Minsheng Art Museum hosts climate exhibition
Print Edition
ON the former site of the France Pavilion, the Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum opened “The Weather War,” a special commissioned exhibition produced by curator Kaimei Olsson Wang and Swedish artist duo Bigert & Bergström (Mats Bergart and Lars Bergström, B&B), on a recent Saturday.
“The Weather War” is a documentary/art film created by Bigert & Bergström in 2012, depicting the pair’s travel in the US’s most tornado-affected states with an imaginary machine sculpture intended to stop the tornados.
Taking the film as a starting point, the exhibition shows several of the artistic duo’s most recent climate related art works. Focusing on man’s attempts at atmospheric control through various geo-engineering techniques, the exhibition walks the audience through three different thematic zones: The Storm, The Drought and The Freeze. Finally, the exhibition invites the audience to enter the history of weather through a new installation entitled “Inside the Weather — a Synoptic Battlefield.”
The six-week long exhibition runs through April 16 and is one of the major events being held at the museum after a merger early this year.
Sponsored by the bank of the same name, the Minsheng Art Museum in the creative environs of Red Town in Changning District, has joined its sister site — the 21st Century Minsheng Art Museum (M21) — in the former France Pavilion from the Shanghai World Expo 2010. After the merger in January, the venue at 1929 Expo Avenue holds the name “Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum” and will host exhibitions showcasing contemporary artists working internationally, as well as regular film screenings, events and lectures.
Before its relocation, “CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland (Phase Two)” was on display as one of the last exhibitions held at the Red Town site of Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum.
Curated by Cooper Gallery DJCAD (Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design) at University of Dundee in collaboration with Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum and organized in partnership with the British Council and Shanghai International Culture Association, the show consists of two group exhibitions: “REWIND: British Video Art in the 70s and 80s” and “FFWD: Artists’ Moving Image from Scotland.”
The exhibition focuses on the history and development of moving image works to explore the distinctiveness of contemporary art made in Scotland; its grass-roots spirit and its keen debates with the social and political dimensions of the art and culture.
Excavating the radical history encapsulated in seminal artists’ video works from the 1970s and 80s, “REWIND” provides an in-depth perspective on the moving image in and out of history. “FFWD” seizes the contemporary in its full immediacy and impact.
A highlight of “REWIND” is a video titled “Doppelganger,” created by Elaine Shemilt. Shemilt manipulates her body and her image to create a double of herself in this video performance.
A highlight in the “FFWD” section is Duncan Marquiss’ “Midday,” created in 2011. The work features footage of the artist’s hand passing under a shadow cast by a grass screen. The movement of the hand through the repeating lines of shade plays on the viewer’s perception of depth, and the tendency to look for familiar forms within disorienting patterns. The affect of the work is to collapse the depth of the film-frame into a flattened, flickering moire.
Since the opening of M21 in 2014, its parent has considered to make a better art museum based on the resources of the two. Two years after, Shanghai proposed to build a cultural industry cluster in its latest blueprint in cultural fields.
The World Expo site along Huangpu River is expected to be a key spot to home all sorts of museums, according to the plan. The merger of the two Minsheng art museums seizes the opportunity of Shanghai’s international development and shows the strategic position of culture and art in the development after the World Expo.
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