Wu Shanzhuan: Today Became a Holiday

Curator: Inga Svala Thorsdottir
Exhibition design: Chen Chao

Today Became a Holiday is Long March Space’s first exhibition of 2019. It will show paintings by Wu Shanzhuan. 

Today Became a Holiday: Wu has named this holiday “World Flatday.”

The concept of logistics as working method has been used throughout the practice of the artist, beginning with the 1989 piece Big Business (Selling Shrimps) up until Today Became a Holiday. This art logistics configuration eventually takes this holiday as a carrier for painting. 

Today Became a Holiday is an epic narrative duration, and the duration of the seven month exhibition time is a holiday, a time of painting. 

In Today Became a Holiday, Wu states his proof of work by painting, and painting as a remedy to resist the burnout syndrome of the contemporary. 

Today Became a Holiday is a constellation with more than 200 paintings, from Hamburg, Reykjavik and Shanghai, that have arrived in Beijing by seven sendings (shipments). They are gifts for this holiday, each arrival pushing us one step closer to Wu’s Today Became a Holiday. 

Here we are sharing some of the gifts (paintings) from the fourth sending recorded. 

These are the starting points of this constellation, Today Became a Holiday. 

About the artist
Wu Shanzhuan (b.1960) was born in Zhoushan, China. He graduated from Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in 1986 and Hochschule für bildende Künste in 1995. He founded Red Humour in 1985 and Red Humour International in 1990. 

About the curator
Inga Svala Thorsdottir (b.1966) was born in Iceland. She graduated from the Painting Department of the Icelandic School of Arts and Crafts in 1991 and Hochschule für bildende Künste in 1995. She founded Thor’s Daughter’s Pulverization Service in 1993 and BORG in 1999. 

Thorsdottir and Wu have been working and exhibiting collaboratively since 1991 and both currently live and work in Hamburg, Shanghai, and Iceland.