Alexandra Munroe

Le Suisse Uli Sigg a joué, dans les temps de l’ouverture économique de la Chine après Mao, un rôle de grande importance perdurant jusqu’à nos jours. Afin de mieux comprendre la Chine, celui qui a été appelé en 1980 dans le pays en tant qu’entrepreneur et expert économique, se consacre à l’Art. Il constitue, au cours des années, l’une des collections les plus considérables d’Art contemporain chinois. THE CHINESE LIVES OF ULI SIGG donne pour la première fois un aperçu de la vie trépignante et extraordinaire de l’entrepreneur, diplomate et collectionneur d’Art. Des artistes contemporains comme Ai Weiwei, Zeng Fanzhi, Cao Fei, Fang Lijun ou Wang Guangyi considèrent Uli Sigg comme leur ami et mentor auquel ils ont pu confier leurs œuvres afin de les protéger de la destruction arbitraire par les autorités. La plus grande partie de ces œuvres sera versée par Sigg au musée M+ à Hongkong qui sera selon les prévisions inauguré en 2019 et les présentera au grand public.

"Marking Infinity", Lee Ufan's recent retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim charts the artist's creation of a visual, conceptual, and theoretical language that has radically expanded the possibilities for sculpture and painting over the past forty years. Deeply versed in modern philosophy, Lee is also an influential writer and is recognized as the key theorist of Mono-ha, an anti-formalist, materials-based art movement that developed in Tokyo in the late 1960s. Active internationally over the last four decades, Lee is acclaimed for an innovative body of Post-Minimalist work that promotes process and the experiential engagement of viewer and site.

Ai Weiwei, famous for his large-scale installation work and his dogged social justice advocacy, created a career-defining work in 2015 with @Large, mounted at Alcatraz, the emblematic site associated with egregious incarceration conditions and radical Native American protest. At the core of @Large were portraits of prisoners of conscience coupled with the opportunity to write letters of solidarity to the imprisoned. In her impassioned and powerful film, exhibition curator Cheryl Haines visits several current and former prisoners, including American whistleblower Chelsea Manning, and learns how these letters were vital to their survival. “The misconception of totalitarianism is that freedom can be imprisoned. This is not the case. When you constrain freedom, freedom will take flight and land on a windowsill.” — Ai Weiwei

The quixotic journey of Nam June Paik, one of the most famous Asian artists of the 20th century, who revolutionized the use of technology as an artistic canvas and prophesied both the fascist tendencies and intercultural understanding that would arise from the interconnected metaverse of today's world.