UCCA Summer Program
Teppei Kaneuji, Towering Something is an exhibition showcasing the works (installation, collage, and video) produced by the Japanese sculptor Teppei Kaneuji (b. 1978, Kyoto) during a residency at UCCA in the summer of 2012. In Towering Something icons of modern culture and everyday objects—hula hoops, shopping carts, plastic dinosaurs, Doraemon— are assembled into sculptural and cut-paper collages, resulting in Frankenstein sculptures that explore a separation of purpose and form. Teppei Kaneuji’s sculptures are fashioned from found objects whose original functions—symbolic and otherwise—are anything but obscure. Employing consumer items, Kaneuji’s works explore the possibility of interacting with materials in ways that go beyond the social and economic values usually assigned to them.
Tehching Hsieh: One Year Performance 1980-1981 is an exhibition dedicated to the work of one of the world’s most important performance artists, and the founding influence on Chinese performance art after 1989: Taiwan born Hsieh. The full installation from one of his most iconic works, “Time Clock Piece” (One Year Performance 1980-1981) will be shown in the UCCA Long Gallery alongside documentary materials on his other works together with the time clock itself, 366 time cards, 366 filmstrips, the uniform that Hsieh chose for himself, an artist’s statement and witness statements, a record of missed punches, a 16mm time-lapse film, as well as a poster and photographic portraits made for the piece. In this work the artist punches a time clock every hour for an entire year. The performance gives flesh to concepts central to theoretical investigations into the mechanics of late capitalism—presence and surveillance, production and control, discipline and submission.
This exhibition is part of an ongoing focus on performance at UCCA this year, marked also by the inclusion of several performative pieces in the recent exhibition DUCHAMP and/or/in CHINA and to be capped with an exhibition by Tino Sehgal this coming autumn.
