Thermocline of Art

This exhibition, with 117 artists representing 20 Asian countries from the Middle East to Far East, from Southeast Asia to Near East and Central Asia, offers the first comprehensive picture of contemporary Asian art production.
The show’s title refers to a climatic phenomenon: just like the whirlpool that one can see shooting from the water’s surface when ocean waters experience a considerable change in temperature, the exhibition »Thermocline of Art. New Asian Waves« makes visible Asian art, which is still largely undiscovered in the West, from an Asian perspective.

The exhibition focuses on the multiple realities and hybrid identities that have arisen in Asia through the effects of globalization, post-colonialism, and the poly-contextuality of the diverse cultural, political, religious, and economic systems. The artists react with fantasy, satire, skepticism,
humor, and cynicism to the conflicts and absurdities of the social systems between tradition and innovation.

The curator, Wonil Rhee, head of the Media City Seoul and co-curator of the 6th Shanghai Biennale, is a recognized expert on Asian art. He will present not only internationally renowned artists who have immigrated to the West, but primarily up-and-coming artists who still live in their home countries, from von Kazakhstan to Korea, from Malaysia to Indonesia. This art reveals different values and criteria than Western art or the art that is produced in the West and for a Western art market. It is a contemporary and global, but also postmodern and post-ethnic art, including paintings, installations, films, videos, photographs, sculptures, and objects, that unveils the potential conflicts of globalization and its effects on the Asian realm. It opens a panorama of art that expands the boundaries of a Western concept of art. The exhibition »Klio. A Brief History of Art in Euramerica after 1945« will take place at the same time on the top floor of the ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art.