Pal(ate)/ette
SGA Three on the Bund, 3F, No.3, Zhong Shan Dong Yi Road, Shanghai
2019.9.20 - 2019.10.31
100 Objects, 69 Artists, 7 Floors, 2 Sensations
a nrm. curatorial project
“No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me.”
Have you eaten?
For SGA’s re-opening and re-launch, for the first time in the history of Three on the Bund, a major exhibition will take place throughout the whole building – Pal(ate)/ette/.
From September 20th – October 31st, over 100 objects by 69 artists will be displayed in a salon-style exhibition within SGA and peppered throughout Three on the Bund`s restaurants and bars, in dialogue with the exhibits and their surroundings.
The exhibition also marks the debut of nrm`s curatorial project as Artistic Director of the new SGA.
Pal(ate)/ette/ will show artworks throughout Three on the Bund with the exhibition`s core display in SGA. Curated by nrm, Pal(ate)/ette/ reflects the spectrum of associations of the homonyms Palate and Palette; a synthesis of the senses – taste sight hearing smell and touch – and presenting Three on the Bund as a cultural whole.
The exhibition title relates to two homophones. While 'Palate' refers to the ability to distinguish between and appreciate different flavours related to food as well as relishing its taste, 'Palette' denotes a broad range of colours or simply the board upon which artists mix pigments. Both symbolise the most significant motif in Pal(ate)/ette/, both as metaphor and experience.
Pal(ate)/ette/ involves two distinct but intertwined worlds, those of taste and color. These worlds interact to create relations between the artists, artworks, and the halls and salons of Three on the Bund, and Shanghai itself. The exhibition explores the richness of aesthetics and materiality in colouration and the sensuousness of food and its ingredients, as medium, subject matter, in its devouring, and as communicative and social habits, experiences for which Three on the Bund is famous. The exhibition is a sumptuous journey that delights us into imagining anew the limitless ways to plunge into uncanny and alluring experiences that tease our senses of sight, smell and space, immersive experiences, encompassing and meditative. This fluidity brings the artworks to resonate with each other, adding to and ultimately enriching one another.
Pal(ate)/ette/
Pal(ate)/ette/ finally is a journey through synesthesia. Colour and taste are always elements of the experience of art and food, affecting the sensations of the person moving in and through the show as much as ordinary life. Pal(ate)/ette/ embodies this.
Wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, in corners and cabinets, Pal(ate)/ette/ does not merely serve the cause of art, food and drink. It is a social organ with a life of its own, a meandering walk through Three on the Bund, its history, restaurants, and its gallery, to stimulate and engage a wide range of artgoers, eaters, drinkers and conversationalists, cultivating awareness from an amalgam of expressive invention and poetic association, memory and madeleine.
SGA – an open platform for contemporary art and culture
SGA is a new model for art production and exhibition. Working with local and international partners, SGA instigates, develops and realizes cross-cultural projects for contemporary art with leading artists, institutions and international private galleries.
An open platform for exhibitions, collaborations and curatorial projects, SGA is an agent of expanding engagement between art and the wider public, connecting and contextualizing the art of greater China and Southeast Asia with the wider international art worlds. Our objective is to decompartmentalize the art world through situating local understanding within global conversations.
To drive this new direction, nrm have been appointed Artistic Director of SGA. Led by Josef Ng, Andrew Ruff and Christopher Moore, nrm brings over 3 decades of combined experience in art curating, collecting and publishing in Asia.