Wang Guofeng presents It is neither the past, nor the present, nor the future at Today Art Museum’s third Document exhibition, Bric-à-brac: The Jumble of Growth. Wang’s exhibited work reflects the collective unconscious spirit and psychological outlook under the totalitarian rule of North Korea. Due to the of North Korea’s closed door policy, it has become the “void” of Northeast Asia. In a sense, It is neither the past, nor the present, nor the future fulfills Wang’s intention to fill up this void. The sea of people attending the concert alludes to an illusion of individual existence in North Korea. Despite the use of real-time documentary photography, the rigorous technological post-processing has offered a unique photographic language that provides an objective of the landscape the spite of the incongruous political landscape of North Korea.
This exhibition for Today Art Museum’s third Documents aims to explore the process of global economic, social and cultural transformations that the boom of emerging market economies has introduced. It will try to examine various ways in which art has participated in or reacted to some of the transitions involved, and to their effects on culture, society and the individual.
The French expression bric-à-brac is broadly employed to mean jumble, odds and ends, or an uneven group of things, with a certain undertone of confusion. The first word of this idiom coincides by chance with the acronym BRIC – Brazil (7th world economy), Russia (13th), India (6th) and China (2nd) –, launched in 2001 by economist Jim O'Neill to discuss the major global economic role played by these four countries. Despite their current slowdown, the BRICs are the largest emerging market economies in the world, and account for more than 25% of the world's land area and more than 40% of its population. The acronym has come into widespread use to epitomize a historic process that is taking place: the dramatic increase of global economic power of the developing world, which has come to play a leading international role in the post-Cold War era. For more information, visit Today Art Museum