Thursday, November 27, 2008

Breaking the boundary









Wonderland

Bund18 creative center

Artist: Lee Lee Nan, Hiraki Sawa

 

Breaking the boundary

Lee Lee Nan’s Video installations are 

about Classic Oil paintings and traditional ink paintings and left audiences a feeling that there is on clear bound between each other. Every single picture in these videos is a beautiful painting of quiet plants, fluid river, misty temple and remote mountains, elements frequently appearing in scenery paintings from both western and eastern culture. Although there are huge differences between oil painting and ink painting, the artist uses these familiar elements to create a coherent atmosphere among different works. One object in this painting may also be in that painting and vice versa .it seems that these works like detailed images, as a whole, 

together and become a grand view of all these gorgeous landscape.

 

Another feature that impressed me is the artist’s extended and expanded vision of time and space. All the objects in these installations are moving images which on longer stop at a certain point of time or place, but going from far to close, from dawn to dark and from spring to winter. In the painting of “temple” the creator shows us a movie: the boat floats far and near ,the light turns on and off tell the every life of a fisher 

 in the island; the breeze in spring, rains in summer, golden plants in autumn and snows in winter illustrate the seasonal changes in the island. This moving image, with the help of modern technology, enlarges the limitation of time and space and provides us a vivid view of Chinese ink scenery and the cycle of life and universe









Yoko Ono- Fly opening

Nov 22nd

 

An unexpected interactive behavior performance and something else


If it is not for Yoko Ono, I would not have gone out in such a rainy night. On my way to Ke Center for Contemporary Art center, I could not keep thinking: what kind of exhibition this famous woman will bring to us?

 

The first outdoor performance was Onochord: I love you. Ono used flash lights and said I love you to audiences and asked all the audiences say that to your family, your friends and people around you. Although there were not so many audiences using flash lights interacted in the performance due to some objective reasons, lots of them said it directly in words. After we went into the main hall, I found several works share some similarities with the first one, like” Mend piece –for shanghai”: four tables, 16 chairs, several broken cups or plates on the desks ,audiences are invited to glue or tie the broken pieces back to original shape. After mending, all works will exhibition on the shelves. These pieces of paper hanging on the wall are also part of performance. One of it tells us to “Shake hands”: a person stand behind a cloth with a hole in the middle and shake hands with people in front of him/her. This performance starts this Tuesday in metro stations, supermarket, restaurant and other public areas and every pass-by can join the performance and bring it home. ”Telephone”: the telephone standing in the lobby, in fact, is a performance, which has not started till Yoko leave china. When in somewhere else, she will call the number at any time, no matter who answer the phone, can talk with the artist and conduct the performance.

 

All the above works can be call “Instruction art”: the artist proposes the idea and the performance conducts by both creator and audience. among all the instruction art pieces in this exhibition, we can see that the behaviors, like shaking hands, mending, answering the phone, themselves are very common in our daily life, but the artist put these common behaviors into carefully designed artistic environment to interfere our usual thinking habit and common concepts .moreover, it also produce questionable exploration towards the long existed values.

 

When we decided to leave, I found the biggest installation we supposed to see first:” Exit”. 100 coffins were lying in order at the front of the entrance. Holly grows in the upside of every coffin if the coffins stand for death; perhaps the holly stands for our hope, a possibility of reviviscence and life. Though the image of 100 coffins might be shocking, green and living hope gives us another aspect of observation towards death and other disasters, as well as reflection about the dedicate and fragile situation of our current situation. 

 

Maybe there is another interactive performance or instruction in this exhibition. It followed by the “I love you” section, when thousands of people tried to pour into the building. After that much squeeze and push, someone finally shouted out the key words: we come here for love, not for violence! This performance ended up successfully with everyone’s entry to the building.

 

Actually, before this exhibition, what I knew about Yoko was just her marriage to john Lennon, her legendary love story and world known frame. But the other side of this celebrity is an artist who has sincere concerns and questions about our fragile living situation, who has the ideas and creativity to produce artistic events, which come from usual concepts and habits.

 

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Taipei Biennial 2008

This was my first visit to Taipei Biennial. Having visited SH Biennial and read my Yishu article on politics of Taipei Biennial, I was expecting a "forced" art show. I was wrong as the Taipei Biennial turned out to be far more intriguing and stimulating than my past experiences in China.

Firstly, the Biennial itself was not only located in Taipei Fine Art Museum but was spread throughout different sites in Taipei City. The medium used was different from SH biennials. It was heavily focused on video installations and barely any sculpture and paintings. Second, the theme was focused on the issues arising from "neo-liberal capitalist globalisation". These issues range from "foreign labor forces, divided nations, micro-nations, war conditions, ecological collapse, global unrest and opportunities for change". The Biennial artworks did not try to represent these issues visually or criticise the system through artistic metaphors or symbols, but rather addressed these issues in "do-it-yourself practices, humourous approaches and idiosyncrasies." The main angle the Biennial tried to show spectators was that art cannot provide solutions but it can reflect these issues from different perspectives and work with "unexpected forms of enquiry".

Since photos were not allowed I will attempt to illustrate one or two works at the show. Upon entrance, visitors are greeted by life size paper-men in black and why, saying "we are all errorists" in different languages. A huge banner hung above museum entrance reading" INTERNATIONAL ERRORIST" in Spanish. It's a play on the US's "war on terrorism" and media bombardment of phrases such as "international terrorists". However, it also illustrates how governments and societies are built upon humans, who are essentially errorists.

Another artwork that caught my attention was called "NSK passport by Irwin". Basically this was an art project where artists set up booths for people to apply for a NSK passport. NSK is an ideal that offers people a way out of being constrained by national borders, citizenships and government policies. An NSK passport meant you belonged to no specific country, religion, race and ethnicity. You were simple a global person. The project was carried out in Taipei and other international cities and the actual artwork were video installations that interviewed people who applied for it.

There were videos that played with miscommunications in a globalized world (sort of "lost in translation"), where a Taiwanese artists asked expats to repeat Chinese phrases and sentences and then include subtitles in the videos. Obviously, the expats had different accents so the subtitles used Chinese characters that were phonetically identical to what was repeated by the expats but made no sense in Chinese writing (or was rather humorous).

The artworks explored different issues of contemporary society but the overall Biennial was not too forced since the theme is so broad and the artists came from various countries, therefore each artist's took on different perspectives and subjects. Some found humorous ways to address the issues, other used more of a documentary approach, some as intellectual research and analysis and others experimented with new media to illustrate a better world. It was refreshing and critical. Intellectual and light-hearted. Funny and depressing. Beneath the surface, the Biennial tried to show us a new group of rebels, fighting for a better world, unveiling the flaws of current societal structures and questioning authority. It also showed the visitors how to laugh and forget in an era of media bombardment and manipulation, political frustration and disillusionment.

For me, Taipei Biennial 2008 reminded me of how far Taiwan has come to be and despite its social imperfections, political scandals and capitalist desires, it has succeeded in democracy and freedom of speech in relatively peaceful ways. Sometimes we become unaware of how fortunate we are to be born in such free societies. Thus my visit to Taipei Biennial pointed out to me how valuable artistic freedom really is and how China, despite all its current successes, still has much more to open up itself to.

Taipei Biennial History

I will begin by presenting my Yishu readings since it involves the history of Taipei Biennial and then share with you my visit.
After major diplomatic crisis in Taiwan in the 1970s, the Taiwan government began using cultural edification to "legitimize" their sovereignty over China. As part of the Kuomintang government's "cultural edification" plan, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum was born. It took a big step forward by creating an image of contemporary China. The architecture of the museum deviates from the usual government-building styles that imitate Beijing's Forbidden City. Instead the architect adopted Japanese minimalist style.
The museum itself had a scandalous and rough beginning. Taiwan was still under martial law and censorship was strong. The Fine Arts Museum had a director with little artistic background and aimed at creating shows "suitable" for the audience and acceptable for the government. However, it also had to strive to be modern and contemporary. The first director had little understanding of contemporary art and before one show, even destroyed and ruined one artists' work because she considered it "crap". The struggle between censorship and artistic freedom continues, and as Taiwan's martial law was lifted, the Taipei Biennial slowly took its form.
There was constant conflict between foreign critics/curators and local politics. The Biennial show was a governmental instrument to create the image that Taiwan has cultural contribution to this world and is essential to the global cultural/artistic community. The second director understood the system and pushed for "art untouched by politics".Under him were years where the upper level was exhibiting government "acceptable" shows to the public and the underground level became the experimental platform for artists to express their political dissent, personal opinions...etc. Slowly as media censorship eased and Taiwan strayed away from martial law, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum started reflecting the change of time by competing for media coverage and attention. It then invited a foreign curator, which received criticism for lack of local artists. Finally, Biennial began having local and foreign curators work together to balance the show.

The Yishu I read is a 2004 edition, a bit outdated so my personal visit differed a bit from the expectations I built up from my readings.

Yishu Journal: The Yan'an Forum on Art Education

The September 2006 issue of Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art focused on the Yan'an Forum on Art Education. The conference was part of the Long March Project, a grassroots project begun in 1999. The Long March Project was not only an art project but also a social project using different types of mediums. It traces the path taken by the Red Armies during the Chinese Civil War between the Communists and the Nationalist Party. The Long March Project began as a way to fight back against the institutionalization of contemporary art in China, basically against having a defined space (an exhibition hall, a museum, etc) as the location of an art exhibition. The project includes many international and national artists as well as the local artists from each of the sites. The pieces are open to the public and not only uses the local arts and crafts of the exhibition sites (paper cutting, woodblock print, etc) but also the location itself (inside the Kailuan coalmine, etc).
In 2006, the Long March arrived in Yan'an where Lu Jie along with Cai Guo-Qiang decided to host a forum on the modern Chinese art education system. But why Yan'an? After all, it was the site of the 1942 Yan'an Conference where Mao made is speech about the purpose of art. After the 1942 conference, art was no longer something individualistic or entertaining. In fact, after Mao's speech, art and literature became something to propagate the voice of the party and the people. Despite its history, the organizers of the conference felt that Yan'an was the perfect setting for the forum as it used to be the creative center of China. They felt Yan'an's energy was what they needed in order to tackle the issue of the modern Chinese art education system. Many of the invited speakers felt that not only the Chinese art education system but also the old Western art education system were both based on the master-apprentice tradition. That is, a master artist would train and pass on all his knowledge to his apprentice. All the apprentice had to do was learn the technicalities of creating art. However, even though the Chinese art education system had changed due to international influences, it lacked one thing that the new Western art education system had: a humanitarian/liberal arts/creative aspect. The participants felt that the Chinese focused on the technicalities of art (notice the proliferation of art studios) and not enough on the create side. After much talk, the participants came up with some solutions as to how to solve this crisis. Beginning in 2006 and continuing until 2009, a training camp for art teachers would be created. The training camp teaches these art teachers how to teach creative art, not just technical art. One of the key events of the forum was when the leaders invited art students from Yan'an University to join the talk. This had not been done before (including students in the educational planning talks) but the participants felt it greatly helped them understand the students' opinions. After the participants talked about their teaching styles, the students offered their opinions about what they felt worked or did not work. This talk, even though it was two years ago, gave hope to the possibility of reforming the art education system so that China's future art could have more substance than what it has now.

Wonderland

During the e-arts festival, I went to an exhibit called "Wonderland," which featured the two artists Hiraki Sawa (Japan) and Lee Lee Nam (Korea). The exhibit was hosted at the Bund 18 Lounge, the same place where the Cotemporary Chinese Arts Awards winners were displayed in October. The two artists' pieces made the viewer feel as if he/she were in a dream or illusion. Hiraki's pieces were similar to "impossible figures." He set his pieces in an ordinary house but then mixed in parts of the natural, or man-made, world so that the viewer saw oceans contained by bathtubs or sinks or mountains growing out of kitchen counters. There was a video pice called "Spotter" that reminded me of the movie "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids." In this piece, Hiraki showed a group of tourist doing tourity things. However, instead of being in famous tourist sites, the tourists were shrunken down and were doing their touristy activities on table tops or kitchen counters while tiny planes flew above them. I suppose this shows that traveling is a lot like a dream. The traveler goes to an exotic location and experiences things he/she would never have experienced at home. As for Lee, his pieces looked very much like traditional Chinese ink paintings. However, whereas ink paintings remain static once the ink dries, his pieces changed. In a piece called "New Gemgangjeongdo" he showed a traditional mountain-water scene but placed cranes constructing famous buildings and landmarks at each peak. If the viewer stayed and watch the three or so minutes of the video, they would see the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Big Ben, etc. being constructed.
Despite the two artists creating some rather unique pieces, I felt rather disappointed by the exhibit. After a long day of classes, commuting for an hour to reach the Bund 18 Lounge, then climbing up several flights of stairs, I did not want to just spend my time there looking at silent videos playing in a darkened room- I wanted something more interactive. While I was at the exhibit, a Chinese family (father, mother, daughter, and grandma) came in, looked at the videos, and were out of the building in the space of five minutes - about the same amount of time it takes me to brush my teeth. For all that e-arts is even more accessible to the public, if it does not hold the public's interest then very few people would even want to access it. I heard from my fellow classmates that other exhibits in the festival included real musicians accompanying images shown on a screen, or pieces where the viewers' faces were photographed then superimposed on the images on the screen, or even where the images moved towards or away from the screen depending on the viewers' vicinity to the screen. Even the 2008 Shanghai Biennale, which mostly included sculptures and photographs, included one interactive piece. This piece, located on the landing to the second floor (the floor with all the images of Shanghai's history), was a giant LCD screen that showed the viewers upside-down when they passed by the video camera above it. Even if it was a rather simple piece, people were entranced by it. A lot of people kept staring at their images or taking photos with their images. Some people were so caught up with the novelty of seeing themselves upside-down that they remained in front of the screen for more than five minutes- again, about the same amount of time I use to brush my teeth.
"Wonderland" was a rather interesting exhibit but if you were tired and were not up to standing in front of a screen or had the patience to watch a three to twenty minute piece, the exhibit would be boring.

HONG KONG femail artists--After reading the YISHU Journal







The concept related to “woman” has always been an interesting and attractive topic in every field. Women have long been involved in making art, but gender consciousness is art is the result of political strategizing. According to YISHU, Generations of female artists have dealt with their own circumstances in ways that have led to different choices and forms of analysis.
The article is about the Hong Kong female artists of different generations. The most interesting part is that, female artists who achieved early success and prominence tended to oppose the application of the label “female/feminine” carried a vague negative connotation. With the passage of time, another group of female artists now opposes the se of gender in descriptions of them, but their reasoning lies in an attitude of “Wah! To talk about women artists is so passé.”

Liang Yee-woo梁以瑚
Liang Yee-woo studied abroad in Canada during the 1960s and came back to Hong Kong at the end of 1970s to “seek roots”. At just that time, the New Ink Painting had come to the forefront. Liang regarded the New Ink movement as an emptying out of traditional Chinese painting, a clever deception using clever method. Lotus flowers became her most unique and favorite subject matter, because they faintly suggested a Chinese literati tradition, as well as associations with maternity. As a result, she felt the need to emphasize women’s art and began calling herself a “female painter”. Her subsequent experience of giving birth led her to affirm the female body more directly and to assert the opinion that “birth is a kind of blessing.” She strongly felt that “the female body was already inside her painting”, and with strength gained from her experience of birth, she finally finished doing imitative studies and embarked upon a new creative stage.
But it’s very difficult to find any her works relevant to her female identity. The only pictures I fond were also very interesting.

May Fung
Starting out using super-8 film, May Fung was one of the original pioneers in Hong Kong in experimental film and video. In 1986, Fung together with Ellen Pau and some other friends formed Videotage, which is a non-profit interdisciplinary artist collective focusing on the development of video and new media art in Hong Kong.
One thing I want to mention about her is her attitude towards her identification, she firmly claims that she’s not a feminist, but other artists tend to quietly call her a “feminist who denies she’s a feminist”. But the label she values more is “independent art worker.” She basically doesn’t have that kind of morale and she understands that for some friends who have spent significant time overseas gender is a political urgency that arises from academic and personal identity conditions of necessity. But in Hong Kong, there are less feeling of oppression or a sense of urgency to necessarily always think about it.
Some of her works include “The second sex”(1986), Her Border, Her Lines(1990), Hong Kong in Transition—getting personal(1997). Her experimental works include lots of observations on social-political issues from a women’s perspective. Of the women she saw and heard about at work, none of them had abilities or achievements that differed from those of the male colleagues. So her works mainly focus on the independent spirit and situation of women in Hong Kong.
(You can go to the website of Videotage: http://www.videotage.org.hk/index.html. But strangely, I notice that in the name list of “Board of Directions”, May Fung’s name no longer exists.)
Although these two artists of a “previous generation ” both dealt with women’s issues in their artwork, over time they have come to a similar conclusion of doubting whether or not it is necessary to concertedly emphasize women’s art. Liang Yee-woo’s hope has been for a greater exploration of aesthetics that tend toward a feminine sensibility, not for political opposition based on biological gender determinism. And I totally agree with that.







Yoko Ono in Shanghai: flash, flash flash, flash flash flash






I was actually extremely excited to see Yoko Ono in real life. I never knew much about her except that she was John Lennon’s wife and, according to my friend, she was the one who “broke up the Beatles.” I quickly did a Google image search of her before I popped into a cab to head to the opening and I saw pictures of her, very young and VERY hippie looking. So off I went to the exhibition, only knowing that she was an artist who was a hippie who John Lennon fell deeply in love with. I walked into the KE Arts Center’s area and was immediately bombarded with tons of chic, artsy looking people standing around underneath the night’s light drizzle. On the movie screen placed outside along the brick wall was a movie of Yoko Ono’s Onochord’s from all over the world. In the European countries she had a massive following as millions upon millions of fans clamored together to repeat her “I Love You” flashlight messages. It seemed almost cult-like.

The people who I went with to the exhibition were mostly just like me—students with no background in the arts. Their initial reactions to the pieces were overwhelmingly negative. They felt that here Yoko Ono was, promoting peace and love and happiness to the world, and by what means? By turning a flashlight on and off six times? What does that actually do to further her message…how does this make an actual difference? I admit her message seems a bit idealistic and ridiculously unattainable. If she thinks that flashing a light six times to random strangers will make the world a better place, she should definitely take her head out of the clouds. However, maybe I am still not jaded from the reality of the world, or maybe I am just not as cynical as my friends, but I thought the message was really sweet. It was endearing that she was trying to promote love to the world, as it justifies her past as a hippie, and hey, what are hippies better known for than to spread love and peace? Her notion of world peace, love, and happiness is a nice one, but that is all it is. Without a concrete force or action behind her ideas, her ideas don’t ever leave the ground. She appeared at the Shanghai opening, her tiny self in her frail voice, attempting to rile the crowd up by getting them to repeat after her, “I…Love…You.” Maybe it was the rain that took down the crowd’s spirits, or maybe it was a language barrier, or maybe, just maybe the majority of the exhibition go-ers thought the same as my friends did…that her Onochord was a crock of bull. I believe that if it were any other lesser known artist besides Ono, they would never be able to garner the same amount of publicity for this event as she did. Her popularity and famous image bolstered this exhibition to the top of the “Must Sees” on City Weekend and SmartShanghai.com, not the message she was trying to convey. For her to use her image to get her message across is in no means wrong—many people do it for far worse reasons. However, because of her ability to reach the masses, I felt she should have put actions behind her words.

The gallery itself was, like my classmates have said, a great disappointment. After waiting in the rain for 30 minutes, fighting for an admission flashlight for 10 minutes, and being shoved and stepped on repeatedly, I definitely had high expectations. I have been to the KE exhibition space before and I know how big that place is… it’s held way more than the five things she had on display. Like her “I Love You” Onochord, I felt that her works were very idealistic and nothing really jumped up and wowed me. Granted, I felt that the positioning of the coffin boxes outside the exhibit were more exciting than anything I saw in there, because they integrated the outside surrounding areas.

So although I was thoroughly disappointed with “Fly,” partially due to the hour wait in the rain, the celebrity fiend inside me was still excited to see a celebrity…no matter how shoddy her message.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

A second tulipmania

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10474

A second tulipmania

The bubble in contemporary art is about to pop. It has exhibited all
the classic features of the South Sea bubble of 1720 or the tulip
madness of the 1630s. It has been the bubble of bubbles—balancing
precariously on top of other now-burst bubbles in credit, housing and
commodities—and inflating more dramatically than all of them. While
British house prices took six years to double at the start of this
century, contemporary art managed it in just one, 2006-07. (Over the
same period, old masters went up by just 7.6 per cent and British
17th to 19th century watercolours actually lost value.) Contemporary
art in the emerging economies did even better. The value of its sales
in China increased by 983 per cent in one year (2005-06). In Russia
they rose 2,365 per cent in five years (2000-05), while its stock
market increased by "only" about 300 per cent.

Even these numbers understate the incredible tulip-like increases in
the value of the hottest artists. The Chinese painter Zhang Xiaogang
saw his work appreciate 6,000 times, from $1,000 to $6m (1999-2008);
work by the American artist Richard Prince went up 60 to 80 times
(2003-2008). The German painter Anselm Reyle was unknown in 2003; you
could have picked up one of his stripe paintings for €14,000. Now he
has a studio with 60 assistants turning them out for about €200,000
each. Any figures for the whole contemporary art market are
guesswork, though Christie's chief executive, Ed Dolman, recently
estimated that it had grown in value from $4bn a year to somewhere
between $20-30bn in the past eight years.

But this bubble is now deflating. Sotheby's share price has lost
three quarters of its value over the past year, sinking from its peak
of $57 in October 2007 to $9 in early November—close to its 1980s low
of $8. The latest round of contemporary art auctions in London has
gone badly. In October, the Phillips de Pury sale made only £5m—a
quarter of the minimum estimate; at Christie's almost half the lots
didn't sell; and an air of denial hung over the Frieze art fair like
a fog. Upmarket dealers Matthew Marks and Iwan Wirth claimed to have
clinched many big deals, but the reality was surely different. A
leading New York gallerist was said to have sold very little and a
well-known German dealer not a single work.

Some dealers have blamed the poor quality of the works in the London
sales. "Just wait for New York in mid-November," one said, "and
you'll see the art market is still doing well." But New York has been
no better. This should have come as no real surprise. If you consider
the market as a purely financial enterprise, rather than one in which
aesthetic quality has any bearing, then the boom in contemporary art
has the hallmarks of a classic investment bubble.

***

In his book, Manias, Panics, and Crashes, Charles Kindleberger
observed that manias typically start with a "displacement" that
excites speculative interest. It may come from a new object of
investment or from the increased profitability of existing
investments. It is followed by positive feedback as rising prices
encourage less experienced investors to enter the market. Then, as
the mania gets a grip, speculation becomes more diffuse and spreads
to other types of asset. Fresh assets are created at an ever faster
rate to take advantage of the euphoria and investors try to increase
their gains by borrowing to buy assets or using derivatives. Credit
ultimately becomes overextended, swindling and fraud proliferate, and
the mania ends in panic as investors seek to liquidate their positions.

The art market has adhered spookily to Kindleberger's model. By 2004
it was clear that a boom in contemporary art was well underway ("The
price of art," Ben Lewis, Prospect, October 2004.) At the Armory
show, New York's trendsetting contemporary art fair, dealers sold
$43m worth of art in four days, nearly twice as much as the previous
year. There were huge price rises at auction, too. A 1996 sculpture
of a stuffed horse hanging from a ceiling, Ballad of Trotsky, by the
fashionable and witty Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, sold for $2m
at auction in May 2002. It had increased in value tenfold in two
years. Gerhard Richter's paintings quadrupled in value between 2000
and 2004. Even then, buyers were paying $1m to $3m for a work by
Hirst, Warhol, Basquiat or Koons. Those sums now seem quaint—last
year a Koons went for $23m, a Hirst for $20m and a Basquiat for $15m.

The moment of "displacement" was driven by the emergence of a global
class of the new rich. These billionaires, who had probably never
drawn more than stick figures with a biro, were drawn to artistic
creation. They wanted to collect contemporary art, partly because
they liked it, partly because it was a status symbol, partly because
most of the good old master works were in museums, and partly because
it seemed to be a solid investment.

The way was led by people like Charles Saatchi and the Miami property
magnates, the Rubells. Saatchi laid down a blueprint in the late
1990s that others have tried to copy—he bought the work of young
artists, established a museum in which to display it or lent it to
public museums, and used the media interest that such shows attracted
(by virtue of the outlandish works involved and the association of
celebrities) to sell on part of the collection at auction at greatly
inflated prices. Some of the proceeds would then be reinvested in the
work of other new discoveries. Saatchi's famous 1997 show,
"Sensation," demonstrated that this "specullecting" was a great way
to make a splash as an arbiter of taste. Others took an earthier view
of the collectors' instinct. Amy Capellazzo, the co-head of
Christie's contemporary art department, observed in 2007: "After you
have a fourth home and a G5 jet, what else is there?"

According to Forbes, the number of billionaires in the world has been
growing by 20 per cent a year since 2000. There were 476 in 2003, now
there are 1,125. As they began to collect contemporary art, prices
started to rise. New fairs, such as Art Basel Miami Beach and Frieze
in London, were a success. Newspapers ran stories that promoted the
boom. Advertising from rich galleries and art businesses and the
untouchable sanctity of "art" deterred criticism. The public flocked
to art galleries. The Tate Modern had 5.2m visitors in 2007, making
it the most popular museum of modern art in the world.

This boom was different from the one in the 1980s. Then, it had
depended on Japanese property speculators buying with credit secured
against inflated real estate values. This time the buyers were more
widely spread and paid with cash, not promissory notes. Art had
become a new asset class—akin to shares or oil. In 2007, Tobias
Meyer, Sotheby's head of contemporary art, effused: "The best art is
the most expensive because the market is so smart."

***

Contemporary art turned out to be an ideal vehicle for speculative
euphoria. The market is almost entirely free from state interference.
Governments have had little interest in regulating the trinkets and
playthings of the super-rich. Art works are a uniquely portable and
confidential form of wealth. Whereas all property purchases have to
be publicly registered, buying art is a private activity. And unlike
old masters, which are often linked by history to specific places,
contemporary art knows no frontiers.

By 2006, the bubble was well into Kindleberger's second phase:
diffusion. Rising prices were sucking in new investors. In the first
half of 2006, 454 works exceeded $1m at auction, up from 130 in the
same period of 2003 as Asian billionaires joined European buyers. In
Britain, there was the Banksy market, a kind of contemporary art
lite, for people with thousands rather than millions to spend. Images
that would once have never made it past a T-shirt, mug or wall, were
now bought and sold as limited edition prints and stencils on canvas.
In 2003, one of the 50 spoofy Kate Moss prints by Banksy in the style
of Warhol's Marilyn could have been yours for £1,500. In February
this year one sold for £96,000 at Bonhams. (Now the price is half that.)

Established collectors dropped out or were nudged sideways towards
lesser known artists by the activities of the new rich. The titans of
the showrooms included hedge fund bosses such as Steve Cohen, whose
SAC fund was responsible for about 3 per cent of daily trading on the
New York stock exchange. Other big buyers were Asian billionaires,
like Joseph Lau from Hong Kong, oil tycoons and the oligarchs with
their huge stakes in metal extraction and banks. The Georgian Boris
Ivanishvili spent $95m on Picasso's Dora Maar au Chat—a work of art
that he still hasn't unpacked. When it was flown back to Tbilisi, the
airport was closed down and the army turned out to ensure the work's
transfer to a secure warehouse. These financial investors didn't
simply shove their wealth into contemporary art, they imported the
strategies of financial investment into art collecting. Alien
phrases, such as "price discovery," were heard in galleries and
auction houses.

Investors became beady-eyed about tracking which artists leading
museums considered important and followed the prices of their works
on Artnet's database like stock market indices.

Indeed, the new art market bore about as much resemblance to
traditional collecting as the modern financial system of credit
default swaps and mortgage-backed securities did to traditional
banking. The correlation between value and rarity in art went out of
the window. Paintings by old masters such as Vermeer and Rembrandt
hold their value because there are a finite number in the world. This
is both a guarantor of value and limits the extent of any speculative
activity. But, as Kindleberger has shown, it is a condition of a
speculative mania that new "assets" be manufactured to meet raging
demand—so the recent bubble has focused on the works of living
artists such as Hirst, Koons, Prince and Murakami. They, and other
stars, have produced scores of very similar works in series, like the
slashed canvases of the Italian conceptual artist Lucio Fontana,
Warhol's screenprints or Hirst's spins and spots.

More and more of such work has been churned out by cookie-cutter
artists without regard to originality or aesthetic merit. Economist
and historian of financial crashes, Edward Chancellor, observed
recently: "Most contemporary art is inherently worthless. It is not
like Titian and other old masters of which there are few and whose
value will not fall away. It's like subprime CDOs."

At the peak of the South Sea bubble in 1720, a series of stock
promoters emerged touting the shares of "bubble companies" that aimed
to take advantage of high share prices. We laugh now at the
prospectuses of these tawdry ventures—not least the one proposing to
carry out "an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what
it is." As the art bubble has neared its peak, the great art-
entrepreneurs such as Hirst, Banksy, Prince or the Chinese artists,
Xiaogang and Yue Minjun, seem increasingly like these 18th-century
promoters. Not only have they pumped out identical works, but they
have also sought to capture more of the value for themselves,
bypassing the gallerists with whom they are obliged to share 50 per
cent of sales and selling direct out of the studio or placing new
works straight into auction. Five years ago it was unknown for a work
of art that was only one or two years old to be sold at auction. Now
this is common—the best example being the Hirst sale of over 200 new
works at Sotheby's in September.

***

The final phase of any bubble is characterised by overextended credit
as investors use leverage to magnify their gains. It is also the peak
of what JK Galbraith referred to as "the bezzle"—the amount of money
siphoned from the system through outright corruption and fraud. The
opacity of the art market makes it hard to know how exposed it is to
the credit crunch. But the auction houses are weighed down by debt
from guarantees—the prices that they have guaranteed to pay the
sellers of works of art in their auctions (which they extend to
persuade sellers to sell works through them). Auction house Phillips
de Pury was rescued by a takeover by the Russian luxury goods company
Mercury. In November, Sotheby's announced it had around $250m of debt
in the form of guarantees to the end of the year. It had already lost
$47m on work that hadn't sold and has since stopped giving further
guarantees. Sotheby's has borrowed $250m to "ensure additional
liquidity." Christie's has also taken out a loan and in October
suspended offering any further credit terms to its customers,
according to an auction house executive.

The mania for collecting contemporary art has become ever more
intense in the past 12 months—in the first half of this year, new
auction records were set for almost 1,000 artists. But the suspicion
is that dealers and collectors with interests in particular artists
may have been "bidding up" prices at auction and acquiring works. If
so, they may be holding large inventories of overvalued work,
financed by increasingly expensive debt. At the Damien Hirst auction
at Sotheby's, his London dealer, Jay Jopling, bid on an astonishing
44 per cent of the lots in the evening sale, and both he and Hirst's
US dealer, Larry Gagosian, bid on two lots after long pauses in the
bidding. One cannot know if Jopling was maintaining Hirst's prices at
his own expense or bidding for clients.

The lack of transparency often makes it hard to know who is doing
what to whom. On 30th August last year, Hirst's business manager
Frank Dunphy and Jopling declared publicly that they had sold his
diamond-encrusted skull For the Love of God for "the full asking
price of £50m"—the highest price ever paid for a work by a living
artist. But just over a year later, Dunphy told Time magazine that
he, Jopling and Hirst owned "a controlling stake" in the skull. A
controlling stake is one that exceeds 50 per cent (and could be
anything up to 100 per cent). In the stock market, a transaction of
this kind would require disclosure to avoid the creation of a "false
market." But as we have seen the art market is unregulated.

As the credit crunch struck, it became evident that American and
Europeans would be buying less art. But that, we were told, did not
matter because a wave of new buyers from Russia and the middle east
would take their place, their wealth buoyed by high commodity prices.
Sotheby's press releases said that every year 20 per cent of their
clients were new and, for the Hirst auction, 22 per cent of the
buyers were new clients. New records were set by these art virgins—
Roman Abramovich paid $86m for a Francis Bacon in July 2008 and the
Qatari royal family, previously known for collecting Islamic art,
bought the Rockefeller Rothko for $73m.

The propaganda of the art entrepreneurs has also reached a final
level of absurdity. We were told that the decline of paper assets
would lead to "a flight of capital into art." The art market, Tobias
Meyer of Sotheby's said in June, is a one-way street: "For the first
time since 1914 we are in a non-cyclical market."

Over the winter of 1636, the tulip mania reached its peak. One kind
of bulb sold for 900 guilders (three times the price of a small town
house), up from 95 a year before. The peak prices of Dutch tulips
were achieved when the bulbs were snug in the ground, and were based
on futures contracts—a form of leverage that allowed investors to
place an enormous price on a bulb without actually laying down the
cash. On 3rd February 1637, the tulip market crashed. There was no
particular reason for the panic—except that spring was nearing and,
on its arrival, the bulbs would be dug up, cash settlement sought for
futures and the game would be up.

We have surely reached the same point in the world of contemporary
art. One of the emotions that has driven its boom is the narcissistic
belief of the rich in the greatness of the age in which they are
living. They thought they were buying masterpieces. But like the
Dutch merchants and their tulips, the obsession of the new rich with
contemporary art is likely to be remembered as the epitome of the
vanity and folly of the age. The bulbs are still in the ground but
the spades are poised.

Yoko Ono in Shanghai: I Love You, Not!





I will not lie, at first I was quite excited to see Yoko-ono's work. I have never seen Yoko-Ono's previous works, and to be honest, the only reason why I know of her is because of her relationship with the late John Lennon. Overall, I was not impressed by her work at all. I was quite disappointed. At first it started out with me, Hana, Val, and Kevin, waiting outside for 45 minutes in the gloomy weather. We watched her video replay itself 3-4 times before anything had actually happened. My first impression of Yoko: creepy. She is a creepy looking lady. Her voice is of peace and harmony but how shes says it seems so generic and even a little fake. Daphne explained the coffins outside represented those who have suffered thoughout the world, coffins are specific for each country, differentiated by the plant. This was nice of her but at the same time so generic. Of course the world suffers, its terrible but I felt the art really had no meaning.

I did not like the "I love you" part. It actually angered me. Her video replayed her movement of "I love you" through the use of flashing lights. Apparently, her idea has been going as early as 2004, which disappoints me because this has already lasted that long. I thought her idea was completely unoriginal. Yes, there is suffering. Yes, people die unfairly. Yes, using light can be used as a universal language so everyone can understand. But I feel that this has no substance what so ever. It seemed more like brainwashing than anything. To me, "I love you" are three very sensitive words to me, not to be used so freely. I found it ridiculous. Yoko-Ono says I love you but to who, for what. The more it was said by her, the more it seemed to lose meaning for me. Superficial. I will admit, it seemed nice of her to create one gigantic prism light in memory of John Lennon, in, I believe but forgive me if its incorrect, Poland. Touching sure. But at the same time, I feel that she is just using the memory of John Lennon to bring attention to her "art." She could have expressed her care not so publicly. She probably meant to stir people's emotion and bring recognition of love, but it just all seems to fake. She just uses her relationship with John Lennon and the power she has accumulated because of it to boast herself and her not-so-genius, not-so-new, not-so-creative ideas.

After watched the video for the forth time, Yoko appears on the rooftop, holding out the peace sign for a long while so she can have her photo-op. Then she repeats her message of "I love you" though you can barely hear her because of her tiny voice. After her brief appearance, she disappears and the exhibit begins. I walk in and what it consisted of was mainly empty space. Her art seemed to be less visual and more reading. Overall, I was disappointed. I see where she is getting at but it just doesn't seem deep at all. It seems that she is trying to change the world, peace and harmony, love, recognizing the mother who brought you to this world...it just all seems so superficial. Perhaps I am being too judgmental. Perhaps I had irrational high expectations. It just didn't seem deep enough for me. It did not have substance in my eyes.

Yoko Ono in Shanghai: Oh No, Yoko

Yoko Ono is certainly in a unique position. Ono is, of course, more famous for her love interests than her art. It's difficult for one to divorce her art from her famous marriage to John Lennon and their decade-long campaign for peace and pacifism in the 1960s and 1970s. Unique to her too is the sense of antagonism that so many feel towards her: she is, to many, the reason the Beatles broke up. Her name has become synonymous with disharmony between friends, a timeless reminder of the danger that relationships can pose to friendships.

Ono has not, however, shied away from her association with Lennon. As hundreds lined up outside the Ke Art Center to see her show "Fly" in Shanghai, a giant screen hanging against the building alternated between slideshows and videos of Ono. At one point, the video for Lennon's "Imagine" came on the screen, perhaps Lennon's most immortal songs, concluding with a written statement by Ono in which she pledges her eternal love for Lennon.

Before the doors opened, Ono stood on the roof of the center, mumbling into a poorly-balanced microphone, shining a flashlight into the crowd. Visitors were given small flashlights, and Ono declared that all should go to loved ones and strangers alike, flash light at them and declare "I love you." Ono tried tirelessly to get the crowd to chant "I love you" to each other and to her, but the crowd was disinterested and unenthusiastic. It was raining, and clearly everyone was ready to get inside to see the exhibition.

Once the doors opened, the crowd began to stampede through the double doors, creating a scary situation that, unfortunately, is not unfamiliar to crowds in Shanghai. Once I made it inside the gallery, the exhibit was, for a lack of better words, underwhelming. I suppose I set my expectations especially high because of my respect and admiration for Lennon, and, being unfamiliar with Ono's art, figured that somehow there would be a connection for me with this art. After all, this was an artist Lennon loved, and I would certainly trust his taste.

Ono's show, however, was seemingly undeveloped and hastily put together. Aside from two large posters, one of a breast and the other of a vagina, Ono's art was rather interactive, grounding itself in words and language rather than visual imagery. Visitors were encouraged on one wall to write a note of love to their mothers. The piece was me was unoriginal and uninspiring.

Ono broke up the gallery space with a makeshift stairway of sorts, a plywood mountain that visitors needed to transverse to see the rest of the show. The rest of the show consisted of a room on which Ono had written sentences and phrases on a wall in black pen, phrases that seemed intentionally ambiguous and minimal. Visitors snaked around the room, dynamically experiencing the space, but there seemed to be a lack of focus or clear message. Whereas the first part of the show seemed focus on love and maternity, this part of the show focused on more abstract concepts without a distinct thesis. Perhaps it was over my head.

I cannot say I was wholly impressed with Ono's exhibit overall. I can appreciate Ono's messages, and her undying love for Lennon, twenty-eight years after his murder, but I cannot say that I feel a connection to her art. It is, for me, far too vague.

Yoko Ono in Shanghai: I LOVE YOU. You Sure About That?




Yoko Ono: FLY Exhibition was...a disaster.
I personally did not know much about Yoko Ono, except the fact that she had been married
to John Lennon and they had led the international peace movement together.
But knowing nothing of her artist life, I had high expectations and was very excited to see her works, in hopes of understanding why she was so famous.
I have to say, even before I saw her works, I was frustrated by the exhibition's organization even before I got there. There was massive confusion of whether it was an invitation-only exhibition, whether the brochure looking thing we got was an actual invitation, or whether everyone can go the opening night. When I called to verify, the employee told me that there was this whole application process in which you have to fill out your nationality, the company you work for, your major (which also makes me wonder, why do they need to know your nationality anyhow?). The funny thing was she seemed to also be confused about this too, not satisfying any of my questions. So when I went to the site, the application process gave off the idea that if you're lucky, you will be selected to go.
But none of this mattered at the end, because first you had to worry about even getting to the front of the door of the exhibition without getting trampled on by the crowd. Oh, but none of this mattered yet, because we were trying to figure out why people were standing around and not in line, only to find out through guessing that there is a video that we must see first, then her speech, then you can go in to the actual exhibition. When we tried to find the organizer or any employee to figure out what was going on, we couldn't find one.
Her "I love you" flashlight code was a whole different story. First, I was fascinated by it. Seeing the video of thousands of people flashing "I LOVE YOU" codes at once, and creating this widespread effect with such a simple idea showed me the immense power of her influence and everyone saying "I LOVE YOU" to each other did at first make me feel all fuzzy and warm inside. But the more I thought about it, the more problems I saw. I felt that she was all about trying to bring universal peace to a world full of hatred and negativity. But, to me, she did a lot of "talk the talk" but not much of the "walk the walk." Everything was so idealistic, and flashing lights at each other isn't exactly going to bring universal peace, if you know what I mean. Just imagine people walking around with flashlights on a daily basis flashing these codes. That is a scary thought, first of all, and just because you flash these codes doesn't mean that the antagonists in our society are going to drop their guns, their hatred, their malice intentions and say, "You know what? I'm sorry. I love you too." Maybe I am being a harsh cynic, but...it was just way too idealistic for my taste.
Her speech, as well, was a disappointment. Being someone who is so famous and well known, I figured she would discuss reflective and profound messages that would really inspire me about her works as an artist, or the messages--maybe about world peace--that she would reflect through her artwork. I was also hoping she can talk a little bit about her work inside the actual exhibition. However, her making an appearance and saying "I love you. I love Shanghai" left me with one reaction: "HUH?"
The crowd itself was very artificial. This was the most crowded exhibition I have ever been to, anywhere. But I felt like a lot of them went for fun, not to appreciate or understand what she had to present. There she is saying that there is so much hatred in this world, and that people should love each other, and while the crowd was flashing these lights that stand for "I LOVE YOU," they were acting in complete hypocrisy--pushing and shoving, pulling people's hairs, causing people fall but not bothering to pick them back up. I LOVE YOU? It certainly did not seem so. I felt like there was also a lot of ignorance in the crowd, people didn't really care about her art work or what she had to say. Many seemed to just come because she was famous. One girl in the crowd completely stepped onto the coffin & tree installation, impatiently trying to get through the crowd, and ended up cracking it, which also made me go, "uh...WHAT"
I did really like that specific installation. The meaning behind it was valuable, if I understood it right. The wooden things were coffins that were meant to commemorate the lives of everyone who died as a result of war, violence in the world, etc. Another interesting characteristic of this installation is that if you notice carefully, they are all of different sizes representing children, bigger people, smaller people. The trees that are placed where the heads lay was also interesting. I read somewhere that these growing trees symbolize the life represented in their faces before they died. And maybe, it could also show how they will still live on to represent the need for peace. The concept of the trees being local to the place it is exhibited is very interesting as well. I really liked that idea.
Overall, I was frustrated and annoyed at how poorly organized Yoko Ono's exhibition was from start to end. Many of my friends left before they can even get into the exhibition because they were sick of how rude the crowd was pushing and shoving, ironically while holding the "I LOVE YOU" flashlights representing exactly the opposite. Letting these belligerent people in little by little in a place where there wasn't even a line was also a bad idea. Overall, there was a lot of confusion, frustration, and a lot of.. hatred. not.. LOVE.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Yoko Ono in Shanghai: war is over? not yet


Yoko Ono’s first solo show in Shanghai, “FLY” had its opening this past weekend. Many people believed they were part of an exclusive group who signed up for, or received invitations to, this opening event. To the surprise of hundreds, this was no small gathering. I arrived at the Ke Center to find a U shaped courtyard completely packed with anticipation filled visitors. Yoko Ono herself was on top of the building at the center of the U, reciting “I Love You” to corresponding blinks from a flash-light. One she retreated into the building the crowd was left waiting to be let in. At this point I had managed to work my way into the crowd to the doors of the gallery. Once people started to be let in –just a few at a time- the crowd turned into a crazy, angry mob, all pushing like crazy to try to get closer and to get in. I saw a mother holding an infant get totally knocked over, and others fall only to be trampled over. This to go see an exhibit of work done by a woman professing messages of love and peace but a moment earlier. I was part of a few lucky individuals to get into the space before EVERYONE was let in (I’m convinced that they must have stormed the doors!). Inside there was a collection of works representing different aspects and times of Yoko Ono’s career. It was interesting to see what the show would be like considering the conceptual and performance based nature of Ono’s work. In the end, the gallery was largely empty, with a few works displayed, recreated, or described. It is really hard to do justice to her art and performances without enacting them and without being in certain contexts. Messages were conveyed, and perhaps some picked up on to her ideas, but mostly people seemed to think it was a joke and pointless –they didn’t really see the meanings and intents. The largest element though was the people, the visitors. Typical of what I’ve seen in China, there was a huge crowd of people, pushing, unaware or ignoring those around them. Such disregard for humanity while fighting to see the work of a woman whose art has always been about humanity and connecting society with peace and love and understanding. While I am interested in Yoko Ono’s work and her philosophies, I don’t think they can really be represented in a static gallery setting, especially in China. Perhaps this exhibit shows how far the world still need to go to imagine all the people living life in peace.

Yoko Ono in Shanghai: Oh No! Yoko's "Fly" Hit or Miss?

I wasn't exactly sure what to expect from the opening of Yoko Ono's retrospective entitled "Fly", as I am only vaguely familiar with her in the context of her marriage to John Lennon. When I arrived at the Ke Center for Contemporary Art, I was not exactly surprised to find a video projection of some of Ono's public appearances. In them, she often spoke of things like universal love, a love that transcends the romantic or the familiar in favor of universal love for humankind. Her rhetoric on the subject I suspect has changed little since her days in the spotlight as Lennon's pacifist wife (and subsequent widow), whose connection to her is clearly inextricable. Ono's exhibition opening, despite obvious efforts on the part of the Ke Center to do otherwise, attracted hundreds of fans and caused something that could only be described as completely chaotic. The whole event, whose organization once again revealed the novice of Chinese institutions in dealing with such situations, was ironically contradictory to Ono's own philosophy and her emphasis on peace and love. Hundreds of people pushed, prodded and shoved their way to the doors of the center, which was only exacerbated by the impending downpour. Many people left in frustration. The combination of the sardine like state imposed on guests as well as the complete lack of communication between crowd and gallery staff was worthy cause for premature departure. I couldn't find one (non-security) staff member to talk to while I waited outside in the rain for an alarmingly indefinite amount of time.

Once inside, however, I am sad to say that the exhibition was not worth the struggle. The space was deceivingly large considering the amount of work that comprised the "retrospective". As far as I could tell, the work consisted of about 5 actual pieces, including the following. Most "shocking" (i.e. provocative and popular with snap-happy Chinese and tourists) were two pairs of large photographs, one a close-up of a woman's nipple, the other of a vagina. On all four photographs the words "My Mommy Is Beautiful" are inscribed.

The next snippets of work mainly consisted of Ono's scrawlings, often on the white walls of the center. To the right of the photographs was a framed poem in appreciation of motherhood. The poem lauds mothers from the perspective of the universal "child" (i.e. everyone on the earth has a mother). Not far from the poem was a large cocoon, once again evoking themes of maternity and childhood. Here the idea of "flying" was blatantly introduced; Ono compares people to butterflies and presumably, cocoons to our mothers. This symbolism was a bit heavy-handed for my taste, or maybe I simply wasn't too interested in the ideas she was expressing. I am also not so sure how deeply it resonated with the local audience, who seemed fascinated by the presence of a giant empty cocoon, but less than contemplative about its message.

There was also a room of unremarkable scrawlings and sketches, most notably a sketch of a 2000 foot long circle (which was about the size of a dumpling). I get what she was trying to do, but I wasn't awfully impressed with it. Her minimalist approach lent the works an air of laziness and incompletion, and ultimately detracted from her message. I will be interested to see how the exhibtion will be recieved.

Dreaming through Wonderland

Last Wednesday I took a walk through Wonderland…well not Alice’s wonderland, but Bund18 Creative Center’s Wonderland. This was an exhibition created by two artists: Hiraki Sawa from Japan and Lee Lee-nam from Korea. Their works were all video installations which was a pleasant change to see at exhibitions.

Looking at all of their video art works, I felt surreal and dreamy, especially because the video art successfully enhanced that effect of making you feel like you were in the video. This was especially true of Hiraki Sawa’s work, in which he created this surreal world that took on the viewer’s perspective of walking through a house. This feeling of walking through the house is not the only aspect that made us feel like we were in some dreamland. It was also Sawa’s repetitive use of slow-moving swing cockhorses, water, and planes constantly flowing, rocking and flying everywhere in abnormal places, like through fluid piano keys, in water vases, etc. The other dream-like characteristic Sawa incorporates into his video installations is proportion/size. The viewers no longer feel a distinct boundary between reality and dream because the concept of real-life space, time, and size does not exist. For instance, tiny planes are flying through flower vases, tiny rocking horses and benches are contrasted with the human-sized tables in the background, and even humans are all of a sudden microscopic in relation to the background house setting. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that Sawa uses the domestic floors, even sink water and other household objects and transforms them into natural plants, trees, and rivers. Therefore, on top of everything else that is surreal about the works, the boundary between nature and human creation melt together and blur as well.

Lee Lee-nam’s works made a lot more sense. But he also did play with the concept of time, especially the changing of seasons. He also fuses old or classical paintings and scenes with modern city scenes and incorporates them together with this passing of time. This is surreal in that it brings the historical scenes out of its time so the concept of time is played around with here too. And the most beautiful thing about the use of video technology is exactly that. Pictures and artworks become free of boundaries of frozen time, the frozen capturing of the past, etc. What confused me was why he chose to focus on Shanghai and Hong Kong and criticize its modernization (if he is in fact, criticizing it) if he is Korean and works in Korea. What special connection does he have with China and if so, does he do a lot of works focused on China? Or were they created just for this exhibition?

Overall, I liked the exhibition concept. The mixing and blurring of reality, illusion, and dreams, something of the present and the past, memories, etc. Everything was interconnected and out of its expected focus.

Friday, November 21, 2008

SITE / PROBLEM- A Case of Jin Feng


SITE / PROBLEM- A Case of Jin Feng

 

Presented by:  Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art 
Dates:  29 November - 28 December, 2008 
Venue:  Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art  (No. 28, Lane 199, Fangdian Road, Shanghai, China) 
Opening Reception:  4:30pm, 29 November, 2008 (Saturday)

Site / Problem-A Case of Jin Feng, solo exhibition of Jin Feng will be presented at Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art on 29 November, 2008. Based upon his recent artistic exploration, the exhibition features performance, research projects, sculpture installations and web  interaction, aiming to present a complete overview of Jin's works in recent years.

 

Jin Feng has made great efforts to integrate various sites in Chinese society into his creation, managing to liberate himself from the constraints of traditional creation modes. Dedicated to establishing a platform for artists to share ideas, Jin has proposed an idea of "focusing on the choices made and the transformation caused rather than the proposal of original themes". Whether this can be introduced as a future mode in exploring the problems of sites in Chinese society is a major theme of the exhibition. Moreover, Jin Feng refers to his work as "case", intending to avoid any possible association of hegemony which might be provoked by the usage of "methodology". Actually, it is the insights and inspiration gained and debates provoked from Jin Feng's solo exhibition that are most worth anticipating.

 

 


Thursday, November 20, 2008

exquisitely pleasant





Matching Hana's enthusiasm, I absolutely LOVED "Exquisite Corpse." We arrived around 5:45PM and the exhibit closed at 6:30PM so we figured we would just take a look around, write some notes, and research more online. Little did we know that the curator introduced himself, asked us where we were studying, and asked if Defne was our professor! We told him our troubles with understanding the context of contemporary art and he immediately began to give us a tour of the exhibit—from beginning to end. With each work each gave us background information, his interpretation of the work, and what others have thought of the work. He told us that the exhibition was arranged in such a away that all the pieces flowed together. I hadn't noticed it before but once he explained it to us I began to see how pieces with trees went after one another and similarly pieces with architecture, boats, bubbles, etc; He ended our tour with one last lingering question—is it always necessary to understand the context behind contemporary art? Maybe contemporary art isn't always meant to be understood… maybe it isn't always so clear cut. Contemporary art's focus is not purely aesthetic, as may be in the case of fine arts. Rather, contemporary art is comparatively, in his opinion, more thought provoking and more open to interpretation.



I learned that "Exquisite Corpse" was originally a game in which random words were placed together to create a new sentence or story. The first two words ever used in that game were exquisite and corpse, giving way to the title of the exhibition. These newly created sentences or stories were sometimes thought to contain a subconscious element—they were more than merely arbitrary words juxtaposed together. And thus this was the perfect term to name the exhibit as they all contained a subconscious opinion on the surreality of life in China.



One of my most favorite pieces was Lu Jin's "Chinese Real Estate Dream #15." The piece put together the traditional paint strokes of hills, trees, and running water with photos of skyscrapers placed within the waves of ocean. I thought it was so interesting to see the two opposite spectrums of tradition and modernity juxtaposed into one piece. It's a seemingly calm clash of East meets West and how they just might intertwine and live together in harmony.


Another one of my favorite pieces was Liu Ren's "Someday, Somewhere." She placed herself in her own piece, surrounded by bubbles with her inside also. There is also a beach scene juxtaposed into the photo. She is dancing on a street, in front of a governmental building in Beijing. She used very bright colors including magenta pink and bright blue. Her work gave off a very playful feel. It seemed like she was giving us a view into her fantastical world. She seemed to defy the stringent Communist government by dancing freely in front of it. It looked like she was living life listening to her own tunes, and "dancing as if nobody was watching." This work seems to convey the view of the youngest generation in China. Most of China's youth have lost sight of China's traditionalist views and moved onto their own age, where individualism takes precedence. Liu Ren's piece seems to perfectly manifest the views of Chinese youth.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Andrew James Gallery






I had the opportunity this week to visit the Andrew James Gallery on Maoming Lu.  The gallery is tucked away on the first floor of a somewhat run down white western-style house, and with only about 300 square meters of gallery space, it is easy to take in and enjoy the work in a controlled, methodically curated space.

Because Andrew James is such a small space, the gallery rotates shows monthly.  The gallery assistant explained that typically the gallery shows mostly oil paintings, but this month was a special exhibition of photography by Liu Ren, a young artist living in Beijing.  Born in 1980, she recently graduated with an MA in photo digital media from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

I immediately recognized one work of hers in the Andrew James Gallery, as I had seen another print of it in the 798 Art District in Beijing.  This work, entitled Sleepwalker - Temple of Heaven is part of a 2007 series in which Liu juxtaposes images of China into surreal, dream-like settings with found objects.  The presence of a rainbow seems to be a theme in many of her works, and the works generally take on a flat, two-dimensional quality with her treatment of light.

According to Liu's artist statement, dreams are the main theme to her works, and she looks to fuse childhood memories with "elements of modern China."  Liu visually alludes to her childhood in the coastal town of Qinhuangdao through motifs of water, clouds, and tide. 

Essayist Zhang Zhaohui describes the power of Liu's new media art in the context of a rapidly modernizing China: "[Liu shows] the hitherto unseen mutation of society and its contradictions and intense tensions, which make for an exceptional ground for their artistic expression."  
To me, the power of Liu's art lies in her embrace of visual contradiction, or the propagation of surreal, dream imagery.  Obviously, art related to autobiographical reflection or dreams is not a new motif to western art, but in a time when there is a pluralist influence on China and its artistic aesthetics, Liu's art really seems to capture a certain nostalgia while at once feeling distinctly contemporary.  She is a master new media artist: it is clear from her works that she is highly skilled with creating her work on the computer, and the quality of her prints (though I cannot say I am necessarily an expert) seemed high.  

Overall, the Andrew Jones Gallery, though certainly too small to spend a real significant amount of time in, really was a nice find.