Artist Statement:

There is distance from A to B.

From turning on the switch to the light going on is a distance. Electricity arrives in its own speed. This notion of speed captivates me and there is a beautiful sensation in it.

I arrive in my own speed from scratch line to end point.

What is the connection between these speeds?

I attempt through my own speed to feel and catch the speed of electricity. I don’t compete with electricity but I try to find an intersection between my speed and the speed of electricity.

The following are images from Hu Qiangxian’s performance at Shanghai’s Rockbund Museum of Art on August 6th, a part of the “Taking the Stage Over” series, curated by Biljana Ciric. All photos are courtesy of the curator, to read more about the year-long series, check here.

It’s clear, the light illuminates even before he has taken his first step. The action of so ferociously attempting this futile race against electricity exhibits a strength that seems increasingly admirable in our age of apocalyptic fear-mongering.

It seems to be the epitome of what I find fascinating about Guangzhou artists in comparison to Beijing artists. Painter and intellectual Chen Tong, founder of Libreria Borges, calls it the “acte gratuite” (无动机）after Duchamp, and in her article “Accidental Conceptualism,”  (e-flux) independent curator Carol Yinghua Lu uses a similar tone to discuss Hu Xiangqian’s controversial work, The Sun (2008), in which the artist tans himself over a consecutive two months, stopping at ”the point at which he became a black-skinned man.”

While the art world mourns the detention of one major artist, there seems to be only time enough for distraction. Following their opening at Long March last week, here are some photos of Madein’s corporate headquarters in Shanghai, I hope to follow soon with more on the Physique of Consciousness show, this is just a small primer to say, you have been warned.

[Looks as if the MadeIn staffers are putting in some long days.]

[Where MadeIn’s felt objects are realized… a crafter’s dream.]

[Piecing together large, tactile collages from a print-out image.]

[”What is the most common site in this nation? Temporary difficulties. What is advantageous about this nation’s institutions? Successfully overcoming difficulties that wouldn’t exist in other social institutions.” Oil on canvas.]

[Small editions of felt creations on sale; this little guy was not priced at $1.]

[Another US dollar makes a cameo, a ‘Dead President’s Coupon,’ MadeIn style.]

8th Shanghai Biennale [from February 2011 Artforum]

The Shanghai Biennale is charged with a significant task: to harmonize the expectations of professional and international audiences with the tastes of a broader local public, all while conforming to Ministry of Culture’s requirements. By the time its eighth incarnation opened last year, the biennial had a reputation as China’s most significant international art show, the most important benchmark for China’s role in the global art-cultural sphere. This prominence was reflected last year in a new opening date, in October, that intentionally distanced the biennial from the commercial influence of the city’s art fair. This incarnation of the event bypassed “foreign” curators; it was curated instead by a team led by Gao Shiming, a young theoretician at the China Academy of Art and a cocurator of “Say Farewell to Post-Colonialism,” the final Guangzhou Triennial (the event is now defunct), in 2008. Gao’s thesis for the show was based on Brechtian notions of theatricality and the idea of the exhibition as a site of cultural production, facilitating multiple possibilities, with the ultimate aim of confronting the discursive dominance of global capitalism. The presiding metaphor of “rehearsal” lent the biennial its title.

The strongest feature of “Rehearsal” was, in fact, its theoretical basis—Gao’s earnest attempt to establish new ideas uniquely situated in an ascendant Asia. Also of interest were the preliminary events that took place across geographic-temporal boundaries, including installments in Vietnam and New York (via Performa) and projects with Indian artists and social thinkers as well as the Croatian curatorial collective WHW. The schizophrenic main exhibition at the Shanghai Art Museum was arguably the Achilles’ heel of the biennial; here, the clarity of Gao’s curatorial strategy was diluted by incongruent inclusions that can only be explained as results of coexisting agendas less noble than his attempt to advance Chinese art theory in the international sphere.

The exhibition was divided into four “acts.” Act 1, the Ho Chi Minh Trail project, was treated like a star-studded miniseries within the biennial: It involved several artists—among them MadeIn Company (represented by their “CEO,” Xu Zhen), Wu Shanzhuan, Chen Chieh-jen, and Wang Jianwei—walking the historic trail with Gao, discussing theory and collectively examining their own artistic practice in daily struggle sessions. The group of artists presented their artistic-intellectual output in Beijing’s Long March Space last September, and they were allotted the entire first floor in Shanghai, where they showed new works, made for this show, spread across the floor; the surrounding walls were hung with blown-up slogans such as we have yet to thoroughly examine the essence of action and taking on the burden of history is not an act of retracing historical memory, but a restless attempt to position the present in history. Prominent among these works, MadeIn’s forest of found images transferred onto canvas and displayed on wooden pickets made the most sense for me when I spied a visitor smiling for a head shot in front of a canvas painted with a pile of US dollars. Elsewhere, the sprawling polyhedronic wooden armatures of Liu Wei’s Merely a Mistake II, 2010, continued the artist’s formalist aesthetic, although a more striking prequel had previously been installed at the Long March Space.

Raqs Media Collective’s Fragments from a Communist Latento, 2010, neatly encapsulated this biennial’s impotent thrust: In this work, light boxes showing fragmented statements, as an antonym to the manifesto, were displayed in tandem with texts and diagrams contributed by Chinese intellectuals and artists (along with an introduction by Gao), the most fascinating of which was a contribution from Chan Koonchung, the author of the 2009 dystopian science-fiction novel Shengshi: Zhongguo 2013 (The Prosperous Time: China 2013). It begins: “Irony with Chinese characteristics—not only could contemporary art play safe by playing ‘revolutionary,’ it could also conveniently become a public relations ally to the official ideology.” His remains the keenest critical observation on “Rehearsal” in any language so far, and it hung in plain view amid the curatorial imbroglio, in English only.
—Lee Ambrozy

On March 20, the Minsheng Art Museum in Shanghai threw open its doors on Liu Wei’s solo show, “Trilogy” 《三部曲：刘韡个展》. Who said there were no local art museums? Although I couldn’t make it for the show, and I can’t offer any critical analysis or interesting commentary, I decided, considering the popularity of previous posts on his works, to post the press images that arrived in my inbox. Here’s a link to a (very poorly translated) English press release. Qu’ils mangent de la brioche! 

The above installation, “Merely a Mistake” 《仅仅是个错误》gets the gold star prize from me, find the rest of the images  after the jump. (more…)

The above artwork, taken from Zhou Yi’s blog (that is “Yi” pronounced like hard “e”) seems to encapsulate many central and interlocking themes in my life right now.

In Zhou Yi’s “Brush Diary November” above (first page only, complete version here), “Lao Ai” maintains his likely pose, tweeting from his computer terminal, holding watch at the very spot where he sits for hours every day. Zhou Yi worked as his assistant until he left last year to work on his solo show.

On Lao Ai’s writings in cyberspace, at long last, his book will be out soon. Find more details on the publisher’s site, and see clips of the anticipated documentary on the man here: “Never Sorry“.

These days, also working on analysis of a recent show that Zhou Yi also participated in, called “Will You Miss Me When I Burn“. This originally brought me to his blog. I have previously mentioned his work on artforum.com, as one of my favorite shows in 2010. A brief discussion of his solo show, “We are all wooden people” can be found in their archive here.

An interview with Zhou Yi on his recent book on Josef Albers’ color theory was also just posted on artforum.com.cn, (Chinese). The book is the first of its kind in Chinese, and he is actually the result of his teaching a unique color-theory class at CAFA.

In June last year, Long March mounted a solo exhibition for MadeIn Co., integral to which was a bit of media trickery. Its been a long time, but I thought it worth to write about here. The show was an interesting ruse best appreciated from within the local art machine.

The press release went out to press folk and mailing lists around the world, its photograph included what looked like a mud statue of Neanderthals mimicking the soviet realist frieze statues that sit outside the Mao mausoleum. It was photographed in a generic art space, with white, lofty ceilings. The image leads you to believe that there will be similarly shocking works, making similarly straightforward statements, on display.      (Press release below)

When you walk into the hall, however, instead of epic sculptures, large photographic print images line the wall. The sculpture that expected, is missing, save of its “reproduced” image on the wall.

There are roughly three groups of images, the first look like digital paintings, in a frenetic aesthetic style similar to MadeIn’s fabric collages. A second type creates a double illusion in which classical Western sculptures appear to be sinking into an unstable ground, their “marble” appearance appear almost fleshy by the way their genitals contour to the floor. The third type shows improbable freestanding sculptures, “photographed” in generic, white spaces, and whose believability and existence seems to exist in a grey zone somewhere between the other two.  The classical sculptures hint at the cultural mutability of fine arts traditions, the digital paintings invoke the “cheapness” and easily reproducibility of digitized images in a globalized anonymity. The trick with the images is, they are photographs of what purports to be an acrylic painting. (Effects not visible via digital photos.)

《团结化是一个减损的过程多于增益的过程，“忠诚信徒”永远不会觉得完整，永远不会觉得安全。》系列作品4, Solidarity is more a process of loss than a process of gain, “faithful believers” will never feel complete, never feel safe. Series #4, 绘画，布面丙烯，painting, acrylic on canvas, 150*212cm

《一只花花绿绿的巨兽——平民。它不知道自己的力量，只知道绝对服从。》作品 2, A colorful beast––civilian. He doesn’t know his own power, he only knows absolute obedience. #2,  装置，大理石, installation, marble, 140*70*50cm。

These sculptures, according to the oral explanation delivered to me by the gallery, and who we assume complicit to the “work,” were all physically realized, photographed, but then destroyed. Not only do we become suspicious of the photographic “evidence”, somewhere between visual and cultural perceptions, one might further question reality, a theme of Xu Zhen’s work prominent since he cut off the top of Mt. Everest (sorry, Mt. Qomolangma) in 2005.
These images raise interesting questions on the simulacra, authenticity, national stereotypes, and more. I’m sorry that the images here cannot fully capture the meaning of the works, or their environment. Hopefully this short synopsis offers something.

Please note, all image captions, images, press release, are taken from press materials from the exhibition. A few of the image English translations are my own.
《诗是生活的表现，或则说得更好一点，诗就是生活本身。还不仅此，在诗里生活比在现实本身里还显得更是生活。》Poetry is the expression of life, or better put, life is poetry itself. Not only this, living in poetry seems better than reality. 装置，黑色大理石、旋转灯、早餐, installation, black marble, barber shop poles, sunny-side up eggs, 300*500*300cm。

《民主是我们的目标，但国家必须保持稳定》Democracy is our goal, but the country must remain stable，  装置，钢制弹簧、花岗岩，installation, spring steel & granite, 1000*500*500cm

《理论与实际越是矛盾的群众运动，就越是热衷把自己的信仰加诸别人。》In mass exercise, the greater the conflict between theory and reality, the stronger its eagerness to impose beliefs on others, 装置， 蜡、军帽，installation, wax & military caps, 300＊800＊300cm

Belated New Year to all, and apologies for the protracted absence. Lots of travel in the late months of last year, and busy updating artforum.com.cn leaves little time to blog. But hopefully, this spring will afford more time to post, more love from the archives. For now, despite the danger of blocking Sinopop behind the firewall, I’d like to wish sinopop readers a happy new year, 拜年拜年 with this, a most inspiring piece of contemporary folk art, door gods designed by Ai Weiwei’s FAKE office in Caochangdi.

Read about the door gods here, on the Epoch Times site. Truly auspicious protectors for 2011, (protection from censorship and littered with Grass Mudhorses and River Crabs) I’m glad that I hung mine on the inside of my door!

何谓“排演”？

第八届上海双年展的策展思考

第八届上海双年展策展团队

为什么排演？

在过去的两年中，全球资本遭遇了它的最新危机并又一次绝路逢生。与之相伴随的是，在两届双年展的间隙，当代艺术也陷入了一场全球性危机之中。这不是现代主义者那种创造性个体深处的精神危机，而是一种瘟疫般的世界性疲软，或者说，这是一种“系统病”——艺术体制的生产力远远大于个体的创造力，艺术家无法摆脱被艺术系统雇佣的感觉和“社会订件”的命运，到处是仿像和角色扮演。2010上海双年展将致力于追问：在当代艺术的政治经济学网络中，是什么在抑制着心灵的力量？是什么在阻挠解放的步伐？是艺术系统那只无所不在的“看不见的手”？还是国际艺术市场的“行情”？是千篇一律的国际大展？还是渗透到我们身体深处的大众文化？艺术家的个体正变得越来越健康而空洞，我们莫名其妙地进入一种“后历史”状态。如何来清晰地描述这种状态？在现行的由国际话语、国际大展、世界博览会以及跨国资本所构成的无限-无缝链接的艺术系统中，如何摆脱这种艺术创造之僵局？如何在这个被全球资本主义俘获的“艺术世界”中发现其内在边疆？在“体制批判”（Institutional critique）和“社会参与”（participation）之外，当代艺术实践是否能够开拓出一种新型的生产关系？

第八届上海双年展的主题词是“排演”，强调展览作为一种文化生产的实验性和开放性。“排演”是排布与推演。“巡回排演”是开放性的和流动性的，强调展览的策划情境和展开的过程，强调展览的创作与生产意识。在巡回排演中，展览空间不仅仅是艺术品的陈列场所，而且是生产性的、变化中的、反复试验的感性现场。正如布莱希特所指出：“排演者不希望去‘实现’一个思想。他的任务是唤起和组织他者的创造性。排演就是试验，就是发掘出此时此刻的多种可能性。排演者的任务是揭露一切模式化的、俗套的、习惯的解决方案”。今天，每个展览都呈现为剧场。展览的“剧场化”与奇观化甚至已经成为当代艺术领域的一个备受质疑的问题。对于双年展而言，“剧场”和“排演”不仅是一种展览效果，更是一种创作、展示和交流的方法。排演中的“剧场”首先是一群人，是一个知识共同体的构造，剧场中人在彼此合作与响应的关系中工作，在排演中，当代艺术创作的个体性被改造和修正，艺术家成为一个开放的主体，一个创作-交往中的“跨主体”。本届上海双年展将从剧场、排演的这种跨主体性出发，强调创作的群体互动性，推动当代艺术家集体现场的探索和呈现。同时，“巡回排演”以“双年展剧场”作为现场，旨在呈现当今艺术语言形态的综合性与实验性。近年来，现场、情境、叙事和社会参与逐渐成为当代艺术与视觉文化中的最前沿话题，本届双年展将以“巡回排演”的形式，争取在这一前沿领域有所推进，将双年展剧场打造成一个多领域、跨媒介的公共现场。

作为艺术与公众的交往空间，展览是超脱于日常生活世界的一块飞地，它坐落于日常之中，又超出日常领域，它的存在方式与剧场相类。就当代艺术而言，展览就是其剧场。展览不但是艺术对日常世界进行表述-再现的剧场，也是艺术界自身的代议剧场。同时，展览首先是艺术之自治领域。在这个自治领域中，艺术家成为立法者，这是现代主义留给我们的最珍贵的遗产。但是，为什么艺术家对展览既渴望又心怀疑虑？为什么艺术家对展览的依赖令我们忐忑不安？对艺术家尤其是装置和影像艺术家来说，展览正在成为创作的第一现场，艺术家的工作被展览绑架为一种机制化创作。最近十年以来，甚至机制批判也早已成为一种机制化创作的套路。更有甚者，展览这个艺术自治领域、这块公共领域中的飞地已经成为全球资本生产、展示和消费的集散地……

另一方面，如果艺术果真是一种“日常生活的实践”，那么，展览的必要性何在？

(more…)

The 8th Shanghai Biennale “Rehearsal” began in June 2010, and will include four acts. Act I, the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” was in cooperation with the Long March Project, and will be implemented in Beijing from June through September, 2010.”Rehearsal Act I” takes the the Long March Project’s ongoing Ho Chi Minh Trail as a case study to verify the idea of “cultural creation” and explore the significance of paradigm shifts from “creation” to “rehearsal.”

This rehearsal will serve as a platform for artworks and ideas in China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The rehearsal will also provide an opportunity to discuss the role of art and ideas in redefining the combination of “ego-history-society.” The Ho Chi Minh Trail includes stages of research (2008-2009), an educational forum (July 2009), field trips (June to July 2010), Rehearsal Act I (September to November 2010), the “theatre” (October 2010 to February 2011) and a later archive of knowledge. The “rehearsal” and “theatre” components will be included in the Shanghai Biennale 2010.

(the above was excerpted from an article by Gao Shiming, it will be included in the forthcoming “Art in China” magazine, published in co-operation with Contemporary Art & Investment and Iberia Center for Contemporary Art.

Wu Shanzhuan 吴山专

Madein 没顶公司

(more…)

 
The following essay will be printed in the catalog of the show “ZAOXING” an exhibition of artwork from the faculty of the CAFA School of Fine Arts. The exhibition is currently up at the CAFA Art Museum, and will be up until October 7th. Pan’s discussion of the inherited notion of the three-dimensional arts at CAFA gives a worthwhile and historical perspective on the subject from the perspective of inside the academy. Pan Gongkai is the president of the Central Academy, and vice-president of the Chinese Artists Association. He is an artist, historian and theoretician. Translation my own.     

The Significance of “Zaoxing”

The use of the term “zaoxing yishu” (the three-dimensional, modeling, or plastic arts) was at its height in artistic circles of the 1950s and 1960s, a result of the Soviet art academy’s influence. It encompasses primarily the mediums of oil painting, printmaking, sculpture and mural painting in the Western tradition, and has definition similar to “easel art.” However, over different eras and across different forums the concept eventually came to incorporate architecture; Chinese traditional mediums were later brought within its parameters. In the beginning of this new century, the Central Academy of Fine Arts is in the midst of another round of reframing the disciplines taught at the academy. We still use the phrase zaoxing to identify the oil painting, print-making, sculpture and mural painting departments, but making a distinction from Chinese painting, have established separate School of Fine Arts and the School of Traditional Chinese Painting, and adding an experimental art department to the traditional zaoxing arts concept. Thus, our concept of “fine arts” in the new millennium is closer to the Western notion of “pure arts.”

These Western mediums enjoy long histories and the achievements made in each respective tradition are rich and generous, they are mankind’s great cultural heritage. But in the Twentieth Century, under the assault of modernism’s great revolution, the tradition of easel arts progressively disintegrated. Since the 1960s, the structure of these disciplines in Europe and North America underwent enormous changes, the fundamental regimen of realist techniques such as sketching slowly slackened and faded out, and were replaced with the analysis of artistic concepts and training and experimentation in creating new ways of thinking.

The significant motivation for the conceptual change in Western art education was this: the success of the various schools of modernism art in the Twentieth Century, which demonstrated that traditional art forms were already outdated. Revolt and innovation became invincible and resounding slogans of, and the intention of all new arts, while the easel arts, which take sketching, color and technical training in realism as their foundation, not only lost their significance, they became the shackles, a hindrance to new modes of thinking in a new era. Therefore, it naturally follows that they ought to be replaced with unrestrained, unfettered teaching methods––the theoretical origins of this concept takes the fast supplanting of different and various art schools in the Twentieth Century as the essential nature of art historical progression, and views it as a rather blind search for novelty, innovation, and understands the total function of art education as the eradication of outmoded ideas through enlightenment with creative thought.

Decades later, we look back and find those conceptual transitions were trends of the times; they aren’t without their principals, and they allowed for arts reform and the emergence of an unprecedented vigor and entirely new directions in the visual arts. However, because of their overindulgent implementation, partial concepts were overwhelmingly accepted as the whole, and now years later, at this late hour, we are able to observe these issues with a more discriminating gaze.

There are two significant issues within worthy of contemplation:
1) The relationship between limitations or restrictive conditions and the freedom to create. Artistic production, especially art production in the modern era, requires ample spiritual liberties, but this doesn’t suggest the utter elimination of all restraining factors. Easel assignments are one nature of restriction, the technicalities of painterly materials are another; rigorous drills in sketching are also a kind of restriction. Can removing all these restrictions be beneficial to creative potential? It might seem so at a first glance, but with more thought, this is not necessarily true. When we examine these from the perspectives of psychology and art history, a far more complex dialectical relationship is revealed between limitations and creation, one that is worthy of serious contemplation and study.

2) The relationship between artistry and transcendence. (more…)

2010年7月

英国的左派文化批评者特里·伊格尔顿（Terry Eagleton） 评论著名后殖民理论家佳亚特里·斯皮瓦克 （Gayatri Spivak）的新书《在俗丽的超市里》时，描述了后殖民话语的特征：“在某处，一定存在着给一本后殖民批评家准备的手册，里面的第一条是“以拒绝后殖民主义的整体概念为开始。”

如果这就是真相的话，高士明在开始他的后殖民批评家之路时，则选择了一个很正确的方向。在2008年，高士明担任第三届广州三年展的 “与后殖民说再见”的总策展人，本文中，我将探讨他在该展览的画册中所撰写的策划人文章：《“后殖民之后”的观察和预感》。

全球化的困扰

作为大展背后的观念和理论的先行本，三年展的重要文章之一《读本一》，本人将对高士明与许江合编的文章《‘全球概念’与中国当代艺术的境遇——写在卡塞尔文献展艺术策划人访华之际》（2000）进行概述 。此文已在不同杂志发表过多次，并且在网络上广泛传播。    上述文章认为，后殖民主义并不适用于中国，中国的艺术家需要在多文化的平台上展示出自身的创造力。二人的争论围绕了2000年第十一届卡塞尔文献展艺术总监奥奎（Okwui Enwezor）和六位国际知名艺术批评家、策划人杭州的杭州之行进行了讨论。他们第一站是中国美术学院，第一天的讨论会上，他们就问道：“西方意味着什么？”

杭州的学者原本希望奥奎等人会问到中国本土的艺术状态，但恰恰相反的是，他们好像只对中国本土文化作为西方文化的反射镜而感兴趣。当被迫地被推到了后殖民主义的话语中后，作者二人开始在文章里进行解构，对后殖民理论的建立在中国为什么无效的说法进行阐述。

首先，他们认为中国与有过殖民历史的国家是不同的，中国艺术家经历的是一种“非西方的西方化”，这点与其他后殖民国家的“反西方的西化”有所不同，中国从一开始对西方的接纳是积极的，自愿的，这一过程是“以反省本民族文化为目的”的。第二，与后殖民国家的“防御的现代性”不同的是，中国的现代性是“反思着的现代性”，其本质是为了本土文化进行深刻批判与再认识。

西方的“全球化”概念与艺术界对身份的认同和对独特性、本土性、差异性的重视不一定是本土艺术界所关心的话题，但是这些因素引起了西方艺术界对“身份”、“他者”以及多文化主义的讨论。 策展小组从来没有提出最相关的问题：后殖民的话语究竟是否适用于中国的文化语境？ (more…)

“Observations on and Predictions for ‘After Postcolonialism’” was a Gao Shiming’s curatorial essay printed in the catalog for the 2008 Third Guangzhou Triennial. It collects and builds upon the rejection of Postcolonial interpretive strategies that was put forth in Xu Jiang and Gao Shiming’s “Globalization,” (see a post on that article here) and provides the framework for Gao’s curatorial strategies in the 3rd Guangzhou Triennial. Almost an decade lies between the first article, and this consequent official “farewell” to Postcolonialism, or what is perceived as Postcolonialism as a factor influencing the production of art. How has a prominent critical discourse in the West, likewise a broad field that might be effectively put to work in China, come to be rejected here? Perhaps more importantly, what comes next?

Key Concepts: Globalization, Postcolonialism, Westernization
Key words: “After Postcolonialism,” “two-fold colonization,” “Self-Othering”

概念：全球化、后殖民主义、西化
关键词：“后殖民之后”、“双重殖民”、“自我他者化”

Anticipating the flurry of discussion surrounding the provacative exhibition title (“Farewell to Postcolonialism”), Gao rounds up a few key criticisms of his thesis in the introduction to his article: with no former colonization to speak of, why do the Chinese even need to bid farewell to postcolonialism? (From the Chinese side.) He nods to “multiculturalists,” who find the notion politically incorrect, reeking of a return to new forms of colonialism (with the colonizers being the Chinese), or who see the notion of rejecting Postcolonialism as a the rise of new forms of cultural superiority.

But Gao has no interest in debating Postcolonial theory or politics. His purpose here is to express his personal dissatisfaction with the politicization of art and the evident harm that this process (understand to be a by-product of Postcolonial) has done to art.

In his first footnote, Gao expounds on some interesting thoughts about “colonization” in China, stating that she has undergone a “two-fold colonization” (shuangchong zhimin): Westernization and then Anti-Westernization; a technological and then utopian colonization. “Social experiments eliminated “traditional” China, and the experience of the Cultural Revolution left deeper scars on the collective Chinese psychology than colonial memories ever could.” Thus, “Art in the 1980s was unrelated to the so-called Postcolonial experience, the Chinese were rising against the social system and the ‘new traditions’” created in this unique context that had been formulating over the past few decades.

To Gao, Postcolonial is a discourse that is available to everyone, but China’s local discourse is not based in a “Postcolonial reality” and neither does she have a historical experience with colonialism. (He says that China’s 20th century discourse is based in the battle of East-West cultures.) China is familiar with Postcolonialism through experiencing it as a framework, an ideology.

Postcolonialism in the visual arts is a “system for viewing” art (guankan zhidu), and it has its drawbacks: “As a mechanism, it is like a net, only catching that which it is able and willing to catch. Sometimes, it transforms into a productive mechanism, penetrating into the artist’s thoughts.” Later Gao states that his curatorial impetus is to collect the things that fall between the holes in the Postcolonial net, and outside of this “system for viewing.”

Here, in his second footnote, Gao makes some more important points: “China’s 20th Century context is the clash of Eastern and Western cultures. In the beginning of the 20th Century, Chinese intellectuals intermingled various “self-othering” terms into cultural discussions, such as Guocui, and New Confucianism. He asserts that  Mao’s “Theory of New Democracy” was extremely similar to Postcolonialism, which he equivocates as the theory of postcolonialism in actual terms as being present in mainstream China much earlier than in the West.

And why should Chinese artists care about Postcolonialism? In a global context––doesn’t matter if you’ve heard of it or not––once an artist participates in any international exhibition, he/she is thrust into this “system for viewing.” To some degree, all artists are caught up in it. (more…)

Gao Shiming and Xu Jiang’s “‘Globalization’ and Chinese Contemporary Art –– written on the occasion of the Kassel Documenta curators’ visit to China”

读许江与高士明的《“全 球概念”与中国当代艺术的境遇——写在卡塞尔文献展艺术策划人访华之际》 的一些感受

The following are some thoughts and some translations while reading Xu Jiang and Gao Shiming’s essay, “‘Globalization’ and Chinese Contemporary Art” (The Chinese title translates more literally as “the notion of Globalization” and the circumstances of Chinese contemporary art.”) I hope to outline the framework of their argument. This text was first published in 2000, and reprinted in the 2008 Third Guangzhou Triennial “Farewell to Post-Colonialism” reader No. 1 (读本一), a Chinese version can be found on the exhibition’s homepage. This text has been circulated widely on the Internet, and the question is, is this a work of “criticism,” or a manifesto of sorts?

Authors Gao Shiming was a curator of the Third Guangzhou Triennial: Farewell to Post-Colonialism” (2008) and is currently on the curatorial team of the 2010 Shanghai Biennial, “Rehearsal.” Xu Jiang is the Dean of the China National Academy of Fine Arts, and one very lively orator.

关键观念：全球化、后殖民主义、 身份、文化多元化、文化他者、“中国性”、“西化”关键词：非西方的西方化，反思着的现代性，沉默的声 音

Key Concepts: Globalization, modernization, Westernization, Post-Colonialism, Multicultural, Identity, Cultural Other, Chineseness.

Key Words: non-Western Westernization, introspective modernity, silent voices

For the sake of brevity, Postcolonalism has been abbreviated to Po Co. The general idea is that Po Co is not applicable in China, and Chinese artists need to creatively assert themselves on a multicultural stage.

“Globalization has caused the West to introspectively reflect on its modernity, especially the various universalisms that this includes.”

“But, amidst the multiculturalism promoted by ‘globalization,’ the strategic misinterpretation and use of Po Co cultural theory to interpret and Chinese contemporary culture and art still exists.”

“Chinese art is facing fortunate opportunities for development like never before, and is likewise experiencing cultural circumstances both of unprecedented complexity and full of paradoxes. In view of the present world’s cultural pluralism, Chinese artists must devote themselves to establishing a new Chinese art rich in imagination and creativity, and not the characteristic monotony of a cultural other.”

So Po Co theory is not applicable in China ( a sentiment that I’ve heard echoed from some students at CAFA, who have said, “why should we apply foreign theories to what’s happening in China?”), and likewise Chinese artists need to make new art that defines them on a multicultural stage.

My reading of this statement sees art creation endowed with a mission to promote a “new Chinese art,” one free from the Western gaze, or free from the “West” as a determinant factor in establishing cultural value. This argument is not new, but here is placed within a framework of Po Co theory and globalization. One valid question that arises is whether or not the same terminology in translation is being interpreted or understood in the same ways across contexts. Po Co as an interpretive model has been looked upon with suspicion in Chinese academia, I believe that it falls outside what ever may be called the mainstream of critical literature, film, and cultural studies in China.

Their argument centers around Okwui Enwezor and the arrival of the Documenta 11 curatorial team in China, a now China-art-world-legendary encounter. Their first stop was the Hangzhou China Academy of Art, where they met with authors Xu Jiang and Gao Shiming, among others. Their question to them was: “What is the West?” The authors are shocked and seem insulted that upon arriving in China, their first question is West-centric (and we assume he should have asked what is ‘China’?) (more…)

Round two of the Beijing art fairs opened on April 30th, and the buzz in the art scene confirms, ArtBeijing has surpassed CIGE, providing a better show all around. While the unofficial theme at CIGE was “fear,” ArtBeijing has embraced the spirit of Shanzhai!

These skulls by Fang Shengyi 房圣易 seem to be popping up everywhere lately, a pyramid of at least 50 similar skulls was spotted at the young artists portion of 《Reshaping History 改造历史》 that opened last weekend. Each skull is mounted with 3700 Czech-crystal “diamonds” and took ten workers more than 45 days to complete all these crystal-studded metal alloy skulls.

Here they are again, lower mandibles disjointed and floating in a pile of red and white sand. The title of this installation is “Original Sin” 《原罪》. The artist’s statement reads “a lateral reconsideration towards the frantic pace of economic growth in a socialist motherland… The utilizing, plagiarizing and plundering of intellectual property of advanced civilizations by developing countries equals a bald-faced exploitation of developed culture under the premise of identification…”

Let’s embrace brevity: It’s Shanzhai contemporary art!

This random installation could be a commentary on the art fair, perhaps we could interpret it as the “shanzhai fair within a fair.” (more…)

The 2010 China International Gallery Exposition closed this afternoon. Although the critics were not impressed, I’ve shared a few personal highlights shared below, my interpretation of “fear” being loose.
Classic “horror flick” fear. For only ten RMB, you too can buy the respect you deserve as a collector of “Chinese art” (represented in vast majority at CIGE). Mr. Sigg’s eyeball-less mug could masks will send shivers up any seasoned “Freddy” fan and is sure to fool even the most experienced gallerist. (more…)

  The title alone of Barbara Pollack’s part exposé, part romp through the Chinese art world seems enough to identify the author’s New Yorker status. But she wears her outsider status like a badge, humbly poising herself to profile art world power players and make a broad outline of the yet infantile Chinese art infrastructure. As an American art critic covering contemporary art from China since the late 1990s, but who remains physically and metaphysically rooted in the Western hemisphere, her observations strive to be impartial and critical, as she wields her pen not on Chinese art objects per se, but the people and the institutions that beget them.

Her reporting skills, and relatively guanxi-free status among what can seem like a tiny, and steamy art world in China help her to collect and present enough information to capture the complexity and scratch the surface of this microcosm. She dives into personal impressions of Ai Weiwei with relish and bares her astonishment at dubious museum shows––all in-between Benson & Hedges and ladies’ nights out with one of her gatekeepers to the Chinese art world, the gallerist Meg Maggio.

The Wild, Wild East isn’t quite a Seven Days in the Art World for the Chinese contemporary art scene, but Pollock smartly plays her “foreign journalist” credentials to work her way to the highest echelons of Beijing and Shanghai’s art world power structure. While every “insider” will surely find points to dispute, they are equally sure to take away something new; newcomers or casual readers will find it a highly readable introduction, especially with regard to the art market.

Pollock well knows, the laowai status within China can be a double-edged sword, and many people have obviously worked on maintaining their “face,” never quite withholding information, but surely not “airing their dirty linens” before the foreign journalist. Although she doesn’t address this directly, Pollock’s self-awareness and sensitivity to her dilemma is reflected in divulging portrayals of her translator, Zhang Fang (also the wife of artist Wang Qingsong, whose intermittent commentary was valuable and entertaining).

Approaching this behemoth––the very complex, very foreign rising art world in the East––takes moxie, which this native New Yorker indubitably reflects in her first book. The Wild, Wild East wavers between dish and reportage, and is unquestionably the most ambitious attempt to date at a narrative account of the light-speed developments in Chinese world of contemporary art, in either English or Mandarin.

Barbara will launch her book at the Bookworm on the 22nd, and at Beijing’s UCCA on April 24.

 Last sunday, Chart Contemporary invited Chen Ke to display “A Room of One’s Own,” a temporary installation that is the fourth in an on-going series of Open Houses, art interventions in some of Beijing’s unique spaces. Chen Ke’s room was a tiny closet of a room in a damp underground maze of dwellings near Lido Hotel. The space seemed perfect for Chen Ke, whose relentless and non-apologetic embrace of the dainty and quaint has come to personify the “cartoon” style of her age-group, but whose open embrace of feminism seems just as subverted as the room itself. Chen says that the idea was inspired by Virginia Woolf, but that the safe space atmosphere of cleanliness and respite was a reaction also to the city’s migrant population.The objects in the room were embroidered by “aunties,” who followed the artist’s instructions and sketches to the thread. (more…)

“Love in fact results from an excess of dopamine in the brain” by Madein from lee ambrozy on Vimeo.The above art work was produced by the artists’ collective Madein (also associated with artist Xu Zhen) and is currently on show at Beijing Caochangdi’s ShanghArt gallery.Their cartoonish rug canvases and plush sculptures notwithstanding, I fell in love with this behemoth made of discarded styrofoam, and held together entirely with bamboo skewers. Inside this half-Star Wars, half-garbage chamber is an automated spotlight which careens on its chassis and seems to be tweaked into permanent freak-out mode––it convulses 360 degrees, its colored lenses whirring in a hebephrenic frenzy.The title of the work is “Love in fact results from an excess of dopamine in the brain.”

A visit to the home of Ouyang Chun and Yang Fan, some big plans loom on the horizon…

NEGOTIATING DIFFERENCE –– What is the Academic Context for Chinese Contemporary Art? As contemporary scholarship integrates art from China into a broadening notion of art history, the growing list of important reasons for its study in the west are plagued by methodological fissures, differences between contexts and backgrounds, and a host of competing interests contending for the roles of gatekeepers in the interpretation and writing the history “Contemporary art from China.” This was evidenced in the May “China Contemporary Art Forum,” where real-time translation was not enough to make up for the different value orientations of scholars present. (Read a review by participants Hans Belting and Andrea Buddensieg)  Western/foreign/“outsider” scholars who approach the subject must contend with numerous language and cultural differences, and China’s culture of introversion that is often defensive when confronted with Western criticism, is almost always suspicious of Western interpretations, and definitely rejects negative attention. East-West negotiations (more specifically framed as China-West 中西 within China) are arguably the most important issue in Chinese art during the entire 20th century, and compose a comparative framework that unfortunately still pervades all discussions on art production, theory, criticism and art appreciation in China today.In this regard, the study of Chinese art across cultures still lacks an accepted framework for discourse, and as the field expands, the already vast pool of variables will only increase: frames of reference, academic training and background, language skills, cultural fluency, one’s stake in their research and incorruptibility, level of participation and mother culture all contribute to our various competing and fluctuating perspectives. How to situate our research in authenticity? How to present art from China in a global context?  The conference “Negotiating Difference” attempted to address some of these questions last October at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt, looking at “Chinese” art in an international setting, and adapting English as the primary language at the conference, the main focus was on questions of methodology. Unique in the sense that it was directed at young scholars and graduate students, more than thirty people from diverse backgrounds convened in Berlin for the event. As the introduction reads: “Whether considered from a discursive, institutional or object-centered perspective, contemporary Chinese art always involves aspects of a globally informed locality and a locally affected globality,” [italics mine] organizers hoped to critically examine the predominant existing research frameworks that emphasize an essentialist “Chinese identity” or locate art from China within an entirely “Western” definition of art.Hans Belting and Gao Minglu were scheduled to attend, but were in absentia, and thus the only “senior scholar” in attendance at the conference was Prof. John Clark from University of Sydney. In his keynote address, the art historian posited three questions that set the tone for the conference:  1) Are ‘Chinese-style’ and ‘Western-style’ twentieth century art practices and their interpretive structures autonomous? 2) If we avoid or defer the bifurcation ‘Chinese’ / ‘Western’, what kinds of historical time is implicit in the development of modern Chinese art? 3) How does Chinese modern and contemporary art look different if we use certain international comparisons from other Asian contexts?Below, in an attempt to introduce to the conference as well as recent scholarship in the field, I’ve provided very short summaries (interpretations?) of each of the papers presented at the conference. Please accept apologies in advance for any cursory reviews, there was so much to discussion that a full summary of each one of them would be beyond the scope of my abilities. The summaries are divided into the eight panels that framed the discussion over the two-day conference, beginning below with “art the transnational and transcultural context.” Comments welcome.I. Contemporary Chinese Art in the Transnational and Transcultural Context.Dr. Juliane Noth, a professor at the Freie Universität Berlin and one of the organizers of the conference, presented on the No Name painters of the late 70s and early 80s, (more…)

Wang Wei manipulates spaces, most often building spaces in spaces. In “Historic Residence” he recreates the lavish bathrooms of cottage that was built for the Chairman and his wife Jiang Qing in the south of China. They are built into the gallery, tile floors and all; while the toilet, bathtub etc, are built to proper proportion, the space itself has been blown up to exaggerated proportions.
The cavernous spaces say something about the cult of personality, the fact that Mao himself only stayed there for a total of 10 days, while it was always kept pristine lends it a sacred air.
Highly recommended, in the new Space Station, now occupying the former space of the China Contemporary gallery in 798.

Until Nov 14

from my ARTiT blog, visit for more exhibition images

read curator’s statement on art-ba-ba

Today is the third day of the “Negotiating Differences” conference in Beijing, and the atmosphere is sparkling. Overall more productive than the May conference “China Contemporary Art Forum” that called together scholars such as Hans Belting and Hal Foster, the conference is progressing with productive debate. This second day of presentations looks promising, Sinopop will post more later, including selected papers.Negotiating Difference. Contemporary Chinese Art in the Global ContextVenue: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, TheatersaalAddress: John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin, GermanyDate: 22 to 24 October 2009Organiser: East Asian Art History, Freie Universität Berlin“Negotiating Difference. Chinese Contemporary Art in the Global Context” is hosted by:Freie Universität BerlinDepartment of History and Cultural StudiesInstitute of Art HistoryEast Asian Art History (more…)

The “Green” art fair recently ended in China’s World Trade Center. Young artists sent their works directly to the fair, applying through an online form, and buyers, gallerists came to root through the weeds, in hopes of finding young sprouts to cultivate. Each artist was only allowed to display one work, and there were some rather established artists present, such as Yang Fan, who sent a portion of the massive carpet she installed last spring, and even some artists under pseudonyms (one included in the photos below).  In its first year, the fair’s website is as ‘green’ as the artists it promotes: only a portion of works are shown online, and the site often malfunctions. Despite that, some editor’s picks are below, click on image for detailed information.

(more…)

On the eve of the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic, things are beginning to look red here in Beijing, deep red, like a profuse wound. On the Beijing streets, some of the visual celebratory feast residents drank in last year during the Olympics is being recreated in billboards, television galas, parades, mass performances and wide-ranging worship for spectacle, but the festivities this year are tinted with more eulogizing, more solemnity, more red. In a commemorative fine art exhibition at the National Art Museum of China (closed on Sept 14) red not only prevailed in the literal sense, its ideological presence was overpowering. In this exhibition that sprawled out over the entirety of the NAMOC’s exhibition halls, co-sponsors Cultural Ministry of China and NAMOC pulled sixty years of revolutionary masterpieces out of storage from all of Beijing’s major collections, including the Military Museum and the former Revolutionary Museum (soon to reopen as the Museum of Chinese History). It was a mind-blowing show, by scale and quality alone. Also, by their omissions, curators highlighted what isn’t included in the sanctioned visual lexicon that is “fine art” in China today. This became especially apparent when viewers started to wonder on what floor the “contemporary” were being hidden.

Divided into three main sections, oil painting, traditional painting, and propaganda posters with comics and animation, “masterpieces” of recent art history, were in every room.

Heading directly to oil paintings, I was intercepted by the captivating magnificence of Chen Yifei’s Seizing the Presidential Palace, (1977), a work that could inspire anyone to make revolution. More familiar as Chen’s work was his Looking at History From My Space (1979), also by Chen Yifei. Perhaps the most iconic painting in contemporary art history was Father (1981) by Luo Zhongli, displayed adjacent to My Space. This work was much more three-dimensional than ever imagined, through a painting technique the “dirt” on the ‘father’s’ eyebrows and on his turban look as if they might literally crumble off the canvas onto the floor.
Next door, two of Chen Danqing’s Tibetan Series paintings dating to 1982 were exhibited, which seemed to fit into a long and ongoing tradition of representing minorities as dark-skinned and almost monstrous. Another work brought out from the coffers and representing the ’85 New Wave was Meng Luding and Zhang Qun’s New Era––The Enlightenment of Adam and Eve. Painted in a surrealist style, this work is often interpreted as a metaphor for the “enlightenment” of their generation in the 80s. (more…)

While we’ll never keep up with AWW’s news appearances, here’s a few recent articles on his activities, his activism, and an interview with ARTiT from Japan following his first major museum show at the Mori Museum in Tokyo.  The photo is him photographing in an elevator from a cell phone while detained by the police, the blog it was found on titled this image “Ai the God” or 《艾神》. 

From ArtAsiaPacific, a magazine on “Contemporary Visual Culture” from Asia:

Ai Weiwei Continues Activism Against China; Government Responds
By Katherine Grube

On New Year’s Eve 2008, during a conversation with curator Hans Ulrich-Obrist at Vitamin Creative Space’s Beijing branch, artist-provocateur Ai Weiwei predicted: “2008 was the first year that China safeguarded legal rights; it’s when people started to wake up. But in 2009, I think China will confront greater problems.”

These words now seem unnervingly prescient, given that the first six months of 2009 in China were marked by politically sensitive anniversaries and often-violent protests including riots by members of the Uighur minority in Xinjiang province. From his Beijing studio, Ai continued his calls for a more responsible government even as China stepped up its response to the artist’s efforts.    [read the rest of this article on the AAP site]

From ARTiT, the Japanese webjournal on contemporary art:

Ai Weiwei Interview: “I’m fighting for freedom of speech. I never settle for less. I don’t engage in negotiation.”

Read the interview in English here, on the ARTiT site