The Rockbund Art Museum presents Model Home – A Proposition by Michael Lin, an exhibition on view through 3 June 2012.
Model Home is the latest proposition presented by artist Michael Lin, by way of an interdisciplinary collaboration. Taking the initial collaborative work by Lin and the Japanese architects Atelier Bow-Wow as departure point, this exhibition invites artists Cheng Ran, Lou Nanli, urban studies researcher Li Xiangning, as well as construction and furniture workers to contribute and participate in the realization of this project. In doing so, Model Home will echo the proposition of Walter Gropius for the Bauhaus (1919) with the idea of a total work of art which integrates architecture, painting and sculpture. This project seeks to explore the processes in the production of contemporary art, its implication and dissemination into society, as well as issues concerning site-specificity and the development of our urban landscape.
It is common in Lin’s work to juxtapose architectural spaces and decorative ornaments and set up dialogues between them. He is widely known for appropriating textile motifs from everyday life, which relate to localities or cultures, and transplanting them into public spaces. Through such interventions and transpositions of the context, he makes the exchanges and conflicts between different cultural traditions visible. As an interdisciplinary work, Model Home departs from and centers on Lin’s emblematic wall paintings, which connect collaborative efforts in a wide range of areas.
Model Home intends to call for a new collaborative relationship that transcends the boundaries between communities, disciplines and social identities, by exploring possible interactions between art and society. The exhibition site is transformed into one where social development and cultural production are re-presented, demonstrating the complex situations of the social structure and individual existence in the city. Viewed in this perspective, Model Home is a conceptual social practice that transcends the boundaries of culture and medium, and indeed experiments with the role the Rockbund Art Museum can play in our contemporary society.
The Model Home sound track is realized in collaboration with Leo Xu Projects.
ABOUT ROCKBUND ART MUSEUM
Located in Rockbund, the famous Bund area where Huangpu River intersects with Suzhou Creek, Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) was originally the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS), home to the former Shanghai Museum, one of the first modern museums in China and was restored by renowned architect David Chipperfield. As the only contemporary art museum on the Bund, RAM considers its mission to be “the spread of humanistic values and the promotion of art”. RAM dedicates its efforts to the study, exchange and promotion of contemporary arts.
Rockbund Art Museum was officially opened on May 4, 2010 and sequentially held different types of exhibitions including “Cai Guo-Qiang: Peasant Da Vincis”, “2010·Zeng Fanzhi”, “By Day, By Night, or Some (Special) Things a Museum Can Do”, and “Zhang Huan: Q Confucius”. All exhibitions were with high originality and rich artistic and social significance. Meanwhile, RAM has launched “Night @ RAM” non-profit events including academic and educational lecture, seminar, performance and workshop etc., receiving active participation and positive remarks from the public. For more information on RAM, please visit www.rockbundartmuseum.org