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Throughout summer 2020, this site gathered digital content that built upon the entire exhibition—new virtual tours of Wrightwood 659 and the Smart Museum of Art, object chats, at-home activities, online programs, and behind-the-scenes videos and photos.

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Transformation

Three performances inspired byYin Xiuzhen’s Transformation.

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Object chat: Mountain Range

In this object chat, Christina Tang takes us on a virtual visit to experience Cai Guo-Qiang’s Mountain Range at the Smart Museum of Art.

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The Allure of Coloring: Zhan Wang

This week’s coloring page features Zhan Wang’s Beyond 12 Nautical Miles—Floating Rock Drifts on the Open Sea.

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Object chat: Gu Dexin’s plastic room

In this object chat, Sara Hindmarch takes us on a virtual visit to experience Gu Dexin’s Untitled at the Smart Museum of Art.

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The Allure of Coloring: Xu Bing

This week’s coloring page features Xu Bing’s gigantic installation, 1st Class.

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Object chat: 1st Class

In this object chat, Nicole Bond takes us on a virtual visit to experience Xu Bing’s 1st Class at the Smart Museum of Art.

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Object chat: Should We Construct Another Cathedral?

In this object chat, Seth Nguyen takes us on a virtual visit to experience Huang Yong Ping’s Devons-nous encore construire une grande cathédrale? (Should We Construct Another Cathedral?) at the Smart Museum of Art.

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Merely a Mistake: A Score for your Door

Based on a score by Irene Hsiao, participants independently created home videos for this community art project inspired by Liu Wei’s Merely a Mistake II No. 7.

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The Allure of Coloring: Zhang Huan

This week’s coloring page features an incense ash painting by Zhang Huan.

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The Allure of Coloring: Song Dong

This week’s coloring page features a work by Song Dong, who has repeatedly used water as a signature material in his practice.

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The Allure of Coloring: Liu Jianhua

This week’s coloring page features one of Liu Jianhua’s porcelain works, Blank Paper.

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The Allure of Coloring: He Xiangyu

This week’s coloring page is inspired by He Xiangyu’s first major work of art, The Cola Project.

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The Allure of Coloring: Cai Guo-Qiang

This week’s coloring page features Cai Guo-Qiang’s gunpoweder painting, Mountain Range.

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Object chat: Day-Dreamer

In this object chat, Ray Klemchuk takes us on a virtual visit to see Lin Tianmiao’s Day-Dreamer at the Smart Museum of Art.

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Material Art: Characteristics and Aesthetics

In China, the publication The Thinker (Xinrui) recently published a translation of co-curator Wu Hung’s introductory essay to The Allure of Matter.

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Object chat: Zhan Wang’s stainless steel works

In this object chat, artist Zhan Wang takes us on a virtual visit to see his work Ornamental Rock at Wrightwood 659.

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The Allure of Coloring: Lin Tianmiao

This week’s coloring page features Lin Tianmiao’s Day-Dreamer.

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Plastically Present

Join Jonathan Gardner, UChicago AB ’20, for a cello-guided tour of Gu Dexin’s Untitled (1989).

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The Allure of Coloring: Sun Yun and Peng Yu

This week’s coloring page features Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s Civilization Pillar.

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Object chat: Exile

In this object chat, Peng Yu talks about the work Exile at Wrightwood 659. The video documents a performance in which Peng poured fat into a Beijing river.

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Black Flame

Please join us for “Black Flame,” a participatory experience that combines live music with optional at-home art-making to honor community and memorialize loss with the Class of 2020.

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Object Chat: Traceless Stele

In this object chat, Conghao Tian takes us on a virtual visit to see Song Dong’s Traceless Stele at the Smart Museum of Art.

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Object Chat: Ant Bone IV and Ant Bone V

In this object chat, Hannah Radeke takes us on a virtual visit to see Hu Xiaoyuan’s Ant Bone IV and Ant Bone V at Wrightwood 659.

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The Allure of Coloring: Ma Qiusha

This week’s coloring page features Ma Qiusha’s Wonderland: Black Square, made of black stockings stretched over concrete shards.

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Object chat: Fingerprints

In this object chat, Alexandra Nickolaou takes us on a virtual visit to see Zhang Yu’s Fingerprints at Wrightwood 659.

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The Allure of Coloring: Ai Weiwei

This week’s coloring page features Ai Weiwei’s Tables at Right Angles, which uses mortise-and-tenon joints to seamlessly reconfigure two tables collected from a Beijing antique market into a nonfunctional object.

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Materiality and Art

A remote symposium on themes of materiality in art, featuring presentations from undergraduate, masters, and PhD students and a panel discussion.

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Score for an unfinished dance

A unrealized, proposed tour of Wrightwood 659 and The Allure of Matter with dancers and guides, designed by Irene Hsiao as an intimate experience of the works and the spaces that invites participation and active sensing.

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From Soil, Sand, and Salt Crystals

Coated with chemicals and exposed to sunlight, dragged through the mud, buried in radioactive soil—the films gathered in From Soil, Sand, and Salt Crystals: Films and Natural Processes emerge from material interactions between film and natural processes.

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Material Stories: Hair

Join Lori Tharps and HAIR CLUB for a conversation about hair as a material carrier of identity and social meaning. Happening via Zoom on Wednesday, May 20, noon.

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Cardboard Caves

Learn how to build a cool cave and construct bulbous boulders out of cardboard boxes in this hands-on project inspired by Zhan Wang’s Gold Mountain!

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The Allure of Coloring: Huang Yong Ping

This week’s downloadable coloring page features one of Huang Yong Ping’s “book washing” projects, Devons-nous encore construire une grande cathédrale? (Should We Construct Another Cathedral?).

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Material Stories: Fat

Ros Holmes, Presidential Fellow in Chinese Art at the University of Manchester, gives a talk on Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s Civilization Pillar and its meaning as a monument to contemporary culture.

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Object chat: Chains: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

In this object chat, Simone Levine takes us on a virtual visit to see Liang Shaoji’s Chains: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Nature Series, No. 79

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The Allure of Coloring: gu wenda

This week’s downloadable coloring page features gu wenda’s united nations: american code (1995–2019), a house-like structure composed of braided and felted human hair.

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Material is the Message

Exhibition co-curator Wu Hung introduced The Allure of Matter and defined some of the major characteristics of material art during this keynote lecture at the US-China Forum 2020.

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The Allure of Coloring: Chen Zhen

This week’s coloring page features Chen Zhen’s Crystal Landscape of Inner Body (2000), a work that evokes the centuries old Daoist concept of “internal alchemy” by rendering internal organs in crystal.

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Pop Bottle Boats

Turn recycled plastic soda bottles into floating toy boats in this hands-on artmaking project inspired by He Xiangyu’s Cola Project.

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The Allure of Coloring: Gu Dexin

Introducing…the Allure of Coloring! Interact with The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China from the comfort of your living room through a special series of coloring sheets drawn by Erik L. Peterson.

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