Salt examines art scene in1980s,1990s

“Taiping Tianguo, A History of Possible Encounters between Ai Weiwei, Frog King Kwok, Tehching Hsieh and Martin Wong in New York during the 1980s and early 1990s” has come to SALT.

Originally exhibited at Para Site in Hong Kong, “Taiping Tianguo, A History of Possible Encounters” is an attempt to think of actual and concrete, as well as tenuous or even possibly non-existing connections between four artists who lived and worked in New York during the heady days of the 1980s and the early 1990s.

Throughout the 20th century artists traveled to cities in Western Europe and the United States to experience stimulating artistic communities and often a more liberal lifestyle. Now, as new cultural hubs are established in the East and South we are in a position to review how these moments impacted individual practices and the development of relative art discourses in different contexts.

While “Taiping Tianguo” looks specifically at four Chinese artists forging their artistic positions while in New York, the relationships they formed present just one set of possible encounters that can be multiplied to imagine similar but very place-specific scenarios occurring across the globe.