Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year - LuYang. DOKU Experience Center

From 14 September to 22 October 2023, MUDEC in Milan presents together with Deutsche Bank and in collaboration with 24 ORE Cultura the DOKU Experience Center exhibition by artist LuYang, who won the Bank’s prestigious international “Artist of the Year” award for contemporary art in 2022, now in its eleventh edition.
The exhibition is curated by Britta Färber, Global Head of Art & Culture at Deutsche Bank.
 
After the opening at the PalaisPopulaire in Berlin, the “Artist of the Year” returns to Milan at the MUDEC carrying on the important collaboration started last year, with the intention of presenting to the Italian public some of the most interesting artists on the international scene, who stand out for their creativity and the significant value of their work. This second appointment with the Deutsche Bank award confirms the commitment of the MUDEC and 24 ORE Cultura to contemporary languages and themes, consisting of an international artistic and cultural programme, accompanied by in-depth collateral events, including themed guided tours, educational workshops, artist talks and meetings.
 
Committed to the promotion of contemporary art for more than 40 years, since 2010 Deutsche Bank has awarded this annual prize to emerging artists working primarily with paper or photography, the preferred medium of the works that make up the Deutsche Bank Collection, which was established in the mid-1970s and is now one of the most important corporate collections internationally. The winner of the 'Artist of the Year' - whose work must always be of social and artistic relevance and must develop new perspectives on the present - is chosen on the recommendation of the Bank's Global Art Advisory Council, consisting of internationally renowned curators such as Victoria Noorthoorn, Hou Hanru and Udo Kittelmann. Instead of awarding a cash prize, Deutsche Bank supports its Artists of the Year by helping to introduce them to the general public, producing a solo exhibition and catalogue, and purchasing some of their works for the collection. Since 2018, the artists’ solo exhibitions have opened at PalaisPopulaire, Deutsche Bank's space in Berlin dedicated to art and culture, and are subsequently presented at other international institutions.
Unlike last year - when three names were exceptionally selected for the tenth anniversary of the award - for this eleventh edition, the space at Mudec Photo is entirely dedicated to LuYang and his DOKU Experience Centre project.

One of the most interesting young contemporary Asian artists, LuYang draws inspiration from science fiction, manga, video games and techno culture, exploring hypermodern technologies and content relating to post-humanism and trans-humanism. His reflection blurs the distinctions between the real and digital form of the body and finds expression above all in dance, a recurring theme in his practice.
 
The DOKU Experience Centre exhibition is entirely dedicated to these themes and, in particular, to the virtual reincarnation of the artist - or Dokusho Dokushi, or DOKU for short - into a gender-neutral avatar, a hyper-realistic figure the face of which is modelled on the artist's face but can take on different guises.
The exhibition thus brings together and for the first time the six different avatars created by LuYang – Human, Heaven, Asura, Animal, Hungry Ghost, Hell – embodying the six kingdoms of rebirth of Samsara, the karmic wheel of life symbolising the eternal cycle of birth, death and reincarnation.
 
Among the works in the exhibition, DOKU the Self - the first narrative film dedicated to avatars that premiered at the Venice Biennale last year - is a sort of radical visual meditation: through stunning images we can see how DOKU lives and dies in each of these Buddhist worlds, radically freeing itself from the concept of self and body. The exhibition also features the specially conceived DOKU the Matrix music video and the new series Bardo #1, which shows DOKU with its respective attributes in round mandala compositions.

Engaging, philosophical, and sometimes disturbing, DOKU Experience Centre introduces us to a way of thinking shaped by new technologies that is both ancient and spiritual: a sensory-expanding experience that radically questions concepts such as cultural identity, the body and gender, but also the common perception of reality, with the intention of trespassing and crossing the boundary between digital and real.
 
LuYang studied at the China Academy of Arts in Hangzhou and lives and works between Shanghai and Tokyo. Since 2015, LuYang has participated in numerous group exhibitions worldwide, including the 59th Venice Biennale, with The Milk of Dreams. The artist has held solo exhibitions in Beijing (China), Moscow (Russia), Aarhus (Denmark), London (UK), Erlangen and Berlin (Germany), Basel (Switzerland) and Hong Kong (China). In 2019, LuYang received the BMW Art Journey.
 
After Wangechi Mutu (2010), Yto Barrada (2011), Roman Ondàk (2012), Imran Qureshi (2013), Victor Man (2014), Koki Tanaka (2015), Basim Magdy (2016), Kemang Wa Lehulere (2017), Caline Aoun (2018-2019), Maxwell Alexandre, Conny Maier and Zhang Xu Zhan (2020 - 2021) and Lu Yang (2022), the 2023 “Artist of the Year” is La Chola Poblete. 

Vai alla guida d'arte di Milan