Global Art and the Museum

Officially established on January 28, 2005, OCAT is a Chinese non-profit contemporary art organization connected to a national art museum, the He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen¹. OCAT is named after the “Oversease Chinese Town” in which is located, a scenic spot in Shenzhen Nanshan District².

Mission

OCAT’s core mission is to gather international resources for the production and promotion of contemporary Chinese art, facilitating exchanges and interactions between China and foreing countries. Through exhibitions, forums and artist-in-residence programs, OCAT aims to support Chinese art, while nevertheless maintaining an international vision. It is committed to functioning as a hub, a supply centre and a departure point for contemporary Chinese art. In other words “an international terminal for contemporary Chinese art”.

OCAT’program is mainly based on visual art, but also includes performing arts, concerts, screenings and multimedia presentations. Furthermore, in order to support the most interesting developments of contemporary art practice in China, OCAT serves as a dynamic platform upon which to join resources from across the world.

Facilities

OCAT has indoors space of over 3,000m², comprising areas of different functions such as offices, artist-in-residence studios, exhibition spaces, storerooms, a merchandise section and a book shop.

Key Exhibitions

In the past five years, OCAT has organized a series of influential exhibitions including: Lift Off: An Exhibition of Contemporary Art from the He Xiangning Art Museum OCAT Collection, Documenting the Contemporary Art Scene in Guangdong, Plato and His Seven Disciples, Gu Wenda’s Forest of Stone Steles: Retranslation and Rewriting of Tang Poetry, Creating History: Comemoration Exhibition of Chinese Modern Art in the 1980s, Qi Yun: The International Traveling Exhibition of Chinese Abstract Art, Pressure Points: Sui Jianguo Solo Exhibition, Visual Polity: Another Wang Guangyi, Political Visual Science: Another Wang Guangyi.

Creating History: Comemoration Exhibition of Chinese Modern Art in the 1980s, Exhibition View

Art Projects in Public Space

The He Xiangning Art Museum has made a continuous effort to bring contemporary art to the public. Events such as the “Shenzhen International Sculpture Exhibition” are an embodiment of this effort. OCAT has followed the museum’s committment on “public art” with the “Shenzhen OCT Subway Murals Project” and the “Ten Year Public Arts Plan for the Shanghai Xinpu River”. These public art projects have attracted widespread attention to the issues of public space, while searching for an effective path for dialogue between artists and the general public. Their aim was to spark a debate on the role played by public art in the construction of a shared realm for exchange and dialogue with local characteristics.

Shenzhen OCT Subway Murals Project, 2006

Collection

OCAT’s collection is focused on contemporary Chinese art. The artworks are mostly collected through donations by the artists, whose works has been exhibited at OCAT. OCAT’s first batch of collections is comprised of Huang Yongping’s BatPlan, Gu Dexin’s December 12, 2001, and Lin Yilin’s The 11th Five-year Plan. These three works were all part of the He Xiangning Art Museum’s international sculpture exhibition, and The Fourth Shenzhen Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition: Transplanted Scene.

Wang Guangyi, ’’Hello, World’’, 2004

Wang Guangyi’s Hello, World! , Zhang Xiaogang’s Large Family-Metro and Fang Lijun’s Song of Joy are three important subway murals originated in the frame of the “subway art museum” concept, and are therefore holding important sociological and historical implications. Other relevant works in the OCAT collection are undoubtely Li Huasheng’ abstract ink painting 023 and Gu Wenda’s Forest of Stone Steles: Retranslation and Rewriting of Tang Poetry. This work took 12 years before it was finally implemented in Xi’an. It consists of 50 stone steles, each measuring 110x190x20cm and weighing approximately 1.3 metric tons. One of those steles is currently part of the OCAT collection. Abstract artist . In addition, OCAT has also collected experimental artworks from young artists, including one of Zhang Chunyang’s Whitewash pieces, Qin Jin’s_ The Last Supper_, Wang Chuan’s Survivor Series: to Xiao Jin An Er Lang, and Sheng Hai’s A Cube.

Symposia

During important exhibitions, OCAT holds academic forums to promote an in-depth research of exhibition-related topics. For instance, the “Guangdong Contemporary Art (1990-2005) Document Exhibition Report Forum”, hosted by Chen Dong, brought together highly active artist groups such as the Big Tail Elephant Group, Yangjiang Artistic Youth and U-Theque; while the “International Symposium on Translation and Image Culture”, hosted by Wu Hung, engaged in issues of visual culture, contemporary art, imagery and cultural translation with reference to the art of Gu Wenda. The academic symposium, “Creating History: on the Sacrifice of the Spirit of Modern Art in 1980’s China”, hosted by Huang Zhuan, invited its participants to rethink the role of the 1980’s Chinese modern art movement. Coinciding with Qi Yun: International Traveling Exhibition of Chinese Abstract Art, OCAT organized several symposia in New York and Shenzhen. Among them, “Looking at Art with Freedom”, hosted by Li Gongming, looked at artistic issues through the perspective of freedom and liberalism, and provided an intellectual historical framework for discussing the role of art in contemporary China. In order to further promote Chinese contemporary art, OCAT worked together with the Museum of Modern Art in New York at the compilation of an anthology of Chinese contemporary art from 1976 to 2006.

Workshops

The OCAT International Art Workshop is a longterm exchange project. It formally began in September 2006 and consists of a three-months residency program dedicated to research, art production and cultural exchange. Up to five distinguished artists, curators and researchers from art-related fields from both China and abroad are usually invited to take part to the program.

Intersection: the OCAT Contemporary Dance Theatre Performance Festival

The name “Intersection” originally comes from the former “Beijing Caochangdi Workshop Performance” and it is meant as an intersection of modern dance and visual art. In order to further engage the audience and increase the awareness about Contemporary Dance Theater, the festival regularly hosts dance workshops, outdoor performances, lectures, and screenings.

Intersection Festival, Report on Given Birth

Key publications

Creating History: Commemoration Exhibition of Chinese Modern Art in the 1980s

The 80’s marked the most important period of change in modern Chinese history. The Liberation Movement and the New enlightenment Movement of the early years of the 20th century laid a deep foundation for China’s modernity. The modernist movement that took place in the art realm in the 80’s was not just a reaction to these changes, but an aware response which contributed to a deeper humanist revolution. The 1980’s art movement began with groups such as the Star Group, the Anonymous Painters Group and the Oil Painting Study Group. The Star Group played an important role in defining the direction of the movement in terms of ideas, literature, art and politics. Creating History is a memorial to the spirit and an exploration of the circumstances surrounding this historical movement. It brings together precious original artworks and documents from the period, presenting the historical trajectory from the Star Group to the ’85 New Wave and the ’89 China/Avant-Garde Exhibition.

State Legacy: Research on Visual Political History

The two year project “State Legacy: Research on Visual Political History” is a collaborative research project on the history of visual culture between Huang Zhuan, John Hyatt, OCAT and Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design (MIRIAD). The project was jointly hosted by the Cornerhouse Gallery in Manchester and opened on April 2, 2009. The project includes important essays by Wu Hung, Wang Hui and Zhao Tingyang, as well as archivial documents from important exhibitions by Wang Guangyi, Wang Jianwei, Lu Hao, Zeng Li and Sui Jianguo.

Notes

¹ The Artistic Board of the He Xiangning Art Museum provides academic advice to both the Museum and OCAT. The members include prominent art critics, curators, artists and museum professionals while its director is Professor Huang Zhuan.

² Located in the western part of the special economic zone, Overseas Chinese Town embraces the theme parks of Splendid China, the China Folk Culture Villages, Window of the World and Happy Valley. The parks feature a wide variety of replicas of natural scenery and historical architecture, reflecting the essence of traditional Chinese and international culture.

*All information compiled from press material provided by the institution *