NYAB Event - “Son: Signal of Authority” Exhibition

“Son: Signal of Authority” Exhibition

inCube Arts

This event has ended.

inCube Arts SPACE presents a group exhibition curated by Boliang SHEN and Zhanglun DAI, entitled Son: Signal of Authority, gathers four artists from China, Israel and United States.

Son, in modern era, is often portrayed as one who constantly strives to free himself from the Father. The modern Son is the Son that tends to forget, split, subvert and self-authorize.

Yet, Son always signals something that is outside of and superior to him, which presents itself as the Authority. Son could never truly be detached as he claims. The emancipation of modern Son, therefore, remains problematic.

Highlighting works of four artists, Yan Xing, Rafael Kelman, Ben Hagari, and Chen Zhou, who are all within 35 years old, “Son: Signal of Authority” investigates the situation of the concept of Son in our time, a time that the Authority, whether household or public, is believed to be precarious and obscure. Rather than justifying the emancipation of modern Son, here Son is rendered as a fluctuating signal of the Authority, and a sort of contemporary culture symptom that needs to be interrogated.

Through presenting a newspaper archive about an interview of the father of Mohammed Atta, one of the 9-11 hijackers, the exhibition also probes how the alienation of modern paternal binding significantly infects the public sphere and further endangers the political realm of our time.

A never-ending voice from Shakespeare’s The Tempest haunts the exhibition space. Listening is a significant device in the show. To listen is to recall, to be re-connected with, and to receive something from beyond. It is in this listening that Son is liberated from any present bondage, and keeps opening to “the other” that is unknown and unpredictable.

Yan Xing (b.1986, Chongqing) lives and works in Beijing and Los Angeles. Yan Xing’s work combines diverse media such as performance, video, photography, and installation. His works circulate around large themes such as negativity, resistance, and order, exploring their complex interrelations. In 2012 Yan Xing won the Best Young Artist Award from CCAA (Chinese Contemporary Art Award) and also received a nomination for the Future Generation Art Prize from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation. Yan Xing has exhibited and performed extensively; recent major exhibitions include 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Yekaterinburg, Russia (2015); 28 Chinese, Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA (2013); and ON | OFF: China’s Young Artists in Concept and Practice, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing, China (2013). Earlier this year Yan Xing presented his newly commissioned performance work Performance of a Massacre at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and Tales from a Small New England Town at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Center for the Arts, Wesleyan University, Connecticut. Later this year the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University will present Yan Xing’s first museum solo show in the United States.

Rafael Kelman (b.1986, Vermont) is a New York based artist working across sculpture, drawing, video and performance. His recent practice has largely revolved around an ongoing project titled Gigantomachy, which explores the collapse, inversion and manipulation of disparate heroic and utopian fantasies, including those of the lone wolf terrorist, the geodisic dome enthusiast and the radical mime. He received a BA at Marlboro College, where he wrote an interdisciplinary thesis on the figure of the “holy fool” within East Orthodox Christian hagiography and the early 20th century European avant garde. He received an MFA from Hunter College in 2015. In New York, he has shown work at venues including the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Booklyn Artists Alliance, Socrates Sculpture Park, and Artist’s Space Books and Talks. He was recently invited to be a part of the Drawing Center’s “Open Sessions” program for 2016-17, through which he will continue to pursue further work on Gigantomachy.

Ben Hagari (b. 1981, Tel Aviv) lives and works in New York. His film, video and installation works are tragicomedies that unfold in absurdist environments that raise questions about identity and territory. Recent exhibitions include: The Rose Art Museum, MA (2016); The Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2016); SculptureCenter, NY (2015); MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art Krakow, Poland (2015); The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2014); Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul (2012); KIT Kunsthalle Dusseldorf (2011). His films have been screened at Whitechapel Gallery, London; Ballroom Marfa, TX and Anthology Film Archives, NY among others. He earned his undergraduate degree from Hamidrasha School of Art, Beit Berl College (2008) and an M.F.A degree from Columbia University, NY (2014).

Chen Zhou (b. 1987, Zhejiang) is a Shanghai-based artist and filmmaker. He graduated from the Media Art Lab in China Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2009. His art practice encompasses video art, painting, sculpture and installation. His videos and films often unfold within an incoherent narrative and paradoxical context. Chen Zhou’s solo exhibitions include Kaufman at Aike-Dellarco, Shanghai (2013); I’m not not not Chen Zhou at Magician Space, Beijing (2013); His works were also shown in art institutions including OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shanghai; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Rubell Miami Gallery, Miami; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; the 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale and the 10th China Independent Film Festival. Chen Zhou was one of the finalists of the 2012 “Focus on Talents Project” organized by Martell Art Fund and Today Art Museum, Beijing.

ABOUT THE CURATORS
Boliang Shen (b. 1984) is currently a M.A. candidate in the Program in Museum Studies in New York University. His research mainly focuses on the interrelationship among the physical exhibition space, the narrative space in literature, and psychological spaces. He was selected to attend the Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course in 2011. He previously worked as a senior editor & correspondent in Blouin Artinfo China (Beijing, 2010-2013) and a curatorial intern in SculptureCenter (New York, 2015). He organized exhibitions and events in the 4th Gwangju Design Biennale (Gwangju, 2011), the 9th Shanghai Biennale (Shanghai, 2012) and OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (Shenzhen, 2014), and was guest speaker in panel discussions in Guangdong Times Museum (Guangzhou, 2012) and Transeuropa Festival (Rome & Bologna, 2012). He is a columnist of The Bund Magazine (Shanghai, 2015). His writing has been included in books Little Movements: Self-Practice in Contemporary Art (2011), Alternatives to Ritual: Exhibition as a Medium in China (2014), and magazines Picnic Magazine (Mexico City, 2011), VISION (Beijing, 2009).

Zhanglun Dai (b. 1983) is a writer on literature and art, an organizer of contemporary art exhibitions and events. Her writings and curatorial practices primarily concern about the spiritual condition, or conflict, of modern men within a certain cultural background and social milieu. Zhanglun worked previously as an assistant curator of the 3rd Guangzhou Triennial (Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, 2008); project manager of Art Writer & Journalist Workshop, the 9th Shanghai Biennale (Power Station of Art, Shanghai, 2012); researcher and scriptwriter of the Documentary Department of Sun-TV (Beijing & Hong Kong, 2011). Her writings had been included in Little Movements: Self-Practice in Contemporary Art (2011), artforum.com.cn, Blouin Artinfo China, Art & Design, etc. She is now based in New York.