A project curated by
Hans Askheim, Tom Keogh and Miranda Pope

www.overlandlondontobeijing.org

press-release (pdf)

Please join us at 6pm – 8.30 pm on Thursday 24th September for the opening of the second sculpture in the Overland: London to Beijing project at Tengri-Umai Gallery, 103 Panfilov St, where the curators will be presenting an artwork by Tobias Rehberger built onsite according to a model and set of instructions provided by the artist.

The sculpture will be opening September 24th from 6pm until 8:30pm, a press preview will be held from 5pm until 5:45pm. The sculpture will also be open September 25th and 25th from 2pm until 6pm. During this period the curators will present a number of contributions and responses by artists and curators. These will respond to the artwork and the ideas behind the project.

The event marks the second stop on a journey undertaken by the 3 curators and the artwork. The artwork takes the form of a model built by the artist that the curators will take to a number of locations between London and Beijing over the coming months. At each location, the curators will use the model to build a sculpture in collaboration with local institutions, curators and artists.

The first stop on the journey was Istanbul where it was shown as a side project of the Istanbul Biennial. The next stage of the journey, after Almaty, takes place in 2010, when the curators will build the sculpture at the XCOMA in Xian, Western China and finally at CAFA Museum in Beijing.

By physically transporting the artwork on this journey, Overland: London to Beijing makes the movement of the artwork and the borders through which it is traveling visible. This stands in contrast to the usual way that art moves around the world – from biennial to biennial, art fair to art fair, institution to institution – where borders might seem porous and the art’s movement is invisible.

The project sets out to create a space in which the various processes of contemporary curating are challenged and questioned. Rather than being driven by a curiosity about how cultural differences are played out in different locations, the project explores the practical and theoretical problems and contradictions inherent within a project of this scale and nature.

The inspiration for the project is the shifting cultural, economic and political positions of countries throughout the landmass between Western Europe and China. While it takes the historic Silk Road as its backbone, as outlined above, its context is the uncertain relationships of contemporary global flows of capital, commodities, technologies and culture.

PROJECT DATES:

Istanbul
Site: Sakasalim Sokak, Tünel (off Istiklal Cad. 115A, outside Platform Garanti)
Opening: Sept 10th 7pm-10pm
Open also Sept 11th-12th from 12pm-7pm

Almaty
Site: Tengri-Umai Gallery, Almaty Press preview: Sept 24th 5pm-5:45pm
Opening date: Sept 24th 6pm-8:30pm
Open also Sept 25th and 26th 2pm-6pm
Web: www.tu.kz

Xian
Site: Xian Center for More Art (X-COMA)
Date: spring 2010 (to be confirmed)
Web: www.x-coma.com

Beijing
Site: CAFA Art Museum Date: spring 2010 (to be confirmed)
Web: www.cafamuseum.org

Tobias Rehberger

Born in Esslingen, Germany in 1966 and currently living and working in Frankfurt, Tobias Rehberger is one of the most prominent artists of his generation. He was awarded the Golden Lion for best artist in Daniel Birnbaum’s ‘Fare Mondi/Making Worlds’ exhibition at the 53rd Venice Biennial and recent international shows include Reina Sofia, Madrid, the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, Galerie Bärbel Grässlin, Frankfurt, Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York, and Haunch of Venison, London.

Rehberger’s practice creates complex cross-overs around ideas of art, authorship, social value and commodity. For his ‘famous’ cars project, started in 1999, the artist asked craftsmen in Thailand to recreate famous car designs he had drawn from memory. The production of the resulting objects mirrors and at the same time undermines the mass market manufacturing relationships that exist under capitalism.

This relationship with commodities was explored further in his 2006 exhibition Seven Naked Hermann Hesse Fans and other Gems at Haunch of Venison in London, where he buried keys of \'desirable\' cars in simple geometric shapes on the floor of the gallery. He also burnt designer dresses and inserted the ashes into cracks in the wall of the gallery. He took his own artist’s drawings, pulped them and then reworked them as faux gallery electricity sockets.

By reshaping the commodities of capitalism, Rehberger raises questions around the relationship between the object and its value as a commodity and value as an artwork. And by including the re-formation of his own artworks, perhaps he’s suggesting that an artwork is the ultimate commodity, or even a ‘hyper’ commodity? Because he creates aesthetically and materially engaging work, it becomes impossible to look at each artwork without being aware of commodity fetishism or the power relationships that inform our relationship to objects and spaces that surround us. In this way, our relationship to the work is constantly destabilised by the question of where the value of the work resides, as well as opening up questions around the notion of an object’s authorship.

CURATORS

Hans Askheim is an artist and curator. In spring 2009 he curated Real Vague, a video and performance event at Betonsalon, Paris, featuring works by Halil Altindere, Gabriel Lester and Mark Aerial Waller. He curated the exhibition And yet it moves! at MOT, presenting works by John Heartfield, Mark Titchner, Lisa Kirk and Gardar Eide Einarsson. In 2005 he was one of the organisers of Pilot:2, London. His research focuses on art and its relation to commerciality.

Tom Keogh comes from an architectural and fine art background. Through his work as an independent curator he seeks to explore the overlaps between differing geographic subjectivities, political economies and art. He has curated exhibitions at the Project Art Centre and Arthouse in Dublin, Galeria dels Angels, Barcelona, and Whitechapel Project Space, London. He also set up and ran the project space Meals & SUVs in London from 2005 to 2008. He recently moved to Izmir Turkey, where he is teaching history of art and design at Izmir Ekonomi Univeritesi and working in an advisory capacity with K2 Gallery.

Miranda Pope is a curator and a doctoral researcher at Goldsmiths looking into ecology and its relationship to art, politics and sovereignty. She is also an associate curator with the Arts Catalyst, where she is editing a publication and podcasts as part of their art and nuclear programme as well as editing a book about the work of Brandon Ballangée. She was project manager for Curating Architecture, a curating research initiative run by Dr Andrea Phillips at Goldsmiths.

DOCUMENTARIAN

Sophie MacCorquodale is a London-based artist and film maker whose practice is influenced by social realism, anthropology and documentary. Inspired by social relations, human resilience and concepts surrounding anticipation and hope, her practice sets out to capture individual narratives within settings that are temporary, awaiting reform or a dramatic turn of fate. She is interested in notions of escapism, idealistic projection and personal experience particularly in relation to social, political and cultural aspiration. Her work has been shown internationally, with recent solo exhibitions at Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester and Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg.

Supported by:

www.overlandlondontobeijing.org

press-release (pdf)