Solo Exhibition Other Büro, Basel, Switzerland
Book Launch: Thursday 13 June, 2019, 5pm
Exhibition: 9 June - 9 July, 2019
Location: Buero Basel, St. Johanns-Vorstadt 46, 4056 Basel, Switzerland
Galleries ShanghART and Waldburger Wouters are pleased to announce “Drifting Along”, a solo exhibition by Chinese artist Chen Wei at their joint project space Buero Basel.
An intimate exhibition will display the final chapter of the artist’s photography and installation works dealing with people and spaces in metropolitan nightlife, a series the artist has been working on over the past six years. Chen Wei builds life-sized stage sets, employing light and colours, then constructs a narrative environment with blurred spatial boundaries. Depicted nightclub scenes in the artist’s works are always permeated with dampness - with vague chronology - and atmospheres reveal a strong sense of immediacy. During the shooting of Disco (nr #1001, #1005, #1006 in the exhibition), Chen Wei directed young urban people to embody being inebriated on the dance floor, thus capturing their body movements disappearing into the sound wave, as well as their mental state of forlornness and confusion. When human figures are invisible, like in Dance Hall Series (set of 8), the artist fills the pictures with objects: the disco ball on the empty dance floor, the iridescent mosaic wall, the cold glowing mirror, and the neon lights displaying intermittent advertising. All the scenes in his photography seem like a pantomime of revelry ready to start, but also like a group portrait of the exhaustion and hollowness after urban nightlife ends.
“Chen Wei: Noon Club”
Conceived in close cooperation with the artist “Chen Wei: Noon Club” published by Skira is an extensive documentation of Chen Wei’s midnight themed photography and installation works since 2013.
With texts by Francesco Bonami, David Campany and Venus Lau
About the artist
Chen Wei (b. 1980, Zhejiang), lives and works in Beijing. Initially a sound and performance artist, Chen Wei's interest developed into photo, video and installation art. The artist has exhibited extensively at institutions and biennales in China and all over the world.
Recent exhibitions include: Chen Wei: Where Are You Going Tonight, chi K11 artspace, Guangzhou (2018); Chen Wei: Falling Light, Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich, Germany (2018); Witness, Chen Wei etc., Pilar Corrias, London, UK (2018); The Club, Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Melbourne, Australia (2017); Noon Club, programmed by Francesco Bonami, JNBY Art Space, Hangzhou (2016); In The Waves, chi K11 Art Museum, Shanghai (2015), The Stars in the Night Sky are Innumerable, Australia China Art Foundation, Sydney, Australia (2014) etc.
Chen Wei was awarded the Asia Pacific Photography Prize in 2011, and was a nominee of the Prudential Eye Awards for Contemporary Asian Art in 2015.
About Buero Basel
Buero Basel is an intimate project space next to the river Rhine in center of Basel run by ShanghART and Waldburger Wouters since 2018.
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