The 6th Goangzhou Triennial:Symbiosis - Future

Symbiosis - Future

OCT Boxes Art Museum is built and financed by OCT Group, operated and managed by the Oil Painting Department Curatorial Team of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. It is a non-profit public benefit organization located in the Shunfeng Mountain Wetland Park in Shunde district.

OCT Boxes Art Museum is enclosed in the wetland park with an area of 1.15 million square meters. The public green space is not only an outdoor exhibition space of the museum, but also becomes a communal place that can bring art into nature by displaying public art and sculptures. Hence, the 6th Guangzhou Triennial at OCT Boxes Art Museum provides us with such a public space for contemporary art, combining nature and humanity together.

The 6th Guangzhou Triennial - Branch Venue Public Art Project is a contemporary art project about public community. As it combines the ecosystem of local wetland park and the artistic urban outfitting, it allows the museum to step out, and allows the public to actively participate in art, thus perfectly combine art and public space in cities.

According to the research conducted by the famous German sociologist Jürgen Habermas, the idea of “public” emerged in the English-speaking world in the seventeenth century; the idea of the pubic sphere was coined with the use of French words. Public space, transgression and regionalism are undoubtedly the key words that cannot be avoided when talking about public art. The transgression and openness of public art indicate the openness of the public realm as well as the level of participation of the public, strengthening the social responsibility and consciousness of them.

After 1960s, the focus on western art has shifted from aesthetics to cultural. Public art emerged from certain social and historical backgrounds of the West. It is not accidental that it is now emerging in China today. These public spaces can be seen as reflections of the openness of Chinese society today and its progress on democracy. The exhibition“Symbiosis - Future” will take both the social nature of public art and its theme into consideration.

In the first place, the OCT Boxes Art Museum is selected as a location that is at the intersection between the nature and city. Thus the public can voluntarily come to the place and experience contemporary art, which will in turn affect their participation in knowledge, religion and cultural identity. Secondly, the exhibition invites artists such as Fan Bo, Zhou Li, Liu Ke, Fang Qi, Shen Lieyi and Jin Jiangbo, who project their understandings of contemporary art and publicity onto their works in various shapes. Whether it is the conversation generated by the public sculptures or installations and their surrounding environments, or the new visual space they construct, the triennial has been bringing in different mediums,exploring the relationship between art and public space while transgressing time, space, region, nation as well as the society and environment that we live in.

Since its establishment, the Guangdong Museum of Art has been dedicated to the development and research of Chinese contemporary art. In 2002, it has also initiated the Guangzhou Triennial, a regular large-scale contemporary art exhibition program. Now it has been successfully organized for five editions.

Held every three years, Guangzhou Triennial has become the most influential professional contemporary exhibition regionally and globally with the persistence of the staff from the Guangdong Museum of Art. In the 6th triennial, we have set the exhibitions in a branch venue and a number of parallel exhibitions to resonate with the main theme. With the help of both main venue and branch venues that include both contemporary private museums and public art museums, we hope to map the landscape of contemporary art that across the media and ideas of today.

In this edition, we include branch venue and parallel exhibitions into the scope of research and reflection of the overall structure of the exhibition. In addition to the regular presentation of the them exhibition and the archive exhibition, we will also cooperate with active art institutions in the Pearl River Delta region. According to the academic orientation and venues of each institution, their exhibits have complementary effects to the main exhibition venue. They will not only have certain academic and logical connection with the them exhibition, but also present their own unique artistic perspectives, and strive to create a new model for the contemporary art ecology in Guangdong, and even the whole country. Through our joint efforts, we hope to continue to enhance the social effects and image of the academic brand while inheriting the merits of the Guangdong Triennial. We also hope to achieve the shift of art exhibition space from single to multiple open spaces, shape and promote the artistic ecology of the Pearl River Delta area, as well as bring vibrancy to its development.

Chief Director,Archive Exhibition and Public Art Project Curator of the 6th Guangzhou Triennial Director of the Guangdong Museum of Art
Wang Shaoqiang
November 2018