Joseph Beuys in China

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986), one of the most influential artists after Marcel Duchamp, fused fervent social engagement with profound transcendental insight through his distinctive artistic language. He introduced such groundbreaking ideas as "Everyone is an artist" and "Social Sculpture." Merging the roles of social activist and cultural shaman, Beuys countered the overshadowing nihilism of his time with a belief in love and redemption. Through unrelenting passion, courage, and intellect, he turned many "impossible utopias" into tangible realities. Since the 1990s, his ideas and practice have profoundly shaped the course of Chinese contemporary art.

HOW Art Museum is among the first institutions in China to systematically collect, research, and promote the works of Joseph Beuys. In 2013, in collaboration with the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum, HOW Art Museum presented Beuys's first exhibition in China. The 2018 large-scale exhibition Letters du Voyant: Joseph Beuys × Nam June Paik was the first to jointly feature these two highly influential artists, bringing their deep intellectual and creative connection into public view. In 2019, the project Me & Beuys invited six Chinese contemporary artists to engage in in-depth dialogue with the museum's Beuys collection through socially engaged works. Since then, HOW Art Museum has continued to experiment with innovative curatorial approaches. The nationwide touring exhibition series Beuys in China (2023–2024), presented in Shenzhen, Wuhan, Chongqing, and Guangzhou, further extended Beuys's influence to broader audiences and regions. By the end of last year, the touring exhibitions had attracted over one million visitors, allowing Beuys's artistic ideas to take root in China as part of an ongoing social and cultural conversation.

Jointly curated by Du Xiyun and the HOW Art Museum curatorial team, this retrospective brings together twelve years of exhibition documentation, as well as rare works and archival materials by Beuys. Amid a world undergoing profound structural shifts and accelerating entropy, the exhibition reconsiders how Beuys, within his own historical and social context, activated and released the transformative power of art—and how that energy might be reclaimed in our time.