Difference Engine

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Artists: Chen Zhou, Guan Xiao, Liu Shiyuan, Li Ran, Song Ta, Yu Honglei

For Magician Space’s autumn group exhibition, the show takes as its namesake, an uncompleted invention dating back to the 19^th century. The idea of this machine inspired a work of fiction by William Gibson, a book postulating an alternative course of characters and historical events initiated by its hypothetical invention. As an exhibition, the question of how to produce ‘difference’ reveals itself with strategies that unfold the varying stages of art production: from recouping the vocabulary and linguistic forms used to create visual art, to nominating paradoxical areas of action and contemplation, and through offering shared but separate ways of accounting for open potentiality.

Beginning the year 2013 with a series of exhibitions dedicated to emerging voices in China, Magician Space has been interested in addressing questions related to how structures and knowledge systems inform our current understanding of the art world and an artist’s changing relationship to this narrative. Difference Engine is a group exhibition marking another entry point into this ongoing series of collaborations, bringing together a collection of artists who have exhibited with solo shows this year alongside collaborations with new artists.

Chen Zhou

Born in Zhejiang in 1987, Chen Zhou operates between discourses of cinema and art to interrogate the incongruous nature of images. Fascinated with contradictions inherent in the visual languages used to narrate China’s disjointed modernity, his work travels from medium to medium like a stream of unconscious thoughts. In 2012 he contributed a text for the Hans Ulrich Obrist publication The Future will be…China. Major group exhibitions include 2PContemporary Art Gallery, Hong Kong (2013); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2013); Yi&C, Taipei (2012); 18 Gallery, Shanghai (2012); and Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid (2011).

Guan Xiao

Born in Chongqing in 1983, Guan Xiao currently lives and works in Beijing. In 2006, she received a BA in Directing at Communication University of China. Guan Xiao’s work relates to video, sculpture and other kinds of media to present the world as a flat and mixed situation in her work. She employs a particular visual language to re-contextualize various materials into her work and discusses the possibilities of “looking” and “practice” from a variety of perspectives. Exhibitions include Taikang Space, Beijing (2012); OCAT, Shenzhen (2012); V&A Museum, London (2008); and National Museum of Contemporary Art Korea, Seoul (2007).

Liu Shiyuan

Born in Beijing in 1985, Liu Shiyuan’s works range from photographic installations to video. Exploring universal overlaps in human behaviour and perceptions of space, her art practice raises questions of cultural differences and seeks an area that confuses geographic or cultural specificity. Her first solo exhibition, The Edge of Vision, or the Edge of the Earth was shown at White Space in Beijing earlier this year. Exhibitions include the 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale, Shenzhen (2012); Guggenheim, New York (2011); and Cats Hill Gallery, New York (2011). Liu is now based between Beijing, Copenhagen and New York, where she studied photography at the School of Visual Arts.

Li Ran

Born in Hubei in 1986, Li Ran primarily works with video and installation, exploring ideas of performativity and role-play in association with historical notions of the artist. Li Ran interweaves spoken-word with a documentary approach and frequently adopts the role of an imitator to transpose the authorial voice of the artist into new encounters and bodily experiences. Co-founder of the influential artist collective ‘Company’, his work has featured in Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin (2013); OTA Fine Arts, Tokyo (2013), and the 9^th Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju (2012).

Song Ta

Born in Guangzhou in 1988, Song Ta employs interventionist strategies to render the dynamics of power at play in the art world and society. His work subverts these systems in comic form with a sleight of hand often undermining both the artist’s right to partiality as well as the higher objectives of art’s aesthetic structure. Exhibitions include: Yangtze Riverspace, Wuhan (2013); UCCA, Beijing (2013); Arrow Factory, Beijing (2012); and Observation Society, Guangzhou (2011).

Yu Honglei

Born in Inner Mongolia in 1984, Yu Honglei’s work represents a new generation of sculpture and video in China. Fascinated by the ‘muted’ speech of objects and its plastic ability to accrue hidden stories through the passage of time, the work of Yu Honglei deftly combines processes of fabrication, appropriation, and placement to create new narrative spaces. The works often engage personal history and highlight the fragile nature of objects within the ebb and flow stream of everyday life. Exhibitions include MOCA Shanghai Museum, Get It Louder, Beijing, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei.

- Catalogue