Reconstructing Utopia – Architecture and Art Exhibition

Curated by architect and artist Ye Cheng, the architecture and art exhibition “Reconstructing Utopia” is now taking place at OCT Art & Design Gallery in Shenzhen and will be going on until May 20, 2018. 

Twenty Chinese architects and artists with bold ideas and in-depth experience have been invited to the event. Over one hundred works using various artistic media such as paintings, sculptures, installations, models, sketches, photographs and videos are displayed. Projects include the West Village Yard of Liu Jiakun in Chengdu, the Chaoyang Mixed-use Plazza of Ma Yansong in Beijing and the renovation of Wencun Village near Hangzhou, by Wang Shu. Organised in three main categories (architecture, art and video), one for each of the gallery’s three floors, the works address the question of “ontology”.

The exhibition aims at presenting practices and conceptions with utopia spirit, by conducting a deep dialogue between Chinese architectural and artistic domains. The event has three main goals: first of all, to rethink the history of rapid urbanization that China embodies; secondly, to criticize the future of excessive artificial intelligence and Big Data monopoly; finally, to motivate people to develop free imagination with a utopian spirit in order to surpass the enslavement of material and information.

Growing up in an era marked by rapid changes, these architects and artists have witnessed major transformations which represent a turning point in Chinese history. The “Reconstructing Utopia” exhibition is not a sort of retrospect of traditional Utopia, but a renewal of Utopia’s experimental spirit and ideality.

Authors: Modu Team