Running until 20 October 2024, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art presents Lawrence Weiner: A PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS ASAP, the first major presentation in China of renowned American artist Lawrence Weiner (1942–2021). Curated by Peter Eleey, UCCA Curator-at-Large, in close collaboration with the artist’s estate, A PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS ASAP brings Weiner’s groundbreaking work back to UCCA seventeen years after TO ALLOW THE LIGHT was commissioned by the museum in 2007.

Lawrence Weiner: A PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS ASAP showcases nearly fifty language-based works that span the entirety of the artist’s career, drawn from the almost 1200 that he created over more than half a century. Selected drawings, posters, and moving images provide additional context for viewers, whom Weiner called “receivers” of his work. Each piece finds expression in specific spaces of UCCA’s Great Hall, allowing subjective reflection depending on circumstances, relationships, setting, and presentation.

Weiner designed and installed his work in a variety of ways over the years, refining it gradually through three primary fonts and a limited color palette. For this exhibition, care has been taken both with translation and design, employing Chinese fonts and graphic approaches similar to those Weiner preferred. While Chinese and English are typically juxtaposed or commingled—as the artist often did when working in multiple languages—some works are installed in only one language. Certain pieces are realized as the “material referred to” and others employ older expressions of particular works that involved hand painting or stencils, demonstrating the wide range of forms that Weiner’s art can assume.