Zhongguo 2185

Zhongguo 2185 Sadie Coles

Zhongguo 2185 (China 2185) is an exhibition of ten young artists from China, whose works address the shifting cultural contexts of China – past, present, and future – while also moving far beyond those social and geographical confines. The exhibition draws its title from Liu Cixin’s 1989 ‘critical utopian’ Science Fiction novel, ‘Zhongguo 2185’, which was written during the rapid socio-political reforms of the 1980s, and remains unpublished to this day – circulating only on the internet. The exhibition harnesses the ‘critical openness’ that early Chinese Science Fiction utilised and advocated in the face of authoritarian rule. It gestures towards potential futures while also constructing a critical vision of the past and present.

Curated by Victor Wang 王宗孚, Zhongguo 2185 examines a new lexicon of Chinese contemporary art – presenting a cross- section of work that complicates and disrupts the premise of a unified visual form and national aesthetic that has often been attached to Chinese ‘contemporaneity’. Bringing together new, existing and site-specific commissions and artworks, this exhibition – comprised solely of artists born after the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 – uses the literary mode of Science Fiction (often deployed as a guise for political and personal concerns) as an entry point for exploring the frameworks that underpin contemporary art in China, and its current accelerated production.

Duration 21 September 2017 - 04 November 2017
Times Tuesday – Saturday, 11 – 6pm
Cost Free
Venue Sadie Coles (Kingly Street)
Address 62 Kingly Street, London, W1B 5QN
Contact 020 7493 8611 / info@sadiecoles.com / www.sadiecoles.com

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