2020 is destined to be an extraordinary year from January with the emergence of the coronavirus. Galleries are compelled to close because of the lockdown and exhibitions have to be postponed for health security. In consequent of this, the art industry has plunged into an unpredicted stagnation. After several months of calm and accumulation, art galleries start to consider their role and duty for the public in the period of post-COVID 19. Swiss curator Harald Szeemann once stated that a museum was a ‘house for art’ and everyone in the house can ‘live his or her own mythologies’ (2001). This begs the question, what is the museum in a new distinctive post-COVID 19 environment? This question starts with ‘A House with Many Guests’.
M WOODS’s first exhibition in Beijing 798 district Collective Care: A House with Many Guests tries to discuss what is a museum since its closure after COVID-19 at the start of 2020. As its name implies, this non-profit gallery hosts eight collections from different local collectors as well as the gallery’s collections in separate rooms and hopes to reflect on a new role that a museum can play in the larger art ecology of the region. All exhibits on display in this exhibition are collected from collectors and each exhibition room represents a collector’s house. Interesting enough, one exhibition hall is like one of the rooms in the collector’s own house which is a metaphor. The gallery’s spaces present nearly 50 objects including Chinese antiques, sculptures, installations, photographs as well as videos from the last three decades. In this new ‘local turn’, Collective Care: A House with Many Guests is both an exhibition and a model of sharing collections that work locally and within a collecting network of sympathetic individuals and guests. In this exhibition, the relation between subject and object is deconstructed, and the traditional identity of Art Museum, collector, curator and audience is given new meanings.
The exhibition poster
New Gallery in 2020
The art gallery cannot be a place for simply displaying and serving the public anymore in 2020. As the first exhibition after the lockdown in Beijing, M WOODS tries to explore the new responsibility of the gallery through Collective Care: A House with Many Guests. No longer to be confined to the traditional role of educator or public servant, the art gallery of this exhibition is more like a host who invites the public in for a visit, whereby the host becomes the guest of the guest, and the guest becomes the host of the host in return. Furthermore, the exhibition broke the boundaries of chronology and conventional stylistic categories by exhibiting collections in independent spaces to create its specific theme. As Hooper’s argument in 1992, it is wrong to suppose that the form of reality and mode of operating for museums is fixed and single. Unlike most other galleries, M WOODS jumps out from conformity and giving the spaces and collections freedom, thus, to develop audiences’ sense of belonging. Although some may object that the form of curating in this exhibition has no logical connection among different rooms and the whole exhibition has no focus, the seemingly random manipulation makes audiences feel freer and more comfortable to scan artworks. The unusual role as a host that the gallery play also brings inspiration to other art institutions and to lead a re-examination of new functions that a gallery or a museum can have. The exhibition of Collective Care: A House with Many Guests illustrates a new model and a new concept of art galleries. Moreover, the characters of curators and collectors have also changed.
Collectors or Curators?
Hosting is enjoyable when collectors become curators; as they design a room of home rather than curating in an exhibition hall. There is no professional curator in Collective Care: A House with Many Guests but instead, every collector is a curator for his or her exhibition room. In a given space with the collections of free creation layout, the process of the curating is like designing their own house. There is more imagination and freedom when it comes to decorating one’s own home, therefore, entering each space is like visiting an old friend. Many of the works are presented to the public for the first time since they became private collections. Every collector shares their cherished works to audiences and makes efforts to get the audience into the world of their collection and learn their preferences. Artworks have the opportunity to truly complete the combination of personal taste and public space which confirms the highest value of every piece of the collection.
In the contemporary art world, exhibitions mostly connect the curator, artists and the art institution. A curator has become a catalyst for their communication (Puwar & Sharma 2012). He or she generally organizes an exhibition with the mission of interpreting artworks and promote the artist. Without a particular curator, the cross-border curatorial activity is not as bad as the imagination. Surprisingly, curators in this exhibition have established a nice relation between collectors and audiences instead of artists and institutions. Collectors here are not superior and unapproachable, they are hosts and even our friends. In addition, it has successfully interpreted a new definition of curators as well as collectors. The curator here is a kind host rather than an active producer. And collectors are curators who need to consider how to show private collections to the public in an art museum through a proper way. This memorable curating experience for collectors also arouses their deliberation about the value of a collection. As Du Jie’s reflection on the curating process in an interview, ‘With the transformation of the identity of collectors, the selected requirement for collections have also been constantly improved, and the standard will be increasingly severe and professional.’. The shift between different roles has influences minds on both audiences and collectors. At the same time, the art museum as an open space where many kinds of sounds meet and collide has become a field and carrier for individuals and institutions to exchange and interact with collections in the form of exhibitions. The gallery is not only public and open space, but also an intimate and private area.
From the Public to Intimate Space and Vice Versa
For the public, one entering the room is an experience of visiting the intimate space of art collectors, and for private collectors, it is a courageous invitation direct at the public. When museums were firstly initiated, the lower classes through museums to raise their level of understanding. Museums were over the public and were places to improve the public taste (Weil 1997). By the beginning of the 21st century, the roles of museums and the public were transposed, a museum was a place to serve the public. This year, the relevant positions of museums and the public and the operating of museums also changed silently under the situation of an unexpected global pandemic. Professional art galleries and private collectors could exhibit together, which expressed plenty of openness, tolerance and trust. The exhibition also gives collectors a chance to combine personal taste with the public space and forms a wide-open sharing from a new angle.
Divided into separate autonomous spaces, the exhibition asks how a museum might become a more open space comprised of intersecting voices and characteristics. The exhibition as well as collectors are completely open and inclusive to the public, hence everyone from the public is welcomed to this house. By contrast, the design of each exhibition hall is personalized and private. Entering into the exhibition room seems to have entered the host’s study room, and the decoration of the room shows the host’s interests, tastes, characters and aesthetic conceptions. For example, Du Jie’s room even furnished a retro armchair and a pendant lamp with warm light which are both brought from the collector’s bedroom. The artwork Work No. 1649 created by Martin Creed is placed together with these pieces of personal furniture. Through this private space, audiences were put in the position of a close visitor to see the collector's life and have a dialogue with the collector. This is a kind of hospitality, as French philosopher Jacques Derrida (2000) suggested, “An act of hospitality can only be poetic”. In short, real hospitality should be an absolute realm without any questions or conditions. In such a homey space full of private collections, it is easier for audiences to think about the relation between artworks and themselves from collectors’ perspectives.
Martin Creed, Work No. 1649, 2013, The Du Jie Collection
The room created by Li Zhanhao, an artist and a collector, also shows his aesthetic styles and artistic pursuit. The exhibition space is selected at the roofed hall on the gallery’s top floor. Going up the stairs to the highest terrace of the gallery and looking around at a series of two-dimensional wall drawings in the light and spacious three-dimensional space. The sunlight pouring from the windows around the roof, all things in this white cube space are sunshine, colours, clean wall and the audience. On the four walls displayed the Dust to Dust series by artist Dong Dawei which the artist using the concept of ‘the void’ to return to the original state of ‘in-differential between objects’. This space seems to be the collector's artistic laboratory which is quiet and having nothing but the artworks. In this philosophical room, the audience only needs to enjoy the pleasure of the art and explore the truth in the art world. The room also seems to be a small balcony of collector's home where one can do nothing but a bath in the sunshine and let the mind run wild. This room brings comfort and may couple with a glimpse of thoughts.
Dong Dawei, Dust to Dust, 2020, The Li Zhanhao Collection
It is also worth mentioning that the join of the unique arrangement of the M WOODS Lounge is original. To accommodate the exhibition, this lounge gathers a number of books that the participating collectors often read and profoundly enjoy in their daily life and sharing them with the gallery’s visitors. They bear the traces and notes left by their owners, from highlighted sentences and paragraphs to short comments and expressions of feelings. These books are carefully put on the bookshelf and is convenient for visitors to read casually. Just sitting down on wooden chairs and reading the books, visitors may find the further insight of the artworks on display as well as their collecting philosophy.
M WOODS Lounge
When audiences got into the exhibition rooms from the outside, they converted from one person in the groups to one guest of the host. But the role of a guest is not fixed, it is open to everyone in the public. The relationship between hosts and guests is not in private according to conventional belief but can be shown in the public. At the same time, traditional stereotypes of collectivistic tendencies in China need to be reassessed.
Collectivism and Individualism
Collective Care: A House with Many Guests has shown an iconoclastic idea that Chinese exhibition can be individual rather than regard for the cohesive group. Old conceptions of individualism and collectivism suggest that Eastern countries tend to exhibit collectivism while Western countries tend to exhibit individualism. However, research by Parker, Haytko, and Hermans in 2009 demonstrates a notable trend that Chinese are less collectivistic than in past research. This tendency also is embodied in Chinese contemporary art industry. This exhibition can be a good representation of this phenomenon. Due to the impact of social distance requirements during the COVID 19, most works in galleries need to be done independently. But the social distance restriction is merely the flashpoint of the new form of this exhibition. The holding of this exhibition also implies a tendency to the improvement of art activities in China.
Collective Care: A House with Many Guests is neither a typical group exhibition nor a solo exhibition. There is no collaboration or common profits between participating collectors and the art institution. The goal of curators in this exhibition is to interpret their personal preferences and artistic feelings to the public in limited space. Collectors are unique and open, and they haven’t sacrificed themselves to cooperate with the group or others. Even though they are participating in the same exhibition, everyone defines the self independently and is a leader of the collections. Consequently, individualism is highlighted, and collectivism is diluted. The drift showing in this exhibition suggest a possible future of the Chinese art world: a more independent and personalized curating process, and new art institutions that are more concerned with care and freedom.
References
Derrida, J., & Dufourmantelle, A. (2000). Of hospitality. Stanford University Press.
Du, J., (2020). Du Jie’s ‘Faded Rose’: A Conversation with collector Du Jie. Phoenix Art.
Hooper-Greenhill, E. (1992). Museums and the shaping of knowledge. Routledge.
Parker, R. S., Haytko, D. L., & Hermans, C. M. (2009). Individualism and collectivism: Reconsidering old assumptions. Journal of International Business Research, 8(1), 127.
Puwar, N., & Sharma, S. (2012). Curating sociology. Sociological Review, 60, 40–63. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2012.02116.x
Thea, C., (2001). Here Time Becomes Space: A Conversation with Harald Szeemann. Sculpture, 20(5).
Weil, S. E. (1997). The Museum and the Public. Museum Management and Curatorship,16(3), 257–271.https://doi.org/10.1080/09647779708565852ue to the impact of social distance requirements during the COVID 19, most works in galleries need to be done independently. But the social distance restriction is merely the flashpoint of the new form of this exhibition. The holding of this exhibition also implies a tendency to the improvement of art activities in China.