箭厂胡同38号(国子监街内)
北京 100007 中国
38 Jianchang Hutong
(off Guozijian Jie)
Beijing, 100007 China

《就在拐角》是一次群展，将街头和胡同环境视同为艺术创作现场。作为箭厂空间首次全方位群展，《就在拐角》邀请国内外艺术家们创作新作，这些计划令他们互动、引起他们的兴趣并使之深入其中，或者与箭厂空间临街场地固有的社会环境相呼应。这些作品跨越空间的四壁，直接与外面的街道、近邻的商铺和居民接触, 而推动了与当地经济以及胡同生活微观环境的密切联系。

在北京，胡同不仅仅是房子与房子之间的过道，在东西南北沿经纬延伸的京城道路里，它是这个城市敏感的神经末稍，在这里，爷们侃大山、妇女聊八卦，犹如今天的互联网，是主流话语之外民众之间交流的重要场所。而各种小生意如：包子、煎饼、水果、菜市、香烟和汽水，买者和卖者都是这些人，像一个物物交换的自给自足的小社会，当旅游者进入这个社区才把这些买卖变成真正的商业化。当现代生活及旅游者侵入胡同之后，当代视觉文化却未把胡同及其居民纳入他们的视野之中，而对等地，胡同以及居民也对当代艺术不加理睬。

在探索胡同半公共环境作为艺术创作的空间之外，此次展览的目的还在于吸引人的观看手法和可视性，特别是它们隶属于我们对日常生活中消费与交换的理解。箭厂空间的观众，由近邻的街坊以及箭厂胡同的居民组成，也就是说，是当地居民、商贩以及偶然路过的人。他们并不熟悉我们很容易便同当代艺术相联系的视觉消费方式，但却是空间的常客，他们的日常生活由很少具有视觉导向的消费所组成：买菜、买烟、买烙饼等等——这些都渗透在每天的日常生活当中。艺术界把观众设定为美术馆馆长、策划人、收藏家、艺术研究者和学生，放弃了普通民众而把艺术的高雅模式不断地强化。艺术作品在一个多种形态或艺术与人类日常生活经历结合在一起的语境之下被观看、留意、亲眼目睹或感受，这意味着什么呢？有没有什么方式可以进入某个现场，例如箭厂胡同，以此作为一个现场，审视与“艺术体系”相交叠但从根本而言仍有所不同的消费体系和结构？这些就是《就在拐角》试图通过其形成和实现而认识并提出的问题。

国际艺术家参与者的赞助: 香港亚洲艺术表演文献库, 广州博尔赫斯书店当代艺术机构, 武汉造实验工作室, 广州与北京维他命空, 英国三角基金会，中央美术学院， Waling Boers and Beatrice Leanza/BAO Atelier.

就在拐角 - Just Around the Corner

August 15 – November 11, 2009
将延期至2010年1月15日
EXTENDED UNTIL MID JANUARY 2010

Curated by Chen Shaoxiong and Pauline J. Yao

Participating artists:

Please note: Artists and artworks in the show will be on view in four different groupings, each lasting for approximately one month.

Just Around the Corner is a group exhibition that looks at the street and hutong environment as a site for artistic creation. Marking Arrow Factory’s first group exhibition, Just Around the Corner invites international and local artists to make new projects that interact, engage, embed themselves or otherwise respond to social conditions that persist within Arrow Factory’s storefront location. Extending beyond the four walls of Arrow Factory’s space to engage more directly with the outdoor street and neighboring businesses and residents, these works wish to promote a seamless relationship with the local economies and micro-environments of hutong life.

In Beijing, a hutong is not only a corridor that runs between houses or even an alleyway that extends in all directions from the major arteries of the city; it is also the city’s sensitive nerve endings. It is where old men chat and women gossip—just like today’s internet—and where an important node of communication that transcends mainstream discourse takes root. Different kinds of businesses selling stuffed buns, pancakes, fruits, vegetables, tobacco and drinks conduct sales among the same buyers and sellers, resembling a self-sufficient system or social network until an intruder enters in to the society and changes these transactions into a genuine form of commerce. Even though modern lifestyles and new inhabitants have invaded the hutong, modern visual culture has yet to incorporate the hutong and its residents into its own horizon. By the same token, hutong residents are nonchalant when it comes to contemporary art.

In taking the hutong as site for artistic production, this exhibition is also aimed at engaging strategies of looking and visibility, especially as they pertain to our understandings of consumption and exchange in daily life. The audience at Arrow Factory is made up of immediate neighbors and residents of Jianchang Hutong, namely local residents, merchants and random passersby. Unaccustomed to the modes of visual consumption we readily associate with contemporary art, they are regular users of the space and inhabitants whose daily practice is composed of less visually oriented types of consumption—buying vegetables, cigarettes, pancake bread, etc—that permeate everyday life. The art world views its audience as the museum director, curator, collector, art researcher and art student, gradually abandoning the general public and enforcing a high-minded view of art. But what does it mean for works of art to be seen, noticed, witnessed, and felt in contexts where the modalities of art merge with everyday human experience? Are there ways to approach a particular location, like Arrow Factory Hutong, as a site for examining the systems and structures of consumption that overlap with but remain fundamentally different than those of the ‘art system’? These are some of the ideas Just Around the Corner seeks to identify and pose through its own formation and realization.

International artist participation has been made possible through the support of several organizations and individuals: Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; Libreria Borges Institute of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou; Manufactura's Studio, Wuhan; Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou/Beijing; Triangle Arts Trust; the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA); Waling Boers and Beatrice Leanza/BAO Atelier.