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CAFA Art Museum
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Chaoyang District,
Beijing, China
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Aura & Post Aura - Beijing Photo Biennial
Artist(s): GROUP SHOW
Date: 24 Oct - 7 Dec 2013

Background & Objective
The First Beijing Photo Biennial, organized by the Ministry of Culture of P.R.C. and Beijing Municipal Government, initiated and curated by CAFA Art Museum, was formally launched in February 2013. As a main project of “The 2013 Beijing International Photography Week,” the exhibition will be held at China Millennium Monument.

This large-scale exhibition program presents how photography has become an effective vehicle in the exchange of contemporary photography in the international arena as an artistic, applicable and self-renewing medium. Furthermore, it has been adopted the building new order and structure in contemporary art and culture. It aims at exploring, discussing and encouraging the investigation of the photographic language and the conceptual advancements, while identifying and supporting young Chines photographers with great talent and potentials with an outlook and methods of the future, in order to promote and raise influence and recognition of contemporary Chinese photography on the international arena. Its introduction of the leading classic western and contemporary resources on photography will facilitate academic exchange between China and the West to further the development of contemporary Chinese photography.

Thematic Statement
“Aura,”
as a key word in Walter Benjamin’s (1892-1940) Artistic Aesthetics System, is always considered as the indicator differentiating classical art from modern art. Modern art, often used to outline and present mechanical reproduction, has already lost the “aura” imbued within its intrinsic vitality, spirituality and halo empowered by classical art, due to the non-manual, non-aesthetic and non-worshipped works, in other words, the “aura” has been dimmed and faded. The loss of the “aura” according to Benjamin should be attributed to the occurrence of photography and film, as well as being consequential to media reforms featuring new technologies and modes of communication such as, printing, radio and television. However, when discussing about one of the “culprits” leading to the death of the “aura” according to Benjamin, in an era of digital information and technology, we found that the so-called “aura” of art might have been transformed is yet still “shining”, or it had been generalized and empowered with more open forms and meaning. Particularly, in a “dark” digital era, one’s re-acquaintance with the “aura” and the command and examination of its definition and value is not only a desire, but also a theoretic exploration through real actions.

Whether it fades, dims, or revisits and reconstructs, in the course of “un-charm, re-charm and un-charm again”, in the “post aura” era before everyone’s eyes has ended quietly. As digital technology revolutionizes, its mad, rapid virtual, fascinating and transcendental approaches changes the medium of expression, creative concept, presentation and means of communication in art, moreover, it gradually impacts our perspective and attitudes on contemplating and viewing art. The “Post-Aura” artistic era, is a process of shifting from the artificial and social “aura” that mimics and reconstructs, to disperse and generate a new set of artistic values and standards.

For photography, we are in the best and the worst times. To have established “aura and post-aura” as the theme of the Biennial, on one hand, it aims to create a mutual reference and frameworks on the equivocal genres of photography, and presents its related issues; on the other hand, it aims to explore how photography generates and presents new understanding and experience between the local and the international, past and current contexts, media, technology and social discourse, moreover, how may one command, grasp and define the characteristics and meanings of “aura” to art at present under the ubiquity of the “post-aura” digital era!

*image (left)
Historical Space A01, 2013
Inkjet print, 130cm×160cm
© Yu Fei, courtesy of the artist

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