K11 Shanghai Art Museum presents “Cinematheque” as its first project for 2015

TEXT:Sue Wang    DATE: 2015.3.18

Poster of Cinematheque

This duo exhibition combines Cheng Ran’s recent video and installation works, entitled “Music is On, Band is Gone”, and Chen Wei’s “In the Waves” photographs, which are accompanied by a movie set installation.

The “Cinematheque”, or film archive, helped give birth to the New Wave cinema (la Nouvelle Vague) in late 1950s Paris. This exhibition invites us to see how a generation of young Chinese are likewise devouring movies and underground music, as evident in the work of two cutting-edge young artists, as a means to find their own modes of expression. This is chi K11 Shanghai Art Museum’s first project for 2015.

About the artists

Chen Wei was born in Zhejiang Province of China in 1980. He lives and works in Beijing, China.

Solo Exhibition

2014

CHEN WEI: The Stars in the Night Sky are Innumerable, Australia China Art Foundation, Sydney, Australia

Slumber Song, Ben Brown Fine Arts, London, UK

CHEN WEI, Gallery EXIT, Hong Kong

2013

CHEN WEI, Leo Xu Projects, Art Basel, Hong Kong

2012

MORE, Leo Xu Projects, Shanghai, China

Rain In Some Areas, Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich, Germany

2011

Tight Rope, Yokohama CreativeCity Center (YCC), Yokohama, Japan

The Augur's Game, Galleria Glance, Turin, Italy

2010

Chen Wei: photography2006-2009, Full Art, Sevilla, Spain

House of Recovery, Platform China, LISTE 15, Basel, Switzerland

2009

Chen Wei's Photography Works From 2007-2009, M97 Gallery, Shanghai, China

Everyday scenery and props, Gallery Exit, Hong Kong, China

Partial Melancholy, Laboratory Art Beijing, Beijing, China

2008

The Fabulist's Path, Platform China Contemporary Art Institute, Beijing, China

Cheng Ran was born in Inner Mongolia in 1981 and is currently based in Hangzhou (China) and Amsterdam. In 2013, He has participated in the Residency Artists Studio Project in the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam in Netherlands. Cheng’s oeuvre mostly consists of video and film, as well as photography and installation works. Cheng’s video works are praised for its eclectic form in which films are integrated into the poetic culture of contemporary age. His works convey a young perspective on the unsolvable issues in life, such as problems regarding identity, and life and death, and the anguish felt by young Chinese people living through the globalized Chinese culture and cultural policy.

Recent exhibitions include KINO DER KUNST film festival in Munich, Germany, and also the 26th European Media Art Festival in Osnabrück, Germany “Moving Image in China: 1988-2011" (a retrospective that surveys the brief history of Chinese video art, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, 2011), “Farewell to Post-colonialism: The Third Guangzhou Triennial” (Guangdong Art Museum, 2008), “The Tell-tale Heart” (James Cohan Gallery Shanghai and New York, 2010, 2011), “In A Perfect World��?rdquo; (curated by former Hammer Museum curator James Elaine, Meulensteen Gallery, New York, 2011), etc..

Cheng Ran has also received a nomination for the “2013 Absolut Art Award”.In 2011, he won the “Best Video Artist”in Dead Rabbit Awards held by online art magazine Randian. In 2014, Cheng Ran received a nomination for "The Best Young Artist of this year" in The AAC Awards.

About the exhibition

Dates: Mar 16, 2015 - May 31, 2015

Opening: Mar 16, 2015, Monday

Venue: chi K11 art space

Courtesy of the artists and chi K11 art space.