NOWNESS presents Out of Blueprints, a new online exhibition of moving image work on the occasion of Cao Fei’s solo exhibition, Blueprints, at the Serpentine Galleries, which has been temporarily closed in response to the global spread of COVID-19.
In partnership with the Serpentine Galleries and K11 Art Foundation, this new program illustrates how artists and institutions have turned closure into creation, and adversity into innovation, as each week an East Asia-based practitioner releases a moving image work on NOWNESS.
Standing in solidarity with artists affected by the outbreak, Out of Blueprints traverses borders to make thought-provoking art that is freely accessible to audiences around the world.
To launch the series Cao Fei shares a documentary film of her 2015 Art Basel Hong Kong commission, Same Old, Brand New. This was a large-scale video installation shown across the entire façade of Hong Kong’s iconic International Commerce Centre—the tallest building in the city.
“People in Hong Kong and other modern cities in Asia are living in a hurry,” Cao Fei told Art Basel in an interview in 2015. “It’s like people are being chased or are chasing something.” This observation on modern behaviour inspired the artist to incorporate popular 1980s escape-and-evade video games, such as Pac Man, into the light show. Other early arcade games such as Tetris and Space Invaders also appeared in the iconography and symbolic language of the installation.
Owing to the size of the skyscraper, Cao Fei turned Hong Kong’s night skyline into a gaming interface that could be enjoyed by everyone from across the city. This democratization of art through technology feeds into the current zeitgeist where the offline art world is switching online to connect with new audiences.
“Embedded within the title of Cao Fei’s exhibition is an impulse for world-building,” say the Serpentine Galleries artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist and associate curator Joseph Constable. “It hints to the open-ended process through which her artworks propose alternative plans, models or templates for how we might live our lives, how we navigate our mutable cities, share our data, tell ours and others’ stories, and form kinships across time and space.”
Same Old, Brand New (2015) is a testament to the significance of cultural fluidity in the artist’s work. By merging nostalgic video game culture with social commentary, Cao Fei unveils her limitless imagination where borders and disparate practices can fade into one to create invigorating new realities.
“I am very excited to work with NOWNESS and the Serpentine on this virtual exhibition,” says Cao Fei. “With travel restrictions closing borders all over the world this is a small way to keep up exchange and communication between artists and audiences.”
Same Old, Brand New
2015 / sound and large-scale led screens / 5mins / size variable
Sound by artist Dickson Dee
Co-commissioned by Art Basel and the International Commerce Centre in Hong Kong
Courtesy the artist, Vitamin Creative Space and Sprüth Magers
The upcoming program so far includes Zheng Yuan, Dream Delivery (2018) (Friday 10 April), Kim Heecheon (Friday 17 April) and Hsu Che-Yu (Friday 24 April).