On Friday, Saturday, & Sunday, December 4-6, 2009, 12-5 PM, the Apogee Penthouse-A, located on 800 South Pointe Drive, Miami Beach will hold “Chimerica,” an event that describes the combination of the Chinese and American economies as a hybrid of mass global exportation and consumption.

Coined by Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick, the exhibition will include a centerpiece by Yin Xiuzhen, one of a series of suitcases she created from found objects including old clothes. “People in our contemporary setting have moved from residing in a static environment to becoming souls in a constantly shifting transience. The suitcase becomes the life support container of modern living, and the holder of the continuous construction of human identity, ” says Xiezhen. She is considered one of the most influential female artists in the Chinese Contemporary Art Movement.  Among her many installations, her work has been exhibited at the Centre George Pompidou, Paris, France (2003), 26th Sao Paolo Biennial, Brazil (2004), Today Art Museum, Beijing (2005), 52nd Venice Biennale, Pavillion of the Peoples Republic of China (2007), and she will have an upcoming installation at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in February 2010.

Triangulating Yin’s fabric-based suitcase are two American works, one by Andy Warhol (Souper Dress (1960-69) with the iconic Campbell’s soup logo) that will  be silkscreened on cellulose and cotton fabric, and  Sam Gilliam’s innovative and best-known works, such as the draped or suspended painting (without the restriction of wooden stretchers) that was a major development in the 1960’s.  Echoing the draped fabric in Xiezhen’s portable city are a pair of Gilliam’s vibrant and colorful pieces suspended from the 20-foot ceiling of the Apogee Penthouse Great Room.

Yichang is an ancient city whose history can be traced back for 4,000 year, and is the location of the Three Gorges Dam Project on the northern bank of the Yangtze River, the largest construction project in China since the Great Wall.  Included in the exhibition is an Untitled work by Liu Xiaodong, one of China’s most important Social Realist painters, that contrasts traditional Chinese commerce with cement trucks and traffic accidents of China’s more recent development boom.

Chimerica is produced contemporaneously with the thirty year anniversary of the Chinese Contemporary Art Movement (1979-2009) and presents works by other Chinese Contemporary Artists including Cui Xiuwen, Hai Bo, Li Shan, Liu Ye, Lu Peng, Qiu Xiao Fei, Qin Feng, Ren Hong, Wang Guangyi, Wang Qingsong, Zhang Dali, and Zhang Huan; and American Contemporary Artists: Henry Richardson, Alberto Senior, Mark T. Smith, and Irene Sperber.

Pictured above:  Works by Andy Warhol, Sam Gilliam, Yin Xiuzhen, & Liu Xiaodong