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.

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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.

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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

王一凡个展“看不完”的确贯彻了“看不完”的根本要义——展出作品包含五件时长24小时的录像作品和抄写在十一幅画布上面的两万多字的小说（小说作者为王一凡），完整地看完这个展览，至少需要不合眼地“看”上120个小时以上，所以对观众而言，“看完”的可能性简直微乎其微。通过超乎寻常的长度，平凡的画面被王一凡改变，常识遭到质疑──“观看”的过程与方式遇到了一个难题──在作品面前，是不是去思考它的意义比用眼睛观看更为重要呢？

那些透过树叶撒在楼梯上的“阳光”，是王一凡于2008年拍摄的作品《安静》。水泥地面上斑驳的树影唤起了艺术家在烈日下等待的日常记忆，只有你心怀沉静、默默观察，才能够在树影中察觉树叶的微微晃动。

王一凡创作观念的成熟从“黑板”系列开始，2005年，他开始在黑色画布上书写他的“故事”。本次展出的题为《马利》的11幅作品是他这一系列的最新代表，画面上的文字讲述了主人公马利从高中到大学毕业的恋爱经历；文字由王一凡撰写，他邀请了11位朋友共同把两万字的小说抄写在画布上，于是形成了面前这番风格迥异的画面形态。 (more…)

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Wang Yifan films Xie Molin from lee ambrozy on Vimeo.

王一凡为了个展《看不完》在弄新的作品拍艺术家谢墨凛的一张画。我偷偷地拍下来这里的小记录片。此作品系列的名称是《王一凡拍摄谁谁谁》，用固定的拍摄方法艺术家王一凡按照他“自然的时间单位” 24小时录像拍摄对象艺术家工作室里的画。除了阳光的变化，没有声音或其他变化。

看不完
Kàn Bù Wán
王一凡个展
Wang Yifan solo exhibition
策展人：安静
Curator: Lee Ambrozy

开幕酒会：2009年8月8日下午4点
Opening: Aug 8, 2009, 4:00 pm

2009.8.8 – 2009.9.7 / Aug 8, 2009 – Sep 7, 2009

地点：星空间、北京市朝阳区酒仙桥路2号、798艺术区D09
Star Gallery，D09, 798 Art Zone, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road，Chaoyang District, Beijing
Tel: +86 10 5978 9224

We all remember “Running Teacher Fan,” the poor sap who, after abandoning his students in the classroom during the Sichuan earthquake, proceeded to be butchered by Chinese media as the anti-hero. “My sense of self-preservation is too strong,” he was quoted as saying.

Later, Ai Weiwei defended him in his legendary blog, commending his honesty and bravery in admitting his un-noble actions in a time of hero fetishizing, especially in comparison to the Sichuan Ministry of Education, which still won’t face up to the sub-standard construction on schools that caused their collapse.

As if taking Ai’s lead, Zhu Qi, artistic director for the upcoming “798 Biennale” will include Fan Meizhong, the notorious “Running Teacher Fan” in the biennale as an artist. Publicity stunts, or significant attempt to bring art in 798 to a new social dimension? We will have to wait until August 15th to find out.

In a post on the artnow.com.cn site , Zhu Qi writes: “I’m not saying that I agree with Running Teacher Fan’s sense of values, however, the fact that he can honestly voice his opinion is worthy of appreciation.”

“我并不认同范跑跑的价值观，但范跑跑能真实地表达自己的态度和看法是值得欣赏的。”

And he’s not the only “vocal” participant, in an exhibition titled “The Soulful Society VS The Net Spirit” (社会魂vs网络魄）infamous Chongqing “rustynail” dweller（钉子户） Wu Ping, the woman who refused to vacate her home (pictured at left) will also be participating, as well as some disabled, and there’s even a program that trains unemployed workers to be artists, the “Laid off Art Rehabilitation Program.” Hm. How does one qualify?

The whole thing will be going off in the 706 space within the 798 complex, one of the main venues of the Biennale. Dates are August 15 to September 12, 2009. Although a little unclear on the details, or what, exactly, they will be making “art” of, Zhu Qi seems unhindered by the fact that these folks have probably never considered themselves artists before they received a call from his assistant.

Zhu Qi gives two reasons for his decision in his post: the first, Chinese contemporary art should take its lead from reality; the second, a biennale shouldn’t necessarily be a collection of highlights, but also a platform for which to discuss issues.

Read Zhu Qi’s post here (Chinese only)

Preview the Biennale at the official website

The Gao Brothers were recently in Moscow for the second annual awards ceremony of the Kandinsky Prize, their well received performance was part of the “Art and Power” themed event.

For their performance, a golden “Miss Mao,” their giant fiberglass bust of Mao’s head with naked breasts, sat in the middle of the stage. The brothers came on stage in similar masks and imitating politicians, waving, etc., before they embraced in a hug, and then taking a hammer to Miss Mao’s head. Inside was a red bust of Lenin, which was bust open to reveal a black skull.

The Gaos were in good company, Dinos Chapman presented the award, and screened a recent video work on the death of famous artists, and Marina Abramovic also gave a performance. The awards ceremony itself was a bit of a scandal, with the award going to Moscow artist Alexey Belyaev-Gintovt, who has been called “ultra-nationalistic” and “neo-Stalinist.” Leftist internationalists protested outside …

Read about the awards ceremony at Frieze.com /  on ArtInfo

www.gaobrothers.net

ART iT was a promising Japanese-English art print magazine with contemporary art coverage from primarily Japan, Asia and the rest of the world. Last month it made the migration to an online format, sad for subscribers and paperphiles, but a triumph for trees and blog readers around the globe.

The online magazine and communities is just starting out, but features “official bloggers” from around Asia, myself included. To celebrate and support this new platform, and try to enrich the Asian art community, I’ll be posting short exhibition profiles and photos on the site, please check it out at the link below.

The site features a few other bloggers from China, such as curator Ou Ning. Those interested in on-the-ground Japanese artists couldn’t find a better site, there are tons of blogs from Japan, and local arts news. The “automatic translation” tool is not as bad as one would expect, either.

Read more about the site in this article from the Japan Times: ART iT transforms into a digital forum
Link to my exhibition reviews and my official blog on ARTiT

http://www.art-it.asia

Its that time of year again, when sweaty gallerists flock to art academy campuses, eager to snatch up the next big thing. Here’s a few choices from the exhibition of students from the sculpture department. Head of the department Sui Jianguo was in attendance, admiring the works while a swarm of his admirers hovered behind him. Sub-themes seemed to include creepy, horror film make-believe and the creative use of hair…

This igloo piece was hiding under a tree, it was made of spray foam used in construction, covered in a sheet, and holes were cut in the walls. It was made on location, and although it looked a little dubiously constructed, it was an anomaly as the only work deviating from figurative representations, shiny materials or nostalgic antiques and tropes. (more…)

Recently in conversation, a friend asked “Who is Ai Weiwei?” Impossible. You know him, unconsciously. He has masterminded some of the most powerful icons of today: the National Stadium, the “Han Dynasty Urn with Coca Cola Logo,” and his unpretentious, minimalist building style of grey-brick has revolutionized contemporary Chinese architecture.

Whether it is through the man himself, his legendary blog, his architecture, or his iconic works of contemporary art, Ai Weiwei is the artist you already know. With 2009 exhibitions concurrently open in Tokyo, Germany, Brussels and Beijing, his work is influential, prominent and provocative, no doubt why museums and established collectors are clamoring for his works, attracting even frugal investors who abide by investment principals laid down by companies like investools.

Below are some of his most often reproduced images, found in monographs, on catalogue and book covers, in newspapers, online. Before we can begin to talk about Ai Weiwei the iconoclast, the following are a brief introduction (in pictures) of some of his most renowned works.

Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-cola Logo (1994)

Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995) pictured here is the middle panel of a triptych (more…)

Now on display at the National Museum of Art is a rare glimpse of the museum’s folk art collection, the gifts of the devoted folk art researcher Wang Shucun, who carefully preserved and hid these items throughout many turbulent years of history. The exhibition only runs until April 14, but is highly recommended.

Its not rare to see “folk arts” in Beijing, dreams of tourist dollars inspire the same kitschy souvenir-style junk that is available all over the nation. But before the internet, the tourist dollar, television, industrial printing, and before the Cultural Revolution, the Nianhua was a very unique form of folk art developed in China. Nianhua are colorful pictures hung in homes to celebrate the new year, tiehua, the practice of “hanging pictures” was once an integral holiday custom. People still hang posters, but the hand printed and painted art form of nianhua is near obsolete. However, in a pre-industrial society, the incredible production speeds, line assembly, and low production costs of nianhua could have been called a “Chinese characteristic,” indeed the production mode of contemporary art from China has also become a new trend in critical analysis.

China’s common folk have been producing printed nianhua on an ever increasing scale since the Song dynasty, the practice fell out of fashion with industrial printing techniques and was abruptly put to an end during political campaigns of the last century. These block printing methods developed in China evolved into personality cults in Japan, evidenced in print artists like Hiroshige; however in China, entire towns became famous for their different production methods and distinctive styles, sometimes varying by only the colors available. These styles are evidenced in excellent surviving examples of work, and those displayed here encompass the most important nianhua production zones from across China. (more…)

Wang Guangle @ Beijing Commune
until May 14

According to tradition in his hometown, elderly people will paint their coffins with one layer each year. Wang Guangle has adopted this to the canvas, in remarkably more colorful layers than we might see on anything to be buried underground. As always, his work reveals time, patience, and the somewhat unexpected results of turning concept into canvas.

The artist himself is extremely popular among Chinese collectors and has a great reputation among artists, but many “outsider” viewers  (Laowai) fail to see the appeal. Unfortunately, this show does not reflect what I consider some of Wang’s best works, those (I’m judging by what I saw on the gallery website) which are now represented by Beijing Commune.

His early works, realist canvases featuring afternoon light hitting the terrazzo floor, reveal ideas essential to the artist’s development; they were not on show at the opening. Later works where he grinds thick layers of dried paint into what looks like actual terrazzo on the canvas were neither on display, nor were photographs of his legendary performance in his Suojiacun studio (read more below). The terrazzo pattern and coffin paint series are his trademarks. A more detailed description is below, in a short artist introduction written for “Looking for Me” (2008)

WANG Guangle
王光乐 (more…)

Huang Liang until April 19 @ Platform China project space
“Look Deeper” until May 17 @ Platform China

In Platform China’s project space, Huang Liang small solo show offers a morbid encounter with illness. Misdiagnosed with cancer in his early adulthood, cool shades of clinical gray seem to still haunt his memory. Although Huang Liang’s tactile painting style of oil on canvas is nothing new, or unfamiliar from academic artists, Huang shows talent with paints.

Small, unframed and unmounted canvases of hospital scenes are arranged across the wall like snapshots, juxtaposed with enormous canvases depicting X-rays.

Next door, 12 person exhibition “Look Deeper” is a fairly sparse selection of young artists, (more…)

CHINA: MUSEUMS
Scala, 384 pages, Feb 2009

Miriam Clifford, Cathy Giangrande and Antony White, all with backgrounds in art history and archeology, have reportedly spent four years combing through China’s hundreds of museums in a search for the most appealing. The result is this in-depth guide to China’s museums that opens up new territories for English-speaking audiences, presumably Western travelers, but for that special, more adventuresome set interested in witnessing China’s cultural growth from a multifaceted perspective. “China: Museums” includes major players, such as the Forbidden City, as well as Chinese equivalents of what could be called “Roadside museums.” Imagine the Squished Penny Museum of Washington DC, translate that into the Beijing Tap Water Museum for an idea of the scale of the many museums referenced here; but then again, our authors have carefully weeded through the deep waters of China’s bowuguan (“museum,” a term that could also be literally broken down to mean an “establishment of ample objects”) to bring us the very best, most socially relevant and worthy selection of China’s ancient memorials, monuments and culturally revealing sites. They prove that lurking behind the Chinglish placards of hundreds of museums across China, there is much to be learned.

With site culled through our authors’ trained, and scrutinizing eyes, “China Museums” is not only a portrait of a nation’s burgeoning museum culture, but a sketchy outline of the earnest efforts of China’s curators or enthusiasts, and a semblance of an infrastructure where we might have assumed there was none. Of course, many Western readers cannot help but judge on appearances when confronted with the widespread curatorial practices Xerox copies glued to walls, or shabby facades and dust-laden velvet curtains, even the sci-fi inspired architecture of modern China can be a turn off. (more…)

Yang Fan’s <Spring>
until April 6 @ Star Gallery

In a drastic departure from her works on canvas, Yang Fan has produced a carpet of colorful poof-balls that she culled from the storerooms of clothing and toy factories in her native Guangdong. Yang Fan is formerly known for her series of paintings of young women in fashion plate style, the series, ever popular with Asian collectors, did not resonate with Western audiences.

When she began working on the project last year, she mentioned that the idea came to her while visiting clothing factories in China’s south. In what might have evolved from more “crafty” origins, this work culminates in her scouring of southern factories for unwanted bits and bobs, a new representation of the stories behind the cast-offs, and timely with the massive layoffs in the south.

An essay accompanying the catalogue is presented below. I translated it, but also enjoyed it for some valuable insights on her early works. (more…)

Recently, while reviewing Wang Gongxin’s installation piece at the Arrow Factory, I thought I would publish here all the additional thoughts that wouldn’t fit into the print version (but please keep an eye out for April’s ArtForum). The Arrow Factory is a small storefront space located in the “arrow” hutong near the Confucius Temple at Guozijian, it was founded by the artists Raina Ho, Wang Wei, Weng Wei and curator / critic Pauline J. Yao.

According to Pauline in a recent phone interview, they were looking to create a counter-dialogue to “art with a capital ‘A’” and to “engage in a different way with audiences”.

The Arrow Factory’s central location indeed is a deviation from the norm. Beijing’s exhibition spaces and galleries are mostly clustered far from the city center and often in factory ruins, they run from enormous to mind-bogglingly huge in size. The distance we travel to see them can put the average viewer at a disadvantage, and perhaps endows the act of viewing art with an unnecessary pretension or the element of a “castle on the hill”. Likewise, the enormity of these spaces presents the inevitable problem of filling them. Art, in tandem to the growing size of these colossal spaces, has also become monumental in size, scope, and this has become an incorrect signifier of implied importance. Thus, the mission of the Arrow Factory is apropos to our times. (more…)

昨天在纽约时报看到的一则新闻中提到了尼古拉·齐奥塞斯库收藏的 ‘宣传’ 油画在罗马尼亚的当代美术馆展出，策展人展示这些敏感题材作品的方法给我留下深刻印象。罗马尼亚共产党时代的独裁者尼古拉·齐奥塞斯库的收藏源于上世纪70至80年代，馆长兼策展人Mihai Oroveanu的想法是把这些肖像画全部歪歪扭扭地挂在展场的墙上，目的是不要误导观众––这些油画不是因崇敬而展示，展览具有历史性的意义。尼古拉·齐奥塞斯库与他的妻子埃琳娜曾经是当时罗马尼亚宣传画的主要题材,强大的个人崇拜，最终结束于1989年的革命，夫妻俩被一排手持AK-47行刑队员所杀。

这里，我并不打算强调两个社会主义国家间可能存在的相似性，有趣的是罗马尼亚美术馆歪歪的展示方法。在他们革命之后不到20年，展现这段历史的重点是接受、包容和忘却。如果在中国举办类似的展览一定会对中国美术史的片断有无数的帮助，文革这段历史虽然没有被掩盖但仍然在当代文化背景里只能表现为当代美术符号化的元素或者装模作样的消费文化的产品。当代中国的主要艺术渠道也仍然对这时期的宣传画文物视而不见。罗马尼亚式的展览，如果能够在当代中国出现的话将会是多大的跃进。

看更多的幻灯片

until April 18 @ Three Shadows Photography Art Center

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Artist Lu Hao and curator Zhao Li were announced earlier this month as the curator of the China Pavillion at the 53rd Venice Biennale. The 40 yr old artist has participated before in the Venezia Biennale as artist, as well as the San Paolo and Busan Biennale.  Lu Hao told reporters in while in France that he wanted to confront Italians with more challenging problems, and discussed mirroring the walls and projecting images from various corners of the pavilion, to create a “gaudy and grotesque site”. (more…)

February 14 - April 5 @ Urs Meile

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