Urban China: Informal Cities January 25, 2011

For the past six years Urban China has been engaged in a unique multidisciplinary inquiry into the rapid state of change in China, presented in the format of a magazine devoted to issues of urbanism published in and about China. Under the guidance of its visionary Editor-in-Chief, Jiang Jun, its photographs, texts, and diagrams, as well as a growing archive of artifacts and images have become a repository of knowledge about the fastest process of urbanization ever recorded in human history. The exhibition brings together a retrospective of the magazine combined with a space transformed into a physical manifestation of its pages, as if exploded into three-dimensions. The installation charts networks of influences upon urbanism such as politics, economic growth, governmental policy and planning, and how these translate to citizens' often spontaneous and informal decisions and the impact this has upon cities. 'Urban China: Informal Cities' is part of the Three M Project, a series organized by the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, to commission, organize, and copresent new works of art.