Hongkong – Aug 1, 2019 – Have you heard that people could play a customized concert just by connecting mobile phone and click the play button? It sounds like an incredible design, but recently been found in a shopping mall located in Taiyuan, Shanxi province of China.
When the reporter stepped into the mall, a bunch of acrylic neon signs and cables were hanging from the top. The sign of “Free” “Park” seem mixed and disorderly, but the acrylic neon lights were flickering rhythmically along with the music beats from connecting mobile phone. The art installation attracted the audience instantly and the mall seems converted to a private concert hall.
It is one of the masterpieces of the popular artist, Tobias Rehberger.
Tobias Rehberger was rewarded the Golden Lion Award at the 53rd Venice Biennale, his creation contains multi art-discipline, such as visual design, architecture design and conceptual art. The current exhibition subverted the traditional visiting mode of art museum, it redefines the relationship among the audience, art work and art museum.
From 23 March 2019 to 26 May 2019, the first solo exhibition of Tobias Rehberger “If you don’t use your eyes to see, you will use them to cry” in China was held at the Shanghai Bund Art Museum. After the exhibition set off a craze in Shanghai, Tobias selected the Fashion Walk Shopping Mall in Taiyuan, Shanxi province to end the global tour of this art show. This is the first time that Taiyuan city to host such high-level international art exhibitions.
Why the famous international artist selected the shopping mall in a second-tier city to display his art piece?
Their collaboration is not just an accidental event. The Fashion Walk Shopping Mall in Taiyuan is focusing on and promoting the art development in a long-term basis. The mall committed itself to create a complex public space covering culture, art, shopping, F&B, etc. The mall continues to innovate in commercial business, bringing in multiple forms of new media, art exhibition, art installation and combine those with commercial public area. This eliminates the gap between art and public group, and creates a new trend for the public to experience the art in shopping mall as a way of leisure and relaxation.
According to the organizer, Taiyuan is the last stop of this Tobias art exhibition, it will last for three months and the art work will be shipped back to Germany after the show. On 6 July 2019, Fashion Walk shopping mall launched an innovative party with the art work of Tobias. The mall seems turned into a night club, thousands of fashionistas were attracted and gathered here. The fever is similar to the scene of superstar concert. Online topics of “thousands of fashionistas dancing in the mall” “Fanatical dancing party in the art exhibition” has spread rapidly, and receives over 20 million clicks. The popularity of the event is comparable to a superstar concert.
Fashion Walk shopping mall always follow the entertainment and consumption trends of younger generation, continuously explore new business models. The firm does not only unleash the innovative spirit to the extreme for creating distinctive consumer shopping experience, but also helps Chinese business become international.
About the Artist
Tobias Rehberger is an artist whose work is characterized by transformation, serendipity, collaboration and shared experience. His work in large-scale often takes the form of visually-rich environments that are sites for social encounter, such as his Was du liebst bringt dich auch zum weinen (2009), which won the Golden Lion for the 53rd Venice Biennale, his recreation of Frankfurt’s Bar Oppenheimer in New York (2013), or his procession of sculptures 24 Stops between the Beyeler Foundation and Vitra Campus near Basel (2015-2016). When working with self-contained sculpture, Rehberger often looks to the viewer, friends and other collaborators to complete or contribute to the work. He invited fellow artists he had portrayed as vases to present him with a bouquet of flowers, completing each Vase Portrait, he asked assistants to initiate sculptural formations in Velcro for his Infection series (2007 – ongoing) and he worked with craftsmen in Cameroon and Thailand to make serendipitous copies of furniture and cars. Working across diverse scales and an array of media, Rehberger is fascinated by the boundless possibilities of object and environment. As Rehberger once described, “I am very interested in this phenomenon that … the object is not only interested in its own existence. It’s a kind of tool helping the existence of something else.”
Selected solo exhibitions and projects for the artist include If you don’t use your eyes to see, you will use them to cry, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2019); Yourself is sometimes a place to call your own, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Busan (2018); 24 Stops, Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2016); Home and Away and Outside, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2014); Tobias Rehberger: Wrap it up, MACRO Museum, Rome (2014); Dazzle Ship London, River Thames, London (2012); When I See the Other Side of Heaven, It Is Just as Blue (commission), The Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2012); Nest (commission), Bloomberg SPACE, London (2012); Tobias Rehberger, MAXXI, Rome (2010); The Chicken-and-Egg-No-Problem Wall-Painting, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2008); On Otto, Fondazione Prada, Milan (2007); Get a New Liver, Tate Liverpool (2006); Private Matters, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2004); Night Shift, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2002) and The Sun from Above, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2000). Tobias Rehberger lives and works in Frankfurt, Germany.
Media Contact
Company Name: Fashion Walk Shopping Mall
Contact Person: Sherry Liu
Email: Send Email
Address:No.116 Changfeng Street, Xiaodian District
City: Taiyuan
State: Shanxi Province
Country: China
Website: https://tinyurl.com/y2e63cpr