曹斐 Cao Fei

Whose Utopia, Poetry and Dream, Tate Modern, London
2014.10.25 - 2015.04.25

Cao Fei's Video Whose Utopia (2006) now on Display at Tate Modern
Theme: Level 2: Poetry and Dream (collection exhibition of Tate)
Room: Cao Fei (Room 2)
more info: Tate
Cao Fei's Haze and Fog screening at Prospectif Cinéma, Centre Pompidou, Paris
2014.10.30

Haze and Fog (2013)  

30 Oct, 2014

Cinema 1 - Centre Pompidou, Paris

€ 6, € 4, free LP

The Chinese artist Cao Fei works with video, 3D animation, photography, as well as platforms through its Second Life avatar "China Tracy". She builds her works from reflections on Chinese society, using references to the fantastic and integrating performative elements related to contemporary dance.

Her latest film Haze and Fog (2013) reflects the discomfort of living in a invaded by the video game industry and consumerism society, symbolized for the artist by a thick fog. She invented in response to a parallel universe with zombies who fully live their desires and emotions.  

Curated Mnam / Bcc - contemporary and prospective service creation, Christine Macel

more info: www.centrepompidou.fr

L’artiste chinoise Cao Fei travaille avec la vidéo, des animations 3D, de la photographie, ainsi que des plates-formes sur Second Life à travers son avatar « China Tracy ». Elle construit ses oeuvres à partir de réflexions sur la société chinoise, en utilisant des références au fantastique et en intégrant des éléments performatifs liés à la danse contemporaine. Son dernier film Haze and Fog (2013), don du Cercle international de la Société des Amis du musée et présenté lors de cette séance, témoigne du malaise de vivre dans une société envahie par l’industrie des jeux vidéo et la consommation à outrance, symbolisé pour l’artiste par un brouillard épais. Elle invente en réaction un univers parallèle avec des zombies qui vivraient pleinement leurs envies et émotions.

Commissaire : Mnam/Cci - Service création contemporaine et prospective, Christine Macel 

Cinéma et Vidéo

30 octobre 2014, à 20h00

Cinéma 1 - Centre Pompidou, Paris

6€, 4€, LP gratuit
Cao Fei's Haze and Fog screening at Gene Siskel Film Center, School of Art Institute of Chicago
2014.10.23
Cao Fei: Haze and Fog
2014.10.23.
Gene Siskel Film Center, School of Art Institute of Chicago.
Cao Fei, China, ca. 80 min.
Chinese artist Cao Fei mixes fantasy, documentary, and virtual reality to reflect on the ways China’s rapidly changing economy has transformed the everyday lives and imaginations of its citizens. Her latest film, HAZE AND FOG (2013), is a darkly humorous reinterpretation of the zombie film, set in Beijing. Here the undead are real estate agents, nouveau riche businessmen, security guards, manicurists, and sex workers seeking contact in an increasingly individualized, alienating society. Fei accompanies the film with her 2007 short i.MIRROR, which follows her avatar China Tracy as she navigates the alternate reality of Second Life. In Mandarin with English subtitles. Various formats. (Amy Beste)

Cao Fei will be present for audience discussion.
more info: www.siskelfilmcenter.org
La Town, Cao Fei's Solo Exhibition, Lombard Freid Gallery, New York
2014.09.10 - 2014.10.25

La Town, Trailer (1'31"), 2014

Cao Fei: La Town
Solo Exhibition

September 10 – October 25, 2014

Vernissage: Wednesday, September 10, 6:00 – 8:00 PM

———————

Indeed, this simulacrum remains unsurpassed in its evocation of the Real.

Indeed, this film conveys the Truth.

I will always mourn for the fate of La Town, for La Town is always in mourning.

– Cao Fei

———————

Lombard Freid Gallery is pleased to present La Town, Cao Fei’s fifth solo show with the gallery. An ambitious stop-motion feature, La Town exemplifies the artist’s playful-yet-political practice, converging fantasy and reality into a film noir-inspired vision of the contemporary China and the World at large. The trailer for the film was well received at Art Basel Hong Kong 2014, and is followed by the full-length film and related photographic series.

more info: Lombard Freid Gallery
Cao Fei's Theatrical Mirror, Contemporary Art Center of South Australia
2014.09.14 - 2014.10.20

Cao Fei’s Theatrical Mirror: Living Between the Real and the Unreal   

Presented by Adelaide Festival Centre and the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (CACSA)

 Internationally recognised Chinese artist Cao Fei presents Adelaide audiences with Theatrical Mirror: Living in-between the Real and the Unreal, featuring eight videoworks spanning the years 2004 to 2013. These video and new media works reflect the fluidity of a world in which cultures have mixed and diverged in rapid evolution, exploring perception and reality in places as diverse as a Chinese factory and the virtual world of “Second Life”. Depictions of hyper-capitalistic Pearl River Delta development abound in imagery that echoes traditional Chinese landscape painting and in the design of her own virtual utopia, RMB City.

Applying strategies of sampling, roleplay and documentary film making Cao Fei reveals the discrepancy between reality and dream, and the discontent and disillusionment of China’s younger generation.

more info: Adelaide Festival Centre
Cao Fei's Haze and Fog, The 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale
2014.05.16 – 2014.08.31

8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale, Shenzhen, China

OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT) Shenzhen announce the artists who will participate in the 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale, open May 16–August 31, 2014. The works selected for the Biennale elicit subtle levels of involvement, whether by inviting action, reflection, critique or contemplation, based on the free judgment of the viewer. The selected artworks use references to everyday occurrences, to modest and neglected aspects of our lives, to seemingly ordinary spaces, structures or architectures as a way of giving aesthetic form to diverse social realities.

The artists and collectives participating in the Biennale and its public programme include Cao Fei, Chen Chieh-jen, Chen Shaoxiong, Chen Yufan & Chen Yujun, Cheng Ran, Geng Jianyi, Gran Fury, Huang Po-Chih, Takahiro Iwasaki, Jia Chun, Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, Meiro Koizumi, Lai Chih-Sheng, Marc Lafia, Michael Lee, Li Jinghu, Li Ming, Ahmet Öğüt, L+ (Pak Sheung Chuen, Wo Man Yee, Lee Soen Long), Sheila Pepe, Adrian Piper, Polit Sheer Form Office, Tsong Pu, Younès Rahmoun, Manuel Saiz, Song Ta, Wu Mali, Xu Tan, Morgan Wong, Yao Jui-chung with LSD, Qiu Zhijie & Song Zhen with Diankou residents and Total Art Studio, Héctor Zamora and Zheng Bo.

OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT)
F2, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town
Nanshan District, Shenzhen
China
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10am–5:30pm
T +86 755 2691 5100/02
info@ocat.org.cn
Is Utopia for Sale? MAXXI Museum, Roma, Italy
2014.02.15 – 2014.05.04

15 February – 4 May 2014
Gallery 5

curated by Hou Hanru and Monia Trombetta
with contributions of the curatorial teams of MAXXI art and MAXXI architecture

Whose Utopia, video, 2006, Cao Fei

The Utopia of monetary power

is gradually replacing

the Utopia of social good.

Is Utopia for sale?

more info: www.fondazionemaxxi.it
Cao Fei's Haze and Fog at Chinese Art Centre, Manchester, UK
2013.10.25 - 2013.12.07

The film Haze and Fog (2013) is Cao Fei’s most ambitious moving image work to date and is a joint commission, the inaugural work to be acquired for the New Chinese Contemporary Art Collection, the first in the UK created in partnership with the University of Salford. This new initiative builds on the strengths of both institutions, commissioning emerging Chinese artists, developing work for the collection that will aim to increase knowledge and interest in Chinese contemporary art across the UK and internationally. The collection will be officially launched on 11th October at Media City UK, Salford.

‘Haze and Fog’ was produced by Eastside Projects (Birmingham) and Vitamin Creative Space (China) and is commissioned in partnership with Eastside Projects, Arnolfini (Bristol), Bath School of Art and Design, Bath Spa University. The film will also be exhibited at Eastside Projects (Birmingham) from 21st September – 16th November, screened at Tate 22nd September, and at Arnolfini (Bristol) as part of a series of events profiling the artist’s work.

Haze and Fog - Trailer: www.youtube.com

More info: www.chinese-arts-centre.org
Cao Fei: What are you doing here? Body-book, The 9th Bienal do Mercosul, Brazil
2013.09.13 - 2013.11.10

A tree on which uniforms are hung, street clothes, photographs of factory staff, drawings made by workers in 2005 and 2006—when Cao Fei approached employees of OSRAM Lighting China Ltd in Guangdong—: all this forms part of a new installation conceived by the artist in the continuous process of reflecting on her experience involving the project What Are You Doing Here?

The German company Siemens is chiefly concerned with the engineering and electronics industries. In 1987, it launched the Siemens Art Program, seeking to establish a dialogue between employees and artists. From 2000 to 2006, under the title What Are You Doing Here?, the program asked a series of artists in China, including Cao Fei, to organize projects in collaboration with employees of Siemens’s subsidiaries in that country. The workers were then asked to reflect on their own work environment and to get actively involved in the artists’ work process.

Another physical manifestation of Cao Fei’s dialogue with the workers is the video Whose Utopia. With a slower pace and piano music accompanied by a guitar that sounds interspersed with working machines, dancers shown running harmonic movements in positions similar to those of birds, including rigorous scenes of work, surrounded by machines and still lifes surely full of boxes containing bulbs to illuminate.

The 9th Bienal do Mercosul | Porto Alegre takes place from September 13 to November 10, 2013, in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil. It consists of an exhibition of contemporary art, including performances and events of various kinds, presented in different venues across the city. Its pedagogical program, Cloud Formations, started on May 17, 2013, along with special public programs and film screenings.

More: 9bienalmercosul.art.br
Cao Fei: Haze and Fog, Tate Modern, London, UK
22.09.2013

Cao Fei, Haze and Fog 2013

Film still, Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space

Haze and Fog is a new type of zombie movie set in modern China. The film explores how the collective consciousness of people living in the time of what Cao Fei calls ‘magical metropolises’ emerges from seemingly tedious, mundane, day-to-day life where a magical reality is created through struggles at the tipping point between the visible and the invisible. This special preview screening will be followed by a discussion with the artist.

Haze and Fog is produced by Eastside Projects and Vitamin Creative Space. It is commissioned by University of Salford and Chinese Art Centre, Eastside Projects, and Bath School of Art and Design, Bath Spa University, with Vitamin Creative Space. An edition will be the first piece in the New Collection of Chinese Contemporary Art developed by University of Salford and Chinese Art Centre and will launch the collection partnership with a showing of the film in Media City on 11 Oct 2013. Cao Fei: Haze and Fog is at Eastside Projects, Birmingham 21 September – 16 November 2013

More: www.tate.org.uk