China’s preeminent museum of contemporary art, the Yuz Museum in Shanghai, will present the first showing in Asia of a major installation from the Yuz Collection entitled Rain Room (2012) by the artists Random International. Rain Room was first presented at the Barbican in London (2012) and then at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013). It will be premiered in Asia at the Yuz Museum Shanghai from September 1st to December 31st 2015, and Artlyst will be there to bring you all the details of this latest iteration of the Rain Room in China.
This exhibition is inspired by an installation at The Museum of Modern Art, on view from May to July 2013, as part of the exhibition EXPO 1: New York, which was organized by Klaus Biesenbach, Director, MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator at Large, MoMA. EXPO 1: New York at MoMA PS1 and The Museum of Modern Art was made possible by a partnership with Volkswagen of America.
Rain Room is a large-scale environment of perpetually falling water that ceases to pour wherever a person walks. Conceived by the artists Random International, Rain Room is on view courtesy of Yuz Collection who commissioned a site- specific installation of 150 sq. meters in response to the vast space of the Yuz Museum. In presenting the most ambitious scale of the work to date, the Shanghai exhibition will have over 50% more capacity than the previous exhibitions.
Extended viewing hours and a “view only” queue where visitors can engage with the installation at very close range but without walking directly below the rain, ensures everyone inspired to visit can experience Rain Room in person.
Rain Room responds to the presence and behaviour of its participants, offering visitors a surreal environment and unique relationship with water. Exploring ecological challenges through art, this presentation of Rain Room also offers another perspective to the multi-layered Yuz Collection and the forthcoming programming of spectacular temporary exhibitions at the Yuz Museum. After the presentation in Shanghai Yuz Museum, Rain Room will tour China and Asia, starting with Beijing during spring 2016.
Founded in 2005, Random International is a collaborative studio for experimental practice within contemporary art. Taking science as a means to develop a new material vocabulary, their work invites consideration through explorations of behaviour and natural phenomena — with the viewer an active participant. In the decade following the studio’s inception, the focus of Random’s artistic practice has continuously evolved and today encompasses sculpture, performance and spatial installation on an architectural scale.
Rain Room by Random International – Shanghai Yuz Museum, Shanghai, West Bund / Xuhui District, China – 1 September to 31 December 2015