June 8 – August 8, 2015
Sifang art Museum, Nanjing, China, 2015
Installation view of Absolute Collection Guideline, Sifang art Museum, Nanjing, China, 2015
Photo: Gao Tianrui
Sifang Art Museum is pleased to present its first collection exhibition titled “Absolute Collection Guideline”, on view from June 8th – August 8th, 2015 at 9 Zhenqi Road, Nanjing. Based on the museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition will have a strong focus on recently acquired works from over twenty Chinese and international contemporary artists. This marks the first time for the museum collection to be open to public. The show will explore the various forms of expressions through a range of medias practiced by contemporary artists today. As it’s a loosely curated collection show, viewers can spend more time to reconnect the various points of ideas that exist between artworks, as well as to rediscover the power of individual works of art.
Significant works from the prestigious Hugo Boss Prize winner Paul Chan and Danh Vo will be presented alongside a large scale venetian blind installation by acclaimed South Korean artist Haegue Yang. Major portion of the show consists of Chinese artists of both established and up-coming nature such as Wang Xinwei, Qui Xiaofei, Li Ming, Zhao Yao etc, as Chinese contemporary art still makes up most of the museum’s permanent collection. Japanese artists Takashi Murakami, Yayoi Kusama and Yoshitomo Nara are also part of the collection and are selected to be exhibited this time.
The exhibition can be viewed as our reflections to the activities of art collecting existing today. We encourage the process of collecting but in today’s ever so vibrant yet complicated art world (market), and when most contemporary art works are recent works that are not recognised historically, every institution or private collector is forced to set their sights somewhere, while holding a “limited list” in their hands. The show is by no means the absolute guideline for collecting but what we hope to achieve is for the viewers to peek into the thinking process behind the act of collecting, and to view the Sifang collection as a single specimen amongst all the other interesting collections worldwide.
