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Martin Margiela At M WOODS


Curated by Victor Wang and Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel. 
M WOODS Hutong, Beijing.
August 18, 2022 – December 04, 2022

M WOODS PRESENTS MARTIN MARGIELA’S FIRST SOLO MUSEUM EXHIBITION IN ASIA

For his first solo exhibition in Asia, M WOODS invites artist and internationally renowned former fashion designer Martin Margiela to reimagine the museum through a series of new and commissioned installations, sculptures, performances, collages, paintings and films.

Martin Margiela at M WOODS Museum is presented in collaboration with Lafayette Anticipations, Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Paris, where Martin Margiela had his first solo exhibition in 2021, and curated by Victor Wang, M WOODS Artistic Director and Chief Curator, with Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel, Lafayette Anticipations Director, the exhibition comprises of over 50 new artworks and installations with interactive performances and special site-specific displays that audiences can participate in.

Developed in close conversation with Martin Margiela and the curators, for over a year, the exhibition focuses on the continuous dialogue that Martin Margiela has been exploring around art, material and the body, time, gender, and audience participation since the 1980s, largely orchestrated through his experimental runway shows and through the exploration of textile and fabric. This connectivity between art and fashion as a vehicle to question representations of gender and power, for example, was already present in 1988, during his first debut show at Café de la Gare, Paris, which incorporated themes of Surrealism and included a large floor painting that was actively created by the models as they walked overtop the canvas with red paint on the soles of their shoes. Moreover, the exhibition expands on the various ways in which Martin Margiela’s artistic practice moves beyond the conventions of fashion, a “system”, Margiela explains, [that] became suffocating”, towards a new space of possibilities within the museum: that is uniquely situated for asking questions, posing alternative thinking, and long-term artistic interventions.

At M WOODS, Margiela constructs a unique space that allows the viewer to experience the exhibition as an alternative world: the traditional entrance and exit of the museum will be reversed, thus altering the successive progression of the galleries, with largescale installation works such as ‘Monument’ (2021) altering the very structure of the museum with sound and vintage furniture, its large architectural façade offers an alternative lens to understand urban development and conservation. Featuring a combination of artworks that activate the space, from live performances to paintings such as “Film Dust” (2021) that makes visible the often-invisible specs of dust found on film stills, or the work “Dust Cover” (2021) that makes reference to Man Ray’s ‘Enigme d’Isidore Ducass’ (1920). In an age of mass exposure and hyper visibility, the exhibition teases out the importance of invisibility and ambiguity in Margiela’s work and practice, placing emphases on the ways in which art becomes a space to ask questions, and where the personal and the public exchange and adopt ideas and perspectives.

A special exhibition catalogue, designed by influential graphic designer and book maker, Irma Boom, will accompany the exhibition. Further, limited edition museum shop items, designed by Martin Margiela, will also be available.  


Image, Monument (Beijing),2021-2022 “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View of M WOODS Museum, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, ‘the making of’, at “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, Hair Portraits , 2015 - 2022, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, Film Dust , 2017 -  2021,“Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, Lip Sync, 2020 - 2022, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS




Image, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, Film Dust, 2017 -  2021, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS



Image, Vanitas, 2019, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image,’Cartography’, 2019, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, ‘Torso Series’, 2018 - 2022, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, Bus Stop, 2020, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, “ Body Part colour”, 2019, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, “ Mould(s)”, 2020,“Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, “ Red Nails”, 2019, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, “ Light Test”, 2021, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


Image, “Martin Margiela at M WOODS”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS


ABOUT Martin Margiela

Martin Margiela, founder of Maison Martin Margiela, was born in 1957 in Leuven, Belgium, to a Polish father and a Belgian mother. He lives and works between Paris and Belgium.

As a teenager, he attended the Sint-Lukas Kunsthumaniora art school in Hasselt, Belgium, for three years, then entered the fashion department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in 1977.

After graduating, he worked as a freelancer in Italy and Belgium before moving to Paris, where he became Jean- Paul Gaultier’s first assistant from 1984 to 1987. Maison Martin Margiela was founded in 1988 in the same city with a unique and avant-garde style, far from traditional references.

Martin Margiela was the first designer to introduce recycling in his creations, using army socks, broken crockery, flea market clothing, and plastic packaging, among other things. His outfits show signs of wear and tear and his fashion often goes beyond the boundaries of clothing. The locations chosen for his fashion shows are equally unconventional: an abandoned metro station, an SNCF warehouse, and a vacant lot that has become legendary.

Early on, Margiela forged links with the art world through exhibitions at the Thaddaeus Ropac gallery (Paris) and institutions such as BOZAR (Brussels), Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam), Haus der Kunst (Munich), LACMA (Los Angeles), and Somerset House (London).

In 1997, while continuing to work for his own label, he was a surprise appointment as creative director for women’s ready-to- wear for Hermès. He worked there for twelve seasons until 2003. In 2008, he decided to leave fashion just after the twentieth anniversary show of Maison Marti Margiela.

Since then, he has devoted himself exclusively to the visual arts. His first solo exhibition, at the invitation of the Lafayette Anticipations Foundation in Paris, took place from October 2021 to January 22.

With special thanks to Zeno X Gallery, Belgium, and Lafayette Anticipations Foundation.


Exhibition Credit

This exhibition is organised by Victor Wang, Artistic Director and Chief Curator, M WOODS, with Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel, Director Lafayette Anticipations.  

Curatorial assistance provided by Chen Lu, Assistant Curator, and Lin Yuyang, Assistant to Artistic Director and Chief Curator.

Exhibition Design by Ania Martchenko, with assistance by Yang Zhi, Li Xindi, Yang Yang, and  M WOODS Technical Team.


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BRUCE NAUMAN: OK OK OK


Curated at M WOODS by Victor Wang, Artistic Director and Chief Curator, M WOODS.
Curated at Tate Modern by Andrea Lissoni, former Senior Curator, International Art (Film), Tate Modern; Nicholas Serota, former Director, Tate, and Katy Wan, Assistant Curator, International Art, Tate Modern.
M WOODS Hutong
11 March 2022 – 11 June 2022

In collaboration with Tate Modern, London and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, M WOODS Museum presents China’s first and most comprehensive overview of the work of the American artist Bruce Nauman. The exhibition features work from fifty years of Nauman’s career, and departs from previous surveys in its experiential approach to display and its focus on Nauman’s interest in performance art, neon, sound, and the moving image.

Image, “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021

Bringing together key works that call attention to Nauman’s highly innovative approach to making art, the exhibition will also include a special presentation of Nauman’s 2004 Tate Turbine Hall commission Raw Materials, which functions as a sound retrospective, bringing together 22 audio excerpts from works spanning a nearly forty year period.

“[If] I was an artist and I was in the studio”, Nauman explained, “then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art.” The exhibition will also present important works from museum collections internationally that explore Nauman’s preoccupation with the theme of the artist’s studio. MAPPING THE STUDIO II with color shift, flip, flop & flip/flop (Fat Chance John Cage) (2001) features seven large video projections presenting different views of Nauman’s studio in New Mexico, filmed at night with an infrared camera over a period of several weeks.  While MAPPING THE STUDIO II focuses on the artist’s studio, video installations like Clown Torture (1987) and Anthro/Socio (Rinde Spinning) (1992) challenge the conventional gallery experience, confronting and at times directly engaging the viewer in the actions taking place.

Reflecting both Nauman’s use of the body as a primary artistic medium and the increasing use of film (and later, video) as an important tool for the documentation of performance art in the 1960s, Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square (1967–8),  Walk with Contrapposto (1968), and Bouncing in the Corner, No. 1 (1968) are among Nauman’s earliest works, made following his graduate studies in Fine Art at the University of California, Davis.

The exhibition also features Nauman’s influential neon sculptures  that explore the ways in which art can occupy a space between advertising and consumerism, and the potential of language and light. Works such as The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign) (1967) were inspired by a commercial beer sign which hung in his San Francisco studio, a former grocery store. The True Artistis also the first of Nauman’s neons to incorporate text. Nauman explained: “I had an idea that I could make art that would kind of disappear – an art that was supposed to not quite look like art. You wouldn’t really notice it until you paid attention.”

Two important works, Going Around the Corner Piece with Live and Taped Monitors (1970) and Changing Light Corridor with Rooms (1971), both reveal the ways in which, for Nauman, behavioural attitudes and audience participation are related to psychological states and spaces. When encounteringGoing Around the Corner Piece, the visitor is required to be both a viewer and a participant, as a CCTV camera records the audience as they activate the work. Built a year later in his Los Angeles studio, Changing Light Corridor with Rooms consists of a long-walled corridor with two side rooms (one rectangular, the other triangular) intermittently flashing lights as the viewer walks through the constricted space. A number of these corridors evidence the artist’s concern with the effect physical spaces can have on people and their behaviour, especially the way that constructed environments can create feelings of unease and change an individual’s mood.

Exhibition organised by Tate Modern, London and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, in collaboration with M WOODS, Beijing and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan.


Image, ‘ Changing Light Corridor with Rooms’, (1971), at “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021


Image, ‘MAPPING THE STUDIO II with color shift, flip, flop, & flip/flop (Fat Chance John Cage)’, 2001, “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021


Image, ‘One Hundred Live and Die’, 1984, “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021


Images, “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021


Image, ‘Clown Torture’, 1987, “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021


Image, ‘The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign)’, 1967, “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021


Image, ‘ Anthro/Socio (Rinde Spinning)’, 1992, “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021


Image, ‘Anthro/Socio (Rinde Spinning), 1992, “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021


Image, ‘ Going Around the Corner Piece with Live and Taped Monitors’, 1970, “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021


Image, “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021


Image, ‘Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square, 1967-1968, “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021


Image, ‘Falls, Pratfalls and Sleights of Hand (Clean Version)’, 1993, “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021


Image, ‘Run from Fear, Fun from Rear’, 1972, “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021


Image, ‘Good Boy Bad Boy’, 1985, “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021



Image, ‘Human Nature / Knows Doesn't Know’, 1983/1986, “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021


Image, ‘Walks In Walks Out’, 2015, “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021


Image, ‘ Washing Hands Normal’, 1996, “BRUCE NAUMAN : OK OK OK”, Installation View, 2022, at M WOODS Hutong, Beijing. © MWOODS © Bruce Nauman by SIAE 2021



ABOUT BRUCE NAUMAN

Bruce Nauman was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1941. He studied mathematics, physics and art at the University of Wisconsin before graduating with a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Davis in 1966, with extracurricular activities including classical music and philosophy.

Nauman’s first solo exhibition was held at Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles, in 1966 and was followed in the same year by his inclusion in Eccentric Abstraction - a group exhibition at New York’s Fischbach Gallery which heralded a new era of post-minimalism. Sperone Westwater, New York, is Nauman’s primary representation, where he has shown since 1976.

In 1972, at the age of thirty-one Nauman had his first retrospective exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, followed by venues in Europe. In 1994 a large retrospective of his work was organised by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, with a subsequent international tour. A further retrospective, Bruce Nauman: Disappearing Acts was presented at the Schaulager, Basel, and The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1, New York in 2018–19.

Major museum shows dedicated to Nauman’s work have included: Bruce Nauman, Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo 1981; Bruce Nauman: Neons, Baltimore Museum of Art 1982-3; Bruce Nauman Drawings 1965–1986, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel 1986; Bruce Nauman, Kunsthalle Basel and Whitechapel Gallery, London 1986–7; Bruce Nauman: Image/Text, 1966–1996, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and Hayward Gallery, London 1997–8. He has participated in five editions of the major quinquennial exhibition Documenta (1968, 1972, 1977, 1982 and 1992) and has presented work in the main exhibition of the Venice Biennale at least six times.

Nauman was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale twice, in 1999 and 2009, the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale Award for sculpture in 2004, the Wolf Prize for Arts-Sculpture in 1993, the Wexner Prize in 1994 and the Max Beckmann Prize in 1990.


With special thanks to Sperone Westwater, New York, Nauman’s primary representation, where he has shown since 1976.

Exhibition Credit at M WOODS

Curated at M WOODS by Victor Wang, Artistic Director and Head Curator
Curatorial Assistance by Deng Yingying, Qi Yuanlin, Chen Lu
Exhibition Design Li Xindi, Yang Zhi, Victor Wang
Exhibition Co-ordination Zhang Yuhan
Exhibition Communication Chen Lu, Zhou Tingyun, Lin Yuyang
Registrar Liang Tian, Zhang Wenwen





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Austin Lee
Human Nature


Curated by Victor Wang 
M WOODS 798
13 February  – June 30, 2021

M WOODS is proud to announce the first solo museum exhibition by American artist Austin Lee (b. 1983). Planned over the course of three years, the exhibition ‘Human Nature’, is an accumulation of Lee’s growth from 2019-2022 and will be Lee’s largest and most comprehensive exhibition to date. The exhibition includes works that have not been publicly displayed in a range of different media –painting, animation, murals, a site-specific commission, and several new large-scale installations.

Conceived with exhibition curator Victor Wang during a period of isolation and solitude, the exhibition focuses on emotion, growth and feelings as fundamental themes in Lee’s work. Moreover, a range of feelings and colors guide the layout of each room, together with correlating symbols designed by the artist, to further communicate Lee’s ideas of connectivity.

Part of a new genesis in painting, Lee’s creative practice involves producing artworks initially in virtual reality - within a computer program - before later materialising them as paintings, installations and sculptures. Balancing between the real and the virtual, the exhibition explores the important questions that Lee’s work and this exhibition raise: How do we translate human emotion through digital technology, and how has the advancement of technology helped us better understand the depth of human feelings? This is perhaps best exemplified in works such as Cry Baby (2021) and Train Tears 2 (2021) where the complexity of emotion attached to crying and the range of human feeling entangled between sadness and happiness are explored through the characters portrayed. In 1981, American art historian, critic and curator Douglas Crimp asked: ‘What makes it possible to see a painting as a painting?’. In 2022, we may expand on this to ask: How is painting also a type of ‘rendering technology’ that helps us understand our reality? “A technology”, says Austin Lee, “that has been shared throughout human history”.

Growth is another important theme that is examined in the exhibition. Several of the works on display, such as Smoking Cat, were originally conceived by Lee in 2019, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, Lee’s practice has undergone major shifts, both in terms of aesthetics and medium: these changes are also reflected in the exhibition, and in new works such as Smoking Cat 2. These new series of works, created during an intense time of social isolation, also follow the challenging shifts that Lee underwent between 2019 and 2021.

Another key strand in the exhibition looks at Lee’s contribution to the development of painting beyond the traditional view of paint as a medium as the only intermediate that characterises the space between the canvas and technology. The space between paint and painting. Lee, for example, using computer generated programs to infuses the feeling of weightless experienced in these programs or the potential of multiple light sources when making work, into each painting. Each of the six galleries in the museum moves between the spheres of virtual reality and the natural world, creating a new experiential unity between the two. For example, the Central Hall Gallery will display Lee’s newly commissioned installation Human Nature (2021), an expanded surreal landscape that evokes both simulation and nature. This installation was originally conceived as a painting for the initial 2019 exhibition at M WOODS, but now takes on an expanded presence which incorporates additional video animations and a large mural. A new commission also features in the exhibition: Relax Fountain (2021), Lee’s first public water fountain, located in the Central Hall Gallery.

 

Installation View, Human Nature (2021),Austin Lee Human Nature”, M WOODS Museum, 2022, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS



Installation View, Relax Fountain (2021),Austin Lee Human Nature”, M WOODS Museum, 2022, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS


Animations, “Austin Lee Human Nature”, M WOODS Museum, 2022, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS



Installation View, Mr. Austin (2021),Austin Lee Human Nature”, M WOODS Museum, 2022, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS




Installation View, “Austin Lee Human Nature”, M WOODS Museum, 2022, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS



Installation View, “Austin Lee Human Nature”, M WOODS Museum, 2022, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS




Installation View, “Austin Lee Human Nature”, M WOODS Museum, 2022, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS




Installation View, “Austin Lee Human Nature”, M WOODS Museum, 2022, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS




Installation View, “Austin Lee Human Nature”, M WOODS Museum, 2022, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS




Installation View, “Austin Lee Human Nature”, M WOODS Museum, 2022, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS




Installation View, “Austin Lee Human Nature”, M WOODS Museum, 2022, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS




Installation View, “Austin Lee Human Nature”, M WOODS Museum, 2022, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS




Installation View, “Austin Lee Human Nature”, M WOODS Museum, 2022, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS




Installation View, “Austin Lee Human Nature”, M WOODS Museum, 2022, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS




Installation View, “Austin Lee Human Nature”, M WOODS Museum, 2022, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS



Curated at M WOODS by Victor Wang, Artistic Director and Head Curator
Curatorial Assistance by Deng Yingying, Qi Yuanlin, Chen Lu, Zhou Tingyun
Exhibition Design Li Xindi, Yang Zhi, Victor Wang
Exhibition Co-ordination Zhang Yuhan, Zhou Tingyun
Exhibition Communication Chen Lu, Zhou Tingyun
Registrar Zhang Wenwen

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Italian Renaissance Drawings: A Dialogue with China


Works from the British Museum Collection by:
Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, Polidoro da Caravaggio, Lorenzo di Credi, and more.

In dialogue with artists:
Hao Liang (郝量), Hu Xiaoyuan (胡晓媛), Jin Shangyi (靳尚谊), Kan Xuan (阚萱), Liu Xiaodong (刘小东), Liu Ye (刘野), Qiu Xiaofei (仇晓飞), Xie Nanxing (谢南星), Yu Ji (于吉), Zeng Fanzhi (曾梵志)

Curated by Victor Wang, Artistic Director and Chief Curator, M WOODS, and Sarah Vowles, Smirnov Family Curator of Italian & French Prints & Drawings, British Museum.
M WOODS Hutong
3 September 2021 – 20 February 2022

The presentation of this exhibition is a collaboration between the British Museum and M WOODS Museum



Installation view, Italian Renaissance Drawings: A Dialogue with China, M WOODS Hutong, courtesy M WOODS, Beijing, 2021

M WOODS and the British Museum (U.K.) are proud to present 'Italian Renaissance Drawings: A Dialogue with China’, the first collaborative exhibition between the British Museum and an independent, not-for-profit art museum in China.


The key focus of the exhibition is to enlighten visitors about Italian Renaissance drawings, and it will include examples by many of the great Renaissance artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian and Raphael, taken from the historic collections of the British Museum. For the first time in their history, these works will be placed in dialogue with contemporary art from China to highlight the important trans-temporal relationships between the Western Renaissance and China.


Taddeo Zuccaro (1529–1566),The cultivation of silkworms
1564–66. Pen and brown ink, with brown wash, over black chalk.
This is a preparatory drawing for a fresco at Palazzo Farnese, Caprarola. The finished fresco is in the former dressing room of Cardinal Farnese, which was decorated with scenes showing the textile industry. Here, Taddeo shows farmers cutting leaves from a mulberry tree to feed to their silkworms. Developed from processes established in China, this produced the finest and most sought-after silk, which was a much admired luxury product in Renaissance Italy.

Installation view, Italian Renaissance Drawings: A Dialogue with China, M WOODS Hutong, courtesy M WOODS HUTONG, Beijing, 2021.

Installation view, Italian Renaissance Drawings: A Dialogue with China, M WOODS Hutong, courtesy M WOODS HUTONG, Beijing, 2021

M WOODS’ Artistic Director and Chief Curator, Victor Wang, has worked closely with the British Museum’s Smirnov Family Curator of Italian & French Prints & Drawings, Sarah Vowles, to consider the possibility of a Renaissance beyond Europe, and introduce a cross-cultural global perspective on these historical works on paper.

‘Renaissance’ is the French translation of the Italian word rinascimento, meaning ‘rebirth’. It refers to the cultural and intellectual flowering that took place in Italy in the 15th century before it spread north of the Alps across Europe[1]. However, the Italian Renaissance was not only fascinated by Greco-Roman antiquity, it was also a larger exchange of ideas, techniques, and perspectives that would go on to influence other parts of the world.


From left to right in image, Xie Nanxing, ‘Spice No. 7’, 2017, Gentile Bellini (1429–1507), ‘A Turkish woman’, 1480, installation view, Italian Renaissance Drawings: A Dialogue with China, M WOODS, courtesy M WOODS HUTONG, Beijing, 2021

From an expanded historiographical perspective on both the period and the ideas that were developed, several important relationships can be revealed between the traditional European Renaissance and the modernization of China, as both an intellectual and cultural project. Local and international scholars have discussed the influence of the Renaissance on modern China in terms of the country’s nation-building and reformational efforts, providing a framework for understanding the modernising forces of the early 20th century, a period that concluded the country’s millennium-old imperial rule, as well as the country’s cultural continuity with the Song (960–1279) and Ming Dynasties (1368-1644), which denote, amongst other things, canonical periods of high cultural tradition that are important periods of reference in the formation of China’s modern identity.  Alternatively, by situating these Italian Renaissance works within a contemporary art framework, we allow for a re-orientation and re-appraisal of these historical drawings from a different cultural context and from a contemporary non-European perspective.


Image left: Zeng Fanzhi, Untitled, 2020, Drawing
Image centre, Zeng Fanzhi, Untitled, 2020, Drawing
Image right:  Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), 1519–1523, Black chalk



Installation view, Italian Renaissance Drawings: A Dialogue with China, M WOODS Hutong, courtesy M WOODS HUTONG, Beijing, 2021.


Installation view, Italian Renaissance Drawings: A Dialogue with China, M WOODS Hutong, courtesy M WOODS HUTONG, Beijing, 2021.

Some of the themes that characterise Renaissance art are brought together in the selection of drawings, which date from between 1470 and 1580 and represent artists working across the Italian peninsula. The works in the exhibition have been divided into six thematic sections: The Human Figure, Movement, Light, Costume and Drapery, The Natural World, and Storytelling. The exhibition then explores how artists both in the Renaissance and in China brought life, form, and dynamism to their compositions through the study of these themes such as movement, light and shade, and costume. This presentation will bring together the artist’s understanding of the earlier themes into a conversation, while opening up a new space that also considers the parallels and tangents between these perspectives and histories. The work of influential Chinese scholars such as Jiang Fangzheng, Hu Shi, Liang Sicheng and Fu Lei, who were key figures in these cultural movements and national reforms, will be represented in specific archival materials, while contextual information on the importance of drawing as a conceptual and explorative tool for Renaissance artists will also be on display.



Image left: Installation view, Kan Xuan, ‘A Monk’, 2005, Italian Renaissance Drawings: A Dialogue with China, M WOODS Hutong, courtesy M WOODS HUTONG, Beijing, 2021.

Image right: Three head studies, Attributed to Giovanni Bellini (about 1430–1516), Three head studies. 1500–16. Black chalk, the sheet extensively made up along the lower margin


Installation view, Italian Renaissance Drawings: A Dialogue with China, M WOODS Hutong, courtesy M WOODS HUTONG, Beijing, 2021.


Left image:  Yu Ji, Flesh in Stone-Ghost #2, 2018

Right image:  Polidoro da Caravaggio (about 1500–1536/37),Two studies of a man with arm raised, About 1530–40. Black chalk

Italian Renaissance art was dominated by the desire to accurately represent the human form. The aim was to engage the viewer in the narrative shown in the painting, and to do this figures had to be naturalistic and convincing.

To help artists develop their knowledge of the human body, workshop practice increasingly focused on drawing the male nude from life. As more ancient sculptures were discovered, artists also began to draw from the original statues or from plaster casts, trying to emulate the muscular power of classical art. Alongside these drawings of the whole body, artists would make detailed head studies of friends and colleagues of various ages, which could later be used to represent saints, mythological characters or classical heroes in finished works. More generic character types could sometimes be exaggerated into caricature, as can be seen in the extravagant heads imagined by Leonardo da Vinci. Here a deep understanding of the human form provides a springboard to a more creative exploration of personality and character.




Left image: Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, il Sodoma (1477–1549)
Red and white chalk, over black chalk, on light brown paper

Right image: Liu Xiaodong 2 Diary of an Empty City 2
2015. Oil on canvas



Installation view, Italian Renaissance Drawings: A Dialogue with China, M WOODS Hutong, courtesy M WOODS HUTONG, Beijing, 2021.


Image left: (foreground in image), Hu Xiaoyun, Spheres of Doubt III, 2021,
Image Right, Francesco Salviati (1510–1563), Drapery study for a seated woman,About 1556, installation view, Italian Renaissance Drawings: A Dialogue with China, M WOODS, courtesy M WOODS HUTONG, Beijing, 2021.



From left to right in image, (left) Michelangelo (1475–1564), The Annunciation
1542–46 , Gentile Bellini (1429–1507), (right)  Liu Ye, Book Painting No.7, 2015,
installation view, Italian Renaissance Drawings: A Dialogue with China, M WOODS, courtesy M WOODS HUTONG, Beijing, 2021.



Hartwig Fischer, Director of the British Museum said, “The British Museum is delighted to be working with M WOODS on this exciting collaborative project. The Museum is absolutely committed to sharing the collection as widely as possible with museums across the world. Our exhibition partnerships in China have always proved very popular with audiences and I will be fascinated to see how audiences in Beijing respond to the show.”

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Man Ray: Dreams, Images and Love

曼雷:白昼纽约,午夜巴黎


Curated by Victor Wang and Marion Meyer
M WOODS 798
1 October, 2021 - 4 January, 2022


“Everything can be transformed, deformed, and obliterated by light.” (Man Ray)

Man Ray: Dreams, Images and Love is the first large scale museum exhibition in China, and the largest to date in Asia, of the pioneering Modernist master Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitsky, 1890-1976). Exactly 100 years since Man Ray’s first exhibition in Paris in 1921, the exhibition features over 240 artworks by Man Ray, including paintings, sculptures, film, prints, works on paper, archival materials, and poetry, from public and private collections, giving the viewer a unique overview of his diverse artistic output.

The exhibition, much like Man Ray’s autobiography, Self-Portrait, follows the artist’s life through his four major migrations between the United States and France, which are represented in the four chapters of the exhibition: New York: 1890-1921, Paris: 1921-1940, Hollywood: 1940-1951, and Return to Paris: 1951-1976.



Installation view, Man Ray: Dreams, Images and Love, M WOODS 798, courtesy M WOODS, Beijing, 2021.

From Man Ray’s early encounters and friendship with Marcel Duchamp, which led to his Photograph of Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 (1920), and his portraits of Duchamp as “Rrose Sélavy” (his infamous alter ego), both included in the exhibition, each chapter in the exhibition contains specific sub-themes that allow visitors to examine his many contributions to modern art. These themes include the important artistic movements—Dadaism and Surrealism—which he helped to pioneer and record: key works are displayed, such as the first Dada object he made in France, Gift (1921), and Perpetual Motif (1923). Other important themes include his career in fashion photography for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and the many muses and lovers who played key roles in his life: Kiki de Montparnasse, Lee Miller and Juliet Browner, all of whom have dedicated sections in the exhibition, which highlight the ways in which his personal life informed his art. As the poet H.D. reminds us, “there is no great art period without great lovers”. This was especially true of Man Ray.



Installation view, Man Ray: Dreams, Images and Love, M WOODS 798, courtesy M WOODS, Beijing, 2021.


Installation view, Man Ray: Dreams, Images and Love, M WOODS 798, courtesy M WOODS, Beijing, 2021.

In addition to this, the exhibition examines the multitude of ways in which Man Ray expanded the medium of photography to occupy a space at the intersection of fine art and documentation. Man Ray primarily saw himself as “a painter [who] uses his photography to reproduce [his] works”,[1] Yet his incorporation of portraiture and “fashion prints” into his artistic language, often to sustain his art, changed the way we understand the discipline today, and influenced the application of photography and images to magazines and advertisements. A gallery dedicated to Ray’s involvement in fashion displays portraits of Coco Chanel, alongside works by other key artists of the period such as Meret Oppenheim, jewellery by Elsa Triolet, and perfumes by celebrated fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, such as Sleeping (1940-50), which was inspired by Man Ray's 1939 painting Le Beau Temps.  


Installation view, Man Ray: Dreams, Images and Love, M WOODS 798, courtesy M WOODS, Beijing, 2021.


Installation view, Man Ray: Dreams, Images and Love, M WOODS 798, courtesy M WOODS, Beijing, 2021.

Man Ray’s art allows us to better understand the world through his alternative lens. The exhibition invites audiences to experience Man Ray’s experiments with optics highlighted by his Rayographs, which were considered “pure Dada creations” and “cameraless photographs”.[1]  Moving between the pre- and post-war periods, the show investigates how historical events, personal relationships, and his long-term examination of the nature of art, intertwine and take form in Man Ray’s work. Dreams become reality as Man Ray reveals the ways in which the subconscious informs perspective, incorporating ideas, desires, and meaning, while “in true Dada spirit”, as Man Ray asserts, completing “the cycle of confusion”.[2]


Installation view, Gallery dedicated to Méret Oppenheim, Man Ray: Dreams, Images and Love, M WOODS 798, courtesy M WOODS, Beijing, 2021.


Installation view, Man Ray: Dreams, Images and Love, M WOODS 798, courtesy M WOODS, Beijing, 2021.


Installation view, Man Ray: Dreams, Images and Love, M WOODS 798, courtesy M WOODS, Beijing, 2021.



Installation view, Man Ray: Dreams, Images and Love, M WOODS 798, courtesy M WOODS, Beijing, 2021.


[1] Man Ray, Self-Portrait (London: Penguin Books, 2012): 90.
[1] Ibid, 128-129.
[2] Ibid, 145.




Organized by:

M Woods Museum, Beijing, and the Association Internationale Man Ray, Paris

Curated at M WOODS by Victor Wang, Artistic Director and Head Curator and 
Marion Meyer
Curatorial Assistance by Deng Yingying, Qi Yuanlin, Chen Lu
Exhibition Design Li Xindi, Victor Wang
Exhibition Co-ordination Zhang Yuhan, Zhou Tingyun
Exhibition Communication Chen Lu, Zhou Tingyun
Registrar Zhang Wenwen




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VICTOR WANG
All content property of © Victor Wang 2009 - 2021 All rights reserved -- BEIJING - LONDON.