Arte da Cina, Corea, Giappone
The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo continues its year dedicated to Asia with the group show Alllooksame? / Tutttuguale?, Art from China, Japan and Korea, at their centre for contemporary art in Turin. The exhibition, curated by Francesco Bonami, unites forty artists with Asian roots, seemingly bound together by history and language yet culturally and creatively frequently at variance from one another.
The title of the exhibition has been borrowed from the web site www.alllooksame.com, set up by a youngster in Japan, partly as a joke and partly to rejoice the stereotype of “diversity at any cost”, while also inevitably highlighting the contrasting characteristics of prejudice and racism.
Alllooksame? / Tutttuguale? humours the way Westerners may have difficulty in distinguishing the features, traditions and lifestyles of Chinese, Japanese and Korean people. Contrary to its title, the exhibition attempts to break through the generalist lines of thought about these countries and reveal new, multiple visions of three countries that have seen and are still seeing breathtaking change and development both socially and politically. The show aims to illustrate the contrasting and experimental sides of Asia and, especially in the light of the many exhibitions about China in recent years, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo hopes to provide a more complete picture of contemporary art in Asia through bodies of work by the new generation of artists from China, Japan and Korea - none of whom will have grown up with a feeling of inferiority towards the Western world that would have affected the people of these countries in the past. Together, the artists from these three countries are able to offer multiple views of the entire landscape in which they live, rather than a detailed one-sided one.
The works in the show range in media and include artists / works such as Korean artist Lee Yong Baek’s Angel Soldiers video with images of rich, colourful flowerbeds, out of which soldiers slowly emerge wearing flower print camouflage uniforms, while fellow Korean Lee Hyungkoo’s presents marionette-like sculptures of the skeletons of Western cartoon characters such as Bugs Bunny and Willy Coyote. The Chinese artist Shi Yong presents a series of light boxes that offer a nocturnal view of the tips of some of Shanghai’s towering skyscrapers and the photographs of the Chinese artist Hu Yang illustrate the extremely rich or extremely modest interiors of private homes in Shanghai. The Japanese artist Sayaka Akiyama, who is presenting a site specific piece for the show, carefully embroiders routes and landscapes on road maps with brightly coloured thread. Another Japanese artist, Aida Makoto, presents a video of a comical and highly improbable Bin Laden.
The façade of the Fondazione’s centre in Turin will be part covered with a giant photograph, by the Chinese artist Jang Zhi, of people on a beach shadowed by a luminous rainbow made up of brand names and product labels as a symbol of mass consumption. Again, on the exterior walls of the centre, visitors are greeted by a neon ideogram of the words China, Japan and korea, created by the Chinese architect Qinyung Ma.
Participating artists
Cao Fei, Chen Qiulin, Chen Shaoxiong, Chen Xiaoyun, Hu Yang, Jiang Zhi, Kan Xuan, Li Shurui, Liang Juhui, Liu Ding, Liu Wei, Lu Chunsheng, Qingyun Ma, Shi Yong, Song Tao, Wang Xingwei, Xu Zhen, Yang Yong, Yang Zhenzhong. Coreani: Ayoama Satoru, Baik Hyunjhin, Choi Ho Chul, Gim Hongsok, Im Gook, Kim Beom, Kim Kira, Koo Donghee, Lee Hyungkoo, Lee Yong-Baek, Park Junebum, So Young Choi. Giapponesi: Akiyama Sayaka, Fukaya Etzuko, Kakitani Tomoki, Kaneuji Teppei, Kathy, Manabu Ikeda, Makoto Aida, Mori Chihiro, Shoji Michiko
