligraphic India ink drawings on paper from Chinese books. Another centerpiece of the exhibition is “Soho Eckstein” cycle, a series of hand-drawn animations that helped establish his presence in the 1980s and 90s. On view are all of the ten “Soho Eckstein” films to date. These and other films including “Shadow Procession”, “Ubu and the Truth Commission” and “Second-Hand Reading” together encapsulate many of the visual and narrative motifs repeated throughout his career: drawing as palimpsest, genocide as the legacy of the Enlightenment, the interdependence of shadow and light, and the hope of revolution supplanted by the terror of its collapse.

 

Info: William Kentridge: Notes Towards a Model Opera, Curating: Philip Tinari, Assistant Curator: Zoe Diao, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, 798 Art District, No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing, Duration: 27/6-30/8/15 Days & Hours: Tue-Sun: 10:00-19:00, http://ucca.org.cn/en