Ox Warehouse opens with exhibition that echoes its relocation

The new Ox Warehouse facilities

To inaugurate its new base situated on Rua do Volong, alternative art gallery Ox Warehouse is holding an exhibition that explores the theme of space, echoing its relocation from its former site on Avenida do Coronel Mesquita.

Ox Warehouse was evicted from its former site last year after the building’s operator, the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC), deemed it to be in a run-down state. Having moved to a new site near Rua do Campo, the association has now entered what it describes as the “post-Ox Warehouse” period.

To mark the reopening of the alternative art gallery, Ox Warehouse is holding its first exhibition at the new site, titled the Post-Ox Warehouse Experimental Site. Artists from five cities – namely Macau, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Shenzhen – have been invited to present their works in art forms ranging from paintings and “conceptual documents” to photography and video installations.

The exhibition explores the concept of space and location, in semblance to the physical move of Ox Warehouse.

One of the most striking pieces in the exhibition is a large mixed media installation of a horned beetle, suspended by metal wires and holding a game and television remote control. The 2018 artwork by Wong Iek is titled “A Bug That’s Controlling a Bug That’s Controlling a Bug That’s Controlling”.

On the ground floor of the exhibition is a white-painted canvas, torn in the center to reveal an artificial wall of white-painted bricks behind. It is the first time that Bianca Lei’s 2012 piece titled “Painting is painting is painting is painting is?” has been exhibited in Macau, though it was previously on display in both Beijing and Shenzhen.

In an interview with the Times, Lei said that she is “challenging the conservative definition of art media.”

Bianca Lei

“There are still a lot of people in Macau who have a conservative view of artworks; that painting is a painting and sculpture is a sculpture. I want to blur the boundary between the definitions,” she said.

“I had the idea quite a long time ago. I realized that [artists in Macau] were quite concerned with the media [of art]. Some would say, ‘let’s do a painting exhibition’ or ‘let’s do a sculpture exhibition’. Then, the art education was still narrow, forcing students to study [one discipline]. You study painting and then become a painter,” explained Lei. “But why do we need to draw a line between painting and sculpture?”

A second exhibit by Lei can be located on the uppermost floor of the gallery.

A 2018 video installation titled “Faith in Fake ix – The shadow said: ‘…’”, the piece comprises two television screens perpendicular to each other that loop a montage of shadowy projections and shapes, accompanied by different sets of music, which produce two distinct atmospheres.

“When you look at a shadow, you know that it is because of light,” said Lei. “The shape of the shadow depends on the light quality, intensity and angle, and that produces [variations]. If shadows exist only because of the light, this symbolizes that there is another side to our reality. I want to emphasize that the shadow only shows part of the reality.”

Celebrated Taiwanese artist Cai Guo Jie is also participating in the exhibition in the form of an urban planning map of a Macau district. Cai is inspired by the philosophical notion that each division of two areas produces not a single area of two parts, but rather two distinct spaces, “not intersected, but separated and part of their own land.”

“Therefore, the space between land A and land B is not equal to zero, but tends to zero,” he notes in an introduction panel that accompanies the conceptual document. “Every time we divide the land, this kind of space [in between] will appear at the same time.”

The exhibition is open until October 7, except on Mondays, and admission is free. DB