art pioneer studio art in progress...

APSMUSEUM is pleased to announce that the spring exhibition How It Flows On will be held at our space and the Riverside Passage on April 22, 2021. The exhibition is organized by Art Pioneer Studio and L+MALL at Lujiazui Center, and invites multiple experts of their fields to participate. The exhibition is curated by Li Xiangning, consulted by Stefano Boeri, with curatorial assistance by Mo Wanli, Xu Yibo, and Bai Yixiong. In this exhibition, architect Liu Yichun, artist Qiu Anxiong, and composer Jin Wang collaborate and create a trans-space, trans-time, and trans-disciplinary large-scale immersive and interactive public installation. We plan to tour the exhibition in major cities in China and abroad, and will decide based on the pandemic control, please stay tuned!

Exhibition space at APSMUSEUM
Entrance of APSMUSEUM
How It Flows On exhibition rendering for the main venue APSMUSEUM (provided by Atelier Deshaus)

In 2020, after having quarantine in the physical space, the intervention of the virtual space in our urban daily life has become ubiquitous. The spring is coming again, but our perception toward distance and space has silently changed. When an architect, artist, and musician meet at the APSMUSEUM, what possibilities will they bring to space?

Two thousand years ago, Confucius watched the flowing river and exclaimed “how it flows on”. It was a sentiment toward time, and how time flies like the flowing water. The featured work of this exhibition spans two spatial dimensions. APSMUSEUM is a public space that explores the interdisciplinary possibilities of contemporary art, and also a passage for the audience to experience art in the busy commercial center. On the other hand, as the window to the urban riverscape, Riverside Passage is a container of the Yangpu Riverside’s industrial history.

Riverside Passage (provided by Atelier Deshaus, photographed by Tian Fangfang)
Riverside Passage (provided by Atelier Deshaus, photographed by Tian Fangfang)
Riverside Passage (provided by Atelier Deshaus, photographed by Tian Fangfang)

Under the crossing of these two spaces, How It Flows On combines architect Liu Yichun’s rearrangement of space, artist Qiu Anxiong’s silhouette animation, and composer Jin Wang’s polyphonic music, connecting the two spaces through the immersive and interactive installation. Stepping into the overlap of the actual and virtual worlds, the audience will witness time in the awakening season, and immerse themselves into the ever-changing state of time. The installation takes the Huangpu River as a background of time. The passing figures and objects in the animation, are all the common people up and down in the river of time. The audience’s interaction incurs the suspension of these figures, and this suspension reflects a common feeling in this generation when virtual reality is becoming stronger and stronger.

To some extent, these spontaneous bodies are all data streams, and everyone’s movement is eventually converted into a data stream, becoming a digit of the weightless digital world. Today’s new mankind does not share the same destiny with Sisyphus anymore. Because everything has lost its weight in the new world, that rock of Sisyphus does not roll down the hill but flows up to space.

Dr. Xiangning Li is dean and full professor in history, theory, and criticism at Tongji University College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He is the editor-in-chief of Architecture China. He is a member of CICA (Comité International des Critiques d'Architecture), and has published widely on contemporary Chinese architecture and urbanism in international architectural magazines including Architectural Review, A+U, Architectural Record, Arquitectura Viva, Space, Domus, and Volume. He has served as visiting scholar and professor at various institutions including MIT, MAK Center of Art and Architecture(Los Angeles), TU Darmstadt, Harvard GSD, etc. He has curated a number of exhibitions including the Pavilion of China at the 16th Venice International Architecture Biennale, “Toward a Critical Pragmatism: Practice of Contemporary Individual Architects in China” at Harvard GSD, 2017 Shanghai Urban Space Art Season, 2013 Shenzhen/Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale, Shanghai Westbund 2013 Biennale, etc. In addition to that, he has been working with international museums and institutes, including Milan Triennale and Goethe Institute, curating exhibitions on Chinese architecture. He has been a jury member to many international awards and competitions including Spanish International Architectural Award, Holcim Award for Sustainable Construction, and Mies van der Rohe Award the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture.

Stefano Boeri is a world-renowned architect, curator, critic, and educator. He received his Ph.D. from IUAV University in Venice in 1989. From 2011 to 2013, he served as the Deputy Mayor of Milan, in charge of culture and fashion, and was the chief planner of the Milan Expo 2015. He is currently the Chief Urban Cultural expert consultant of the Mayor of Florence. Mr. Boeri is also a professor of Urban Studies at the Politecnico di Milano. He has taught at Harvard University, Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Belahan Institute of Architecture in the Netherlands, and Moscow Strica.

Since 2007, Mr. Boeri has served as the curator of the Italian Architecture Festival. He is currently the curator of Call­ing in São Paulo and the invited curator of the main pavilion of the Venice Art Biennale in 2015. His well-known architecture projects include Milan's Vertical Forest, the overall plan for the 2015 Milan Expo, the planning and architectural renovation of the World G8 Summit venue, and the Marseille Mediterranean Cultural Center. His works and designs have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Milan Triennale, Kassel Art Exhibition in Germany, Bordeaux Enlev Architecture Exhibition, Berlin Contemporary Art Center, Paris Museum of Contemporary Art, Generali Foundation in Vienna, TNProbe in Tokyo, and other internationally renowned art museums.

Wanli Mo,an emerging curate and architecture scholar.

Her research focuses on contemporary forms of life and its relationship with material and immaterial productions. Mo has published widely in Architectural Journal, Time+Architecture, Urban Environment Design, Retrospecta and etc. Since 2018, she has served as the acting editor of Architecture China. Mo is the curator of Home, Sweet Home(2017) exhibition at Shanghai Power Station of Arts. She has also served as an assistant curator of the Pavilion of China, Biennale Architettura, 2018 Shanghai Urban Space Art Season 2017.

She is also a doctoral student at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University. She received her Master of Architecture Degree from Yale University.

Dr. Xu Yibo, national first-class certified architect, Guest Lecturer of China Academy of Art

Dr. Xu Yibo is the Chinese partner/presiding architect and general manager of Stefano Boeri Architetti, Milan Chief Coordinator of China Triennial.

Decades of green design in Europe and China Practical experience, once worked for Cino Zucchi (CZA) in Milan and Office for Metropolitan Architecture(OMA). He once taught at the Master of Architecture School of the Politecnico di Milano, and published many articles on urban updates in domestic and foreign magazines. He presented at the CTBUH Shanghai International Symposium and CTBUH Chicago Conference Speeches etc. Participated in many architectural exhibitions, including the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, Beijing Design Week, Shanghai 2015 Urban Space Season, Shanghai 2116 Plan, Shanghai 2017 Urban Space Mars Planting plan, etc. Introducing the Milan Vertical Forest concept Entering the country, he was responsible for the construction of Nanjing Jiangbei Vertical Forest and Huanggang Vertical Forest City Complex.Shanghai Bailian Yanqingli fashion center renovation, Shenzhen Barrier-Free Innovation and entrepreneurship Center, etc.

Yixiong Bai, current undergraduate student at Rhode Island School of Design majoring in Interior Architecture, focusing on interior studies and adaptive reuse.

LIU Yichun, founder and principal architect of Atelier Deshaus.

He has lectured in many universities and institutions, such as Harvard University, University of Hong Kong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Architectural Institute of France, the RIBA, etc. His works have been widely presented in many international architectural and artistic exhibitions in Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon, Dusseldorf, Rotterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Milan, Venice, Prague, Barcelona, Vienna, Geneva, Boston, Tokyo, Seoul, etc. His most representative work, the Long Museum West Bund, has been published on international journals and magazines across more than 26 countries and regions. The office is recognized as One of 10 Design Vanguards 2011 by Architectural Record. Liu has also been awarded the AR Award for Emerging Architecture by Architectural Review, the Golden Prize for Public Architecture at the Architecture Creation Awards of ASC, the Honor Award for Architecture Best in Show 2019 by AIA China, and the Gold Winner (Public Amenity: Social and Cultural Buildings) in ARCASIA Awards for Architecture 2020, and the Most Influential Chinese Designer by Forbes.

Qiu Anxiong was born in 1972 in Sichuan province. He graduated from Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1994. In 2003 he graduated from the University Kassel's College of Art in Germany after six years of studying both contemporary international art and traditional Chinese culture. Now he is teaching at East China Normal University. His works employ different kinds of mediums including animation, painting, installation and video, etc. Representative works are animation films New Classic of Mountains and Seas, Temptation of the Land, Minguo Landscape, video installation Staring into Amnesia. He founded “Museum of Unkown” in 2007, which is an active power in the ecological construction of contemporary arts in recent years.

Qiu Anxiong’s recent work consists largely of paintings, animations, and video installations. In the 2006 piece The New Classic of Mountains and Seas, for example, Qiu employs multitudes of ink drawings and links them together in an animated form. The title itself refers to the ancient Chinese mythology Classic of the Mountains and Seas. Besides investigating the interaction between ancient and modern Chinese culture, this work and others like it have a dreamlike quality: the clearly delineated images framed by unbelievable narratives faithfully depict the absurdity of the world around us. This link to the everyday further enhances the political value of the work, which engages in a damning criticism of environmental degradation, social breakdown, and massive urbanization. Unlike younger artists, Qiu Anxiong does not indulge in the personal pleasures of the everyday, but rather takes the undifferentiated mass of history as his raw material.

Selected Public Collection Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum of Modern Art New York. Art Museum of Brooklyn, New York Spenser Museum, Kansas University Museum of University Oxford, Kunst Halle Zurich, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Art Museum Hongkong, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai Contemporary Art Museum.

Jin Wang, composer, born in 1978, Shanghai, China.

His chamber music has showcased at the Shanghai International Music Festival Shanghais Spring, the Hong Kong Arts Festival, the Korean International Music Festival, among others.

In addition to composing for concert works, Jin Wang has collaborated with a wide-range of different visual artists in various fields.

Collaborated in art films and multimedia works with the artist Yang Fudong such as " An Estranged Paradise ", "Seven Intellectuals In Bamboo Forest", "No Snow on the Broken Bridge", and "The Fifth Night", exhibited in: Documenta 11 Kassel, 52nd International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale, FACT Liverpool, Carnegie International, the Venice International Film Festival, Film Festival Hannover Germany, and other art exhibition and film festivals. Yang Fudong in 2010 directed creative music for famous Italian fashion brand PRADA advertising art video "First Spring", broadcast on PRADA's official website, reaching to a massive global audience.

The music for the artist Qiu Anxiongs animation video work, " New Book of Mountains and Seas Part 1 (2006) ", "New Book of Mountains and Seas Part 2 (2007) ", "Minguo Landscape (2007)," "Temptation of the land (2009), "Portrait "(2011) , has been exhibited at the International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale, the United States Spencer Museum of Art, Barbara Gross Gallery in Germany, Sao Paulo Biennale in Brazil, Cairo Biennale, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo Japan, Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Luxembourg Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Norway, etc. In 2011, Jin Wang collaborated with Qiu Anxiong a sound installation piece "Fundamental Tone," shown at the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art "Concern Follow".

In 2007, Jin Wang was nominated in The Person of the Year Award by the Chinese Culture of Classical Music.