COURTESY XU ZHEN®
Two years after SHANGHART SUPERMARKET was first exhibited, Xu Zhen decided to subsume his own identity within an art-making company called MadeIn Company. Four years later, in 2013, he went one step further in blurring the boundaries between art and commercial production, launching the XU ZHEN® brand under MadeIn Company, thereby branding himself as a product of his own corporation.
Setting Up XU ZHEN SUPERMARKET in Shanghai
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In 2016, he returned to the concept of the shopping emporium with XUZHEN SUPERMARKET, which he credited to the XU ZHEN® brand. Authored by a brand and not a person, the work serves as an idiosyncratic 21st-century self-portrait: one that exemplifies Xu Zhen’s radical creative strategies and which encapsulates the genius of one of the most important conceptual artists operating in the world today.
In XUZHEN SUPERMARKET, shelves are stocked with familiar products, from familiar Western offerings like Colgate toothpaste to bottles of Kweichow Moutai, the popular Chinese liquor. Closer inspection, however, reveals the store as devoid of any actual products, and instead offering the empty packaging alone. These false offerings proposition viewers to make a purchase, merging art and daily life.
XUZHEN SUPERMARKET will be open for exhibition and public participation in Hong Kong from 28 September to 3rd October. The work will become the first concept ever offered at auction in Asia when it arrives at the auction block at Sotheby’s Hong Kong on 30 September. XUZHEN SUPERMARKET will be offered with an estimate of HK$900,000–1,500,000 ($115,000–192,000).
