WSJ on learning from Hangzhou
Nov 4th, 2009 | By Chris | Category: Random Shanghai stuff...The Wall Street journal has covered 38-year-old American artist-curator Mathieu Borysevicz’s new book. Link here.
Mr. Borysevicz’s project began in 2003 when he was bicycling around Hangzhou to scout locations to install his own billboard art. Mr. Borysevicz peddled past the idyllic scenes that inspired Marco Polo and instead spotted a strip of hardware stores so plastered with Chinese characters that he felt the buildings served no purpose other than propping up the signage.
“There were buildings that were signs and signs that were buildings,” he writes in one of the essays that accompany photos.
In Hangzhou, Mr. Borysevicz sensed parallels with a landmark 1972 research and book project by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown called “Learning From Las Vegas.”. The earlier study explored the merger of commercial and pop culture in another freewheeling tourist city.
In a brief preface to Mr. Borysevicz’s book, Mr. Venturi and Ms. Brown write: “So move over Las Vegas and Viva Hangzhou!”
