Overview
Pilar Corrias is pleased to participate in Gallery Weekend Beijing, showcasing recent works by Peppi Bottrop, Cui Jie and Rirkrit Tiravanija.
The paintings, sculptures and conceptual pieces on view illustrate the idiosyncratic world-views of the artists – who are from three different generations and regions – encouraging us to reflect on the events and factors that separate a local reality from another in a post-globalisation era.
Pilar Corrias is pleased to participate in Gallery Weekend Beijing, showcasing recent works by Peppi Bottrop, Cui Jie and Rirkrit Tiravanija.
The paintings, sculptures and conceptual pieces on view illustrate the idiosyncratic world-views of the artists – who are from three different generations and regions – encouraging us to reflect on the events and factors that separate a local reality from another in a post-globalisation era.
Peppi Bottrop’s paintings depict one of the most pressing issues of our time: the ongoing struggle of structural transformation. Inspired by the reality of the Ruhr district, Europe’s largest and once most prosperous coal-mining region, Bottrop makes scrawling coal marks as he negotiates space, tracing grid structures that are reminscient of the German rust belt’s obsolete order. He turns canvases into windows that look out onto unknown terrain, where remnants of an industrial past are churned up by natural powers and entangled in an intriguing symbiosis.
Cui Jie’s series of sculptural works is an ambitious move towards critiquing architectural history by crafting buildings and re-scaling the relationship between men and the man-made. Her sculptures often refer to buildings and monuments found in cities such as Shanghai and Hangzhou, whilst being attentive to international modern legacies. Thematically and formally speaking, the 3D-printed works are in stark contrast to Bottrop’s paintings, opening a gap through which heterogeneous visions and perspectives are valued.
Rirkrit Tiravanija’s highly conceptual works speak by leaving room for other voices. Reduced to fundamental syntax forms, the artist’s ambivalent yet certain statements propose that together we should stop being silent. Universal in nature, Tiravanija’s works invite the audience to make their statements in their own language.
Bringing together three distinct bodies of work that pertain to diverse realities and urgency, "Here or there!" encourages fair visitors to take their own sense of belonging and here and there-ness as a starting point. Living in either the metropolis of Beijing, the magnificent Shanghai, or the old coal-mining town in Bottrop's works, one can always be concerned with events and developments elsewhere, asking important questions, and working on critical projects that give solidarity a chance.
