The artist should still be trusted …

~ Jérôme Sans

UCCA has dedicated space to a new series called Curated by … where leading artists curate and promote the work of emerging artists. Wang Du initiates this series by curating the work of Ji Zhou for a show entitled In Situ.

“We believe that artists themselves still trust art,” says Jérôme Sans. “We have chosen to release the curatorial process to established artists because we want to share with them our attitude toward art, to share their judgment of art and their excitement of being a temporary curator.”

As an institution, UCCA’s mission is to support artists and in particular emerging artists. The new series Curated by … is an opportunity rarely given to artists by other institutions.

“In an iconized world suffering from a flood of images and a severe loss of the imaging ‘gene’, more than ninety-nine percent of artists are enslaved and mocked by images,” says Wang Du. “Fortunately, there are still some artists, such as Ji Zhou, who can free themselves from such a plight.”

Ji Zhou features two series of works in the exhibition—Incident and Mirror—splitting the White Cube in two. Their commonality, says Ji Zhou, “is that there are two versions of reality in every image.

In the Incident series, Ji Zhou juxtaposes a normal version of contemporary urban life with another seemingly chaotic one, allowing the audience to view and judge which is authentic and which is false. With Mirror, “two different versions of the same scenario are presented,” says Ji Zhou. However, this still requires the audience to identify what is reality and what is vision by positioning themselves in front of the images.

“We are extremely honored to have Wang Du initiate our new series of exhibitions Curated by … ,” says Jérôme Sans. “His dedication to his art and to supporting younger artists is inspiring to all of us.”