(Un) Forbidden City
MACROS Testaccio
Rome - 2012
Curated by Gao Zhen e Gaoqiang, aka i Gao Brothers, Simona Rossi e Dominique Lora
The glimpse of the new trends that animate the Chinese contemporary art scene: “(A) Forbidden City.The post-revolution of the new Chinese art "is the exhibition presented by Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang, aka the Gao Brothers, curated by Simona Rossi and Dominique Lora, at MACRO Testaccio.
The exhibition is conceived as a place where traditions and identities are added to a transnational creative path, towards a reality that Achille Bonito Oliva would define glocal.
The group of selected artists is characterized by a generational matrix linked to the post-revolutionary student movements and the underground culture that ensued. Such artists present aesthetic codes and formal solutions that galvanize new media and popular culture in an attempt to build a new identity. Their hybrid and provocative artistic experience includes photography, installation, performance and video art.
Among the artists present in the exhibition are the same Gao Brothers, known internationally for their artistic and multimedia experiments on the idea of the spiritual crisis that affects the individual and more generally the human condition.
Their works stage the anxieties and fears that characterize international culture now lost in the cultural vulgarity of globalization (Yi Ying, World Art Magazine).
Among the other selected artists, Lu Feifei, Chang Lei, Wu Xiao Jun, Li Xinmo, Shen Ruijun, Gao Shen, Sung Ping, Sun Lei.
All they express a research that is at the same time individual and collective, in which the tensions and dynamics of the cultural and social development of contemporary China intertwine in relation to an inescapable international and abstract modernity. These tensions and dynamics also include research and a dialogue between ethics and aesthetics applied to the relationship between man and nature, with the aim of promoting an ecologically and economically sustainable world.
By exploring issues such as environmental impact and development, the ethics of responsibility and consumption, artists begin to support new, more prudent and aware lifestyles that are certainly necessary for the next generations.
The exhibition “(A) Forbidden City. The post-revolution of the new Chinese art ", presented by Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang, aka the Gao Brothers, curated by Simona Rossi and Dominique Lora, is promoted by Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities, Roma Capitale, Department of Cultural Policies and Historic Center - Superintendence of Cultural Heritage, Chamber of Commerce of Rome. The exhibition is organized, produced and sponsored by Glocal Project Consulting, with the organizational support and museum services of Zètema Culture Project. Catalog Damiani.