ART CITIES:Shanghai-Proposals to Surrender

Building upon the interests of Ming Contemporary Art Museum (McaM) in the notion of performativity in art, which is the only institution in China that actively supports live works, the group exhibition “Proposals to Surrender” explores the nature of such practices and their relation to the exhibition format, a temporal reality that provides an important physical encounter between individuals and artworks being created in real time.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: McaM Archive

The exhibition “Proposals to Surrender” attempts to challenge the formulized ways of behaving of the viewer or participant within exhibition structures, creating gaps and openings for the exhibition and its form to leak into reality. The exhibition thus explores the durational aspects of live works by some of the foremost practitioners, who contribute significantly to the debate around the need to rethink the ritualized nature of exhibitions within the so-called Western Art context. This exhibition also confronts the way in which this model has been copied around the world, in many cases without any critical consideration as to the local social rituals and context, its relation to objecthood, and what gets lost when an object is exhibited. Annie Vigier & Franck Apertet (les gens d’Uterpan), Isabel Lewis, Eva Kot’átková, Stuart Ringholt, Ana Prvacki, Li Liao, Tino Sehgal, Pratchaya Phinthong, Ei Arakawa, Stefan and Sergei Tcherepnin, actively contribute to the rethinking of what an art object is and whether we can expand our understanding of art objects and relationship to them, thereby challenging many aspects relating to its documentation, notions of ownership, transmission, and the impossibility to re-enact identical situations or encounters. The exhibition attempts to create encounters that will challenge the common consumption modes for the experience of exhibitions in China, and requests the commitment from both sides—the artist and visitor. The importance and value of physical encounters and mutual commitments is more and more important as our lives become more isolated and new communication tools replace physical connectivity.

Info: Curator: Biljana Ciric, Shanghai Ming Contemporary Art Museum, No.436 East Yonghe Road, Zhabei District, Shanghai, Duration: 23/12/16-12/2/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, www.mcam.io