Zuoxiaozuzhou is one of China’s first experimental musicians, also one of the first artists that settled down in “Beijing East Village” (an avant-garde artistic community of the early 1990s located in the eastern part of Beijing, just past the Third Ring Road on what was then the city’s margins). In 1993, he founded the rock band “No”. Since 1998, he has published seven albums including The Missing Master (1998), Trip to Temple Fair (1999), Zuzhou at Di’anmen (2001), I Can’t Sit Sadly by Your Side (2005), The U.S.A. (2006), You Know Where the East is (2008) and Big Deal (2009).

Over the years, Zuzhou has developed a unique music style. Like his violin performance in early years, his voice is maniac and indifferent. His personalized high-pitch singing staged a vocal revolution in China’s rock scene. After middle 1990s, he has gained fame as stage artist and his artistic exploration expanded to a broader range. In 2000, he published a full-length novel Barking at the Tomb. Zuzhou also produced quite a few soundtracks for independent film directors including Jia Zhangke and Zhu Wen.

In 2010, right after his new album Big Deal was published, Zuzhou decided to hold his first solo concert, named “All the Best”. The concert will present Zuzhou’s music achievement in the past ten years. The production team is consisted of the leading figures in China’s contemporary art, film and theatre scenes. The shining list: Ai Weiwei as chief planner, Ning Hao as creative director, Meng Jinghui as stage director, Jia Zhangke as concert DVD director, Zhu Wen as performance director, Li Yanliang as music director and Fang Wuxing as producer.

Shao Foundation is proud to fully support Zuoxiaozuzhou’s upcoming solo concert. The cross-disiplinary and multi-media performance will surely bring you an unprecedented concert experience.

Date: 19 Mar, 2010
Venue: Beijing Century Theatre

Official Website of Zuoxiaozuzhou
Book tickets online

Reflections：10 Chinese Artists and Their 20s

Curator: Linghu Lei
Opening: 5pm, Jan 20, 2010
Exhibition time: Jan 20 to Feb 5, 2010
Opening hours: 11:00am to 6:00pm everyday
Address: Beijing Angle Modern Art, 4/F, Tower 1, Zhongguo Hongjie (China View), Jia 2 Gongti Dong Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing
 
CROSSTALK Beijing #7 Life: Inspiration and Passion

Host: Linghu Lei
Guests: Hu Jiujiu, Pi Li, Rongrong, Philip Tinari,
Time: 14:00, Jan 20, 2010
Address: Beijing Angle Modern Art, 4/F, Tower 1, Zhongguo Hongjie (China View), Jia 2 Gongti Dong Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing

On Jan 20, 2010, the exhibition “Reflections：10 Chinese Artists and Their 20s” will open at Beijing Angle Modern Art. 10 contemporary artists from different realms will use their early works to trigger the discussion of that particular age they belonged to.
Stepping into the last year of the first decade of 21st century, it’s time to review what has come along with us. Today’s important artists had their first shine 20 years ago, with boundless passion and inspirations, paralleling changes and contemplations taking place in this very nation. Their stories simultaneously reflect the enlightenment of the nation’s art field.

This exhibition will touch upon fields including: engraving, painting, device, concept, action and photography etc. Exhibits are mostly unknown works, sketches, unfinished works, even “failed works” which the artists found themselves embarrassed of, together with thoughts and dreams about the work.

The exhibition is inclined to re-open the memory of that age, how these avant-gardes began to fulfill their dreams. This private and mystic period is valued and delivered to audience as a group exhibition. The unique era they lived through still seems nice and warm today.

Traces: Liu Xiaodong

Co-curators: Wu Hung | Ou Ning
Opening Reception: 9pm, September 18, 2009
Exhibition Time: September 18 – November 15, 2009
(Closed during the National Day holiday.)
Opening Hours: 2pm–8pm, Monday–Friday
10am–6pm, Saturday–Sunday
Address: Beijing Angle Modern Art, 4/F, Tower 1, Zhongguo Hongjie (China View), Jia 2 Gongti Dong Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing

CROSSTALK Beijing #6: Archiving and Case Study in Contemporary Art

Guests: Liu Xiaodong, Wu Hung, Ou Ning
Time: 3pm, September 19, 2009
Address: Beijing Angle Modern Art, 4/F, Tower 1, Zhongguo Hongjie (China View), Jia 2 Gongti Dong Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing

As one of the most successful artists in China, Liu Xiaodong’s works are classics in contemporary Chinese art history and an art market phenomenon. In an exhibition of his finished works, an audience or critic can only make a ‘format analysis’ and ‘image/pattern recognition’ during the show. No more information is available. But here, sketches, notes, snapshots, documentary films, conversations and publications are all available, presenting the traces of Liu’s inspirations. In this exhibition, you will see the primary form of his works, revealing and unraveling a process to give an insight and depth beyond the paintings. This wealth of context provides many points of penetration and investigation for case studies: they could be sociological, political or even from a perspective we never expected.

This exhibition is not about work, but process. A finished work signifies the solidification of artistic creation; it is the sprint result on the timer, recorded, and unchangeable. On the other hand, the process signifies time and thought, which is the endless and unquantifiable running itself. A work is destined to be a possession of other people, rarely of the artist himself. Its value is only realized through translocation and collection or appraised and determined by museums, exhibitions, art market, audience, critics and history. But the process will belong exclusively to the artist himself. It is scattered in sketches, notebooks, study rooms and the studio, just as thoughts and memories.

It is the public exhibitions of finished works that made art history; while the trace collection and accumulation of the process that made archive. A work with no traces can’t be art, while a painter with no process can’t be an artist.

Biography:

Liu Xiaodong was born in 1963 in Liaoning, China. He graduated from Central Institute of Fine Arts, Beijing and then studied in Academy of Fine Arts at University of Complutense in Madrid, Spain in 1999. Liu’s first solo exhibition in 1990 lifted the curtain on the New Era in China’s art field. He was titled the representative artist of New Era, and during the same period participated in the making of several independent films, which made him one of the first participants of Chinese independent movies. His major field painting projects since 2004 ranged over several different countries and areas. These projects faced straight up to reality and showed his position, attitude, and power of action as an artist. They extended the connotation of paintings. Liu’s most important works; Pastoral Song, Burning Mouse, Eighteen Soldiers, Three Gorges Series, Qing Zang Railroad, Horse Market, secured his place in both contemporary art history as well as the art market.

Exhibition guide

CROSSTALK: 5:00pm, August 30, 2009 (BAMA)
Inquiry: (86) (10) 6561 0361, info [at] shaofoundation.org.cn

Born in 1977, Ying Liang is a young director in China who has been living in a small town called Zigong in Sichuan province, where most of his films are produced by a crew consisting of his friends and relatives. Taking advantage of the global distribution system in the ‘Long Tail’ era, Ying has managed to secure a place in the international festival circus with his ultra-low budget productions. He is, however, not to be mistaken as one of the many faceless auteurs. He’s dedicated, resourceful, flexible and prolific, with a distinctive personal style. With all three of his feature films and several shorts screened for three rounds in three weekends, Sichuan Chronicles is the most comprehensive presentation of Ying’s works to this date.

(Some of these films are in Sichuan dialect, with Chinese and English subtitles.)

This exhibition is sponsored by Shao Foundation, the opening party will be held at 4:00pm, August 8, 2009 (Saturday).

By Liu Heung Shing, 1979.

Seek Truth from Facts is the first exhibition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Liu Heung Shing in mainland China. It features a selection of Liu’s photos taken from 1978 to 1983, all of which were published in China After Mao: Seek Truth from Facts by Penguin in 1983 (reprinted in 1987 and 1992). The Chinese edition will be published by the World Publishing Company (Shijie Tushu Chuban Gongsi) this September.

Liu Heung Shing was born in Hong Kong in 1951 and graduated from Hunter College of the New York City University in 1975. He was a former foreign correspondent / photojournalist who had been dispatched to China, U.S., India, South Korea, and the former Soviet Union in a span of 20 years. From 1997 to 2000, Liu was the Director of Business Development for Time Warner Inc. in China. He worked for News Corporation (China) as the Executive Vice President from 2000 to 2006. In 1992, Liu shares the Pulitzer Prize and the Overseas Press Club Award for the coverage of the collapse of the Soviet Union. He is currently the Editorial Director of Modern Media Group, which publishes eight magazines including Modern Weekly.

Please visit Three Shadows gallery’s exhibition page for more info on the exhibition.

The CROSSTALK Beijing # 5 echos the retrospective of Ying Liang. Film critics Chiao Hsiung Ping， Shu Kei, Cui Weiping and Du Qingchun joined the discussion with Ying Liang on art value of these film and how film directors with extremely low budget can survive today.

Inquiry: (8610) 6561 0361, info [at] shaofoundation.org.cn

Free admission. The talk will be in English with consecutive Chinese interpretation.

Shao Foundation is proud to announce CROSSTALK Beijing #4: Public Space as Side Effect: The End of Neo-Liberalism, a talk by Professor Scott Lash from Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Disagreeing with Ma Qingyun’s famous dictum ‘There is No Public Space in China’, Lash will look at the terminal crisis of Neo-liberalism with the financial meltdown of 2008 – 09, striving for an understanding of Neo-liberalism in the context of ‘The Washington Consensus’  and financialisation — including especially the corporate bond markets and the triumph of the funds — hedge funds, venture capital, leveraged buyout and private equity. Neo-liberalism will be examined as the competition between monopolies and a certain legalisation of production, including sharply defined property rights. Lash will also elaborate on a possible ‘Beijing Consensus’ of blurred property rights, relationality in place of individualism, and of course a different financial regime. If classical liberalism features market transactions, Neo-liberalism features corporation as the site of transactions. Lash will look at how this creates externalities that is side effects or spillovers from the neo-liberal corporate space, which creates for itself not just environmental damage but also public goods and positive externalities. These externalities include the creation of a certain kind of public space itself — not the public space in the classic western sense, but something else. In his talk, Lash will discuss the implications of this new kind of space for urbanism, the arts and new media, including different possibilities for meta data, semantics and the social web.

Scott Lash is the Director of Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He’s the author (co-author) of The End of Organized Capitalism, Reflexive Modernization, Critique of Information, Another Modernity, A Different Rationality, Global Culture Industry, Sociology of Postmodernism and Economies of Signs and Space. Currently, Lash is working on a new book called Intensive Culture. He has been doing research on the ‘Risk Culture’ in China, and is a part of Rem Koolhaas’ OMA team for the West Kowloon Culture District bid in Hong Kong.

CROSSTALK Beijing is a new kind of conversation programme conceived and presented by Shao Foundation. We invite artists, scientists, thinkers, architects, designers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, futurists and software developers to a lecture or conference setting, confronting them with the live feedback from the audience — local and remote — through the use of new web technology known as ‘Micro-blogging’ (a la Twitter). The event is free.

- Scott Lash’s Wikipedia entry.

Beijing, April 20, 2009 — Ou Ning, the Director of Shao Foundation, joins the jury of this year’s Benesse Prize at the 53rd Venice Biennale.

Initiated by the Benesse Corporation in 1995, Benesse Prize is awarded to young artists who are opening new horizons outside the current paradigm with an experimental spirit. All the artists and works in the Biennale, including those in each pavilion and the special exhibitions, are open for consideration. The judging process is executed separately from the official judging, and a new jury group is organised for each Prize. Besides Ou Ning, this year’s jury consists of Hans Ulrich Obrist (Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes, Director of International Projects, Serpentine Gallery), Tom Eccles (Executive director, Centre for Curatorial Studies), and Fram Kitagawa (General Director of Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial).

Past recipients of the Benesse Prize include Cai Guo-Qiang, Alexandros Psychoulis, Olafur Eliasson, Janet Cardiff, Georges Bures Miller, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Tacita Dean and Adel Abdessmed.

The Benesse Prize is a part of ‘NAOSHIMA: Art and Architecture Projects in the Seto Inland Sea’ to be presented by Naoshima Fukutake Art Museum Foundation this June at the Venice Biennale. The event consists of a symposium, exhibition, the annual awarding of the Benesse Prize, and an overview of the latest projects by Tadao Ando, Kazuyo Sejima, and Ryue Nishizawa in the Seto Inland Sea area.

The symposium this year will be conducted on June 3, with theme of ‘how to revitalise the Naoshima and the Seto Inland Sea region by creating a cultural sphere based on architecture and art’. Guest speakers include architects Tadao Ando, Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa, and Hiroshi Sambuichi, as well as Soichiro Fukutake — the Chairman and CEO of Benesse Corporation. Francesco Dal Co, one of Italy’s most prominent architectural historians, will be moderating the discussion.

The exhibition, which aims at a retrospective of the art projects in the Naoshima and the Seto Inland Sea area in the past twenty years, will run through June 7 to June 21. In addition to learning about art and architecture, visitors to the exhibition will have a chance to experience the area through the natural environment and local culture on the islands.

In the past editions, one of the features of the Benesse Prize was that the artist was chosen based on the understanding that he/she would be considered to create a commissioned work in Naoshima. Last time, the possible site for the commission was extended to Echigo-Tsumari. This year, it would be further extended to the seven islands in the Seto Inland Sea as part of the Setouchi International Art Festival, which will be launched in July 2010.

Click here to download the original press release by Benesse Corporation.