Duration: 2013-04-11 -- 2013-04-30
Location: 3/F,Building No.1&De cafe

In his many years' art practice and academic research, Pan Gongkai continuously challenges the borders of art and his personal capacity in the contained and low profile of a traditional intellectual. The exhibition Dispersion and Generation is a comprehensive summary of Pan's achievements and works in several quite differentiated fields in recent years. These include Chinese ink and wash painting, research on the modernity of the history of Chinese fine art, the research of contemporary western art theory, the creation of conceptual works and contemporary architectural works and so on. Pan believes that "although culture demonstrates the trend of deconstruction, fragmentation, homogenization, collage mixed and flat existence in the times of globalization nowadays, it still has the hope of generating a new structure and system." At the occasion of this exhibition, Today Art Museum and Pan Gongkai invite a number of honored guests to several symposiums covering topics of many field and discussing a series of issues based on the interact of design, art, architecture and key questions of contemporary art.
　　
Dispersion is a basic concept of modern thermodynamics. It is a description of the flow of heat energy within a closed space. The principle No. 2 of thermodynamics stipulates that heat energy always flows from warmer spot to colder ones. The process is irreversible and leads to the increase of entropy. Within a closed space, where a difference of heat energy levels exists, heat energy tends to spread equally to reach the highest entropy status. And then there is no longer flow of heat energy. This is the process of dispersion.
　　
In his study of the global movement and influence of 20th century culture and art, Pan Gongkai found that the flow of cultural energy follows the principle of dispersion as well. Cultural influence spreads from regions of higher cultural potential energy to ones of lower energy. Such tendency has long appeared in Romanization of ancient Greek art. The advanced information network accelerated such dispersion of culture in the 20th century. As globalization furthers its steps, culture and art disperse rapidly from the central area (in the west) to the peripheral regions, bringing expansion of visual culture and systematic knowledge to every end of the world. In this process, streams of thoughts that were diachronic turn to co-existence of multiple synchronic factors. The accumulation of systematic knowledge further melts and mixes to form the dispersing global landscape of new culture and art, which shows the characteristics of being fragmentized, collage mixed, flattened and popularized.
　　
Cultural dispersion is a positive phenomenon that is inevitable, and unnecessary to avoid, in the context of globalization. It brings the modernization of world culture. All mankind benefits undoubtedly from it. But if we look at it from a larger scale of time and space, the constant seek and construction of certain fusion and negentropy in opposition to the dispersion and high entropy is necessary balancing and complementation.
　　
How new culture and art generate in the cultural context of dispersion is a starting point of Pan Gongkai's art practice and thoughts. The overwhelming power of dispersion makes generation difficult. It makes generation a goal worth pursuing for all the artists that have global vision.

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