Design Trust Feature Grant Recipient Venus Lau’s “Simon Denny: Real Mass Entrepreneurship” exhibition currently showing

28. 3. 2017

Design Trust Feature Grant recipient Venus Lau has launched the “Simon Denny: Real Mass Entrepreneurship” exhibition, the first solo exhibition in China of the Berlin based artist and a project supported by DESIGN TRUST, at OCAT Shenzhen one of the leading non-profit contemporary art institutions in China. The exhibition runs till June 15th, 2017 at C2 Space in OCT-LOFT.

All newly commissioned for the exhibit, the works on view see a continuation of Simon Denny’s information technology-charged projects. Through his in-depth investigation of Shenzhen’s ecosystem, the artist reflects on the high-tech industry’s role in reshaping the world’s economic horizons. The exhibition title echoes the timely call for “mass entrepreneurship and innovation” in contemporary China. Taking Shenzhen’s accelerated production model as its point of departure, “Real Mass Entrepreneurship” looks at the myth of the small technology hardware business owner as global hero.

For Simon Denny, the notion of “mass entrepreneurship” not only signifies a socioeconomic activity, but also alludes to the repeated duplication and subrogation of “individuals” in the system of production. In a globalized network, individual entrepreneurs representative of innovation and advancement are seduced by fabricated myths and plunge themselves into science and finance through ways of incubation and acceleration, eventually becoming part of the masses. As if produced on the assembly line, these individuals are just like the items in those Huaqiangbei counters, perpetuating a cycle of production and consumption of a different nature.

DESIGN TRUST supports the project research as a collaboration between the artist, curator Venus Lau, Hong Kong-based architect Betty Ng and international hardware accelerator Hax along with a designed public program. The project commences with the artist’s research in tech-manufacturing in Pearl River Delta and aims at converging the vectors of arts, science and technologies to form a discursive platform transcending the imaginary seamless space of globalisation.

Simon Denny: Real Mass Entrepreneurship
Date: 18 March – 15 June 2017
Venue: C2 Space, OCT-LOFT
Website: http://www.ocat.org.cn/index.php/Exhibition/?aid=387&lang=en