Exploring the dialogic space and the unknown
ROCKBUND Art Museum’s latest exhibition “Walking On The Fade Out Lines” brings together 23 artists with 30 artworks selected from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection, spanning various forms such as painting, interactive installation, photography and video.
Stepping into the museum, visitors are first greeted by a yellow bear crawling on the floor. Covered by chicken feathers, this cuddly art piece titled “Have you seen me before?” by Italian artist Paola Pivit invites the viewers to drawl down and experience the emotions and memory of a fairy tale that accompanies our coming of age.
In the British artist Damian Hirst’s painting “Love Is Great,” colorful butterfly samples are systematically stuck on the turquoise surface, as though fluttering in the serene heaven, vivaciously embodying the fragility of life and the conflicts of existence.
A simple meeting table and chairs make up a threedimensional model of a city, taking up the corner of the gallery hall.
Built on household items from daily use, the model “Nocturnal City Scene” by Dutch artist Mark Manders, is locked inside a showcase, open only on one side. By shifting the ways of seeing, viewers get to reflect completely anew about the environment in which they are situated.
According to Larys Frogier, director of the Rockbund Art Museum, the exhibition “voluntarily erases the already made delineations, stereotypes and dichotomies, such as local vs global, in vs out, national vs international, masculine vs feminine, and east-west vs north-south.”
Different viewing perspectives bring about reflections on different issues such as cultural memory, urban transformations, power politics, and identity, among others, Frogier says.
Hassan Khan, an artistic pioneer of the underground music and experimental video art scenes in Cairo, has a sound installation “DOM-TAK-TAK -DOM-TAK” which brings viewers to the streets of the Egyptian capital through light and sound.
The video work “Traveling Amazonia” recounts French artist Marine Hugonnier’s summer journey along the Trans-Amazon Highway in Brazil in 2006. In the film, the process of rail building alternates with the voices of several inhabitants expressing their point of view on the Trans-Amazon.
Viewers will also see works by Song Tao, whose film “From the Last Century” records the rapidly developing urban landscape in early 2000s Shanghai.
Also from Shanghai, artist Zhang Ruyi has created site-specific works by employing tiles and concrete. She examines from spatial displacements and attributes the “blockage” and “pressure” between people in cities.
“We hope to open the dialogic space of the epistemological world and continue to spark processes in which people explore the unknown,” says curator Hsieh Feng-Rong.
During the exhibition period, a series of public education events will be held to further explore this issue.
For more information, check www.rockbundartmuseum.org.
Date: Through May 27 (closed on Mondays), 10am-6pm Venue: Rockbund Art Museum Address: 20 Huqiu Rd