For Immediate Release
URBAN PLAY – SITE – SPECIFIC PUBLIC ART EXHIBITION
The Landgent Center is pleased to announce the opening of “Urban Play- Site-specific Public Art
Exhibition” on Nov.17.
Featuring installations, videos, performances, dance, as well as sound art by fourteen artists from
China and abroad, “Urban Play” attempts to challenge the stereotypes of public art and to reflect
on the diversity and dynamics of contemporary art beyond the institutional framework.
“I would like to think of the exhibition as a small-scale, alternative approach designed to
investigate and discuss the urban reality in which we live.” says the curator Tang Zehui. Over the
past three months, artists have been working on-site in the Landgent Center—a complex including
office buildings, a shopping mall, subway station and plaza—investigating its cultural and social,
as well as physical, conditions from each of their own perspectives.
Andrew Toland, architect from Sydney, Australia designed an architectural installation composed
of three interlocking pyramids each of which functions as a camera obscura. As visitors enter the
pavilion they are confronted with a series of blurry images projected onto the floor. These images
are real-time projections of the world they have just left outside captured by the three camera
obscuras. Visitors can ‘catch’ the in-focus images in the palm of their hand. “Modern Beijing is represented
as a fractured, merging, inverted dream-world of living pictures within the darkened,
reflective space of the camera obscuracontainer.” says Andrew.
Another outdoor large-scale architectural installation “Glass Screen Pavilion” is designed by
Harvard architect Tang Keyang. “My design is neither too much nor too little. It aims to create a
world within the world, a visually and psychologically “screened” urban alcove that is open to
anyone dropping by.”
Experimental sound artist Yan Jun has been focused on the historical and social dimensions of the
space in his work. The work is triggered by sunflower seeds: the artist meets old workers from
Beijing Internal Combustion Engine Factory who were living here with seeds. The sound of
cracking sunflower seeds, as well as mundane sounds of everyday life from the neighborhood
became the material of his work.
“In this exhibition art does not come down to the street, but rather is growing from there. The
works are initiated by the artists but they interact, interweave and grow together with existing
lifestyles and social textures in the area, rather than imposing upon them.” Says Tang Zehui.
“Urban Play” is of free admission, on view through Dec. 25.