Admiring art in fuel tanks

Set in a former airport, a new cultural landmark in the West Bund area will hold three exhibitions as part of its grand opening in late March, Zhang Kun reports in Shanghai.

Anew cultural landmark called Tank Shanghai, an art space which comprises five repurposed giant oil tanks, will open in the West Bund area along the Huangpu River on March 23.

The tanks that make up this art space used to be part of the facilities of Longhua Airport, the city's first aviation hub.

The West Bund area that flanks the Huangpu is one of the most active art and culture centers in downtown Shanghai. The area is home to a cluster of important art and cultural institutions, such as the Long Museum, the Shanghai Center of Photography and the new Pompidou Centre Shanghai, which is still under construction. Situated across Longteng Avenue from the art space is the West Bund Art Center, the venue for an annual art fair in November that was attended by more than 100 leading galleries around the world.

Occupying 60,000 square meters, the art space was founded by Qiao Zhibing, a renowned collector of contemporary art. According to Qiao, the space is a multifunctional cultural hub that combines exhibition venues with parkland, a plaza, a bookstore, an education center and a restaurant. The project took more than five years to complete.

Three exhibitions will be held in celebration of the art space's grand opening. The largest tank, No 5, will host TeamLab, a renowned group in the global contemporary art scene that dabbles with new media. Here, the group will present a large interactive digital art show called Universe of Water Particles in the Tank.

The art space exhibition will be TeamLab's largest show in China. The title work Universe of Water Particles in the Tank, Transcending Boundaries, will feature an enormous waterfall which appears to cascade down the interior surface of the tank. Other works will depict flowers throughout the seasons, as well as a projection of waves.

Over at tank No 3, visitors will find Argentinean sculptor Adrian Villa Rojas' exhibition titled "Sometimes you wonder, in an interconnected universe, who is dreaming whom?"

Meanwhile, tank No 4 will be used to host a group exhibition titled Under Construction that showcases works by leading Chinese artists such as Ding Yi, Liu Xiaodong and Zhang Xiaogang.

The opening exhibitions were designed to reflect the vision of Qiao, a collector of contemporary art globally. The 52-year-old entrepreneur, who started collecting contemporary Chinese art in 2006, says the reason behind setting up the art space was his desire to work with artists and introduce their new ideas to the public as well as channel the spotlight onto emerging young Chinese artists.

Shanghai's first airport, Longhua Airport, was located in the area surrounding the art space since 1917. Although the airport was closed in 1966, it wasn't until 2008 that it was demolished to make way for the construction of the new Longyao Road Tunnel under the Huangpu.

In 2012, State-owned enterprise West Bund Development Co was founded to carry out the comprehensive development of the Xuhui waterfront area by the Huangpu, which includes the establishment of 20 cultural institutions and six theaters in the area. Aside from culture and art, the West Bund area is also a thriving zone filled with finance and high-tech enterprises.

There were originally seven tanks used for fuel storage at the airport. Following the redevelopment, two of the tanks were torn down and a new heliport was built at the site. The remaining five oil tanks, the highest of which has a height of 19 meters and a diameter of 28 meters, were redesigned by the award-winning firm Open Architecture to become the new art space.

(CHINA DAILY)