On December 21, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) released its 2016 exhibition schedule while giving an overview of operations in 2015. In 2015, UCCA welcomed 800000 visitors. While presenting an overview of the thirteen exhibitions mounted in 2015, UCCA’s director, Philip Tinari, revealed that Liu Wei’s “Colors”, William Kentridge’s “Notes Towards a Model Opera”, and David Diao’s retrospective earned the most enthusiastic responses from the public. In addition, shows that will travel include Michael Chow’s exhibition (due to hit the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh soon), Zhao Gang’s solo exhibition “The Road to Serfdom”, and “The Chinese Photobook”, which presented twentieth-century Chinese history via individual artistic positions and experiences. 2015 also saw the second installment of the Secret Timezones Trilogy—a UCCA series focusing on artists in Asia, as well as installments of the “New Directions” exhibition series focusing on up-and-coming artists. In 2016, “New Directions” will continue with shows from Hao Jingban, Nadim Abbas, and Wang Haiyang.

UCCA’s first large exhibition in 2016 will be “The Well Fair”, featuring the Northern European art duo Elmgreen & Dragset. Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset will arrange their works to resemble the spatial structure of an art fair. Previously, the duo’s museum shows have taken the form of a failed architect’s apartment (“Tomorrow”, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2013) and a generic airport terminal (“Aéroport Mille Plateaux”, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, 2015).

Following this, UCCA will present “The 1/4 Mile or Two Furlong Piece”, a 450-meter long composition by Robert Rauschenberg, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Rauschenberg worked on the piece from 1981 to 1998; the piece has only been exhibited four times previously, and has not been shown since 1999 at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Due to Rauschenberg’s pivotal role in the initial development of contemporary art in China, the exhibition will be supplemented with photographs, documents, and literature tracing the artist’s China exhibitions, his influence on Chinese art, and the trajectory of his artistic career.

UCCA’s Great Hall will also be playing host to a Zeng Fanzhi solo exhibition. According to Tinari, this will be the artist’s largest and most comprehensive showing in China to date. Other exhibitions to be put up in the coming year include the following: Peter Wayne Lewis & Frederick J. Brown, “Trace of Existence”, “Wang Yin: Gift”, a John Gerrard solo exhibition, “Accommodating Reform” (an exhibition tracing the development and evolution of international hotel architecture in Reform-era China), and Hao Liang’s “Eight Views of Xiaoxiang”. UCCA will be publishing a catalogue of its 2015 exhibitions to be released during Art Basel Hong Kong 2016.