Hyper Real @ National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Hyper Real
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Through 18 February 2018

Ron Mueck

Pregnant woman 2002

mixed media

252 x 78 x 72 cm

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Purchased with the assistance of Tony and Carol Berg, 2003, © Ron Mueck

Courtesy the artist, Anthony d’Offay, London and Hauser & Wirth

Carole A Feuerman

General’s twin 2009–11

resin, oil paint

61 x 38 x 20.5 cm

Galerie Hübner & Hübner

© Carole Feuerman

Image courtesy Institute for Cultural Exchange

At the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), visitors can expect to see a frozen sculpture made entirely of the artist’s blood, a transgenic creature giving birth amidst an infinite meadow and a virtual journey through a human skull floating in space amongst the incredible array of ultra-real sculpture and digital art on display.  

Hyper Real presents some of the world’s most incredible true-to-life sculpted forms alongside recent kinetic, biological and virtual creations. The exhibition investigates how artists are pushing the boundaries of the genre in their exploration of what constitutes the contemporary hyperreal.  

‘Presenting 32 artists and nearly 50 works, Hyper Real focuses on extraordinary talent from around the world,’ said Gerard Vaughan, NGA Director. ‘Most importantly, this exhibition highlights the exceptional contribution of Australian practitioners, including Patricia Piccinini, Sam Jinks, Ron Mueck, Shaun Gladwell, Jan Nelson, Stephen Birch and Ronnie van Hout.’ 

Installation view of George Segal’s works 

in the Hyper Real exhibition 

at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

‘This exhibition not only celebrates the astonishing material and technical feats that have made hyperrealism such a globally popular genre, but also explores the conceptual framework within which these works operate,’ said Jaklyn Babington, NGA Senior Curator of Contemporary Art. ‘Contemporary hyperrealism has pushed beyond static sculpture and into the digital realm. It is a shape-shifting genre, simultaneously traditional and innovative, familiar and provocative.’  

From the Renaissance to the present day, artists have long been fascinated with the human form. Hyperrealism momentarily tricks audiences into believing the artworks to be real and, in doing so, encourages viewers to reconsider what it means to be human. 

Maurizio Cattelan

Ave Maria 2007

polyurethane, paint, clothing, metal

74 x 13 cm x 65 cm

Private collection

Allen Jones

Refrigerator 2002

mixed media

188 x 84 x 37 cm

Private collection

Hyper Real delves into the nuances and complexities of the nude body. From the astonishing precision of replication in Paul McCarthy’s work, to the idealised beauty of John DeAndrea’s sculpted women and the oversized, emotionally exposed figures of Ron Mueck, the nude is central to hyperrealism. 

John DeAndrea

Lisa 2016

bronze, oil paint, hair

30.5 x 170.2 x 91.5 cm

Collection of John DeAndrea & Lorraine DeAndrea

Sam Jink’s technically spectacular oeuvre is exemplified by the NGA’s new commission The deposition 2017, an emotive exploration of the fragility of life and familial roles.   

Sam Jinks

Woman and child 2010

silicone, pigment, resin, silk, human hair

145 x 40 x 40 cm

Collection of the artist

© Sam Jinks. Image courtesy of the artist, Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney and 

Institute for Cultural Exchange, Tübingen

Zharko Basheski 

Ordinary man 2009–10

polyester resin, fiberglass, silicone, hair

220.0 x 180.0 x 85.0 cm

Collection of the artist

Humour and satire are used to deliver social and political commentary in Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s kinetic sculptures, while Maurizio Cattelan uses a playful juxtaposition to explore how the notions of power and evil are constructed. Hyper Real pushes the genre beyond today’s understanding of what is natural by encompassing the fantastic hybrid creatures of Patricia Piccinini. 

Sun Yuan and Peng Yu

Old people’s home 2007

fiberglass, silica gel, clothing, accessories, electric wheelchairs, dimensions variable

Collection of  Mr. Shi Lai Liu

Marc Sijan

Cornered 2011

polyester resin, oil paint

73.6 x 38.1 x 71.1 cm

Collection of the artist

© Marc Sijan

Image courtesy of the artist and Institute for Cultural Exchange, Tübingen

‘My work deals with ideas of transgenesis—beings that may be part-flower, part-boot, part-human – and looks upon them with compassion, love and acceptance,’ said artist Patricia Piccinini. ‘I question how far science and technology may take us, and what ethical questions arise around beings that are non-conformative and imperfect.’ 

Patricia Piccinini with her work The welcome guest

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Patricia Piccinini

Prone 2011

silicone, fibreglass, human hair, felt

230 x 60 x 60 cm

Collection of the artist 

Courtesy of the artist, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, 

Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne and 

Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco

Our computer-generated world is explored through Cao Fei’s pop culture offering, created in the game of Second Life. Tony Oursler’s digital talking head holds a mirror to the twenty-first century’s social media obsession; with anguish, Oursler’s projection tells the viewer it will die if it is not continually looked at and commented upon. 

Cao Fei

Live in RMB City 2009

single-channel video: 24:50 minutes, sound, colour

M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong

By donation

Shaun Gladwell

Orbital vanitas 2017

virtual reality: computer-generated animation, 6:00 minutes, sound, colour

Produced by BADFAITH

Courtesy the artist, Anna Schwartz Gallery and BADFAITH 

Creating sculptures that engage with surprising themes, the unbelievable craftsmanship of Tony Matelli’s Josh depicts a young man who appears to both levitate and fall, while Berlinde de Bruckyere’s Elie is presented in a state between agony and death, the human and inhuman.  

Tony Matelli 

Josh 2010

silicone, steel, hair, urethane, clothing

77 x 183 x 56 cm

Collection of the artist

Berlinde De Bruyckere

Elie 2009

wax, epoxy, cushion

38 x 154 x 115 cm

Fundació Sorigué, Lleida, Spain

Sculptures depicting popular figures such as Spider Man, clowns and pin-up girls reveal how culture and the media construct other hyperreal forms, while Ronnie van Hout’s doppelgängers and Marc Quinn’s self-portrait – created with litres of the artist’s frozen blood – provide disconcerting commentary on the infinite replication of humans in the future.  

Ronnie van Hout

Sitting figure I 2016

polyurethane, fibreglass, polystyrene, paint, clothing, acrylic, stainless steel

106 x 90 x 110 cm

Collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2017

Courtesy of the artist and STATION, Melbourne

Shaun Gladwell’s virtual reality artwork is an immersive experience, a simulation that tricks us into believing that we are out of our mortal shells, and exploring deep space. VR offers a technological advancement of the human body. As technology is used to enhance our human capabilities we become another kind of hyperreal figure ourselves.  

The Russian collective AES+F present a high-definition 360° immersive video work evoking the aesthetic of daytime soap operas, with a provocative twist. In AES+F’s inverted world, the poor overthrow the rich, women torture men, youths punish their elders and animals usurp humans. 

AES+F

Inverso mundus 2015

seven-channel HD video installation: 38:20 minutes, sound, colour

Courtesy of the artists, MAMM, Anna Schwartz Gallery and Triumph Gallery

Hyper Real explores art, psychology, science, technology and philosophy through the very realness of its subject matter. Welcome to humanity amplified.  

Evan Penny

Self stretch 2012

silicone, pigment, hair, aluminium 

122 x 81 x 69 cm

Courtesy of the artist

Allen Jones

Refrigerator 2002

mixed media

188 x 84 x 37 cm

Private collection

Peter Land

Back to square one 2015

silicone, human hair, fabric, cardboard, leather, dimensions variable

Courtesy of Galleri Nicolai Wallner and Peter Land

HYPER REAL: ARTISTS 

AES+F (Russia)
Zharko Basheski (Macedonia)
Stephen Birch (Australia)
Maurizio Cattelan (Italy)
John De Andrea (USA)
Berlinde de Bruyckere (Belgium)
Keith Edmier (USA)
Cao Fei (China)
Carole A Feuerman (USA)
Daniel Firman (France)
Shaun Gladwell (Australia)
Robert Gober (USA)
Duane Hanson (USA)
Sam Jinks (Australia)
Allen Jones (UK)
Peter Land (Denmark)
Tony Matelli (USA)
Paul McCarthy (USA)
Ron Mueck (Australia)
Jan Nelson (Australia)
Tony Oursler (USA) 
Evan Penny (USA) 
Patricia Piccinini (Australia) 
Marc Quinn (UK) 
Mel Ramos (US) 
Ugo Rondinone (Swiss) 
Jamie Salmon (UK) 
George Segal (USA) 
Marc Sijan (Serbia) 
Ronnie van Hout (NZ/Australia) 
Sun Yuan & Peng Yu (China)

This exhibition is made possible through the support of presenting partner Visit Canberra, major partner Qantas, and supporting partner Maddocks, as well as Exhibition Patrons, Zeke Solomon and the Neilson Foundation.

NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA
www.nga.gov.au

Tales of Our Time @ Guggenheim Museum, NYC

Tales of Our Time
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
November 4, 2016 – March 10, 2017

Chia-En Jao (b. 1976, Taichung, Taiwan)

Taxi, 2016

Color UHD video, with sound

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Collection, Acquisition in process

© Chia-En Jao

Sun Xun (b. 1980, Fuxin, Liaoning Province)

Mythological Time, 2016 (details)

Two-channel color HD animated video, with sound, and ink, graphite and acrylic on mulberry bark paper

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Collection, Acquisition in process

© Sun Xun

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents Tales of Our Time, an exhibition featuring eight newly commissioned, large-scale works by artists born in mainland China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan. This is the second exhibition of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative, a long-term research, curatorial, and collections-building program at the Guggenheim Museum.

Though diverse in subjects and strategies, the works are united by the artists’ use of storytelling to propose alternative ways of looking at place. Working in drawing, animation, video, photography, sculpture, installation, and participatory intervention, the artists in the exhibition address the concept of geography and territory in ways as specific as where they are based or as big as China itself, which they see as a concept constantly being questioned and reinvented. These artists freely cross divides to examine the tensions between past and present, myth and fact, reality and dreams, rationality and absurdity, and individuality and collectivity.

The artists represented in Tales of Our Time are Chia-En Jao, Kan Xuan, Sun Xun, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, Tsang Kin-Wah, Yangjiang Group, Zhou Tao.

Tales of Our Time is organized by Xiaoyu Weng, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Associate Curator of Chinese Art, and Hou Hanru, Consulting Curator, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative. The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative is part of the Guggenheim’s Asian Art Initiative, directed by Alexandra Munroe, Samsung Senior Curator, Asian Art and Senior Advisor, Global Arts. Kyung An, Assistant Curator, Asian Art, provides curatorial support. All commissioned works will enter the Guggenheim’s collection.

“Curators Xiaoyu Weng and Hou Hanru have taken a dynamic and collaborative approach, as they worked closely with the commissioned artists to explore the questions and insights that drive these art practices. We hope that these works will inform new understanding of global contemporary art through the lens of Chinese culture today,” stated Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation. “The Guggenheim is grateful to The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation for its sustained commitment to this effort.”

“The artists represented in Tales of Our Time vary greatly in their practices and viewpoints,” says Xiaoyu Weng. “But they share a broad perspective, one that places China’s culture, history, and social reality in the context of the wider world. And like so many artists today, they register acute discomfort with the tension between the personal experiences of regular people and the dominant narratives and conventions of power.”

The exhibition’s title refers to the 1936 book Gushi xin bian (Old Tales Retold) by the influential Chinese modernist, social activist, and literary giant Lu Xun. In the book, Lu reinvents Chinese legends, as he considers these tales to be not only a literary genre, but also a strategy for critiquing social conditions and reconstructing history through storytelling.

Tales of Our Time is installed on two Tower Levels of the museum. Visitors may enter Tower Level 4 through a passageway lined with fantastic visions inspired by the natural world, drawn in the classical Chinese style on traditional bark paper by Sun Xun (b. 1980). Sun’s installation Mythological Time (2016) centers on his hometown of Fuxin in northeastern China, a coal-mining town that was once the pride of modern-era Chinese industrialization, but which the artist portrays as merely a fleeting scene over many millennia. A second monumental wall-size painting by Sun Xun depicting a surreal prehistoric landscape is also on view. Two video streams are projected onto its surface, sending animated creatures cavorting next to those drawn on paper with ink and acrylics.

Taxi (2016), a video installation, presents conversations conducted by the artist Chia-En Jao (b. 1976) with taxi drivers in Taipei. The artist asked drivers to take him to historically contested destinations in the city, such as a branch of Chang Hwa Bank where a mass protest was suppressed by Chiang Kai-shek’s military regime in 1947, the Presidential Office Building, the Grand Hotel, or the National Taiwan Museum. Recorded documentary style, the conversations meander through difficult memories of the Japanese occupation and martial law to present-day concerns. The artist has also created a flag for the installation, a traditional coat of arms representing many aspects of Taiwanese society, including its aboriginal communities. Through this investigation into the powerful connection between history and storytelling, Jao creates a mental map of Taipei that honors individual memory and experience.

Zhou Tao (b. 1976, Changsha, Hunan Province)

Land of the Throat, 2016

Installation with two-channel color HD video, with sound

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Collection, Acquisition in process

© Zhou Tao

Nearby Taxi on Tower Level 4 is a futuristic, pod-like video installation by Zhou Tao (b. 1976).  Land of the Throat (2016) evokes a phenomenon characteristic of China’s urbanization today: the construction of the new and the consequential transformation of the land. Two synchronized videos composed of footage recorded in Guangdong, China and Arizona are projected onto opposite sides of an enclosed structure in the gallery space.  A cow chained to an abandoned industrial washing machine moos in an otherwise silent, desolate landscape; workers pour out of construction sites; children play aimlessly; dogs and rats roam near fishing holes; and rescue workers in Shenzhen care for survivors injured in the city’s 2015 landslide.

Kan Xuan (b. 1972, Xuancheng, Anhui Province)

Ku Lüè Er, 2016 (details)

13-channel color video installation, with sound, and sandstone and marble

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Collection, Acquisition in process

© Kan Xuan

Kan Xuan (b. 1972) is an artist who splits her time between Beijing and Amsterdam. She traveled for more than five months to far-flung parts of China to photograph and research the remains of 110 ancient cities to create the multi-media installation Ku Lüè Er (2016), on view on Tower Level 4. On one gallery wall, eleven flat-screen monitors rhythmically loop videos of various lengths, each featuring hundreds of the thousands of mobile-phone images Kan took while traveling. The artist manipulated the color of the images and edited them in a stop-motion style. A lone video monitor is stationed on the floor, leaning over a floor projection of simple, notational maps created by the artist from her memories of site locations. The floor monitor sends out smacking, splashing sounds from balls of clay being thrown in a children’s game. A few stone sculptures hang nearby, their knotted forms echoing the fences that guarded these lost cities. Instead of providing historical knowledge or factual statistics, Kan Xuan engages China’s vast history of dynasties and evolution of territories through her intimate personal emotions and experience as a reminder of our collective memory and oblivion.

Yangjiang Group (est. 2002, Yangjiang, Guangdong Province)

After Dinner Shufa: Tales of Our Time, 2015

Photograph, 150 x 300 cm

Courtesy the artists

© Yangjiang Group

Yangjiang Group, whose founding artists are Zheng Guogu (b. 1970), Chen Zaiyan (b. 1971), and Sun Qinglin (b. 1974), conjure a small utopia in Tales of Our Time. Unwritten Rules Cannot Be Broken (2016) is installed along a Frank Lloyd Wright–designed circular area overlooking Central Park. Here Chinese tea is to be shared on simple plywood furniture set amid calligraphic works and a temporary Chinese garden, which is visible on the outside balcony and contains bamboo, shrubs, a miniature bridge, and a pond. As part of the participatory installation, visitors are encouraged to measure their blood pressure and heart rate before and after they enter this area—a humorous means designed to calculate the purported relaxing effects of a tea gathering in an art exhibition. A green and white calligraphic mural is suspended several stories from the ceiling to the ground floor of the museum’s Thannhauser Gallery. Since 2002 this art collaborative has been inviting neighbors in Yangjiang, its small hometown on the southern coast, to drink tea, play soccer, practice calligraphy, and enjoy communal dinners. In symbolically transporting their small plot of land to New York, the Yangijiang Group has neither left behind its humor nor its desire to create a borderless, anarchist zone of citizenship and belonging.

The Tower Level 5 gallery houses Can’t Help Myself (2016), a massive robot with a mechanical arm created by Sun Yuan & Peng Yu (b. 1972 and 1974), two longtime collaborators based in Beijing. Placed behind clear acrylic walls, the machine is programmed to perform one very specific action: with its modified front arm, it guards a puddle of dark red viscous liquid. As the red substance slowly spreads on the ground, the robot frenetically shovels it back into place, leaving smudges reminiscent of contemporary surveillance warfare. Sun and Peng, who are known for using bold humor with undertones of violence to address provocative topics, neither pose nor answer the question of whether the repetitious dance of the robot in Can’t Help Myself is absurd, authoritarian, or both.

Sun Yuan (b. 1972, Beijing) & Peng Yu (b. 1974, Jiamusi, Heilongjiang Province)

Can’t Help Myself, 2016

Industrial robot, steel, rubber, visual-recognition sensors, acrylic wall with aluminum frame, and food-grade fiber with water

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Collection, Acquisition in process

© Sun Yuan & Pen Yu

Photo: Courtesy the artists

In a darkened gallery, also on Tower Level 5, an immersive projection sends images of rocks, ships, oceans, and waves washing over the viewer. Entitled In The End Is The Word (2016), this six-channel video installation by Hong Kong–based artist Tsang Kin-Wah (b. 1976) interweaves found footage, sound, and light. The work begins with a rush of seemingly banal shots of a tsunami at sea near the site of an ongoing territorial dispute between China and Japan, the Diaoyu Islands (known as Senkaku Islands in Japanese). These images then begin to morph into abstractions. Synchronized videos projected onto the walls and floor of the dimly lit room create the illusion that animated, coiling strips of words and phrases are pouring out of the video images and into the gallery. Finally, rather than simply disappear, these images accumulate into a crescendo of blindingly bright light, a state the artist likens to sa?sara, a Sanskrit word meaning “perpetual wandering” in the sea of life’s suffering.

Tsang Kin-Wah (b. 1976, Shantou, Guangdong Province)

In The End Is The Word, 2016 (detail)

Six-channel video installation, with sound

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Collection, Acquisition in process

© Tsang Kin-Wah

In addition to In The End Is The Word, Tsang created No(thing/Fact) Outside (2016), a vinyl text installation that extends beyond the Tower galleries–climbing walls and snaking along floors in less prominent areas in the museum, such as elevators and stairwells. Reflecting Tsang’s ruminations on the exhibition, the work spatially and conceptually links the stories told by the artists in Tales of Our Time.

About the Exhibition Catalogue

A conceptual extension of the exhibition, the catalogue edited by Xiaoyu Weng and Hou Hanru blends a traditional museum publication with a fiction anthology. Featuring scholarly essays and artwork descriptions, it unconventionally examines the exhibition artists, who all challenge current views about art from China. Interwoven with these essays are seven commissioned short stories by the Chinese and American fiction writers Han Song, Hon Lai-chu, Li Juan, Ken Liu, Lo Yi-chin, Wang Bang, and Brian Kuan Wood. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue offer a heterogeneous view of contemporary art and culture from China, highlighting tensions between individual narratives and mainstream history as well as showing how the gaps between the two can be transcended.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
www.guggenheim.org