The 8th Gallery Weekend Beijing concluded successfully on June 2, 2024. As the most concentrated and grand art event since the beginning of 2024, Gallery Weekend Beijing has received a lot of attention from its planning and preparation to grand opening, attracting a total of visits during the 10-day event. The 798 Art District attracted a total of 427,000 visits during media guided tours and VIP guided tours, an increase of 6.75% compared to last year. From May 23 to June 2, it achieved a global exposure of more than 1.4 billion person times.
With “Drift to Return” as this year’s overarching motif, Gallery Weekend Beijing attracted a total of 40 participating galleries and institutions to present over 50 high-quality exhibitions. As the cornerstone of this event, the Main Sector covers six major art enclaves in Beijing, including the 798 Art District, fully showcasing the contemporary art vitality of the city. At the same time, this year’s event continues the consistent and inclusive program framework of Gallery Weekend Beijing, with the Main Sector serving as the foundation to illuminate the local contemporary art ecosystem in Beijing, leveraging the Visiting Sector to broaden horizons and gather premium contemporary art from around the world, and taking advantage of the Up&Coming Sector to showcase the creative landscape of young artists in the growing Mandarin speaking region, so as to inject “fresh blood” into the Main Sector.
With the aim of expanding exchange and communication, the Visiting Sector welcomes 8 domestic and international galleries with distinctive characteristics to showcase vibrant exhibitions within the 798 Art District, infusing Beijing’s contemporary art scene with renewed energy and transforming cross-cultural exchanges into wellsprings of innovation.
The Up&Coming Sector, under the discerning curation of Jiawei Yuan, uses “The Inner Side of the Wind” to mirror the overarching motif of “Drift to Return” of this year’s Gallery Weekend Beijing, focusing on the thinking and expression of young Chinese artists on the relationship between global culture and Chinese localization, and shedding light on the youthful characteristics and rich features reflected by their ecosystem. Jiawei Yuan believes that young artists need to find their own identity and contemplate geologic time and interculturality. This viewpoint is also implemented in his selection of artists and artworks. During the guided tours, Jiawei Yuan mentioned the changes in the era and mentality of Chinese artists. In the 1980s and 1990s and even prior to the Beijing Olympics, artists had a strong sense of confrontation, criticizing emerging artists for lacking energy and critical consciousness. But Jiawei Yuan believes that artists today still have a critical consciousness. It’s just that this critical consciousness has become more subtle.
The Public Sector emphasizes more on direct interaction and communication with the public. The “Poetry Marathon” special program is jointly planned by artist Zhijie Qiu and Gallery Weekend Beijing and will be held during the 2024 Paris Olympics. By adhering to the Olympic spirit, it will explore the humanistic commonality between sports, culture, and art. This program welcomes every poetry and art enthusiast to step into this “urban poetry beach” to participate in a marathon-style continuous poetry creation.
Meanwhile, in addition to the Best Exhibition Award, this year’s Gallery Weekend Beijing has added the Infinity Award at the suggestion of the academic committee, forming a dual award system.
The Best Exhibition Award was won by Yilun Zhou’s exhibition “SANLIANZMK” presented by Beijing Commune, featuring a series of the artist’s recent paintings, sculptures, and installations. The exhibition title is borrowed from the inexplicable English letters on the water shield of the construction boards often employed by Zhou in his art practice. Devoid of literal meanings, repetitive groups of letters lead to a typographic beauty. In the form of unmeaning words or random combinations of letters, these patterns are extensively incorporated into everyday consumer products. Familiar yet estranged forms prevail in the artist’s work, shedding light on the complex mechanisms and dynamics underneath the homogeneous spectacles. Seemingly desultory and eccentric, Zhou’s work reexamines the relationship between the subject and the surroundings, order and chaos, concept and practices, and life and art.
The Infinity Award was won by Roksana Pirouzmand’s “On My Mother’s Lap” presented by SPURS Gallery. The exhibition presents seventeen works of her recent thoughts and practices, spanning from paintings, sculptures, installations to performances, marking the artist’s debut in China. Starting from personal experience, Pirouzmand works with identity and its politics and narrates a cross-regional and trans-cultural poignancy. By exploring a vast array of work materials, she attunes to the subjectivity and objectivity of bodily rites, the relational aesthetics between performer and spectator, and the arising interactivities and changes.
The above awards were voted upon by 5 representatives from the contemporary art industry (including curators, representatives from non-profit institutions, authoritative media practitioners, and artists) after a 2-day visit to 25 exhibitions of 21 galleries in BLANC Art Space, Caochangdi Art District, 751D Park, and 798 Art District.
