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After being closed for more than half a year for renovation, Rockbund Art Museum will present a fresh look to visitors in October 2011. The first exhibition will be Q Confucius, asolo exhibition by world renowned artist ZHANG Huan. The artist will present a series of thoughts on art and society in theQ Confucius exhibition with all the works tailored for RAM space and the cultural environment of the museum. The show has been planed with the collaboration between the museum and the artist for about two years.

The basic concept ofQ Confucius originated from a series of questions ZHANG Huan pondered over: faced with rapid economic and societal changes and energy and climate challenges, how can we achieve sustainable development? What responsibilities come along with China’s rise in international importance? Where is the sense of spiritual belonging for contemporary Chinese? These questions seem massive and unrelated, but actually they are inherently connected by inescapable bonds. The artist hopes to explore the inner structure of the questions through large sculptures, ash paintings and installation works tailored for this exhibition, providing a unique way of observation and thinking in the context of contemporary art. Just as in RAM’s previous exhibitions last year, all the works of the artist are custom-made for the art museum’s space, and strive to correspond with the unique architectural environment and historical and cultural background of the Bund district. The exhibitions are not confined to the physical space of the museum, but are integrated within the surrounding neighborhood to promote direct communication and interaction with the audience, thereby carrying out the concept of “Museum without Walls: Art and Life”.

May 4 2010 marked the official opening of RAM to the public, and three major exhibitions have been held since then, each highly original and full of academic and social significance, including Cai Guo-Qiang : Peasant Da Vincis, 2010 Zeng Fanzhi, and BY DAY BY NIGHT or Some Special Things a Museum Can Do. The art museum has organized more than 100 academic and educational activities for the public, including lectures, seminars, performances and workshops, which have been well received by various circles of society who actively participated. In order to protect the museum’s historical architecture and provide better conditions for exhibitions and visitor service, Rockbund Art Museum has been closed since January for Phase 2 renovation and improvements. During the closing period, educational programs were held regularly in every weekend.

Fumio Nanjo (b.1949 in Tokyo) is the director of Mori Art Museum since November in 2006 as well as a lecturer of Keio University since 1991. He graduated from Keio University in the faculty of Economics (1972) and Letters (Aesthetics/Art History; 1977). He organized numerous exhibitions as an officer of the Japan Foundation (1978-1986), as the director of ICA Nagoya (1986-1990), as the founder and as the representative director of Nanjo and Associates (1990-2002), and as the deputy director of Mori Art Museum (2002-Oct.2006).

His main achievements include commissioner of the Japan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale(1997), commissioner at the Taipei Biennale(1998), member of jury committee of the Turner Prize(1998), co-curator of the 3^rd Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art(Brisbane,1999), member of the selection committee of the Sydney Biennale(2000), art specialist of the Japan Pavilion of the Hanover Exposition(2000), artistic co-director of the Yokohama Triennale 2001, Tokyo-section co-curator of the Sao Paulo Biennale (2002), selector of the Artes Mundi Prize in Wales(2004), jury member of the Golden Lion Prize of the Venice Biennale(2005) and artistic director of the Singapore Biennale(2006 & 2008).

He also served as a consultant on several public art and corporate art projects including Shinjuku I-LAND" Public Art Projects (Tokyo/1995), Hakata Riverain Art Project (Fukuoka/1999), Art Project for Obayashi Corporation Head Office (Tokyo/1999), and VIVO City Art Project (Singapore/2006). Advisory positions include a member of International Committee of ICOM for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (CIMAM) and a member of International Association of Art Critics (AICA). He was awarded Foreign Minister’s Commendation for Fiscal Year 2007 for his contribution to international cultural exchange over the years. Publications include From Art to the City, a record of 15 years as an independent curator (1997) and Asian Contemporary Art Report: China, India, Middle East and Japan (2010).

Zhang Huan is an internationally renowned contemporary artist. He was born in Anyang, Henan Province in 1965, and currently lives and works in Shanghai and New York.He was active in Beijing in the 1990’s, where he was considered one of the foremost avant-garde artists in the nation. During that period, he was mainly doing performance art, and his representative works are 12 square meters, To add one meter to anonymous mountain, To raise the water level in a fish pond and etc. In 1998, He moved to New York and became a full time artist who took various medium to express his art. He had made a lot of performances in big cities around the world and his representative works are My New York, Family Tree, Peace and etc.

In 2005, he returned to Shanghai and established Zhang Huan Studio, where he continues to expand the forms and boundaries of art. The ash painting technique he created has added a new painting category to art history, and other techniques, such as ash sculpture, ash installations, sculpting in ox-hide, door carvings, and feather woodcuts, to name a few, have all been pioneered by him. Collections of Zhang Huan’s art can be found in the Contemporary art museums of major cities all over the world, as well as in the collections of art foundations, with public collections totaling nearly sixty, including The Museum of Modern Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Pompidou Center in Paris, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago, Illinois and The Shanghai Art Museum. In 2008, Wu Hung who is a famous arthistorian wrote a book "Zhang Huan Studio: Art and Labor," which covered detailed information of Zhang Huan Studio.In 2009, the lyric opera Semele, for which Mr. Zhang was director, stage manager was performed the Theatre Royal De La Monnaie in Belgium; heis the first Chinese contemporary artist to have directed a lyric opera.