Qiu Zhijie: Breaking through the ice

Acting as a platform of dialogue between China contemporary creativity and the world, UCCA inaugurates its spring season with three landmark shows: Qiu Zhijie: Breaking through the ice, Mona Hatoum: Measures of Entanglement and He An: What makes me understand what I know.

Following a series of exhibitions exploring the origins of Chinese contemporary art, UCCA presents Qui Zhijie: Breaking through the ice as an ambitious new project, being the artist's first major solo exhibition and featuring totally new works commissioned especially for this exhibition.

Breaking through the ice reveals mankind's desire of building gigantic structures and their related systems, especially within Chinese industrial history. Conceived as a huge sinking ship that is engaging the audience throughout the industrial transformations of China, this highly experimental show displays a wide variety of works ranging from sculpture and installation to ink paintings and pictures. Viewed together these works explore the ill-fated implications of massive industrial state enterprises, such as the iconic Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, for the individual mind, private life, history, philosophy and surrounding nature.

"Qiu Zhijie is recognized as one of the leading figures of China's new generation of artists. His artistic orientation, theory and curating have time and again been the driving force of several Chinese art movements, setting the standard for younger and more established artists alike", said Guo Xiaoyan, co-curator of the exhibition and UCCA chief curator.

Qiu Zhijie: Breaking through the ice
Co-Kurator: Guo Xiaoyan