MadeIn, Spread B-050, collage on canvas, 320 x 182 cm, 2010

Long March Space proudly presents MadeIn Ltd solo exhibition “Spread – Global Nervous System” at the 2010 Frieze Art Fair.

“Global Nervous System” is a phrase taken from a comic strip.  When our curiosity compels us to look for meaning in what we see, we often find that our inherent limitations block the path to reality, but then again what reality are we seeking?  What constitutes this global nervous system? Politics? Culture? Resources? Economy? Democracy? MadeIn Ltd. is focused on the discrepancy between reality and what presented as reality.  The existence of this discrepancy is proof that curiosity (a search for truth) is not just an illusory exercise, but one that allows our nervous system to interact and connect with the events in the world around us.    

MadeIn is a limited cultural production company founded in Shanghai in 2009 by artist Xu Zhen. The company is comprised of multiple functions including artistic creation, production, communication, and planning.  While the conventional understanding of an art company is tied to commercial relationships and its forays into forms of production, MadeIn’s attitude or working approach emphasizes “to come into being”, an idea whose goal is to explore the limitless possibilities of different problems and to create works with unrestricted understandings .

As such, MadeIn pays close attention to the inner constructions of today’s art system and refuses to be confined to appropriating the already explored experiences, be they collective or individual.  MadeIn forges another working approach that seeks to enlarge the scope of personal artistic creation. Its experimentation inverts the logic of individual values and private ownership. It questions and updates the roles of artist that has been defined by various art systems, and through a collectivist action disintegrates the individual-centered value system that immanently exists in the contemporary art world.

We are inclined to consider MadeIn’s experimentation as blurring the boundary between art and mass production, contributing to the superficial discourse on the “malicious challenge to the whole system of displaying and selling artwork”.  Rather, it is the boundaries of viewership that MadeIn blurs, provoking the audiences to understand its works in an abnormal way and creating an atmosphere where the audience refuses to cooperate with the work.  The ambiguity and uncertainty creates more possibilities beyond the definition of contemporary art.