On July 21, someone released such a message at weibo.com: it is learned that the 4th Guangzhou Triennial is in the pipeline and its opening ceremony is to be held as expected on September 22. The hearsay，besides the time, does not show any ounce of the theme and planners, etc., so now, are the working staff at the art museum injected with hormone to such a silence? Is it a surprise or a letdown two months later? This message at weibo.com was extensively reproduced by netizens who showed great interest in the 4th Guangzhou Triennial. On the same day, a public media published a report entitled “Luo Yiping: Guangzhou Triennial is a Great Challenge”. Yet, in this report, Luo Yiping didn’t disclose any details about the theme and planners of the Triennial but only disclosed that the mystery would be unveiled at the Triennial news release to be held at Peking University on August 16.
 
    Guangzhou Triennial, a contemporary art exhibition in Mainland China, basically takes two years for preparation based on the experience of the previous three sessions and the details shall be announced one year in advance. But up to now, Guangdong Museum of Art, the sponsor, has always kept the details in suspense with strong mystery left behind. As for more information about the exhibition, Luo Yiping thus said, “As early as last September, we decided that this Triennial would focus on the framework of the Extension Project of Guangdong Museum of Art, thus basically forming the fundamental ideas for the Inauguration Exhibition, Project Exhibition and Theme Exhibition. So from them on, we got started with the relevant work. Up to now, the specific positioning for the artists’ works for the Inauguration Exhibition has been nailed down.” In addition of Hermes, widely reported by the media, there are some other institutional sponsors including Guangzhou Grandview Plaza, etc., for the 4th Guangzhou Triennial.

Inauguration Exhibition

    The exhibition period will be September 22 to November 22, 2011 and the artists for the exhibition will be jointly nominated by the planners and critics. The exhibition curators include Luo Yiping, Yang Xiaoyan, Zhang Kexin + Zhang Yun and nominators include Jiang Jiehong, Ashish Rajdhyasksha, Pooja Sood and Peter Noever.                                       
    “Forums in Motions” Team for Inauguration Exhibition will be composed by  Zhang Xudong, Chairman from Dept. of East Asian Studies, NYU., Gan Yang, president of Sun Yat-sen University, LASH Institute For Advanced Studies in Humanities, Yin Jinan, president from Humanities and Arts College of CAFA and Luo Yiping, director of Guangdong Museum of Art. 20 invited domestic and overseas famous scholars mainly include Arthur Danto, the author of “Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art”, Fredric Jameson, Yasuo Kobayashi, director from UTCP, Anthony Vidler, president of Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and Gao Minglu, etc.

    Luo Yiping, president of Guangdong Museum of Art and the general planner for the exhibition, couldn’t wait before any questions raised by the reporters, saying, “the 4th Guangzhou Triennial will be combined with the extension project of Guangdong Museum of Art and will arrange for the Inauguration Exhibition, Project Exhibition and Theme Exhibition in the whole process of the engineering extension period.” It could be easily seen from the first information that the mysterious 4th Guangzhou Triennial was basically consistent with the initial layout as disclosed by Guangdong Museum of Art in March this year—3-year extension and 3-year Guangzhou Triennial. Perhaps, due to the tight financial problem related to the project extension, the museum will initiate its engineering extension in next spring, but the original ideas for Guangzhou Triennial are not mentioned again from “the onset of the first brick being knocked down”.

    This Triennial will officially kick off from the large-scale “Inauguration Exhibition”, focusing on the theme entitled “Meta-question—Back to the museum per se”, which shall be highly combined with the progress of the extension project of Guangdong Museum of Art by positioning the art museum as “Meta-question” and taking “dismantling” and “rebuilding” as the key words and shall also question many “Meta-questions” related to the cultural logic of the transformation of the art museum from the traditional model to the modern model.

    As to why to focus on such theme key words for the Inauguration Exhibition as “demolition” and “construction”, Luo Yiping said, “Viewed from the social development in China, we can actually use two characters for the rough description, namely ‘dismantling’ and ‘rebuilding’. ” Since the 1911 Revolution, we have never stopped dismantling buildings and even dissembling the political system and the cultural structure, including people’s mental or psychological structure. In the dismantling or dissembling process, we are also rebuilding. So it follows that we can engage in the exhibition activities related to the visual thinking again and again through the actions of ‘demolition’ and ‘construction’ of the art museum.”

Project Exhibition

    Basically speaking, Project Exhibition will be launched during the period from 2012 to 2013. At present, there are five exhibitions, respectively the Parallel Exhibition for “54th Venice Biennale”, The Third Nature: Chinese Reconstruction” (curated by Gao Ling) and “Dimensions——Analysis of Three Art Cases” (curated by Luo Yiping), etc.

    Luo Yiping also said, “the 4th Guangzhou Triennial will get started with one exhibition and a forum by taking the domestic and overseas five project exhibitions as the case study and will come to a close by presenting the Theme Exhibition and Theme Exhibition Forum, which will turn out to be a dynamic ‘Triennial’” for a period of more than three years.

Theme Exhibtion

    The Theme Exhibition for the 4th Guangzhou Triennial ---“The Unseen”, will be jointly curated by Jiang Jiehong, a professor from Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (BIAD), Birmingham City University, and Jonathan Watkins, the curator of Ikon Gallery, which represents “the extension and depth of the Inauguration Exhibition”. Theme Exhibition will focus on a series of key words, such as, “Future Things”, “Future Objects”, “Future Cities”, “Future Changes”, “Extraordinary Cities” and “Future Letters”. The Theme Exhibition will have a summary forum planned for a series of discussion after the unveiling of the Initial Exhibition. Anyhow, Luo Yiping held his tongue about more details related to the Theme Exhibition. 

    Luo Yiping, director of Guangdong Museum of Art, disclosed the abovementioned details to this reporter, yet, the 4th Guangzhou Triennial remains a great mystery to most readers, who are eager to know more about it, say, the name list of invited artists, the 3-year-long forum, including the exhibition venues.