EXHIBITIONS“START” Start Museum Inaugural Exhibition Season One

“START” has been ingeniously planned for years by a group of specialists, led by Mr. He Juxing, the founder and director of the museum. The exhibition involves 88 works by 85 artists, among whom the eldest was born in 1921, while the youngest was born in 1988. The artists are representatives of contemporary art from around the world, coming from different countries including China, Korea, India, the US, Denmark, Brazil, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Bulgaria, Serbia, and more. The power of the times, as well as the creativity and aesthetic value of their works, will be the new epitome of contemporary aesthetics and cultural expressions.

This exhibition is the first chapter of the debut of Start Museum, according to the team’s plan. The entire debut consists of 4 consecutive exhibitions, or the 4 seasons of “START”, each of which will last for 5 months in the upcoming 2 years. For the sake of diversity and complexity of art, each season will be demonstrated with different undertones and perspectives, which ensures the novelty and freshness of the works, despite some repeated artists. In summary, the 4 consecutive inaugural exhibitions will last for 20 months, and will cover over 300 works by over 300 contemporary artists from around the world.

As the first chapter of the museum’s inaugural exhibition, “START” is not only a grand gathering of contemporary classics, but also proposes a series of niche insights and important questions to the international academia. On the one hand, it seems to be reiterating the spiritual value and contribution of Chinese art in the new era, while on the other hand, it has put forward a grand vision to contribute to and reshape the development of international art from a Chinese perspective. What’s more, other than the current popular paradigm, it transcends the classics beyond the “time clue” and the “thematic”. In Mr. He Juxing’s words, the artists and their artworks, according to his anticipation, are to become their own time and monuments, rather than being sorted by timeline or defined by themes. Perhaps this happens to tackle the pain point of the narrative of the existing art history and of the logic of present-day exhibitions.

Season One of the inaugural exhibition “START” is characterised by strongly representative and recognised works in art history. Among them are: Diana by Matthew Barney, named after the heroin of the latest movie Redoubt by this master of contemporary art and avant-garde movies, an indispensable central piece of the exhibition; Great Migration at the Three Gorges by Liu Xiaodong, a master of Chinese contemporary painting, who records with the most astonishing touch the construction of the Three Gorges Dam—the largest man-made project in China and the world; Reflection II by sculptor Antony Gormley, an earlier work that the artist modeled after himself, and one of the classics that challenges the construct of society by the scale of an individual; La Berceuse (for Van Gogh) by the German Neo-Expressionist artist Anselm Kiefer which fuses the withering beauty and the warmth of art with a huge scope, sparking a direct conversation with the history of art, which is rarely seen by the artist; Water: Standard Version from the Cihai Dictionary and The Direction of the Vision, respectively by Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi, two pioneers of the ’85 New Wave, to be juxtaposed in this exhibition with Candle TV by Nam June Paik, master of the Fluxus and father of video art, resonating across the gap of time, history, culture, and nationality; and works by the most influential soft sculpture and fiber artists at home and abroad, including Rosemarie Trockel, Maryn Varbanov, Liang Shaoji, Shi Hui, Kaari Upson, etc., to be gathered for the first time in order to demonstrate the unique relationship between body, nature, vision, and other dimensions. “START” exhibits a giant collection of multi-dimensional, multi-perspective, and multi-threaded dialogues between hundreds of contemporary masters through a brand-new structure and a “non-linear, non-thematic” narrative, so that the works can speak for themselves and resonate with each other.