Mall and museum unite in a happy marriage of creativity and commerce
Acynic might argue that a collaboration between a contemporary art museum and a vast shopping mall, where upmarket brands abound, represents the very worst commercial excesses of the art world. But on this occasion, the cynic would be wrong – or at least, not entirely right.
While there is something unsettling about seeing a selection of paintings, photographs, sculptures and video installations from Beijing’s M WOODS Museum dotted around the fashion wing of The Dubai Mall, the quality of the work and the inventive way it is displayed quickly dispel any doubts you may have about this marriage of creativity and commerce.
The show, which consists of about 40 artworks spread across seven pavilions on three different floors, is a joy – ambitious, challenging and, at times, extremely funny. Taking these pieces, many of which comment on today’s capitalist, technology-driven society, out of the gallery and placing them in a shopping mall is cheeky, but it works brilliantly.
The man responsible for all this is Chinese curator Michael Xufu Huang. Still only 25, the co-founder of the M WOODS Museum is considered one of the most exciting young curators out there and he was included on Forbes’s Art and Style 30 under 30 list in 2017.
The highlight of the show, which runs until April 30, is undoubtedly Pavilion 6. Huang has pulled together a selection of works from M WOODS Museum’s hugely successful 2017 exhibition Heart of the Tin Man, including Norwegian-German artist Yngve Holen’s You
Got Issues (2016) and Swiss artist Pamela Rosenkranz’s
Look Deeper (2016). Even in this abbreviated form, the collection packs a punch with its cleareyed dissection of how technology is changing, and often damaging, human beings.
“Throughout the history of art, every period has had an important theme that influences the art at the time,” Huang explained during an exclusive tour of the pavilions. “Technology is the main motif of what is happening today. You don’t have the human-to-human contact anymore.”
Look Deeper, a refrigerator full of different coloured Voss water bottles, initially strikes you as aspirational – how many models do we see on Instagram sipping Voss? – but the bottles are packed claustrophobically, shut off behind the refrigerator’s glass door. They are relying on the very thing that traps them to remain cool. It’s a haunting comment on consumerism and social media.
You will also find three of Argentinian provocateur Amalia Ulman’s photographs from her series Excellences & Perfections in Pavilion 6. In 2014, Ulman created a fake Instagram account, which she used to chart her journey from innocence to brash notoriety – think boob jobs and cash – before completing the cycle and posing as a clean-eating wellness guru. The hoax was a sensation and has lost none of its power to shock.
Elsewhere, in Pavilion 4 you can see Andy Warhol’s Silver
Clouds. First exhibited in 1966, this immersive installation allows visitors to walk among the dozens of shiny silver balloons floating around the room.
Pavilion 3 introduces influential Chinese artists from the 1980s to present. Zeng Fanzhi’s works are reminiscent of Francis Bacon’s bleak characterisations, while Ouyang Chun’s
Abandon Painting, which depicts a man throwing his paints and brushes away, is absurdly childish but somehow not at all sweet. The brutish brushstrokes and lack of realism accentuate the action of throwing the creative tools away.
American artist Paul McCarthy’s 1965 video installation in Pavilion 1, cisuM fo dnuoS ehT/The Sound of Music –a
recording of The Sound of Music played backwards, with the pictures upside down – is well worth a look, as are Lu Yang’s kaleidoscopic videos.
Huang was adamant that the architecture of the mall and the natural sunlight enhanced the works in a way that he had not experienced before. It is hard to disagree. Cynics be warned: you’re going to leave converted.
M WOODS at The Dubai Mall runs until April 30. For more, visit www.thedubaimall.com