The Art Newspaper

Sculptures by contemporary art stars fill Shanghai park

Works by Wim Delvoye, Subodh Gupta and Jaume Plensa are on view in second Jing’An International Sculpture Project Biennial

By Cristina Ruiz. Web only
Published online: 17 September 2012

Subodh Gupta's Ray, 2012, a giant steel bucket with a cascade of smaller ones falling out of it, is included in the sculpture biennial

Sculptures by Wim Delvoye, Subodh Gupta and Jaume Plensa among many others go on display in a public park in Shanghai in September as part of the Jing’An International Sculpture Project Biennial (20 September-30 November).

The exhibition is part of an effort to build a permanent outdoor sculpture collection for the Jing’An district in central Shanghai, which began two years ago when the first edition of the biennial was held to coincide with the World Expo in the Chinese city.

In that edition, works by Jim Dine, Arman, Jan Fabre and others were dotted around the 110 acres of the Jing’An park. Over 20 of these sculptures were then purchased by the district and they remain on permanent display, including the Belgian artist Arne Quinze’s Red Beacon, a wooden pavilion that rises from stilts before unfolding into a complex undulating form that weaves through the treetops.

The 2012 biennial will include two massive steel sculptures in faux Gothic style by the Belgian artist Wim Delvoye. One of them, entitled Tour (Paris), 2010, is an intricately-detailed 40-ft-high steel tower which was placed in front of the Peggy Guggenheim collection on the Grand Canal in Venice during the 2009 Venice Biennale and in Paris in front of the Musée Rodin the following year. The other is a huge steel pergola.

The Indian artist Subodh Gupta is sending Ray, 2012, a giant steel bucket with a cascade of smaller ones falling out of it.

According to Natacha Xu of the Purple Roof Art Gallery, which has helped plan the show and which represents many of the artists included in it, several sculptures from the 2012 biennial will also be purchased by the city and remain in the park permanently. The show has been organised by Huang Du, an independent curator based in Beijing, whose previous projects include the Chinese pavilions at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and the São Paulo Biennial the following year.