UCCA Center for Contemporary Art
Beijing / Director: Philip Tinari
About
Founded in 2007, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art is China’s leading contemporary art institution. Located at the heart of Beijing’s 798 Art District, it occupies a series of repurposed Bauhaus-style factory chambers. Under the leadership of Philip Tinari, UCCA has evolved into a multi-city institution, serving as a critical gateway for global artistic exchange and bringing China into a global dialogue through a rigorous program of exhibitions and research-driven initiatives.
Current Program
Duan Jianyu
30.04.2026 — 30.08.2026 UCCA Center for Contemporary Art presents “Duan Jianyu: Daisies, a Light Breeze, No Relatives Writing Poems” from May 1 to August 30, 2026. Over nearly three decades of artistic practice, Duan Jianyu has cultivated a painterly language that is whimsically absurd and edged in quiet acuity. Her work brings together diverse cultural references and vivid textures of lived realities, continually opening up new possibilities for painting in dialogue with contemporary life. This exhibition offers a systematic survey of the artist’s work over the past decade, tracing her sustained exploration of contemporary painting across different dimensions including pictorial expression, creative methods, modes of perception, and historical consciousness.
Carsten Höller
2026.7.4 - 2027.1.31 Holding a doctorate in agricultural science, Carsten Höller often approaches art from the mindset of a scientist, turning the exhibition hall into what he terms a “Laboratory of Doubt.” Blending methodical investigation with playful and at times unsettling interventions, he encourages audiences to question how they see the world, themselves, and others. His works frequently generate surprise, laughter, or even dizziness—through slides that spiral through galleries, goggles that flip visual orientation, or settings that manipulate light, sound, and scale. These encounters destabilize habitual ways of perceiving, opening space for reflection on behavior, consciousness, and the precarious line between belief and uncertainty.
As Höller shifted his focus to art in the early 1990s, he quickly crossed paths with contemporaries who were likewise experimenting around the intersections of art, space, and social experience. This approach that would later be described as “Relational Aesthetics,” underscoring an emphasis on exchange and context. Over the past thirty years, Höller has examined how games, amusement park devices, and everyday technologies can be reconfigured to provoke unfamiliar modes of perception. Many of his installations shape collective environments, urging participants to reconsider their own positions within them. His scientific training also resurfaces in works involving plants and animals, whose forms and colors he distorts or amplifies, prompting new perspectives on humanity’s relationship with other species.
At UCCA, Höller will present a constellation of his signature works together with new projects created specifically for Beijing. Conceived as a series of evolving experimental encounters, the exhibition will plunge visitors into shifting perceptual states, encouraging them to experience time, space, and social relations in unexpected and transformative ways. This exhibition is curated by Philip Tinari.
30.04.2026 — 30.08.2026 UCCA Center for Contemporary Art presents “Duan Jianyu: Daisies, a Light Breeze, No Relatives Writing Poems” from May 1 to August 30, 2026. Over nearly three decades of artistic practice, Duan Jianyu has cultivated a painterly language that is whimsically absurd and edged in quiet acuity. Her work brings together diverse cultural references and vivid textures of lived realities, continually opening up new possibilities for painting in dialogue with contemporary life. This exhibition offers a systematic survey of the artist’s work over the past decade, tracing her sustained exploration of contemporary painting across different dimensions including pictorial expression, creative methods, modes of perception, and historical consciousness.
Carsten Höller
2026.7.4 - 2027.1.31 Holding a doctorate in agricultural science, Carsten Höller often approaches art from the mindset of a scientist, turning the exhibition hall into what he terms a “Laboratory of Doubt.” Blending methodical investigation with playful and at times unsettling interventions, he encourages audiences to question how they see the world, themselves, and others. His works frequently generate surprise, laughter, or even dizziness—through slides that spiral through galleries, goggles that flip visual orientation, or settings that manipulate light, sound, and scale. These encounters destabilize habitual ways of perceiving, opening space for reflection on behavior, consciousness, and the precarious line between belief and uncertainty.
As Höller shifted his focus to art in the early 1990s, he quickly crossed paths with contemporaries who were likewise experimenting around the intersections of art, space, and social experience. This approach that would later be described as “Relational Aesthetics,” underscoring an emphasis on exchange and context. Over the past thirty years, Höller has examined how games, amusement park devices, and everyday technologies can be reconfigured to provoke unfamiliar modes of perception. Many of his installations shape collective environments, urging participants to reconsider their own positions within them. His scientific training also resurfaces in works involving plants and animals, whose forms and colors he distorts or amplifies, prompting new perspectives on humanity’s relationship with other species.
At UCCA, Höller will present a constellation of his signature works together with new projects created specifically for Beijing. Conceived as a series of evolving experimental encounters, the exhibition will plunge visitors into shifting perceptual states, encouraging them to experience time, space, and social relations in unexpected and transformative ways. This exhibition is curated by Philip Tinari.
Location
798 Art District, No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing
Tuesday — Sunday: 10:00 – 19:00
Final Entry: 18:30 | Closed Monday
Tuesday — Sunday: 10:00 – 19:00
Final Entry: 18:30 | Closed Monday