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M+, Hong Kong, © Wu Shanzhuan
Wu Shanzhuan 吳山專
The Action with Big Yes and Big No, Standing and Falling; Buying and Selling; Borrowing and Lending 大是大非行為──立與倒，買與賣，租與借
1985
This work consists of three photographs documenting three actions by Wu Shanzhuan. The first photograph shows Wu in a square with many bicycles, attempting to lift one of them, which lies on the ground. In the second photograph, Wu and an elderly woman selling oranges at a roadside shop are in the middle of a transaction. The third photograph shows the artist in front of a building with another man who lights Wu’s cigarette. The three actions demonstrate three principles that Wu defined as integral to art: an awareness of one’s environment, consumption as creation, and borrowing as a creative method. The photographs depict places near Wu’s residence and the Institute for Mass Culture in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province, reflecting his interest in the connection between art and daily life. He extended the idea of consumption as creation in his seminal performance work Big Business (Selling Shrimps), in which he sold shrimp to visitors at the 1989 China/Avant-Garde exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. Wu continued to explore these principles in his practice when he moved to Europe in the early 1990s.
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