Overpop

The concept of “Overpop” comes from Jeffrey Deitch – who has been advising Budi Tek and the Yuz Collection for this section – and the show will be displayed in the form of a curatorial conversation with Karen Smith, a Chinese contemporary art expert who has been based in China for over 24 years. Jeffrey has selected artworks from artists based in the US and Europe; Karen is curating artists based in China.

“Overpop”  focuses on a group of artists who are defining new contemporary aesthetics. Their work embodies an intensification of the pop tradition, portraying an enhanced reality. These artists are responding to the impact of the Internet on the visual environment, but their work is more than “post-internet” art. It incorporates the historical tradition of Pop Art in addition to responding to the acceleration of digital imagery. The artists emphasize precision of craft and execution. The artist’s hand is generally subsumed within an aesthetic of industrial and artisanal fabrication techniques.

For Karen Smith, if the phrase“Overpop” refers to Pop Art as a form of artistic expression that is now officially “over”, if it serves to demonstrate how Pop’s aesthetic critique has overtaken by the attitudes of a new generation, then China presents an interesting comparative case study. Dominating the recent exhibition scene in China is a generation of younger artists responding to concepts of reality and the internet in dynamic modes of activity; with incisive insight into the present and to the “impact of context and display”.

The exhibion is realized based on two years’ effort by Mr. Budi Tek and his team that includes numerous studio visits, fieldwork and intellectual dialogues with artists. The exhibition will eventually bring together nearly 20 eastern and western artists and present around 60 new art works crossing different media and created after year 2010. As also for Budi Tek, “ it is with confidence that these works can be displayed at the Yuz Museum, described as arguing for the complexity of this era, reflecting the leading trends of new art of today, in China and in the world and mirrored as such in the Yuz Collection”.