13 abr 2021

Guangzhou Image Triennial 2021

Curated by Gerardo Mosquera, Hyperimage Group (Dong Bingfeng, Xiang Zairong, and Teng Yuning) and Yang Beichen

March 30 - May 30, 2021

Guangdong Museum of Art, China

I was invited by Gerardo Mosquera to participate in the Guangzhou Image Triennial at the Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou (Canton), China with 8 photos: Paju (DMZ) II, Love Motel (Pasta), The Most Dangerous City in the World, Path of Light, Araya, The Wheel of Time, Moonset, and El Castillete.

NASA’s night photographs of Earth taken from space disclose the worrying scope of the human occupation of the planet: the extension of city lights, which are the only human creation that can be seen from outer space – not the Chinese Wall, as has been wrongly asserted. These photos are also a social and economic cartography: lights and shades show the unequal distribution of wealth and power. Just as the microwave image of the Universe, these scientific vistas were not intended as art, but they are as aesthetic and thought provoking as art is. We could play with the idea that Suwon Lee’s views of cities at night are poetic close-ups of NASA’s panoramas, which bring together a refined nocturnal beauty with a kind of eerie aesthetics.

[From Mosquera's curatorial text]

Guangzhou Image Triennial 2021 (originally scheduled for 2020 but postposed due to COVID) consists of three thematic exhibitions and an archive exhibition. Wang Shaoqiang, Director of the Guangdong Museum of Art, is the chief director of the Triennial and the curator of the archive exhibition. The original theme Rethinking Collectivity was changed at the last minute to Intermingling Flux. The thematic exhibitions, each by a different curator/team, have gathered a total of 60 artists and collectives. Mosquera's proposal is on the third floor of the museum and is entitled Globalscape. On the second floor is Frontier Mentality by Yang Beichen and on the first floor is Why Collectivity? by Hyperimage Group.

Originally the Guangzhou Photo Biennale, The Guangzhou Image Triennial began in 2002 to activate the international artistic dialogue at the museum and has been co-curated over the years by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Hou Hanru, and Guo Xiaoyan (2006), Gao Shiming, Sarat Maharaj, Chang Tsong-zung, Dorothee Albrecht, Sopawan Boonnimitra, Stina Edblom, Tamar Guimaraes, Steve Lam, and Khaled D. Ramadan (2008), Jiang Jiehong and Jonathan Watkins (2012), Henk Slager, Zhang Qing, Ute Meta Bauer, Kim Hong-Hee, Sarah Wilson, Sun Ge (2015), and Alejandro Castellote, Bao Dong, and Zeng Han (2017).

Opened in 1997, Guangdong Museum of Art covers a total area of 22,000 square meters and is dedicated to the collecting, preservation and presentation of Chinese modern and contemporary art.

GLOBALSCAPE

Gerardo Mosquera

Only in recent times we have been able to see the global landscape. “I see the Earth! It is so beautiful!”, exclaimed Yuri Gagarin during the first manned spatial flight sixty years ago. He was the first to watch the globalscape with his own eyes: “The Earth has a blue hue... The view of it is sharp... Very distinctive are large mountain ranges, rivers, forest areas, shorelines, and islands.” He discovered that we were living in what was later coined the “blue planet”, something that we can only know from looking at Earth from outer space. Gagarin also made the first description of the globalscape, which was also an aesthetic and emotional appreciation: What beauty! I saw clouds and their light shadows on the distant, dear Earth....The water looked like darkish, slightly gleaming spots.... When I watched the horizon, I saw the abrupt, contrasting transition from the Earth's light-colored surface to the absolutely black sky. I enjoyed the rich color spectrum of Earth. It is surrounded by a light blue halo that gradually darkens, becoming turquoise, dark blue, violet, and finally coal black."

...Today we see the globalscape not only from a distance through the images of our planet taken by spacecrafts, but also from the proximity that globalization – through the use of photography and video, together with the expansion of electronic communications and digital technology – have made possible. This proximity has allowed us to view landscapes from all over the world – even in real time – without leaving home. There is no new frontier left anymore, no undiscovered land, no remote landscape. Technological images allow us to observe the cosmos as well as every small corner of the globe that we inhabit. The globalscape has thus both macro and micro dimensions, which we can observe, analyze and enjoy through the eye of a camera...

Read Gerardo Mosquera's full curatorial text here:

Globalscape 全球景观 3F Gerardo Mosquera

Davide Tranchina 戴维·德兰奇

Glenda León 格兰达·莱昂

Arno Rafael Minkkinen 阿诺·拉斐尔·闵奇恩

Luis Camnitzer 路易斯·加姆尼则

Marina Abramovic 玛丽娜·阿布拉莫维奇

Suwon Lee 李修源 Analía Amaya 阿纳利亚·阿玛亚 Che Jianquan 车建全 Marcelo Moscheta 马塞洛·摩茨凯塔 Isaac Julien 艾萨克·朱利安 Tarek Al-Ghoussein 塔里克·阿勒古赛因

Alberto David Fernández 阿尔贝托·大卫·费尔南德斯 Bae Bien U 裴炳雨 Luiz Braga 路易斯·布拉加

Cyrus Cornut 赛勒斯·科努特

Iosif Kiraly 艾奥斯·基拉利 Zhang Xiao 张晓 Du Zhenjun 杜震君

Gabriel Orozco 加布里埃尔·奥罗斯科 Chris Jordan 克里斯·乔丹

Junebum Park 朴峻范

Sherman Ong 王明安

Rubens Mano 鲁本斯·马诺

Alain Paiement 阿兰·派恩蒂

Rula Halawani 鲁拉·哈拉瓦尼

Pu Feng 浦峰 Zhang Zhitao 张志韬

Zhang Youqiong 张由琼 Sohei Nishino 西野壮平

Michael Wolf 迈克尔·沃尔夫

Ed Ruscha 埃德·拉斯查

Cristina Lucas 克里斯蒂娜·卢卡斯

Frontier Mentality 前沿心致 2F Yang Beichen

Monria Al Qadiri 莫妮拉·艾·卡迪里

Ho Rui An 何锐安 John Gerrard 约翰·杰拉德 Liu Chuang 刘窗

Chia-Wei Hsu 许家维

Zhang Wenxin 张文心 Emilija Škarnulyté 艾米利娅·斯卡努利特

Pedro Neves Marques 佩德罗·内维斯·马克斯

Lu Chunsheng 陆春生 Jonathas de Andrade 乔纳森·德·安德拉德 Geocinema (Solveig Qu Suess & Asia Bazdyrieva) 地质电影小组 (索尔维格·瞿·苏斯&阿西娅·巴兹蒂里耶娃) Allora &Calzadilla 阿洛拉&卡尔扎迪拉 Ali Cherri 阿里·切里 Julian Charrière 朱利安·查理埃

James Bridle 詹姆斯·布莱德

Trevor Paglen 崔佛·帕格伦