Excerpt: Exhibition uses materials from cigarettes to human hair to explore Chinese art
by Jack Wang, News Officer for the Social Sciences and Arts & Humanities, UChicago News
Smart Museum visitors admire gu wenda's united nations: american code. Made of human hair, the piece is one of dozens featured in The Allure of Matter, a new contemporary Chinese art exhibition hosted jointly with Wrightwood 659. Photo by Jean Lachat.
A farming scene, drawn intricately with incense ash found in Buddhist temples. A dark metal pillar, acting as a canvas above a pool of water. And at first glance, a 36-foot-long tiger skin rug—an illusion created by hundreds of thousands of carefully placed cigarettes.
These are just a few of the artworks displayed in The Allure of Matter, hosted by the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art and Wrightwood 659. Conceived by Professor Wu Hung, the new exhibition marks a public introduction to “material art,” or caizhi yishu—a term he coined to distill a four-decade-long trend of artistic development in China.
One of the world’s leading experts in contemporary Chinese art, Wu uses the new concept to shift art scholarship from a historical, cultural or political framework to something more fundamental: The materiality of the art itself. From silk to human hair to melted plastic, The Allure of Matter highlights the ways that artists express themselves through a specific medium.
“Art is always part of politics, so to speak; that part is true,” said Wu, Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History. “But I feel that artists—first, they want to create interesting works.”
The result is the Smart Museum’s largest exhibition ever, one that spreads 48 pieces between the UChicago campus and Wrightwood 659’s four-story building in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.
Xu Bing, 1st Class, 2011, 500,000 “1st Class” brand cigarettes, spray adhesive and carpet. Photo by Jean Lachat.
Taking up the full gallery footprint of both sites, this joint show is the largest of four stops on a national tour—one which began last summer at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and will continue later this year at the Seattle Art Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.
Wu advises even those who saw the LACMA exhibition, which closed last month, to visit The Allure of Matter in a different setting: “In Chicago’s spaces, the works will become more intimate.”
To incorporate nine additional works not shown in Los Angeles, Wu and co-curator Orianna Cacchione divided the exhibition according to the architecture of each space: The modernist white walls of the Smart Museum and the warm brick of Wrightwood 659, designed by Pritzker Prize winner Tadao Ando.
“Which work will look better here or there? That was our main criteria, to help us think about the relation of each piece to its place,” said Wu, who also prefaced the exhibition with a keynote address at UChicago’s U.S.-China Forum. “Each place has some wonderful works. If people are really interested, they shouldn’t miss either part.”
Read the full article at UChicago News.
The Smart Museum of Art will host The Allure of Matter through May 3, and Wrightwood 659 will do so through May 2. Free admission is available at both sites, and Wrightwood 659 also offers paid reservations and tours. Visit theallureofmatter.org to learn more.