Right as the quantity, quality, and scale of new museums in China are reaching an apex, Shanghai’s new Power Station of Art (PSA) is addressing this phenomenon with a well-timed exhibition, Spectacle: 12 Presentations of Contemporary Museum Architecture in China, which runs through July 18. The title comes from the curators’—Zhang Ming, Bu Bing, and Zhang Jiajing—contention that museums both present spectacles and are spectacles.
The curators approach the topic through a lens of “presentations instead of representations,” intending that the 12 projects explore not only the design of museums but also “the social, cultural, and political transformations” they produce. Presentations include installations such as “B10 Upgrade Strategy—OCATEA/HQ” by Urbanus, an activity center to encourage the making of art; “Bias” by Yu Ting, a treelike collection of convex mirrors producing a purposefully distorted view; and “Art for Lease” by Qiu Anxiong, a display of contemporary Chinese art that will be loaned out to visitors. The included projects investigate ideas of participation, perception, content, and a museum’s connection with its site.
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