AFTERMATH 余波
SGA Three on the Bund, 3F, No.3, Zhong Shan Dong Yi Road, Shanghai
2019.11.8 - 2020.1.15
Gao Weigang「高伟刚」, Michael Joo
a nrm. curatorial project
SGA Three on the Bund announces its new exhibition, AFTERMATH 余波, a dramatic vision by Gao Weigang「高伟刚」and Michael Joo of environmental uncertainty and a post-technological world.
“AFTERMATH 余波" masquerades as neutral while suggesting the dystopian outcome of a precipitous event. It conjures dreams of what comes after civilization, history and society – perhaps an endless post-apocalypse, an interminable twilight of the gods. Here history has become civilization’s wasteland, an enervating desert of consumption, littered with objects with forgotten stories and bizarre adaptations. The present is brooding and the future opaque. But there is evidence to sift through to glean what happened, and perhaps find something to help us glimpse what might have been. Welcome to the AFTERMATH 余波.
Gao Wei Gang presents seascapes and mountain-scapes at a scale that invite the viewer to be physically present within the canvas, simultaneously creating anxiety about the fate of the individual enveloped by these harsh environments and sublime awe at the towering beauty of the mountains, terrible and elegiac. Elsewhere Gao's shipwrecks, abandoned and repurposed containers and even his shadow studies, where glass has replaced glaze for the purposes of creating a sfumato effect, leave us pondering the precursive events that have led to us standing before works of such beguiling intrigue.
Michael Joo deploys a diverse array of elemental materials and processes. From paintings of silver nitrate to carbonized mushrooms, blown-glass versions of plastic shopping bags or mirrored borosilicate exhibition ropes and stanchions, Joo’s works in the exhibition evoke the temporal but universal transformations shared by us all. Humanizing the alchemical, the works in the exhibition present transient things and environments that have been destroyed and distorted in the process of production into works of permanence. Resurrected in alien beauty, the seemingly contradictory states of fragility and assured certainty of Joo’s transformed objects and chemically conjured images suggest an aftermath as yet to be realized.
About Gao Weigang and Michael Joo
Gao Weigang「高伟刚」(born 1976, Heilongjiang, China), his works employ a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, installation, and performance, he evades categorization of his artworks into a particular genre, reflecting his intention while challenging mainstream visual culture through questioning the apparatus of common knowledge and perception. Gao Weigang has widely exhibited across mainland China as well as in Hong Kong, Singapore, London, and New York City, etc. His works have also been collected by many art institutions and foundations such as the Burger Collection, Switzerland; the DSL Collection, Paris, France; Long Museum, Shanghai, China; White Rabbit Collection, Sydney, Australia; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong, China, and the Louis Vuitton Group, Hong Kong, China. Gao Weigang currently lives and works in Beijing, China.
Michael Joo (born 1966, Ithaca, USA) is a conceptual artist who explores the physical boundaries of materials and objects, from glass stanchions to silver nitrate paintings, contemplating questions of ontology, epistemology and entropy based on place and history. Michael’s work is represented in FNAC, Paris; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Samsung Centre for Art and Culture, Seoul and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Michael lives and works in New York and Seoul.
About SGA – an open platform for contemporary art and culture
SGA is a new model for art production and exhibition. Working with local and international partners, SGA instigates, develops and realises cross-cultural projects for contemporary art with leading artists, institutions and international private galleries.
An open platform for exhibitions, collaborations and curatorial projects, SGA is an agent of expanding engagement between art and the wider public, connecting and contextualising the art of greater China and South East Asia with the wider international art worlds. Our objective is to decompartmentalise the art world through situating local understanding within and in contrast to global conversations.
To drive this new direction, nrm have been appointed Artistic Director of SGA. Led by Josef Ng, Andrew Ruff and Christopher Moore, nrm brings over 3 decades of combined experience in art curating, collecting and publishing in Asia.