Ann Veronica Janssens: pinkyellowblue
30 June 2023 – 26 November 2023
M WOODS 798, Beijing, China
Curated by Victor Wang, Artistic Director and Chief Curator, M WOODS
“I’m interested in the idea that a work can be almost invisible until it catches your eye, after which it becomes almost hyper visible and establishes an encounter: you could walk past without noticing it, but it creates an experience when you do” - Ann Veronica Janssens
Ann Veronica Janssens, the renowned Belgian artist, will be presenting her first solo museum exhibition in China at the M WOODS Museum, Beijing. The exhibition, entitled pinkyellowblue, is curated by Victor Wang as a meditative journey through Janssens’ 40-year career of colour and light in motion, a survey exhibition that will feature a selection of Janssens' luminous and sensorial works, inviting viewers to enter an immersive spectrum, where colour and light combine to expand the senses and stimulate perception.
Janssens’ art resonates with both Eastern philosophy and the opulent harmonies of color and light utilized in artistic movements such as Op Art, Minimalism, and Light and Space, which emerged in the 1950s and 1960s.These movements, which examined sensory and perceptual experiences through optical illusions and the manipulation of perception, find echoes in Janssens' use of light and space as mediums in themselves. In the context of China, the artist's practice also finds synergy with the philosophical traditions of East Asia, particularly Buddhism, where different hues of colour are believed to align with distinct mental states or qualities.
Ann Veronica
Janssens, pinkyellowblue (2015-2023), Installation View at M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
This survey exhibition, which comprises of key works from her 40-year career, was planned with the artist and curator over several years and is constructed as a series of experiential encounters and ‘sensory modalities’ that highlight fundamental ideas and concepts that Janssens has been exploring throughout her career. Forming the core of this exhibition as an immersive body of colour are several of the artist's most iconic works, such as: pinkyellowblue (2015-2023), and a new Beijing version of Janssens’ celebrated glitter sculptures. These artworks demonstrate Janssens' exploration of the dematerialisation of sculpture, unbounded by material or form. pinkyellowblue is an immersive installation that uses light and color to create a sensory and perceptual experience for the viewer. The work consists of a single space infused with hues of bold and bright colour and fog. As the viewer moves through the spaces, the colors blend and shift, creating a sense of movement and transformation: a journey of the mind and body through colour and space. Untitled (Silver Glitter) is another ethereal work that uses dispersed glitter to create a sea of silver colour and light on the floor. As the glitter is released into the gallery, it dances and swirls with the air upon impact, creating a floor sculpture in the space. Like pinkyellowblue, this work highlights Janssens' exploration of the “instability of material”, as it focuses on the sensory and experiential aspects of the work rather than physical form.
Ann Veronica Janssens, pinkyellowblue (2015-2023), Installation View at M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
The exhibition, planned to coincide with the summer solstice, is structured as a journey into the expanded realm of sculpture. It offers a transcendental experience that uses colour and light as a primary gateway for understanding Janssens’ investigation into ‘soft sculpture’. It brings together key works that highlight the artist's approach to making art that examines sculpture through an interdisciplinary field.
For the first time in Beijing, key works that consider this relationship between the viewer, the museum, and light such as Hot Pink and Turquoise (2006) and Rouge 106 Bleu 132 (2003) are displayed. In these works, Janssens blends continuous fields of light with the museum's architecture to produce unique spaces that absorb the viewer in spectrums of colour. Enhancing both the visual and experiential nature of these works in the galleries, filling each room with soft, coral and cerulean hues of light, creating a sense of warmth and temporary tranquillity.
We invite audiences to consider the limits of their own perception through Janssens' art, and to explore how the artist complicates our understanding between the material and the immaterial in art. The sensory experiences created by the artist's use of light and colour, plus the transition to summer in Beijing, will leave a lasting impression on the viewer, proposing a deeper level of engagement with the work, and to further consider the relationship between our feelings and our observance of reality. Do not miss the chance to have your perceptions challenged and your mind expanded by the immersive, experiential art of Ann Veronica Janssens.
Ann Veronica Janssens, pinkyellowblue (2015-2023), Installation View at M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
Ann Veronica Janssens, installation View “pinkyellowblue”, at M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
Ann Veronica Janssens, installation View “ Rouge 106 - Bleu 132” (Scale Model), 2003 - 2007, at M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
Ann Veronica Janssens, installation View “ Eclipse – Shanghai, China 2” (after) (fine), 2009, at M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
Ann Veronica Janssens, “Untitled (silver glitter), open sculpture #1”, 2015 - 2023, at M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
Ann Veronica Janssens, “ Untitled (silver glitter), open sculpture #1”, 2015 - 2023, at M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
Ann Veronica Janssens, “ Phosphènes”, 1997 - 2018, at M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
Ann Veronica Janssens, “ Scrub Colour 2”, 2002, at M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
Ann Veronica Janssens, “Sky”, 2003, at M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
Ann Veronica Janssens, installation View “pinkyellowblue”, at M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
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Photo: portrait of Ann Veronica Janssens, ©Andrea Rossetti , courtesy Esther Shipper Berlin
About the Artist:
Ann Veronica Janssens was born in 1956 in Folkestone, England. She studied at L’École de la Cambre in Brussels. The artist lives and works in Brussels.
Among her numerous solo exhibitions are: Entre le crépuscule et le ciel, Collection Lambert, Avignon (2022); gam gam gam, Galleria d'Arte Moderna – GAM, Milan (2021); Hot Pink Turquoise, South London Gallery, London (2020–21) and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (2020); Contrepoint 2, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris (2019); Ann Veronica Janssens, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (2018–19); Fog Star, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore (2018); Ann Veronica Janssens, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2016); Ann Veronica Janssens: yellowbluepink, Wellcome Collection, London (2015); Serendipity, WIELS, Brussels (2009); CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts (2003); Rouge 106, Bleu 132, Musée d’Orsay, Paris (2003); and Light Games, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2001), amongst many others.
Selected group exhibitions include: Fata Morgana, Jeu de Paume, Paris (2022); Chagall. Le passeur de lumière, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz (2021); Time is Thirsty, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2019); Luogo e Segni, Punta della Dogana, Venice (2019); Space Shifters, Hayward Gallery, London (2018); Poïpoï, une Collection Privée à Monaco, Nouveau Musée National de Monaco (2017); Daniel Buren – A fresco, BOZAR – Centre for fine Arts Brussels (2016); Illumination, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (2016); Manifesta 10, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (2014); Des choses en moins, des choses en plus, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2014); Dynamo, Un siècle de lumière et de mouvement dans l’art 1913-2013, Grand Palais, Paris (2013); Fruits de la Passion, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2012), amongst many others.
Janssens's work is held in the collections of Caldic Collection – Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; De Pont Museum, FNAC, Paris; Fundación Jumex, Mexico City; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk; mac, Marseille; Mona – Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania; MUHKA, Antwerp; Musée national d'art moderne – Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels; Mu.ZEE, Oostende; Musée des Arts Contemporains – Grand Hornu; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; S.M.A.K., Gent; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, and many others.
With special thanks to 1301P, Gallery and to Ann Veronica Janssens‘ Studio.
Exhibition Credit
This exhibition is curated by Victor Wang, Artistic Director and Chief Curator, M WOODS, with Assistant Curator, Qi Yuanlin, M WOODS.
Curatorial assistance provided by Lin Yuyang, Assistant to Artistic Director and Chief Curator.
Exhibition Design by Victor Wang, Li Xindi, Yang Yang, Wang Jian, and M WOODS Technical Team.
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Salman Toor: New Paintings and Drawings
17 December 2022 – 9 March 2023
M WOODS 798, Beijing, China
Curated by Victor Wang, Artistic Director and Chief Curator, M WOODS
Assistant Curator, Qi Yuanlin, M WOODS
Salman Toor: New Paintings and Drawings is the first solo museum exhibition in Asia of Pakistan-born, New York-based artist Salman Toor. The presentation will showcase a selection of 27 new paintings and 23 new works on paper, exploring important themes that converge in Toor’s work, from museological allegories and imperialist histories, to his conversation with nature as a space for queer freedom. Toor created an ambitious new body of work for the Beijing exhibition, and the presentation was developed over the last two years through close conversations between the artist and Victor Wang, Artistic Director of M WOODS.
Blurring the line between memoir and fiction, Toor’s work presents a nuanced view of the queer and the immigrant experience, questions of cultural ownership, and the search for self-love and community. Rendered in Toor’s signature figurative style, which both pays homage to and wryly subverts a variety of art historical references, the works are camp, macabre, romantic, and reverential. Probing his own identity – oscillating between Eastern Muslim man and queer brown boy – Toor’s work speaks to the challenge of reconciling multiple selves and the expectations carried by each.
Salman Toor, Ali, 2022, courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York
A love of costume features prominently in Toor’s work. Contemporary and historical styles comingle to deliberately confuse class, culturetribe, and individuality, at times adding a layer of humorous absurdity to otherwise somber subjects. Yellow Group (2022) depicts a motley crowd – a patched-up pauper, a bald old man with a marionette-like nose, a blue-eyed adventurer in a Napoleonic hat, and a shadowy darkened Muslim woman with a head covering – waiting modestly humbly at the threshold of an immigration counter. The cameras which point at these travelers function as tools of control and surveillance, whereas in works like The Artist (2022) they are exploited employed for a portraits of self-empowerment. Toor’s emphasis on the way appearance is scrutinized brings into relief the way in which identity is both externally determined and internally defined.
Another important device that Toor employs in his work is the use of allegory, exemplified in the recurring scenes of imaginary museum spaces such as The History Room (2022). In this painting, a man confronts a mysterious assortment of museological artefacts including Roman portrait busts, fragments of wooden figures, and an open book. These objects lend a critical view to the manner in which museums have historically enabled and supported systems of classification and colonial pillage. The painting also raises questions: Did the protagonist just chance on these objects, or is he here to reclaim them, or mourn them? Toor’s use of allegory reappears in his “Fag Puddles,” which depict heaps of entangled body parts, clothing, and household items. The humorous and macabre dichotomy in Toor’s work is evident in the agglomeration of these incongruous objects, which function as a lexicon for the building blocks of his imagined characters and narratives.
Salman Toor, Twilight Park, 2022,courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York
The central hall of the exhibition at M WOODS is dedicated to “queering” the nocturnal as a space of desire, shelter, thrill, and the lusty promisepotential of pleasure. The drooping and contorting trees in Night Park (2022) echo the shapes and gestures of Toor’s femme figures, and are rendered in his signature array of poisonous, peaceful, and verdant greens. In the context of China, the artist’s use of velvety, jewel-like emerald and jade hues provides an interesting contrast and dialogue with the long tradition of the colour in the region, such as the use of green in traditional landscape paintings of the Tang and Song dynasties.[1] Effortlessly weaving together modernist impulses with European Old Master techniques in painting, Toor’s work bridges cultures and eras in order to reflect on our current moment and propose an alternative narrative for the future. His art allows us to contemplate the complexities of love, gender, and communal and personal identity. Specific works and themes have been selected for display in this exhibition in order to stimulate local discussions and provide a space for a critical openness to develop and take effect.
“Salman Toor: New Paintings and Drawings”, Installation View of M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
Salman Toor, Late Dinner, 2022, courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York
“Salman Toor: New Paintings and Drawings”, Installation View of M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
Salman Toor, Thanksgiving, 2022, courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York
“Salman Toor: New Paintings and Drawings”, Installation View of M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
(detail image) Salman Toor, Night Park, 2022, courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York
“Salman Toor: New Paintings and Drawings”, Installation View of M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
“Salman Toor: New Paintings and Drawings”, Installation View of M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
Salman Toor, The Doodler, 2022, courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York
“Salman Toor: New Paintings and Drawings”, Installation View of M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
Salman Toor, Wandering Beggars, 2022, courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York
“Salman Toor: New Paintings and Drawings”, Installation View of M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
“Salman Toor: New Paintings and Drawings”, Installation View of M WOODS Museum, 2023, at M WOODS 798, Beijing. © MWOODS
Salman Toor, Man with Flag, 2022, courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York
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Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love, a concurrent solo exhibition organized by and originating at the Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland, is touring in the United States with upcoming presentations at Tampa Museum of Art in Florida, Honolulu Museum of Art in Hawai’i, and Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. Toor’s widely acclaimed first solo museum exhibition, Salman Toor: How Will I Know, was on view in 2020-21 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Toor’s work is in the permanent collections of the Tate, London, United Kingdon; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; M Woods, Beijing, China; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island; and Wake Forest University Art Collection, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, among others.
[1] Ibid.
With special thanks to Luhring Augustine, New York
Exhibition Credit
This exhibition is curated by Victor Wang, Artistic Director and Chief Curator, M WOODS, with Assistant Curator, Qi Yuanlin, M WOODS.
Exhibition Coordination by Deng Yingying
Curatorial assistance provided by Lin Yuyang, Assistant to Artistic Director and Chief Curator.
Exhibition Design by Victor Wang, Li Xindi, Qi Yuanlin, Yang Yang, and M WOODS Technical Team.
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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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VICTOR WANG
All content property of © Victor Wang 2009 - 2021 All rights reserved -- BEIJING - LONDON.
All content property of © Victor Wang 2009 - 2021 All rights reserved -- BEIJING - LONDON.