Shanghai ‘All Impressions Will Vanish’ Exhibition

The exhibition is co-curated by Busan Biennale (2024) co-curator Philippe Pirotte and ShanghART Gall[...]

The exhibition is co-curated by Busan Biennale (2024) co-curator Philippe Pirotte and ShanghART Gallery. It gathers 11 artists from diverse backgrounds, showcasing how their creations take on distinct appearances in various environmental contexts. The exhibition delves into how artists blend concepts of memory and dreams, reality and fantasy in a rapidly disintegrating world, and resist the process of meaning being imposed from above. The exhibition is structured as a multi-layered sensory field interwoven with visual, auditory, and performative elements, revealing the invisible connections between these shared realities. The title ‘All Impressions Will Vanish’ is borrowed from French Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux’s memoir ‘The Years’. This phrase serves as a testament to the intent of art—to combat oblivion, even though humans inevitably forget. Art can be likened to the Buddhist concept of ‘Nirvana’ (the state of enlightenment), with its Sanskrit meaning being a flame that is extinguishing or being blown out. Thus, art, as an act of preserving life experiences, resists the dissolution of individual will while also dissolving itself into an empty signifier—the ultimate dispersal of one’s possessions into the collective ‘us’ that encompasses all things on Earth. The exhibition is open from November 9th to January 5th, with specific business hours subject to daily opening conditions.

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