2021.05.09-2021.12.05

Curator: Cancan Cui

Pingshan Art Museum, Shenzhen

Nine-Tiered Pagoda: Spatial and Visual Magic, as a cross-disciplinary event, represents an unprecedented direction and form of exhibition in China. Nine (groups of) artists will provide their works as the basis material for the exhibition. Besides, nine architects and nine designers will also join to form nine temporary teams, hence the cooperation among artists, architects and designers. There is no ‘priority’ or ‘center’ in the exhibition, only division of labor and collaboration, presenting nine individual exhibitions of a brand-new type.
As the core determinant for the exhibition, space and design are also a kind of re-creation of the exhibition and the work; They determine the content and how the audience see the exhibition, as well as the sequence and pace. Space and design, no longer in the service of the exhibition, provide an independent and autonomous experience for the audience, granting the exhibition a myriad of variables and possibilities.
There has always been a lack of quality cross-disciplinary exhibitions, which are neither a fast food product preached by celebrities and online influencers nor a highbrow art confined to professional barriers. The cross-disciplinary advocated by Nine-Tiered Pagoda creates a nexus joining art, architecture and design together with a new cross-discipline, which reflects the practical needs and collaboration of the three professions, while it also retains the expertise and strengths of each with a proper division of labor.
As an ancient Chinese architecture, ‘Pagoda’ has a special structure, with each tier telling a different story. These stories, spaces, and designs are closely intertwined with each other into a superimposed whole, formulating the external image and spiritual core of the exhibition.
Nine-Tiered Pagoda: Spatial and Visual Magic, launched by curator Cui Cancan and architect Liu Xiaodu in 2020, is a hands-on project that mixes ideas, methodologies and tools. It’s not only a workshop for cross-disciplinary art, but also a platform for artists, architects and designers to cooperate and expand their development realms together.
The advent of Nine-Tiered Pagoda represents the ambition to create an entirely new field, with an aim to invent a new way of collaboration and to create a fresh exhibition concept that can reshape the perceptual experience of our times.

As the fifth project of “Nine-Tiered Pagoda”, “Similar Results, Different Approaches” is the first group exhibition unveiling a discussion on abstract art creation methods, with the focus on elementary and core issues in art, architecture, and design: the constant change of dots, lines and planes in the work. The exhibition is based on the works of the artists Chen Wenji, Ding Yi, Tan Ping, and Liang Quan, with the architect Chang Yungho designing the space, and graphic designer Han Jiaying in charge of posters and other visual designs.

“Similar Results” refers to the common use of dots, lines, and planes as elements of creation to finally present a similar form of picture; while “Different Approaches” refers the completely different working method, conceptual intention, production mechanism, as well as the artistic language employed by the four artists.

Chen Wenji uses industrialized colors and modules to form a matrix of ordered abstratic works with various rhythms and pauses by using different combinations and splices. Ding Yi has started to create these five exhibited works since 1993. He uses multiple media, materials, brushstrokes, colors, and structures to “repetitively” create the “cross”, therefore creating a myriad of variables. Liang Quan has his own rules. He makes pieces of paper of different colors and collages them all in one picture. The diverse distribution of the pieces forms a never-repeated relationship between dots, lines and planes. Tan Ping sets up a rule in his “Position Series”, where he draws a few dots randomly on the paper , pulls out the radiating rays, pins down a few intersections on the rays, and finally gets the position of dots in the plane. We will find that in the works of the four artists, the form is only a means of execution, while the “Approach” itself will develop the work and generate infinite variables.

“Similar Results, Different Approaches” provides us with a new perspective for recognizing abstract art, which no longer aims at form innovation, but shows the importance of the artist’s conceptual thinking, artistic language, and the systematic work.

Architect Chang Yungho transforms these “perspectives” into a spatial feeling, and thus building a brand new field for the works. The exhibition space has become another form of “dot, line and space”, giving the viewers different experiences: big and small, interior and exterior, top and bottom, movement and stillness, seeing and being seen. Here, architecture is interacting with paintings, just as the viewers are interacting with the exhibition. Designer Han Jiaying provides another intersection of artist’s names with dots, lines and planes of the work, making these simple elements ideological, realistic and personal.

“Similar Results, Different Approaches” shows the joint work of artists, architects and designers, which carries out infinite explorations of dots, lines, and planes in the world of order. These explorations depend on changes in emotions and concepts, as well as the tools, techniques, and approaches that we continue to create in various fields. Countless directions and arrivals (reflected in all these explorations) have enriched our language world. And also because of the essence and basis of dots, lines and planes, they can exist eternally and are almost immortal.

Curator: Cui Cancan

九层塔：空间与视觉的魔术 ⑤：“相似的结果，不同的路径” 陈文骥 × 丁乙 × 梁铨 × 谭平

Nine-Tiered Pagoda ⑤ Similar Results, Different Approaches

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