Xu Zhen


Xu Zhen, born in 1977 in Shanghai, China, is a multimedia artist. Xu Zhen's body of work, which includes photography, installation art and video, entails theatrical humour and social critique. His projects are informed by performance and conceptual art. Xu's work focuses on human sensitivity and dramatizes the humdrum of urban living.

Biography

Xu Zhen's earlier representative individual works includes the video, Rainbow, which is presented at the 49th Venice Biennial in 2001, displays a whipped naked back turning redder without showing the hand or person beating the figure. The video Shout exhibited in the first China Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennial is one of the most representative works in Xu's career according to the art critic Barbara Pollack. As the artist screams on the crowded streets of Shanghai, the lens captures the frightful and bewildered faces of pedestrians momentarily disrupted.
The installation ShanghART Supermarket recreates a convenience store on-site: the shelves are crammed full of empty products, while the items, sold at their ordinarily marked prices, only have the external shells of their packaging.
His recent pieces survey ancient and new art while fusing Chinese and Western cultures into large scale installations or into new art forms. European Thousand-Hand Classical Sculpture assembles 19 different Western classical sculptures of various forms; borrowing from the shape of the Thousand-Hand Guanyin in Buddhist iconography. Physique of Consciousness is a video which comprises movements derived from dance, gymnastics, spiritual and cultural rituals.

Curation

Xu Zhen's curatorial experiments and engagement with an alternative art space, BizArt, complement and extend practice. Aside from being an artist, Xu Zhen organizes various art activities and co-curates with other artists. Major exhibitions in Shanghai include Art For Sale ; Fan Mingzhen & Fan Mingzhu ; Dial 62761232-Courier Exhibition ; 38 Solo Exhibitions ; The Real Thing: Contemporary from Art China, Tate Liverpool; Bourgeoisified Proletariat ; and My Communism – Poster Exhibition. He was also one of the creators of the online contemporary art forum, Art-Ba-Ba, in 2006.

Museum and Biennale Exhibition

Xu Zhen has exhibited internationally at museums and biennales, such as, Venice Biennale, Lyon Biennial, Asia Pacific Triennial, Guangzhou Triennial, The Museum of Modern Art, ICP, Mori Art Museum, PS1, Tate Liverpool etc. Recent exhibitions include Corporate-Xu Zhen, Kunsthaus Graz, Xu Zhen Solo Exhibition, Long Museum, Xu Zhen-Produced by MadeIn Company, Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, 14 Rooms, Foundation Beyeler, Art of Change, 11 Rooms, 15 Rooms, Long Museum, Corporate, Graz Kunsthaus,, Bentu: Chinese Artists in a Time of Turbulence and Transformation, and Foundation Louis Vuitton etc.
Xu Zhen won the prize for ‘Best Artist’ at the China Contemporary Art Award in 2004 and ‘Best Artist of the Year’ at the AAC Award in 2014.
His work has been collected by many institutions and private collections worldwide including the Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Daimler Collection, The White Rabbit Collection, the Rubell Famil Collection,, the Musée d'Art Contemporain de Lyon, the K11 Collection, the DSL Collection, among others.

MadeIn Company

In 2009, Xu Zhen founded ‘MadeIn Company,’ a contemporary art creation corporate that plays off of the phrase "Made in China". In 2013, MadeIn Company launched the brand "Xu Zhen" and led MadeIn to expand into curatorial production, research and publications.
In 2014, MadeIn Company founded MadeIn Gallery, a gallery dedicated to the promotion of international artists with an accent on contemporary culture development and communication. Located in M50 Shanghai contemporary art district, MadeIn Gallery aims to be a platform for creativity in China, giving access to the latest artworks of established artists as well as younger and lesser-known talents. MadeIn Gallery was featured in the China Focus Section of the Armory Show in New York in March 2014. On this occasion, detailed images of the series Under Heaven by Xu Zhen, commissioned artist of the Armory, were featured in all the visual promotional materials.

Selected solo exhibitions

;2015
;2014
;2013
  • The Most Important Thing Is Not the Contract, OCT, Shanghai, China
  • Turbulent, Bund 18 Temporary Space, Shanghai China
  • Movement Field – Xu Zhen Solo Exhibition, produced by MadeIn Company, Long March Space, Beijing China
  • Offsite：MadeIn Company, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada
;2012
  • Forbidden Castle, Muzeum Montanelli, Prague, Czech Republic
  • MadeIn Company, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China
  • Sleeping Life Away, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France
  • The Last Few Mosquitos, WHERE? , Vancouver Canada
;2011
  • Action of Consciousness, ShanghART Gallery & H Space, Shanghai
  • Physique of Consciousness, Long March Space, Beijing
  • Physique of Consciousness, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Switzerland
;2010
  • Don’t Hang Your Faith on The Wall, Long March Space, Beijing
  • Seeing One's Own Eyes, IKON Gallery, Birmingham, UK
  • There are new species! What do you suppose they are called? , Fabien Fryns Fine Art, Los Angeles, U.S.
  • Spread-by MadeIn, ShanghART Beijing, Beijing, China
;2009
  • Spread—New Exhibition Produced by MadeIn, ShanghART at Huaihai Rd 796, Shanghai, China
  • MadeIn -- Seeing One's Own Eyes europalia.china, S.M.A.K., Gent, Belgium
  • Lonely Miracle: Middle East Contemporary Art Exhibition, James Cohan Gallery, New York, USA
  • Seeing One's Own Eyes—Middle East Contemporary Art Exhibition-Space, ShanghART Gallery and ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai
  • The Last Few Mosquitos, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK
;2008
  • Impossible is Nothing, Long March Space, Beijing, China
  • Xu Zhen, Folkert de Jong, Martha Colburn, James Cohan Gallery, New York
  • Just Did It, James Cohan Gallery, New York
;2007
  • In Just the Blink of an Eye, James Cohan Gallery with PERFORMA, New York
  • Art '38 Basel, Art Unlimited-Xu Zhen 18 Days, Art Fair Switzerland
;2006
  • 8848 – 1.86, ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai
  • 8848 – 1.86, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
  • An Animal, 2577 Longhua Road, Xuhui district, Shanghai
;2002
  • Careful, Don't Get Dirty, Galerie Waldburger, Berlin, Germany
  • A Young Man, Bizart, Shanghai