12 presentations of contemporary museum architecture in China

May 18th, 2013 - July 18th, 2013

Opening: May 17th, 2013, 18:00, Friday

Venue: 3/F, Power Station of Art | Archichoke Aviation Influenza

Artists: LIU Jiakun, Urbanus (LIU Xiaodu/WANG Hui/MENG Yan), Original Design (ZHANG Ming/ZHANG Zi), One Design (BU Bing)/CHAI Tao, GOM (ZHANG Jiajing/HUANG Wei), China Megacities Lab/GSAPP Columbia University (Jeffrey JOHNSON/Zoe FLORENCE)/SLAB Architecture (Jeffrey JOHNSON/Jill LECKNER), YU Ting, YUAN Feng, Atelier Z+ (ZHANG Bin/ZHOU Wei)/Archmixing (ZHUANG Shen), FENG Lu/LIU Yuyang, Museum of Unknown, SHEN Zhonghai

Curators: ZHANG Ming, BU Bing, ZHANG Jiajing

Organizers: Power Station of Art, Archichoke

Museum presents spectacle as well as being a spectacle in the city. This creates the intricate relationship of watching and being watched. Spectacles overlap and blur, creating the halo of the museum architecture. In modern society which is desperately eager to consume spectacle, museum as a haloed spectacle has increasingly become the object to be worshipped rather than a place for worshipping. Partly for this reason, Museum projects are also considered as most desired and proud of opportunity to architects.

In the past few years, new museums have been constructed all over China in an unprecedentedly quantity and scale. As excellent works are emerging, we found it a critical moment to reflect on such new museum architecture. However, the conventional way of architectural exhibition, with models, photographs, or drawings, can only display piecemeal vignettes of the selected works rather than their potential role in contemporary China. We now need to explore new methods to investigate the social, cultural, and political transformation underlying the quantitative expansion, such as construction and usage, public and private, representation and observation, event and daily life, etc.

So we put together here presentations instead of representations in this exhibition. 12 architects/artists (groups) are invited to approach the topic of museum architecture in visual ways from a diversity of perspectives.

The primary purpose of the exhibition is to stimulate more deep thoughts and critical reflections on the new museum architecture rather than repeating superficial complains about the over-speed or over-quantity. The large-scale construction activities in China today are both challenge and opportunity to the architects. It is also a critical moment for the architects, intellectuals, and the public to reconsider and re-assess architecture and urbanism. We do hope that the visitors can look through this gigantic and splendid mirage composed of any kind of spectacle shown in the exhibition, and start to think more about what we have had, and what we are pursuing.