The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art presents Xu Zhen: A MadeIn Company Production an exhibition on view 19 January – 20 April, 2014.
A daring artist with a voracious appetite for global information and a unique ability to produce work across multiple platforms and media, Xu Zhen (b. 1977) is the key figure of the Shanghai art scene and a foundational figure for the generations of Chinese artists born since 1980. Including over 50 installation pieces, 10 videos, 40 painting and collage works, and several performances, together filling UCCA’s signature Great Hall, this exhibition spans Xu Zhen’s early works made in his own name beginning in the late 1990s, works produced under the “contemporary art creation company” MadeIn Company, which he founded in 2009, as well as major new pieces produced specially for this exhibition under MadeIn Company’s newly launched brand “Xu Zhen.” Presented together, Xu Zhen’s oeuvre reflects the lingering concerns of an artist participating in the international art world while remaining deeply skeptical of it and its conventions, most imm ediately the label “Chinese contemporary art.” Xu Zhen’s artworks probe the various mediations that corrupt the viewer’s experience of an artwork, particularly in observing a culture that is not one’s own. The exhibition is curated by UCCA Director Philip Tinari and UCCA Chief Curator Paula Tsai.