Date
22.12.2018–22.01.2019
Venue
Pop-up chi K11 art space, 4/F, K11 Art Mall, Shenyang
Co-presenters
K11 Art Foundation, The Royal Academy of Arts
K11 Art Foundation (KAF) and The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) are delighted to welcome English artist and RA alumnus Paul Schneider to take up residence in Shenyang for two months as the second artist participating in the residency programme co-presented by the two institutions. Schneider’s residence in Shenyang culminates in his first solo exhibition in Asia, Rule 32, which investigates how the way of documenting life with photographic images affects people’s perception of the world and contributes to their sense of existence in the social networking age.
The title of this exhibition borrows from Rule 32 of the imageboard website 4Chan—‘Pics or it didn’t happen’, a statement that asserts the need of photographic evidence for proving claims or reported events. An artist keen on exploring the semiotics of the visual lexicon in our image culture, Schneider takes this statement as the starting point for inviting rumination on the role of the camera in everyday life. With the proliferation of image-propelled social networks, photography has expanded from a method of capturing experiences to a way of living life, allowing us to curate our desired personas as we share images of the happenings around us online. Huge stencils of simplified, instantly recognisable representations of the camera are all over the pop-up chi K11 art space. Rule 32 encourages visitors, who are surrounded by the multitude of cameras, to take photos in the exhibition, turning them into embodiments of the exhibition’s theme and inviting them to reflect on themselves with the photographic devices in their hands.
About the residency programme:
The partnership between K11 Art Foundation and The Royal Academy of Arts facilitates an exchange of artistic practice with Chinese artists invited to work in London to highlight the diversity and dynamism of Chinese contemporary art and for RA Schools graduates to take up residence in Greater China, whereby all these artists have an opportunity to engage with new and international audiences.