Prada is set to expand its “Paraventi: Folding Screens From the 17th to 21st Centuries” exhibition at Fondazione Prada in Milan, which is set to run from Oct. 26 to Feb. 22, 2024, with a simultaneous showcase titled “Paraventi:屏” (screens) at Rong Zhai in Shanghai.
Running from Nov. 3 to Jan. 21, 2024, the Shanghai exhibition will feature artistic commissions focusing on how folding screens are currently influenced by the pervasive digital experience of layering and screens within screens.
Two ancient Chinese folding screens from the 17th and 18th centuries, a small standing screen intended for a desk and a 12-panel imperial screen, respectively, will be shown alongside five newly commissioned works by international artists such as Tony Cokes, John Stezaker, Shuang Li, Wu Tsang and Cao Fei.
Cokes’ work “Untitled (Sol Lewitt 1967/1968/1989)” is inspired by the American minimal artist’s work “Folding Screen.” He inserted concentric circles, colored on one side and black-and-white on the other, in a complex sculpture-like composition. Stezaker’s work “Screen-screen” aims to evoke cinema imagery, introducing an idealized Hollywood domestic scene within a real space that preserves the elements of a private house.
Li’s “This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough for the Two of Us” is looking to explore the notion of intimacy by projecting moving shadows on a screen. Tsang’s Carmen sketch deals with the performative nature of the folding screen and the idea of the screen as a symbolic limit or emotional boundary. Cao’s ”Screen Autobiography (Shanghai)“ consists of photographic green screens of different sizes forming a composition that resembles a folding screen.
The Milan version, meanwhile, will explore the histories and semantics of these objects by tracing trajectories of cross-pollination between the East and West, the hybridization processes between different art forms and functions.
A parallel exhibition will run at the Prada Aoyama Tokyo around the same time as well.