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…)

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

the following was first published on artforum.com, link to the original here.

Li Ming “X X”

Platform China

No. 319-1 East End Art (A), CaoChangDi Village, Chaoyang District｜朝阳区草场地村319号艺术东区内
November 14–December 27

Li Ming, XX, 2009, still from a color video, 5 minutes 17 seconds.

Eleven videos and sporadic accoutrements litter the floor of this exhibition by the emerging artist Li Ming. A television, cast in the bushes outside the gallery entrance, screens Back Garden, 2008, in which security guards, recurring characters in the artist’s vignettes, romp around the gardens of a residential compound in unintelligible acts of “play.”

The folly continues indoors, where the atmosphere turns to one of extreme irrationality and even perturbation. Li’s works fall into the category of absurd realism; he sets the parameters for the semi-orchestrated madness and compulsive behaviors in his videos, while the improvisation of his actors who interpret his instructions makes the works fascinating to watch. In the video XX, 2009, two men sit on a stone, writhing as they attempt to exchange shirts; the rule is that their skin must always make contact. More awkward body negotiations and Dionysian revelry follow in Afternoon Happiness, 2008, wherein a group of near-naked boys chase one another through a demolished building, smear one another with cream, and then try to lick it off.

The strongest works in the exhibition display Li’s understated production techniques, which do not undermine his ability to captivate viewers. Recurring characters, plants, and unorthodox, sexually charged human contact are just a few elements in his latent symbolic language. An exploration of the boundary between agony and ecstasy is among the most significant leitmotifs here.

––Lee Ambrozy

Elsewhere, 2009, video_12′09”

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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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Wang Yifan’s latest exhibition is titled “Kan Bu Wan” [which in English means you can’t finish seeing or looking], and is in utter agreement with the works themselves. Primarily video and installation works in this exhibition confront viewers with simply too much to take in, each individual work offering an extreme amount of information, making it possible that not a single viewer could finish “looking” at any single work in the show.Throughout his work Wang Yifan pays close attention to the dimensionality of time, then he confronts it with a challenge, Stakeout on Time––Wang Yifan’s Clock is one of his representative works. In this video, Wang Yifan takes a common quartz clock found in most Chinese households as his prop and then uses digital means to record its state over a period of twenty-four hours. Through this lengthy documentation, Wang Yifan covers the clock’s logo with an obscure symbol for his own name, and in an attempt to establish a new order he establishes control over time.In a general survey of Wang Yifan’s works, it appears he is examining trivial, humdrum things insignificant to mention. But beyond doubt there are minute changes that exist within these works. No matter if he is recording the state of a given space, or employing the thickly congested words of his own novellas written over canvas, magnified by Wang Yifan’s lens imperceptibly minute details are abruptly thrust into the spotlight. As such frivolous commonalities take starring roles in the works, the role of seer and the seen are begin to fluctuate. Through a stealthy hand, time itself is transformed into a character into whose life we peer, and the power of discourse is diverted into the hand of the viewer. Whether or not to look, or whether or not to finish looking are both determined by viewers. At the same time, the established duality and oppositional roles of the artist and audience are subject to change. Wang Yifan’s works provide a link by which the artist and viewer are linked, and by which both can envisage and deconstruct time.Author: Jing XiaomengTranslation: Lee AmbrozyOriginally Published in Chinese on www.artforum.com.cn

In Chinese pinyin, Kàn Bù Wán literally means, “You can’t finish looking.” These works by the emerging artist Wang Yifan embody the statement—with five 24-hour videos and 20,000 characters written over eleven canvases, it would take one more than 120 hours to see this exhibition in its entirety. The artist doesn’t hope that anyone will try. Thus he liberates the viewer using impossible length, mundane appearance and self-evident simplicity to imply that seeing with our minds is just as important as seeing with our eyes.

Projected in the stairwell is Quietude, a short homage to everyday memories of waiting while staring at the shadows of leaves on the concrete. Like a sunbeam, visitors’ shadows are intended to mingle with the projection. Subtle movements from the wind are visible to keen-eyed people.

The artist’s conceptual evolution begins with stories on canvas, represented by “blackboard” works like The Story of Ma Li.  One single work of eleven canvases, the original story was authored Wang Yifan, and then copied onto canvas by eleven of his friends. Each canvas has a different “artist.”

Wang Yifan films Xie Molin from lee ambrozy on Vimeo.

his upcoming solo exhibition, “Kàn Bù Wán” I captured Wang Yifan as he films an acrylic painting by Xie Molin. The exhibition was lovingly curated by Yours Truly.

This work in production is titled [Insert Name Here] Filmed By Wang Yifan.

From a fixed position, Wang will film the [Insert Name Here] series is a collection of paintings filmed for a period of 24 hours as they hang on the walls of each respective artists’ studio. The resulting video is soundless, the only changes apparent are subtle variations in sunlight.

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

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…)

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…)

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…)

“Fucking Beautiful #3″, Liang Shuo’s recent work displayed at the Arario Gallery’s “The Game Is Not Over - Young Chinese Artist Group Exhibition” (游戏没有结束) was a beautiful elegy on all things kitsch and native to China. Its Chinese name, “臭美” translates roughly to something like “self-admiration”, “indulging in vanity”–– the work is a culmination of the artist’s exploration into the world surrounding him, and perhaps a more objective interpretation of “aesthetics” than what we usually see.

Last year, graduates from CAFA’s sculpture department held a rogue exhibition  (titled “掉队”) in the art studios by Crab Island (蟹岛). Among the works there, Liang Shuo’s “Shopping at the Temple Fair” (描绘购物) left me giddy, it has proven to be a work in which he honed this vocabulary of bright, flashy and gaudy that appears in “Fucking Beautiful #3″.

Although then still a work in process, “Temple Fair” was clearly a work with roots in rural and folk traditions, as well as an almost encyclopedic examination of the uniqueness of the “made FOR China” market–not only were these objects inexpensive, they were reflective of the dreams, preferences and practicalities of living in rural places. Like the “migrant labor” figurative sculptures that he became well known for from 2000-2004, “Temple Fair” also reflected a consciousness or state of living unique to China. (more…)

Beijing art hipsters oddly deny a fascination with the “post-wave” punk band New Pants, its something like New Yorkers who won’t own up to “Gossip Girl” addictions.

Despite the fact that the band’s front men, Peng Lei, is an artist with some repute (and proprietor of a vintage toy boutique), his much more successful band receives nary a mention in Beijing’s art world. This fan was literally sneered at in 798’s “sugar jar records” when she asked if their album was available––instead I purchased a recording that was nowhere near as brilliant as “Dragon Tiger Panacea”, but still labeled itself as ‘punk new wave’. Is the “fine art” myth surrounding 798 purposefully trying to distance itself from the commercial success of Peng Lei and New Pants?

Their new video, 《野人也有爱》 [savages can love too] is a nod to Beijing’s heavy metal heritage. The video is an homage to classic metal bands of the 1990s like Tang Dynasty (or Dou Wei’s Hei Bao), and a jibe at the “primitive” nature of the grubby, long-haired metal hippies that still thrash in the Beijing night.

If you know the references, or have ever experienced an authentic Beijing metal session,  you can appreciate the fine art direction: awesome nappy hair (and fine handling of it), cut off jeans, motorcycles and on-site locations featuring the National Art Gallery, Forbidden City and a sweet pile of rubble.

Its clear that Peng Lei’s’ “artistic direction” helped the band take off, and even though there are a few lapses into videos with a mass-market appeal, the lo-fi, self-depreciating absurdity of “savages can love too” convinced me that there were some more good things to come.

In the video below,  see a great use of montage in 《爱带我回家》[love take me home], some unforgettable dancing moves by keyboardist Pang Kuan, unresolved Village People references and a superb “circle of slapping”.

More New Pants classics:
Dragon Tiger Panacea, Bye Bye Disco, She is Automatic

Click here for an interview with Peng Lei in Wallpaper magazine
see more works from his 2007 solo exhibition at Arario Beijing 

PLATFORM CHINA｜站台空间
No. 319-1 East End Art (A), CaoChangDi Village, Chaoyang District｜朝阳区草场地村319号艺术东区内
August 30-October 12

Chinese culture is steeped in delicate intimations sometimes so slight they can be easily missed. In “Subtlety,” curator Karen Smith presents a thoughtful selection of nine Chinese artists—of divergent generations, media, and creative thought processes—who demonstrate this historical refinement. Wang Wei creates site-specific installations that transform their exhibition spaces. For this exhibition, he has enlarged a dozen pieces of the tiny furniture used in real estate mock-ups. These life-size wardrobes and kitchen sets have an odd effect on the space, causing double takes. The artificiality of these stunningly white wooden sculptures is enhanced by their epoxy-resin edges, which give them the appearance of having been pulled from plastic molds. Hu Xiaoyuan and Qiu Xiaofei, who are a couple, present independent works in adjacent rooms; each artist uses a combination of found objects and conventional artistic media to evoke nostalgia. For Permanent Address, 2008, Qiu has assembled from flea-market goods a complete domicile, its corridor entrance flanked by towers of discarded electronics, as well as rice cookers realistically re-created in painted wood. Hu’s Summer Solstice, 2008, is more symbolist and organic: a battered, lift-top school desk is filled with cicada husks; everyday objects fashioned from coarse papier-mâché are displayed on small wooden shelves above it. From the open drawer of the desk, a roll of blank paper spills out onto the floor. The cicadas represent years of gestation in a harsh, survival-of-the-fittest educational system that the surrounding desk and school supplies intimate. In another room, Jia Aili, a young painter known for barren landscapes and ominous figures wearing gas masks, presents a video filmed out the window of a train. Using charcoal pencil, he has covered the nearly sixteen-foot-high adjacent wall with realistic cracks, flimsy nightgowns, and blank canvases. An otherworldly light casts shadows on this crowded wall of nonexistent, two-dimensional objects in the dim room, and a trademark demonic gas mask stares at viewers from its center.

— Lee Ambrozy

read more critics’ picks at artforum.com

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Some of us look forever, others never seek––perhaps they’re already found “ME.” New September 2008 publication is a compilation of short texts and artwork images documenting China’s new generation of “Post 70s” artists. Included within are 30 artists, each artist includes a short introduction, three full pages of color images, and up-to-date artist resumes, there is even a photograph of each artist, in the old school, i.d. photo style.

These artists included are among the most outstanding of their generation, they represent Mainland China’s up-and-coming talent in the visual arts. Although often called the “Post 70s” generation, the artists here are mostly born after 1975. The book is a compliment to the exhibition of the same name, curated by Fang Fang (art director of Star Gallery and 2006 exhibition “Naughty Kids”), but is meant to stand on its own, and become a resource tool for those interested in this younger generation of artists, a browsing book.

If you’re like everyone else I know, you’re thinking: What does the name mean?

After spending a summer on this book, researching these artists, writing texts, translating and pondering the very same question I can only say: It means what ever you want it to. Whatever looking for you might entail. May you find it within!

Artists: Ouyang Chun / Li Jikai / Wei Jia / Qin Qi / Huang Yuxing / Xiong Yu / Wen Ling / Wang Guangle / Liu Ding / Li Hui / Qiu Jiongjiong / Song Kun / Wang Yaqiang / Liang Yuanwei / Cao Fei / Wang Yifan / Li Chaoxiong / Chen Ke / Xu Maomao / Jia Aili / Gao Yu / Li Qing / Qiu Xin / Wen Chuan / Yan Cong / Ha Migua / Chen Fei / Jin Nv / unmask

Book design: Liu Zhizhi MEWE

Authors: Lee Ambrozy / Jing Xiaomeng / Gong Jian / Huang Shan / Helen Li / Pauline J Yao / Chang Chang

The following artist introduction will be included in the forthcoming book, Looking for Me, a collection of writings and works representing the best of China’s young artists.

Yan Cong’s artistic career began in boredom and loneliness, a student wasting away in his dorm room, which he surmounted by drawing comics and illustrations and posting them online for a growing group of virtual friends. Thus the imaginary landscapes he retreats into and characters that inhabit them are a true blend of his psychology and quaint nostalgia for childhood, or perhaps his humble home in the countryside. His adopted penname, yancong, is the Chinese for “chimney.”

Yan Cong works in an eclectic mix of elementary materials: ballpoint pen, newspaper collage, low-tech digital illustration, even needle and thread. His choice of mediums reflects the low-tech modesty and longing for an uncomplicated world that color his personal world.  In drawings and comics on paper of various sizes and quality, he invokes a lonely world of folkloric creatures, and dreamlike adventures unfold in a narrative voice culled over a lifetime of avid comic reading. Much of the detail, the compositional language and depth in his two-dimensional works was informed by his training as a traditional painter, although, this formal instruction is otherwise invisible. He shares new comics and illustrations online at his blog, Soda Pop Stand, and is a central member of the Green School Design Collective, curating shows and influencing the group aesthetic with his seemingly benign style.

Many of his drawings resemble children’s book illustrations, but tiny nuances betray the skill of their author––eyelashes, the twinkle in an eye, or the just-so buttons on a flowery dress. There are evil characters with bullhorns, and good boys with rosy cheeks, pig-headed or dog-faced children are everywhere, and characters tear out their heart (literally) for us; the moon smiles down on it all. His works might be small but his repertoire is growing, each artwork becoming a frame onto Yan Cong’s private mythology. As it once functioned for him, Yan Cong’s work shelters us in a simpler world.