XUZHEN SUPERMARKET

Event Date：4/8/2016-4/29/2016 7:00-24:00 Event Venue：1386 Yuyuan Road, SHANGHAI (Near Dingxi Road)

    The brand XuZhen is pleased to present XUZHEN SUPERMARKET, a critically acclaimed art project, on Yu Yuan Road in Shanghai since April 8th, 2016. Initially launched in 2007, XUZHEN SUPERMARKET was featured in several gallery shows, museum exhibitions, and art fairs, including Art Basel Miami, James Cohan Gallery, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, ShanghArt Singapore, Seoul Museum of Art, Long Museum, and Kunsthaus Graz among others,and has received international acclaim from art professionals as well as the press.

    Judging from the outside, XUZHEN SUPERMARKET looks just like a typical Chinese franchised convenience store,with its recognizable logo, convenient location, 24 hours opening time, in addition to providing the customers with everyday necessities. However, all the products on sale, although seemingly intact, in fact contain no ontent at all.The package shows no sign of opening, nor do the customers have ways of knowing how the substance inside just evaporates.

    XuZhen Supermarket takes the customers on a journey with three twists. First, they are thrilled to find the shelves packed with alluring products, and then they get a little anxious about making a decision; Eventually, they wonder about the truth of emptiness. Precisely in the form of art commodities, Xu Zhen plays on the collapse of the dialectic of art and commodity. While subtly alluding to the expanding commercial power, the store simultaneously explores how capital exerts influences on cultural communication. The false appearance of the store and the paradoxical merchandises recalls Guy Debord’s classic formulation, “The spectacle is capital accumulated to a certain point where it becomes an image.” Rested upon the logic of commodities exchange of equal value, XUZHEN SUPERMARKET also manages to reserve a corner in reality for visitors to “fill their void."