osage

osage shanghai
Room 101, Block 5, Wang Zu City,
251 Cao Xi Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai 200235
T: +86 13581929608
E: info@osagegallery.com
W: www.osagegallery.com

PRESS RELEASE
To Arts and Features Editors
For Immediate Release
27th January, 2015
Osage Art Foundation presents

JUST AS MONEY IS THE PAPER, THE GALLERY IS THE ROOM
Curated by Biljana Ciric

Re-print #2 by 3-ply: Shanghai Fax (1996); “Let’s Talk About Money”; Hank Bull, Shi Yong, Ding Yi, Shen Fan, Zhou Tiehai, et al.

EXHIBITION PUBLIC PROGRAMMETalk and Book Launch:
Re-print: Lets Talk About Money: Shanghai First International Fax Art Exhibition (1996)
Date/time: Saturday, 7th February 2015, 15:30-17:30
Speakers: Fayen d'Evie, Nicholas Tammens (3-ply members) and Shi Yong, with the special appearanceof Hank Bull
Language: Chinese﹠English (consecutive interpretation provided)
Event Synopsis
Fayen d’Evie and Nicholas Tammens from 3-ply, together with Shi Yong, will be invited to contribute a
dialogue covering aspects of the exhibition Lets Talk About Money: Shanghai First International Fax Art
Exhibition held 19 years ago, including the social and political environment at the time. 3-ply members
and Shi Yong will also address the Re-print project and the concepts of ‘fax’ and ‘copy’ in the contextof their respective practices. The book launch of Re-print #2: Shanghai Fax (1996); Lets Talk About the-Money will be held during the event and the book will be available for purchase after the talk.
All public programmes are free of charge. Please RSVP to elvaxie@osagegallery.com.
About Re-print: Excerpt from 3-ply’s interview with Biljana Ciric in the exhibition guidebook of‘Just as money is the paper, the gallery is the room’:
Shanghai Fax has been described as the first artist-organised, international group exhibition held inChina, which not only seems a crucial exhibition to be retained within the history of exhibition-making
worldwide, but was also interesting to us since 3-ply is an artist-led publishing project and we welcome
opportunities to reclaim an alternative, artist-focused history of exhibition-making. The involvement of
Hank Bull from the Western Front reinforced the significance of the exhibition, given Western Front’s
pivotal history and continued contemporary engagement in communications-oriented art…The use in[Lets Talk About Money: Shanghai First International Fax Art Exhibition] of an early technology for socialcommunications, combined with the thematic (“Let’s Talk About Money”), [has] unique relevance
today in terms of current debates regarding social media, trans-national artistic collaboration,
economic crises and recessions, the political economy of art making, state oversight, and possibilities
for grassroots conversations.
About Lets Talk About Money: abridged text by Biljana Ciric on ‘Lets Talk About Money:Shanghai FirstInternational Fax Art Exhibition’ (1996) from the book ‘A History of Exhibitions: Shanghai-1979-2006’:
Lets Talk About Money: First International Fax Art Exhibition (1996) was initiated by Hank Bull, who was
the director of Western Front, an artist-run space in Vancouver, BC at the time. The exhibition involveda group of artists in Shanghai, including Ding Yi, Shi Yong, Shen Fan, and Zhou Tiehai as curators. Thisexhibition is important as the first international exhibition to show work by artists from abroad along with
Chinese artists’ works, which arrived to the show via fax. The faxes would transmit and be pasted on
the walls on a daily basis during the exhibition period.
This innovative approach to exhibition-making, with a specific focus on the nature of its format, its
communication, and how information is circulated in the public realm, went far beyond providing
recognition to the international artists, but in fact influenced artist-organized exhibitions in the cominggeneration. This exhibition could be understood as a marking point for the beginning ofexperimentation within the format of exhibitions in Shanghai. It also affected display strategies, whichbegan to be even more clear in the Art For Sale Exhibition, years later.

The event is part of the public program of Just as money is the paper, the gallery is the room curated
by Biljana Ciric
ARTISTS FEATURED:
3-PLY (FAYEN D'EVIE, MATT HINKLEY & NICHOLAS TAMMENS) | CHARDA ADYTAMAYASON BANAL | GONG JIANHUA | HU YUN | IRWIN
MARYSIA LEWANDOWSKA | LI RANSHI YONG | LUKE WILLIS THOMPSON | MONA VATAMANU & FLORIN TUDORYU YOUHAN with contributions from DING YI, FAN JIMAN, FENG LIANGHONG, QIN YIFENG, SHEN FANand ZHANG JIAN-JUN | ZHANG PEILI | ZHOU ZIXIEXHIBITION PERIOD: 20.11.2014 – 28.2.2015
VENUE: Osage Shanghai
Room 101, Block 5, Wang Zu City, 251 Cao Xi Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai(Gallery entrance at Caodongsan Road)
EXHIBITION OPENING HOURS: Tue – Sat: 10.30 am – 6.30 pm
Sun: 2:30 – 6:30 pm

Open to special appointments outside of these times.
Closed on public holidays.

Just as money is the paper, the gallery is the room takes as its focus artist-organized exhibitions
between 1979 and 2006 in Shanghai. The role of artists as “curators” in today’s terminology, has sincemore or less vanished from the scene due to the commercialization of art and exhibition making andviewing methods; this exhibition thus attempts to re-activate this local knowledge and practicethrough involving a number of local and international artists, hoping to bring together common
threads from the larger context of exhibition-making practices across the region to explore exhibitions
as an epistemological engine and to re-think the rituals within the art system. The structure of theexhibition will be dynamic and will be developed in conversation with these local and internationalartists and curators.
The visual experience of the exhibition is conceived in collaboration with architect Ségolène Dubernet.
Special thanks to Qian Weikang, Shi Yong, Tang Guangming, Zhang Jian-Jun, Zheng Shengtian andZhou Zixi for providing archival materials and works.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
3-ply is an artist-led publishing initiative that focuses on publication, writing, editing and translation as
an extension of art practice. 3-ply is directed by artist Fayen d’Evie in collaboration with a network ofartists, writers, curators and graphic designers. Beyond production and distribution of materialpublications, d'Evie is fundamentally interested in mobilising artist-led publishing as an experimental
and strategic device to expand and/or disrupt the production, transmission and archiving ofknowledge. 3-ply publications are stocked in leading contemporary art galleries and bookstoresworldwide.
3-ply's Re-print project is a curated series that reintroduces out-of-print artist publications to acontemporary audience. The series also exploits the character of the reprints to insert interventions inpublic archives: introducing material that was never legally deposited, or reinserting previously archived
publications in the form of mediated replications, thereby indexing the originals.
For more about 3-ply and Re-print #2: Shanghai Fax (1996); Lets Talk About the Money, see the link:
http://3ply.net/forthcoming/
Shi Yong (b. 1963) lives and works in Shanghai. Shi Yong's work embraces modernization and theideology of consumerism as the basis for self-imagination and creation. He has produced a series ofphoto-based works around the concept of the ideal Shanghai citizen. It is an ongoing multifaceted
project that explores images of consumption, commodity and the development of the culture industry.
One series, entitled "Made in China – Welcome to China" (1999), consists of hand-painted plastermodels of a young businessman in a Mao suit, sunglasses, briefcase and waving. The image of theideal citizen used for the statue was the outcome of an Internet project through which Shi Yong asked
volunteers to vote for the ideal way of looking. The individual now transforms the identity of his or her
self by following the logic of commodity market surveys. It is a composite image that Shi Yong has
repeatedly used in other pieces such as "Longing For" (2000) and "You Cannot Clone It, But You Can
Buy It" (2001). The iconic figure is morphed through the agency of the marketplace.
Recently, Shi Yong has focused his attention on large-scale installations and architectural models
imbued with an absurd twist of humor. Most notably, his mixed media installation "Flying Q" is of a UFO
built with the purpose of opening up the sky. The flying object comes with no additional explanation,
but might be recognized as just another signature vision of and interventions into the imaginary worldof Shi Yong. His subversive approach pokes fun at architecture based on rules and pre-establishedschemas. Shi Yong fabricates a colorful and ironic architectural structure that is at once a parody ofserious design and its synthesis. In short, his work is an amalgam of Shanghai's eclectic 'anything goes'attitude towards the built environment.
Shi Yong was born in Shanghai in 1963. He graduated from Light Industrial School, Fine Arts
Department. He resides and works in Shanghai. Shi Yong has exhibited widely since the early 1990's.
Recent shows include Face, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2012); Grasstress 2011, Venice, Italy(2011); Negociation, The Second Today's Documents, Today Art Museum, Beijing (2010); Shanghai Kino,Shanghai Kino, KUNSTHALLE BERN, Switzerland (2009); The 3rd Nanjing Triennial-Reflective Asia, RCM ART
MUSEUM, Nanjing (2008); Think carefully, where have you been yesterday?, BizART, Shanghai (2007);The First Today's Documents, Energy: Spirit ּ Body ּ Material, Today Art Museum, Beijing (2007); Follow
Me!, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2005); Second Guangzhou Triennale, Guangsong Museum of Art,Guangdong (2005); Zooming into Focus, China National Art Museum, Beijing (2005); The Heaven, TheWorld, ShanghART Gallery & H-Space, Shanghai (2004); 4th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai (2002); Bienal
de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2002) and BM99, Bienal da Maya, Maya Art Center, Portugal (1999)
etc.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Biljana Ciric is an independent curator based in Shanghai. Her recent exhibitions include a soloexhibition featuring Tino Sehgal held at the UCCA Beijing, an exhibition hosted by Times Museum
titled One Step Forward, Two Steps Back—Us and Institution / Us as Institution and Alternatives
to Ritual presented by Goethe Open Space and OCAT in Shenzhen. In 2013, Ciric initiated From
History of Exhibitions towards Future of Exhibitions Making, an ongoing seminar platform that
proposes to revisit the importance of exhibition making; the seminar platform will specifically belooking at the history of exhibitions in China, South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. In 2011,Ciric initiated the project Taking the Stage OVER, a year long, ongoing investigation related tothe performative aspects of art. She was co-curator of the Asia Triennial in Manchester (2011) andpresented the exhibition Institution for the Future. Upcoming publications include Active
Withdrawal: Weak Institutionalism and the Institutionalization of Art Practice co-edited with Nikita
Yingqian Cai, to be published by Times Museum and History in the Making: Shanghai 1979-2009
published by Black Dog Publishing. Ciric is a regular contributor to Broadsheet and Yishu Journal.
She was nominee of the Independent Vision Curatorial Award by Independent Curators
International in 2012 and was on the jury for the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award in 2013.
ABOUT OSAGE ART FOUNDATIONThe Osage Art Foundation was established in 2004 with three main goals - Creative Communities,
Cultural Cooperation and Creative Capacity and has since played an active role in developing
education and training of young people, broadening cultural awareness and participation in artistic
endeavours, nurturing creativity and critical thinking and fostering international cultural exchange. TheOsage Art Foundation is now widely recognised by the local community and internationally as having
initiated many pioneering projects of international calibre.
The current focus of the Osage Art Foundation is on developing deeper discourse in and around thearts in the wider community. We believe that research, analysis, examination and promulgation ofissues pertaining to society, contemporary culture and value by artists, writers, critics, curators andcommentators will build better understanding of regional perspectives throughout Asia and beyond.
In order to better contextualize the work of the current generation of Asian contemporary artists, theOsage Art Foundation has helped to introduce a number of seminal contemporary Asian masters tothe wider international art world. For example, Roberto Chabet (1937 - 2013) made an unparalleledcontribution to Philippine contemporary art as an educator, mentor, visionary, conceptualist,innovator, alchemist, poet and tireless promoter of younger talents, but until recently was not as wellknown internationally.
In 2014, Osage Art Foundation co-presented Market Forces | Erasure: From Conceptualism toAbstraction, curated by Charles Merewether with the City University of Hong Kong, and Just as moneyis the paper, the gallery is the room, curated by Biljana Ciric. In 2013, OAF presented It’s Me, Goodbye:
Andy Warhol’s Cinema, jointly presented by The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the four CarnegieMuseums of Pittsburgh. Osage also presented the second in its series of non-profit Market Forces
exhibitions that draw attention to the non-commercial intrinsic values of art: The Friction of Opposites,
which opened in Hong Kong in May 2013, coinciding with the commercial art fair Art Basel Hong Kong.
In May 2013, The Osage Art Foundation was honoured at the Hong Kong Arts Development Awards
with an Award for Arts Sponsorship.
For more information, please visit the website www.oaf.cc.

MEDIA ENQUIRIESElva Xie (Osage Shanghai):elvaxie@osagegallery.com | +86 135 8192 9608 | + 8621 5448 5098

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