Macalline Art Center is proud to announce that its physical space in Beijing’s 798 Art District will formally open to the public on January 15, 2022. 

Macalline Art Center is a non-profit art institution founded by philanthropist Che Xuanqiao and supported by the Red Star Macalline Holding Group Co., Ltd. Based in a 900-square-meter, two-story building, Macalline Art Center will bring together artists, curators, and cultural professionals from around the world working in a range of forms. The Center will build a practice-oriented site focused on contemporary visual inventions and become a new cultural coordinate on the contemporary art map.

A New Coordinate Space

Founder Che Xuanqiao remarked, “Macalline Art Center is different from a standard art museum; it is a medium-sized art institution with a distinct point of view. Our point of view is an open work of art that has been shaped, extended, tested, and renewed through the practice and inquiry of all participants. We chose Beijing’s 798 Art District as the base for Macalline Art Center’s mission to ‘engage with artists and art groups,’ and we hope to foster closer, deeper interaction with the district’s outstanding artists, art professionals, and art institutions.”

With its 900-square-meter, two-story building as a base for practice, Macalline Art Center has been designed, built, and utilized based on functional needs, while also embodying the institution’s concept, character, and organization. The Center’s physical building cuts across and combines different structures and forms, creating a space of difference, a community of creative connections, and a laboratory. When artists, curators, culture and art professionals, and viewers enter the Center, they continue to collectively define the form and function of the space.

A New Vehicle for Art Programs

While preparing for the physical space in Beijing, Macalline Art Center launched three programs and one special project space: Heichi magazine, the digital video commission program “Bare Screen,” the “Cacotopia” podcast, and the Cloister Project, a special project space in Shanghai. Through the varied forms of text, video, sound, and space, these programs get under the skin of contemporary art creation. They truly participate in the intellectual structures of society today and actively shape the new role that art institutions will play in the rapidly changing contemporary context.

The bilingual digital publication Heichi launched online in May 2020 and has published nearly 100 original bilingual (Chinese/English) articles to date. Heichi focus on new perspectives in a detailed way, giving art an important place in understanding social reality, spiritual structures, and technological innovations. “Bare Screen,” a digital video commission program, makes use of the environments of social media platforms to produce, exhibit and disseminate contemporary art. Since December 2020, “Bare Screen” has released online works by Tao Hui, Tianzhuo Chen, Qinmin Liu, Zheng Ke & Tan Jing, Zhang Wenxin, Tang Chao, Hu Wei, Payne Zhu, Liu Wa, and Yang Bao. The program has also held nine public events in different forms and an in-person exhibition “Meditation Chambers with Furniture in Motion”. “Cacotopia”  is a podcast that launched in March 2021, every episode of “Cacotopia” has featured artists, scholars, or researchers as guests. Over the course of more than ten episodes and an artist commission, guests have shared their interdisciplinary creations, texts, and ideas.

The Cloister Project is Macalline Art Center’s special project space in Shanghai. Located on the second floor of the Cloister Apartments at No. 62 Fuxing West Road, Shanghai, the Cloister Project is a non-profit space for exhibitions, public education, and cultural exchange. Since November 2020, the Cloister Project has held eleven exhibitions, public education programs, and screenings, with further programs planned. The Cloister Project embraces artistic intuition and novel creativity. It is a place of ongoing encounters, and the invited artists, curators, writers, and researchers are constantly shifting between the roles of host and guest, exploring the heterogeneity and spirituality of an artistic community today based on the common value of mutual respect.

A New Site of Practice

Macalline Art Center is also interested in art events and the development of artistic research. The Center will hold four physical exhibitions every year, a diverse array of online and in-person events open to the public, and a regular program of symposia and summits. Macalline Art Center will continue to make space for its function and form as an art institution. Through art programs, education, community-building, and philanthropy, the Center will work with international culture and art professionals and institutions in a range of forms to build a practice-oriented site focused on contemporary visual inventions, a physical and online community, and a self-renewing perceptual and cognitive system. Macalline Art Center’s collecting program attempts to blend research and curatorship, creating a collection methodology that is rooted in the local art ecosystem.

Curated by chief curator-at-large Yuan Fuca, Macalline Art Center’s first exhibition will open to the public on January 15, 2022. Yuan Fuca said, “The exhibition’s title, The Elephant Escaped, attempts to respond to contemporary society and life in the post-pandemic era. Through all-new commissions by five young Chinese artists, Fang Di, Li Ming, Peng Zuqiang, Shen Xin, and Tao Hui, the exhibition will present a dialogue between independent yet enmeshed elements. Through collective working methods and long discussions, the Macalline Art Center team and the artists explored the question: ‘How can I be plural?’ We continuously interrogated the ever-changing relationship between the individual and the collective, finding renewed hope for polyphonic artistic creation.”