After the success of “Utopias/Heterotopia: Wuzhen International Contemporary Art Exhibition” in 2016, “Now Is the Time: The Wuzhen Contemporary Art Exhibition 2019” will open in Wuzhen on Saturday, March 30, 2019. The exhibition was initiated by exhibition chair Chen Xianghong and will be organized by Cultural Wuzhen Co., Ltd. with Feng Boyi as the chief curator and Wang Xiaosong and Liu Gang as curators. This edition will bring artworks by 45 artists from 22 countries around the world to Wuzhen. A young artist section will also be presented for the first time; through a process of nomination, exhibition, and judging, 12 artists were selected for the exhibition and first, second, and third prizes were awarded, providing a platform for exhibition and exchange among young Chinese artists.

After the success of “Utopias/Heterotopia: Wuzhen International Contemporary Art Exhibition” in 2016, “Now Is the Time: The Wuzhen Contemporary Art Exhibition 2019” will open in Wuzhen on Saturday, March 30, 2019. The exhibition was initiated by exhibition chair Chen Xianghong and will be organized by Cultural Wuzhen Co., Ltd. with Feng Boyi as the chief curator and Wang Xiaosong and Liu Gang as curators. This edition will bring artworks by 45 artists from 22 countries around the world to Wuzhen. 

A young artist section will also be presented for the first time; through a process of nomination, exhibition, and judging, 12 artists were selected for the exhibition and first, second, and third prizes were awarded, providing a platform for exhibition and exchange among young Chinese artists.

A young artist section will also be presented for the first time; through a process of nomination, exhibition, and judging, 12 artists were selected for the exhibition and first, second, and third prizes were awarded, providing a platform for exhibition and exchange among young Chinese artists.

Over the course of history, different points in time have been linked to behavioral codes and ways of thinking, as well as changes in the natural world. “Now Is the Time” does not discuss time itself; it looks at the direction of our era from a larger historical perspective. The uncertainty in the future evolution of the world order seems to obstruct a globalization path in which diverse cultures assimilate. The ongoing changes in the values of humanity and the international “rules of the game” affect the future direction of the global order and have implications for millions of ordinary people. With the decline of forces of globalization and internationalism, the real circumstances of isolation, conflict, and cooperation between groups and civilizations, and the changes in these rules, have given rise to a range of unknown variables, which may foreshadow the future. We could well imagine that we are standing at a major turning point in time. 

The instinct of contemporary art is to actively respond to social sites, and we want this instinct to be expressed in specific critical values, but also in the temporal transformations of the connections, interpenetrations, and convergences between the site-specific and the global. Although subjective or objective conditions may set limits on the physical space of the exhibition and its range of interpretations, the visions of artists can be revealed when their creativity is seen by people who care about these issues. We have invited artists from all over the world to respond to external (social and technological) or internal (psychological and conscious) forces; in using artistic wisdom to sketch the dynamic contours of the temporal markers of this boundary, we present a contemporary art exhibition with relevance to both social reality and artistic themes. 

“Now Is the Time” is just a hypothesis, but it also reflects our personal experience of our times. Artists constantly dissecting and interrogating “the now” has been an important motivation for artistic evolution. In Wuzhen’s various exhibition spaces, we look forward to presenting the artists’ ways of thinking through their work, and finally bringing together viewers in the sensory appreciation of fragmented moments in a site of sober reflection. 

Echoing “Now Is the Time,” the youth section entitled “How Far is the Future” extends this theme from the past and the present into the future. Examining the future is the creative key for this generation of young artists; through a broad nomination process, we hoped to discover the younger generation’s artistic experimentation, creativity, and future growth, thereby providing sources and foundations for judging the future direction of Chinese art. We have expanded traditional analyses of artists and artworks into an overall examination of how this generation of people is connected to their times, fully respecting the viewpoints of young artists and their various creative explorations. We hope that establishing a prize will further encourage young Chinese artists to explore the unknown. The judging panel was comprised of experts who were not the nominees, curators, art committee members, or exhibition initiators, and the award ceremony for the prize winners will be held during the opening of the exhibition. For more information on the section’s organizational structures, exhibition rules, prizes, and prize money, please see the attached summary of “How Far is the Future: The Wuzhen Young Contemporary Art Invitational Exhibition.” 

In addition to the 2016 venues of the Silk Factory and West Scenic District, the exhibition will feature two more sites: the Rice Barn and Wu Village. The Wuzhen Rice Barn was originally built in the 1960s by the Wuzhen Grain Management Office. After renovating the space and adding to the structure, the Exhibition is proud to present this 3,500-square-meter indoor space for the first time. Wu Village was built on the natural village of Hongqiao in Wuzhen, covering an area of 450 mu. Since its refurbishment, it has presented rural customs and provided deep experiences of nature. The indoor venues are primarily concentrated in the Silk Factory and Rice Barn, with a total exhibition space of 10,000 square meters. 

The Wuzhen Contemporary Art Exhibition 2019 will open to the public on March 31, 2019 and will run until June 30. The exhibition will also feature inter-disciplinary symposia, as well as workshops and public education events for different groups.