Tobias Rehberger : If you don’t use your eyes to see, you will use them to cryMar 23, 2019 - May 26, 2019
- Venue:
- Rockbund Art Museum (20 Huqiu Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai)
- Curator:
- Larys Frogier, Billy Tang
- Artist:
- Tobias Rehberger
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About the Exbition
The Rockbund Art Museum is very pleased to present the first institutional solo exhibition in China by the renowned German artist Tobias Rehberger. “If you don’t use your eyes to see, you will use them to cry” will be on display from 23 March to 26 May, 2019. Rehberger’s multifaceted work has been instrumental to expanding the possibilities of sculpture, spanning a diverse range of fields that include design, architecture, and conceptual art. The exhibition looks to showcase newly commissioned works and site-specific installations created especially for the Rockbund Art Museum. Through an array of visually confounding objects and environments, Rehberger continues to pioneer a range of production techniques and forms of social intervention that explore how we interact with space and perceive the connection between everyday life and art.
Born in 1966, Esslingen, Germany, the Frankfurt-based Rehberger was a student of Martin Kippenberger and Thomas Bayrle, and is noted for later contributions that place him among a generation of artists in the 90s whose cross-disciplinary approaches redefined ideas of shared authorship and controlled chance as a catalyst for making art. Larys Frogier, Director of the Rockbund, anticipates Rehberger’s exhibition as follows: “During the exhibition, the artist will transform the building of our institution into a space that looks to appeal to passersby or those who rarely venture into the museum. Through the transition of moving from the outside into the exhibition, the audience will be immersed into a dazzling alternative world that subverts the boundaries of these different realities. By intervening onto our museum structure, Rehberger re-routes the logic of our social norms, therefore opening up new entry points to imagine how art can fuse together with our life.”
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About the Artist
Tobias Rehberger is an artist whose work is characterized by transformation, serendipity, collaboration and shared experience. His work in large-scale often takes the form of visually-rich environments that are sites for social encounter, such as his Was du liebst bringt dich auch zum weinen (2009), which won the Golden Lion for the 53rd Venice Biennale, his recreation of Frankfurt’s Bar Oppenheimer in New York (2013), or his procession of sculptures 24 Stops between the Beyeler Foundation and Vitra Campus near Basel (2015-2016). When working with self-contained sculpture, Rehberger often looks to the viewer, friends and other collaborators to complete or contribute to the work. He invited fellow artists he had portrayed as vases to present him with a bouquet of flowers, completing each Vase Portrait, he asked assistants to initiate sculptural formations in velcro for his Infection series (2007 - ongoing) and he worked with craftsmen in Cameroon and Thailand to make serendipitous copies of furniture and cars. Working across diverse scales and an array of media, Rehberger is fascinated by the boundless possibilities of object and environment. As Rehberger once described, “I am very interested in this phenomenon that …the object is not only interested in its own existence. It’s a kind of tool helping the existence of something else.”
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About the Curator
Larys Frogier is the Director of the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) in Shanghai. Curator, critic and art historian, he is involved in artistic and social challenges in post-global contexts where ongoing social, economical, cultural transformations demand new ways of interrelations, citizenship and reinvented creativity. He curated numerous exhibitions and published extensive essays on the works of international artists: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Nan Goldin, Paola Pivi, Ugo Rondinone, Wang Du, Yang Jiechang.
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Previously the Director of the contemporary art centre La Criée in Rennes (France), he curated long-term projects (symposiums, residencies, exhibitions, publications) which question the links and ruptures between broadening transcontinental areas. Chair of the HUGO BOSS ASIA ART jury since 2013 at the Rockbund Art Museum, he is conceiving this new award, exhibition and research program as an evolving platform to promote emerging artists and to question Asia as a construction to investigate rather than a monolithic area or fixed identities. Larys Frogier taught art theory, history of art and curatorial studies at the University of Rennes, while he was also researcher at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and at the Archives for Art Criticism.
Billy Tang is Senior Curator of the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) in Shanghai. He joined the museum in Spring 2018. His previous projects have helped to introduce moving-image artists to new audiences in Mainland China, commissioning large-scale works of young artists, and curating projects that look to disrupt the architectural function and experience of the exhibition space. Other projects involve curating daily interventions that explore how art appears or is consumed by visitors—most recently at a restaurant in London. He has worked collaboratively with curators and writers to realize exhibitions of works by among others, Wang Bing, Liu Chuang, Lav Diaz, Li Jinghu, Wong Ping, Nabuqi, Yao Qingmei, Song Ta, and Trevor Yeung. -
About Blackbird
Blackbird is an exploratory F&B program that combines different dining formats and hospitality services to discover new intersections for beauty and urban lifestyle. Situated in a three-story building in the historic Columbia Circle, remodeled by Rem Koolhaas, each floor offers a different ambiance with unique offerings. Blackbird embraces the power of exploration, with a palpable belief in natural ingredients and local seasonality.
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Acknowledgments
Sponsor: RELIANCE COMMERCIAL LAND
Special Thanks: SIAM CENTER
Operating Partner: Blackbird
Support: Department of Culture and Education of German Consulate General in Shanghai, Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany Shanghai, Grand Kempinski Hotel Shanghai, Dulux
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RAM INTERVIEW | I would like the museum to be a place for people to hang out.
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Tobias Rehberger / If you don’t use your eyes to see, you will use them to cry
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Tobias Rehberger / Blackbird’s Rockbund Art Museum Butcher Shop
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Tobias Rehberger / Infection series、Vase Portraits series、Mother without child series、WHY NOT WHY
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Tobias Rehberger / In the end you can start from behind
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Tobias Rehberger / Pee, Tea
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Tobias Rehberger / Free Coffee Free Parking Freedom (plug & play version)、WHY NOT
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Tobias Rehberger / Pixels series
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Tobias Rehberger / Forbidden in Heaven, Useless in Hell
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reviewRAM Conversation: Tobias Rehberger: If you don’t use your eyes to see, you will use them to cry--Artist & Curators’ Talk 2019.03.23 16:00-18:00 Saturday