CURA.

At the core of Max Hooper Schneider’s (b. 1982, Los Angeles) multifaceted practice are habitats of abandoned, human-free environments and collapsed ecosystems. The protagonists in Hooper Schneider’s fictive scenarios are not limited to organic entities such as marine life and copper electroplated plants, but also include inert gases, uranium, margarine, and borax. Far from the static display often staged at art museums, these works mobilize active, unstable materials that are constantly becoming and transforming through mutual affective interactions, sometimes even undergoing dramatic self-destruction. They speak to the artist’s understanding of nature as a sustained, continuous process of morphogenesis—a process in which humans are not transcendent beings, but merely one form of nature naturing that is, in essence, no different from a starfish, a telephone, thoughts, and viruses. All matters are mutually transformative through their coexistence in the same spatio-temporal site, as the boundary between matters is never absolute; everything permeates everything else.

Each gallery in this exhibition showcases a specific method of the artist’s material innovation: self-sustained ecosystems activated in glass capsules, a series of margarine sculptures that imagine post-human landscapes, an aquarium of fortunes that evokes metaphors of microplastics, strange electroplated copper bonsai assemblages growing out of milky tidepools, and antique microscopes entombed by boraxcrystals. Together, the works depict spectacles under extreme conditions as if in an epic post-human saga. Beyond their profound material connections, these works also labor at multiple registers that attempt to blur and disrupt binary oppositions between life and death, growth and decay, natural and artificial, toxicity and nourishment. Oscillating and shapeshifting in a liminal state, these elements reveal unknown discursive and material potentials as they invite viewers to abandon existing notions of morality and mortality, and to reflect across longer geological timescales. The works embody both ecological trauma and marvel, and the tension between the two animates the core of the exhibition.

“Max Hooper Schneider: Carnival of Gestation” presents six new commissions for the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition in China. This exhibition is curated by UCCA Curator Luan Shixuan. Exclusive wall solutions support is provided by Dulux, and Genelec contributed exclusive audio equipment and technical support. UCCA thanks the members of UCCA Foundation Council, International Circle, and Young Associates, as well as Lead Partner Aranya, Lead Art Book Partner DIOR, Presenting Partners Bloomberg, and Yinyi Biotech, and Supporting Partners AIA, Barco, Dulux, Genelec, and Stey.