Prada Presents The Exhibition “Paraventi:屏” At Prada Rong Zhai In Shanghai From 3 November 2023 To 21 January 2024

Prada Rong Zhai PARAVENTI:屏 Cao Fei
Prada Rong Zhai PARAVENTI:屏 Cao Fei
Exhibition views of “Paraventi: 屏”
Prada Rong Zhai, Shanghai
Courtesy Prada
November 05, 2023 5:37am EST

Prada presents the exhibition “Paraventi:屏” with the support of Fondazione Prada, on view from 3 November 2023 to 21 January 2024 at Prada Rong Zhai, a 1918 historic residence in Shanghai restored by Prada and reopened in 2017. Curated by Nicholas Cullinan, this group show is unveiled in conjunction with the extensive exhibition “Paraventi: Folding Screens from the 17th to 21st Centuries” on view at Fondazione Prada in Milan from 26 October 2023 to 22 February 2024.

The Milan exhibition explores the histories and semantics of these objects by tracing trajectories of cross-pollination between East and West, hybridization processes between different art forms and functions, collaborative relationships between designers and artists, and the emergence of newly created works. The folding screens embody liminality and the idea of being on the threshold of two conditions, literally and metaphorically. They cross barriers between different disciplines, cultures, and worlds.

Shuang Li
Prada Rong Zhai_Paraventi:屏_Shuang Li 
Shuang Li
This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough For The Two Of Us
2023
Bench: steel, acrylic paint, 163 x 170 x 64 cm Video: color, sound, 13 min 10 seconds
Screen: steel, paint, PVC projection screen, 190 x 240 x 50 cm Courtesy the artist

This project generates two emanations at Prada Rong Zhai in Shanghai and Prada Aoyama Tokyo. Both exhibitions arise particularly from artistic commissions focusing on how folding screens are currently influenced by our pervasive digital experience of layering and screens within screens.

Before the advent of mechanical image processing techniques in the 19th century, a screen was not a place of visibility but mainly a protective element. This contrast between revelation and concealment survives today mainly in the screens of our devices, at once opaque and transparent windows. Screen images provide virtual, in-depth access to archives and databases and conceal the functioning of hardware, perpetuating an ambiguous relationship between surface and depth.

Prada Rong Zhai_Paraventi:屏_Tony Cokes
Prada Rong Zhai_Paraventi:屏_Tony Cokes 
Tony Cokes
Untitled (Sol Lewitt 1967, 1968, 1989)
2023
LED video walls, sound, 200 x 250 cm
Courtesy the artist, Greene Naftali, New York, Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles, Felix Gaudlitz, Vienna, and Electronic Arts Intermix, New York

The Shanghai exhibition includes two ancient Chinese folding screens from the 17th and 18th centuries – respectively a small standing screen intended for a desk and a 12-panel imperial screen – and develops into a sequence of rooms hosting five newly commissioned works by international artists such as Tony Cokes, John Stezaker, Shuang Li, Wu Tsang, and Cao Fei.

Tony Cokes’ Untitled (Sol Lewitt 1967 / 1968 / 1989) is inspired by the American minimal artist’s work Folding Screen. Cokes insert concentric circles, colored on one side and black and white on the other, in a complex sculpture-like composition. He adds “an affective layer, register, or zone of possibility” to his installation’s textual and visual elements featuring LED video walls and a music track by Irish- English rock band My Bloody Valentine.

John Stezaker’s Screen-screen evokes cinema imagery, introducing an idealized Hollywood domestic scene within a real space that preserves

the elements of a private house. In his new work, Stezaker moves between the tangible dimension of a folding screen and the imaginary space of a movie screen.

Shuang Li’s This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough For The Two Of Us explores the notion of intimacy by projecting moving shadows on a screen. These ephemeral traces of a bodily presence are associated with an ordinary object like a bench that reveals a profound desire for a safe and familiar environment. This work aims to reaffirm the importance of corporeal value over the virtuality of screens: a relationship that the artist believes has been reversed in contemporary times.

Prada Rong Zhai_Paraventi:屏 Cao Fei
Prada Rong Zhai_Paraventi:屏 Cao Fei 
Cao Fei
Screen Autobiography (Shanghai)
2023
Multi-media installation (combination of videos, smartphones, green screens, self-timer lamps, furniture, photographic tripods, ect.)
Size: Variable dimensions
Music: Zafka. Acknowledgement – Video Production
Participants: Er Gao (He Qiwo), Zhang Dianling, Liu Qingyu, Pan Xiong, Ai Kuo, Sa Na, Gao Qizhen, Chen Xin, Madelin Cheng, Shen Jinghao, Zhao Mengyao, He Peijia
Courtesy of the artist, Vitamin Creative Space and Sprüth Magers

Wu Tsang’s work Carmen sketch (encantada) deals with the performative nature of the folding screen and the idea of the screen as a symbolic limit or emotional boundary. A filmed performance by London-based producer, DJ and singer-songwriter Ms. Carrie Stacks is projected onto a curtain-like structure. In the video, the performer appears in a flashy gold dress, plays the piano, and sings two of the tracks from her 2017 EP 5 Sad Songs, I Gotta Pick Myself Up and Hit it Right.

Cao Fei’s Screen Autobiography (Shanghai) consists of photographic green screens of different sizes forming a composition that reminds a folding screen. A series of short videos filmed with these green screen items is looped on the LED monitors. This exhibition area becomes a temporary “live photography studio” where the boundaries between real and virtual, exaggerated and distorted, familiar and strange are blurred, making it difficult for visitors to trust the reality of the images.

Prada Rong Zhai_Paraventi:屏_Wu Tsang
Prada Rong Zhai_Paraventi:屏_Wu Tsang 
Wu Tsang
Carmen sketch (encantada)
2023
Courtesy the artist