ART-PRESENTATION: Robert Rauschenberg in China
A masterwork often can be read as a self-contained retrospective, “The ¼ Mile or 2 Furlong Piece” was completed over a 17 year period from 1981 to 1998 and reflects major themes from throughout Robert Rauschenberg’s oeuvre, ranging from his “White Paintings”, “Combines”, “Cardboards”, and “Gluts” to collages composed with found images as well as the artist’s own documentary photographs.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: UCCA Archive
In the exhibition “Rauschenberg in China” at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art the audience can see for the first time Robert Rauschenberg’s complete “The ¼ Mile or 2 Furlong Piece” (1981–98), its 190 parts stretching 305 meters. Also included in the exhibition are: a selection of Rauschenberg’s color photographs titled Study for “Chinese Summerhall”, taken during the artist’s travels in China in 1982. Accompanying these works is a collection of documentation and ephemera related to his transformational 1985 exhibition “ROCI CHINA” at the institution now known as the National Art Museum of China. “The ¼ Mile or 2 Furlong Piece” disregard traditional limitations of painting and sculpture. Patterned dress shirts, constructions made from found objects salvaged from junkyards, and silkscreens over Lexan move across walls and into the space as a single work, presented over a cacophony of street sounds collected from the artist’s travels. The first half of the work inaugurated the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1987. The piece was later shown in its near-entirety as part of the artist’s 1997 retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, subsequently traveling to the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Guggenheim Bilbao in 1998. Rauschenberg continuously added and revised the work during its extended period of creation, and in keeping with his ideology of non-intention, the work has been presented in various configurations over the years. Its most recent public showing prior to this exhibition opened at Mass MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, in 1999. The exhibition also includes Study for “Chinese Summerhall”, two portfolios of images taken during Rauschenberg’s first trip to China in the early summer of 1982, the only body of color photography the artist ever designated as art. Outfitted with a Hasselblad camera, Rauschenberg recorded scenes of daily life in early Reform-era China, captured through his sharp eye for composition and unique sensitivity toward beauty in the mundane, and relating to elements of urban environments and landscapes that had frequently appeared in photographs made throughout his career. These rarely seen images were made as studies for the monumental 30-meter scroll-like photograph Chinese Summerhall, one of the centerpieces of his 1985 “ROCI CHINA” exhibition in Beijing.Commemorating Rauschenberg’s interactions with China in the ‘80s is a selection of ephemera and archival materials documenting his initial trip to one of the world’s oldest paper mills in Jingxian, as well as his 1985 exhibitions in Beijing and Lhasa.
Info: Curators: Susan Davidson and David White, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), 798 Art District, No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing, Duration: 12/6-21/8/16, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-19:00, http://ucca.org.cn
