At 17:00 on December 26, 2014, the press conference of “The 2nd CAFAM Future Exhibition: Observer-Creator/The Reality Representation of Chinese Young Art” was held at the VIP room of CAFA Art Museum. Professor Xu Bing from CAFA, Wang Huangsheng, Director of CAFA Art Museum, Wang Chunchen, Director of the Academic Department at CAFA Art Museum, Cai Meng, curator of the Academic Department, curator Sheng Wei, Fu Dandan, Director of the art project of K11 Northern China, one of the partners, as well as more than dozens of media representatives in Beijing attended the conference.

Since “Sub-Phenomena: The First CAFAM Future Exhibition” was successfully held in the summer of 2012, arousing a lot of attention and highly praised, at the beginning of 2015, after continuously observing the young artists over more than two years, CAFA Art Museum will bring The 2nd CAFAM future exhibition themed “Observer- Creator” to the art world, to present the new change of the young art and culture in the past two years and the new thinking of the art museum.

Initiated by CAFA, planned and organized by CAFA Art Museum “CAFAM Future Exhibition” aims at encouraging the youth’s exploration of art language and the advancing of concept. Discovering and supporting the talented and potential Chinese young art talents, to set up the repository of Chinese young art, promoting the influence and awareness of contemporary art in Chinese society, to improve and create the influence of Chinese contemporary art in the international art world.

The 2nd “CAFAM Future” exhibition continues the previous clue, representing the “young and future”, in the key tone of the visual design. In addition to the efforts of the organizer CAFA Art Museum, it is also supported and sponsored by K11 Art Foundation, Beijing 798 Cultural Creative Industry Investment Co., Ltd. Among the work team, Professor Xu Bing from CAFA and Jean de Loisy, Director of Palais de Tokyo serve as the Chief Curators, Wang Huangsheng, Director of CAFA Art Museum serves as the Art Director, Mr. Zheng Zhigang, founder of K11 Art Foundation serves as the Art Advisor, while the curatorial team is composed of Wang Chunchen, Sheng Wei, Li Zhenhua and Cai Meng.

Organization – Individual Nomination Replaced by the Institution Nomination

Dr. Cai Meng presided over the conference, and the chief curator Professor Xu Bing initially spoke at the press conference, reviewing the situation of the first CAFAM Future exhibition themed “Sub-Phenomena”, the exhibition was the objective investigation and analysis of the ecology of young art, rather than jumping to conclusions, the attention to young artists can reflect the most uncertain part of the times with the most sensitive way, and often reflecting our numb part while seeing these young artists. The first future exhibition achieved the expected effect, sorting and analyzing the growth condition of the young artists, classified the artists into 6 tendencies, causing a strong reaction. He said that the theme of the exhibition “Creator”, was originated from his understanding, it was a time that people couldn’t define “what was art?” “What did art do?” nowadays, which was corresponded to the spirit of “creator”. At present, there was not a standard definition of the concept of “creator” in the world, but it was certainly that the expression, the way sharing ideas of the “creators” was more and more in consistent with the artistic creation and the way to share artistic creation of the young artists.

Director Wang Huangsheng emphatically introduced the most important changes of the exhibition: “individual nomination” was replaced by the “institution nomination”. In recent years, a group of active art institutions gave the young artists a lot of support, and remarkably received the achievements and significances. In view of this, in the continuation of the nomination way of the first session “real-name system of nomination” and “fieldwork research”, the art museum had made an adjustment, taking the way of “institution nomination” instead of the nomination in one’s own name, invited part of the major non-profit institutions, art museums, art spaces, etc., which continuously paid attention and promoted Chinese young art in recent years to constitute the “nomination committee” of the second future exhibition. There are 64 art institutions included in the selection, 232 artists (group) are nominated, and then within the scope of the nominated artists, according to the curatorial concept, exhibition theme and framework, the curatorial team choose 83 artists to participate in the thematic exhibition of the art museum, and selecting 12 artists to participate in the tracking project exhibition in the 798 art factory.

About the Theme – Taking “Creator Culture” as the Representation of Young Art

“Creator” is derived from the English word “Maker”, referring to the person making efforts to change various ideas into reality, instead of the purpose of making profits. They stick to innovation, continuous practicing, enjoying to share and pursuing a better life. In recent years, Chinese “creator” has also started to enter its booming period. Among them, it not only contains the science and technology talents engaged in the “hardware invention”, and also includes the advanced activists from various fields, such as software developers, artists, designers.

Exhibition Structure - Section Display of Sense of Future and the Tracking Project

The 2nd “CAFAM Future” Exhibition includes the Intelligence Field (I), the Source Code (O), the Cloud Production (C), E Cycle (E), and Future Formula - The 2nd CAFAM Future Exhibition Tracking Project (F). The whole exhibition structure is with a strong sense of future like a science-fiction film.

Public Teaching Activities – Unfolding Multi-Level Dialogues Around “Creator, Thought, Future”

Director Wang Huangsheng said that the exhibition would be diversely presented in the form of “remaining young, open”, during the exhibition period it would launch a series of academic and public educational activities, unfolded around “Creator, Thought, Future”, including “Thought and Future - the First ‘University and Art Museum’ Forum”, planning to invite the directors and curators of the domestic art museums of universities to communicate together. In addition, there are workshops focusing on the contemporary young culture, cross-border cooperation of art and technology, showing the frontier achievements in the relevant fields, “Creating Art • Talk Show” and so on.

“The 2nd CAFAM Future Exhibition” will be grandly displayed at CAFA Art Museum and 798 Art District on January 15 to March 1, 2015. Then the show will tour in Shanghai, Hong Kong, etc.

Text by Zhu Li, Photo by Yang Yanyuan/CAFA ART INFO

Translated by Chen Peihua and edited by Sue/CAFA ART INFO

Courtesy of the CAFA Art Museum, for further information please visit http://museum.cafa.com.cn.