This event has now passed.
UCCA, Beijing’s most esteemed private institution for contemporary art, has a major group show open now that’s well worth a look. The New Normal starts with the question, 'What is the place of art in China today?', and attempts an answer by way of showcasing new work from more than 20 artists from China and elsewhere colonising all four of UCCA’s gallery spaces.The exhibition title refers
to an official PRC euphemism
introduced in 2015 to describe
China’s breakneck technologicaleconomic
acceleration; the show’s
Chinese title translates to 'State
of exception', 'a political situation
in which the normal laws and
regulations of a society are abruptly
suspended'. Curators Guo Xi, Yang
Zi, Alvin Li, and Wenfei Wang aim to
trace the particularly disorienting turbulence of the present moment
through art spanning different
media, including Lek’s Sinofuturistic
video game animation works.
UCCA
has mounted a major group show
like this every four years since 2009,
starting with that year’s Breaking
Forecast: 8 Key Figures of China’s
New Generation of Artists, and
continuing with ON | OFF: China’s
Young Artists in Concept and
Practice in 2013. We recommend
this latest entry as an authoritative,
if not necessarily definitive,
presentation of the state of Chinese
art in 2017
