Chanel Culture Fund Announces Parallel Exhibitions at Shanghai’s Power Station of Art – WWD

SHANGHAI — More than a year after unveiling the Chanel Culture Fund’s partnership with Shanghai’s Power Station of Art, the French luxury brand has unveiled its inaugural exhibitions at the state-run contemporary art museum.

As a part of Chanel Culture Fund’s “Art of Craft” series, the two-year “Next Cultural Producer” program at PSA marked the company’s first partnership with a museum in Asia. Despite a five-month delay due to COVID-19-related disruptions, Chanel and PSA will put on two parallel exhibitions at PSA’s second-floor exhibition hall from Nov. 5.

The two group shows, borne out of more than 40 open call submissions from film directors, college professors, architects, curators, art critics and sculptors in more than 14 provinces, will focus on showcasing the current state and the revival of Chinese crafts.

“Hill of the Madman,” curated by architects Lixing Feng and You Wu, will explore the idea of ​​craftsmanship as the ability to “know” and “see,” as stated by German philosopher Martin Heidegger. The show will present “a collection of subtle yet highly intensified artworks” that could be taken as the labor of “madness.”

The second exhibition, called “Back to the Future: Breaking the Time Barrier,” is curated by Jing Zuo, editor in chief of the Chinese art publication Bishan Jing Zuo, and Zuo’s colleague Yanzhi Wang. The show will take a look at how traditional crafts could be applied to “contemporary manufacturing and modern life.”

To further explore Chinese craft in its various stages, an adjacent project curated by PSA called “House of Crafts” will open simultaneously at the museum’s third-floor terrace, exhibiting research and literature material.

The second season of the “Next Cultural Producer” is themed “Dynamic Architecture,” which will aim to open in the summer of 2023.

Launched in March 2021, the Chanel Culture Fund is a three-year initiative to “support innovators across the arts in advancing new ideas and greater representation in culture and society.”

Aside from PSA, the fund has forged partnerships with the National Portrait Gallery in London, England; the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France, and the Underground Museum in Los Angeles, California, to explore different topics, according to the company website.