On Last Week and Performance Art, Gerry Pryor & Zhu Yu; A Criticism

During last week's class, Gerry Pryor, a professor at NYU and an artist himself, came in to talk with us as well as show us a clip form a recent performance he put on entitled Chance Running. The visit, as well as our further discussions on some examples of contemporary art from the Fuck Off exhibit, got me thinking about the meaning behind these often seemingly inaccessible "shock" works. 

To begin with, I have no qualms with - what I believe to be - the main focus of these works: that of confronting taboos and absolutes in our society; things that, no matter our stated beliefs or how open we may say we are, still make us feel uncomfortable for reasons we can't fully explain - in fact, I wholly support it. The male nude is one example, as Mr. Pryor pointed out (though his assertion that no male nudes appear in western art (with the exclusion of Jesus and Greek pottery) is not true); why is it that, on a purely reactional/instinctual feeling, we accept female nudity as acceptable/beautiful/normal, but the male form (especially the genitals - as opposed to the female "equivalent") is much more taboo/disgusting/unsettling. Moreover, what does this say about the subjugation of both genders to certain roles.

And so, with this grounding, art would seem to be an appropriate means of addressing these issues. However, I feel the execution is often times (and this applies fully to Mr. Pryor's work Chance Running) deeply flawed, often times too caught up in a desire to be something esoteric and consequently, not quite sure itself what it is trying to say. First off, if Mr. Pryor were using his art to address the points I brought up above, he would have used full nudity as opposed to simple stripping to his underwear. By remaining in his underwear, I fail to see how he is doing anything more than merely re-enforcing the same strict gender conforming roles and taboos he claims to confront: still the male is not allowed to be unclothed, always to be hidden behind some artificial construction of what masculinity should be (here I feel I could analyze "clothes" as symbolizing a lot - with reference to the art piece - about societally enforced notions of masculinity that males are required to "wear", but then I might just be going too far). (He mentioned posing nude - or simply stripping - for his class, did he remove all his clothes?). To me, it seems that his work is merely taking the symbols of what "radical" is, but is lacking any of the meaning or bite, being instead, just an empty husk. The work should make the audience feel uncomfortable so that they are forced to, at the very least, evaluate (or re-evaluate) their views. It shouldn't make us laugh at how ridiculous it seems.

What about the other parts of the performance Chance Running? I felt I was only given vague explanations about why any of the particular actions he took were taken - a reason that contemporary art is often derided for: for example, saying, "'X' really shows 'Y'", without explaining how or why. I'm not sure there was any part of the performance I found crucial - or for that matter important - to the work. And I certainly could not have found meaning in it without the artist himself explaining what it meant (with explanations that often seem to come not actually from the art piece). The work seemed so caught up in absurdity, but not absurdity for absurdity's sake (which is an entirely different movement), but (meaningless) absurdity that claims with a straight face to be profound.

The work "Eating People" by Zhu Yu, form the Fuck Off exhibit is a work for which I haven't fully settled upon a conclusion - not that that is necessary, or even desirable. In the work, Zhu takes pictures of himself eating, what he claims to be, a human fetus. Zhu described the work as by saying, "No religion forbids cannibalism. Nor can I find any law which prevents us from eating people. I took advantage of the space between morality and the law and based my work on it". As a work intending to be "radical" (a word which is itself rather vague), it certainly succeeds in packing a punch. Cannibalism is something that I think almost everybody is disgusted by and the very thought of it makes us feel uncomfortable and (the work eventually drew attention from the CIA and Scotland Yard after rumors of cannibalism in China/Taiwan grew out of hand). At first I was more than skeptical of the work, to the point of ridicule. But to Zhu's credit, after reading over his statements on the work, I actually began to turn a much more appreciative eye towards it. Like most contemporary art pieces, it's vague, but there is a definite message here, and it does get you to think about where law comes from and how it relates to humanity and a sense of some absolute morality. It seems silly to say, but if law (secular or religious) doesn't forbid something we almost unanimously agree as wrong, what does it deal with? Is it really connected to reason, or perhaps - to an opposite end of the spectrum - it is just a tool, created by men, used for control. The fact that I am still uncomfortable with how I view the work - as a piece of art - makes me think that perhaps it really is successful at what it set out to do.

Anyhow, I'd like to hear what everyone else thinks about these two works.

Group Show at BizArt

(I can't seem to load the BizArt website or find any information about this show, so I won't be able to refer to pieces or artists by there names, sorry)

It was nice to see some art on display at BizArt over the weekend, since the last time I was there the only thing in the gallery was a badminton net. The current show is , an all women group show. There was a nice variety of work, with every piece being quite good in its own right. As a whole the pieces were stronger on their own than together, but I suppose the fact that they were all made by female artists connnected them. The pieces ranged from conceptual to sculpture, sound, video, bugs, etc. Each piece was well executed both in terms of content and form. One piece that sticks out in my mind was a sort of contraption built of cameras, speakers, TV screens, and little vials containing fish and frogs. At the pace of what I think was a heartbeat, a slight electrical current was sent into the water, shocking the animals. By the time I we (as in Boyang and myself) got there most of the animals were lifeless bodies floating in the water. The ones that were alive would jump of move everytime a shock was sent through the water. Visually the piece was very ineresting, with wires and stands everywhere it was reminiscent of some amd scientist's experiment. While looking at the piece, I couldn't help but think back to the Interrupt show, specifically Wu Ye's Me Too (in which he repeatedly spun a rabbit around and let go of it until it died) and the liberal attitude towards animal life in China. Similar to the fish and frogs was a piece that was a wooden container filled with silkworm cocoons, with a them underneath. The wood was painted white and juxtaposed with the cocoons, there was a uniformity of color that made one look past the fact that there were maybe a couple hundred cocoons on the floor.

Overall the show had a certain playfulness about it, perhaps due to the variety of pieces and somehwat conceptual nature of each of them. And while none of the pieces specifiacally referred to the gender of the artist, as a whole the show exceeded my expectations and is certainly worth a look (unless you find silkworm cocoons gross).

Class last week was enjoyable with both Gerry Pryor from New York giving a short lecture and showing a video of his recent performace, Chance Running, as well as a documentary about 2000's Fuck Off Show. Gerry is somewhat of an art cliche or character, dressed in all black and speaking in a jargon that indicates a wealth of knowledge and expereince. His work, which I ahd not been familiar with prior to seeing the video, was interesting simply because of Gerry's willingness to use his body in a variety of ways in a public space for art. Even at 62 he seems remarkably fit, with his pieces often requiring a certain level of fitness to achieve. I'm not a huge fan of performance, but Chance Running was something to behold, even on video.
The video we watched about the making of the notorious Fuck Off show was maybe not quite as good as seeing the show (before it was shut it of course), but seeing the artist together setting up was a fascinating glimpse into the production of a high-profile art show. Most of what we saw was a number of Chinese artists, including organizer Ai Wei Wei, inflating the skin of a bull or ox. Once again the issue of animal rights is no where to be found and strangely I felt no pity for the animal, despite a number of my classmates around me vocaliziong their disdain.

That's about it for now, see you all on Friday for Zhao Chuan's performance and the Mommy Foundation Party

JAMES COHAN GALLERY

This past week, I went to several small galleries that were enclosed in a small area on Huaihai Road (forgot exactly what the street was), but I'll get to those on a later post.  For this post, I wanted to talk about the James Cohan Gallery.  Based off of its neighborhood, I would say that I liked the Cohan Gallery more than any of the previous galleries that we have  visited--the location was quaint and hidden, almost to a point where I felt that just getting to the artwork was an experience in and of itself.  Also, the surrounding environment felt authentic, lived-in, and thriving; it definitely did not feel like the manufactured (and sometimes industrial) spaces of gallery areas.

I'll candidly admit that my main impetus for visiting the James Cohan Gallery was because I was already a fan of the three non-Chinese artists (especially Anselm Kiefer), but being in the gallery itself and seeing all the works in one space made the bridge between the art produced by Western and Eastern artists a realistic and energetic reality.  There was no way of pinpointing the perpetual question that I have asked of contemporary Chinese artists and their works: "What makes this 'Chinese' art", because being in the Gallery made me realize that Xu Zhen's works (and in theory, any of the works that we have seen thus far from Chinese artists in class) belong in the Gallery and unite together wonderfully with the (Western) contemporary artists whom many of  us are familiar with.

Ai Weiwei's political and cultural influece

Ai Weiwei is one of the most prolific and influential artists living in China today. He was one of the founders of the now infamous Fuck Off exhibit that showed simultaneously as the Shanghai Bienalle in 2000. Ai Weiwei's healthy political opposition since the cultural revolution when he watched his father forced out of publication and into cleaning latrines in a remote location in Norther China.

Photo Credit

The artist Ai Weiwei has extensively criticized the unlawful use of governmental power over Chinese citizens, and the poor handling of the Sichuan earthquake devastation in 2008. Spotlighted in a New York Times' article, as well as many party announcements, Ai Weiwei has reached a large number of Chinese people through both his star power (he is most publicly know for helping design the Beijing's Bird's Nest) Internet publications such Ai Weiwei's blog (English translation) are becoming of increasing importance in not only China but also the world.

Photo Credit

Despite his political dissonance Ai Weiwei has only become more popular around the world and in China itself. Today thoughsands of Chinese read his publications, and his works are very popular in the world art market.

His sculpture and performance art maintains a keen sense of the current cultural pulse of China, and he remains to be extremely influence to young Chinese artist as well.

I have to admit. I think Ai Weiwei is a really inspiring figure to me as an artist.

Photo Credit

Group Show at ShanghART @ 796 Huaihai Lu

I was taking a stroll along Huaihai Lu last weekend, when I stumbled upon the ShanghART Gallery space at 796 Huaihai Lu. I walked into the gallery very impressed by the exhibition space (I particularly like the bamboo trees lined along the outside of the large glass windows.) ShanghART was having a group show there, including works by Shi Qing, who does some interesting pieces with electricity, and Song Tao, whose work on display is a collection of black and white photographs spread across the gallery floor. In addition, there is an installation of "Exposure" by the artist Shao Yi, which explores the themes of our everyday exposure to and dependence on modern technology that affects the way we produce work.


Photo: "Exposure", Shao Yi, ShanghART Gallery 2009

Finally, I was happy to come across Xu Zhen's recent work, "18 Days", which I had read about while working on my art presentation. There are photographs on display in the gallery which follow Xu and his team's 18-Day trip, taken in 2006, to China's neighboring countries with the intention of invading them with remote controlled toy weapons. The gallery also presented the documentary on their journey. I enjoy Xu's social commentary/humor. New media projects and contemporary installations are fascinating. The way the artist can fully create the space they are in or organize the various elements and players in their works requires ingenious thinking and coordination.




Photo: "18 Days", Xu Zhen, ShanghART Gallery 2009

The Group Show at ShanghART Gallery @ 796 Huahai Lu, Shanghai, was presented on April 12, 2009 - Apr 19, 2009.

Internet Expression in Contemporary Chinese Art

The use of the internet and other new digital technologies have been a part of international contemporary art since it became accessible and affordable. Internet and new media entered China well over a decade ago, and since that time it China has only become more and more wired. Even in the strict attempts by the government restriction to access of information and communication in the name of social unification, a large amount of Chinese internet culture remains unchecked and perhaps almost impossible to ever repress fully.

As a cultural leaders, visual artists have remained at the edge of innovative uses for information technologies. Just as quickly as the artist adapts to new media art production, new ways of implementing the internet become apparent. Today a large number of professional contemporary artist use the internet is some way, at almost every different level of their process.

Artist like Shi Yong, a practicing Shanghainese artist, first used the internet as a key component of his work when he designed a visual survey for non-Chinese to vote electronically for the image of the contemporary Chinese artist. This image is of the postcard, mostly printed in English, that was sent to people around the art world. The card instructs viewers to log onto a special link at Shangart.com to vote on the most appealing hairstyle.

The internet voting was only the beginning of a year long series of performances where the artist acted out the fantasy of hundreds of e-voters. Ultimately he used the outlet to critisize the outlets the Western art world allows Chinese artist.









Electronic resources have created a relatively safe and effective way to convey feelings of unrest withing the strict cultural confines of mainland China.

Quick Links

Unfortunately, I have not had the time this past week to go visit a gallery, so that'll have to come this weekend followed by a post-visit blog post.  For now however, I wanted to share a couple of links/quotes that I thought would be helpful in our endeavor of studying contemporary Chinese art (especially since I think that many of these touch upon the issues we had raised last Thursday).

Artnet had a art-news roundup from around the globe where it briefly mentioned the speculations surrounding whether or not the SHContemporary Art Fair was going to return this year.  Now, up until now I had never heard of this fair, so it piqued my interest, and although I don't think most of us will be able to go (since it is scheduled for September), but it's pretty depressing that the global financial crisis is starting to dig its claws into the Chinese art scene.  (I don't know much about the SHContemporary Art Fair, so Defne, if you have any insights concerning the event that you could share with the class about this, I'd greatly appreciate it).

Speaking of news in the vein of "abysmal-economy-affecting-the-art-market", China Daily had an article last week that talked about how Chinese artists and their surrounding art community were trying to pick themselves up after the fledgling performance of this past winter.  It's not a substantial read, but they discuss the repetition of subject matter that we have raised in class:

The slowdown in the Chinese contemporary art market is not surprising, according to Fang Zhenning, an independent art critic in Beijing.

"Art works are commodities, just like sugar or copper. The art market, like any other market, is speculative in nature and has its ups and downs," he said.

Fang said the challenge for China's prominent artists, such as Zhang Xiaogang and Yue Minjun, is to see whether they can keep innovating.

"To change or to repeat themselves. That's the question," he said.

The overheated Chinese art market also raised issues for rising young artists.

"What people are concerned about is all these young artists coming to the art world as a job rather than as a creative thing," said Wallace.

"They've got the skills and they know the market is here. So you see a lot of repetitiveness in their subject matter, particularly in place like 798," he said.

This ARTnews article, though a year old, is still remarkably keen and detailed in its explication of the widening net of contemporary art and also, the limitations of its emergence in China.  I don't think we discussed this in class, but the underdeveloped role of curators is something to think about in connection with the museums that we have seen:

A key problem has been the absence of training programs for museum professionals in China, a country where the term “curator” did not exist ten years ago. Even now, there is only one program in curatorial studies, run by the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, which is graduating its first class this year. “In China, we didn’t have degrees such as arts management or curatorial studies, so most of the museum directors were originally artists,” says Fan Di’an, who like many directors in China got his position through political appointment. Lack of training is evident at all levels of museum management, as is an absence of professional art handlers and restorers, all of which results in poorly installed exhibitions and damaged artworks, especially at state-run museums. “They have no practice, and they are not interested in developing the proper standards,” comments Marie-Laure Jousset, head of the Pompidou Center’s design department and curator of the exhibition “Fabrica: les yeux ouverts,” which was on view last fall at the Shanghai Art Museum. Jousset had to bring an entire crew of installers and art handlers to Shanghai to ensure proper care of the artworks. “They want the event, and they want our name, but they don’t want to spend money,” she laments. “We had to have long discussions about how a museum has to reach a certain level in order to gain credibility.”

The Art of na lai by Zhao Chuan

After all, we shall have to na lai (bring it in). We'll have to use
it, store it or destroy it. If the owner is the new owner, the house
will become a new house but, first of all, this person has got to be
cool-headed, courageous, discriminating and not selfish. Without na
lai (bringing it in), one cannot possibly become a new person nor can
art and literature start anew.

── Lu Xun

〈na lai'ism〉

7 June 1934

Since the late Qing Dynasty, China has been gradually pursuing a new
cultural target, that of 'modernization'. For this reason, China
has always had to face the source of imagination about this target,
the West, by thinking about various possible inter-positional
relationships between her and the West. In the May Fourth and New
Culture Movements in the early twentieth century, a number of young
intellectuals took the lead, who actively sought a clean break with
the thousand-year-long tradition in which they found themselves
through subversion and fracture, much the way one cuts the messy hemp
with a sharp knife. However, at the same time when they looked for a
West-style cultural knowledge and social formation, they had behind
them a strong nationalistic appeal for social change as they were
urgently hoping for the day to soon arrive when they could run neck
to neck with the Western powers. That revolution that, to this day,
still has not had China run out of its tracks, is considered as a
radical culture movement and has led to a genuinely political Chinese
revolution. After liberation in 1949, the target of
'modernization' in Chinese society turned into a full-scale left-
wing socialist ideal based on the theory of class struggle. By the
end of the 1970s China had experienced the Cultural Revolution and
the closure of itself against the Western capitalist world after
liberation. Before the door of the nation was thrown wide open,
intellectuals and artists were acutely aware of an urgent need to
return to the target of 'modernization'. The pursuit all the way
for new art began then in such a trend that thought took. They first
passionately wanted to break with the new fine arts tradition of
China in which they found themselves, a fake realist art serving
politics, and they then wanted to push for change in social thinking.
Back then, because of our consistent imagination of modernity, we
directly took up in hand a weapon that was Western philosophy and
literature that was hardly explored in depth, particularly the kind
of Western modernism and its subsequent art trends that were almost
out of touch with the contemporary society. In addition, all weird
impulses and things that defied understanding were categorized as
part of Western modernism or had found a basis there. Even then, this
is still na lai, a consciously chosen scheme for transformation.

In that process, artists and commentators in China used terms such as
modernism, modernists, new wave, avant-garde or vanguards to refer to
new art and to define the art that was happening, references that,
judging from today's vantage position, did not quite match the
Western context that they had wanted to quickly enter into. These
Western artistic terms that came mainly from the West were, for the
most part, outdated for the West in the 1980s and 1990s. However,
this was not a real issue in the 1980s when there was a relative
distance between China and the outside world and when the focus was
on its own problems. The title of the most important exhibition,
Modern Chinese Art Exhibition, at the end of the 1980s, was not
rendered as 'China Modern Art Exhibition' in its English
translation. In the words of Gao Minglu, its curator, it was
translated as 'China/Avant-Garde Exhibition', based on 'its true
original meaning', that is, 'China Avant-garde (or Vanguard) Art
Exhibition'. Obviously, when one is aware of a global context, the
word 'modern' sounds outdated and out of place. But why 'avant-
garde'? What is the true original meaning of these new arts in
China? In their understanding then, the word 'modern' had an
absolute evolutionary meaning. The new-wave art in the entire 1980s
China was an effort made to welcome its arrival, which made a major
contextual difference from modernist arts that were opposed to the
materialistic capitalist society subsequent to the industrial
revolution in the West. Even though Western modernist art process was
in fact one of our main references, the word 'modern' was a
Chinese term in the unique Chinese context. If one wouldn't mind
sounding extreme one could say that it would be xiandaism, not
modernism, if written into a history of art in English. It wouldn't
be 'avant-garde', either, because it was an artistic formation in
a seriously Western context although it did display the radical
relationship between art and the society in which art found itself.
In the early 1990s, the 'Chinese Avant-garde' was used in the
local art circles and the exhibitions that went to the West, becoming
internationally known. By the early twenty-first century, the new art
has not only been found conditionally acceptable by the official
Chinese art institution but has also basically collaborated with the
globalized contemporary art system. For this reason, no-one actually
disputes the replacement of 'modern' or 'avant-garde' with the
term 'contemporary art' that follows the current international
trend. For art in the previous hard process, it is its own new art
but with embarrassing old garments and hats as they were once used by
others. These are terms that have their own specific meaning in the
process of na lai as they have their equivalent fixed usages in their
Western source that refer to a certain age. Under the global pressure
that includes a postcolonial consciousness, it is either easy for
these appellations to induce simplistic reading or hard for them to
identify themselves.

It is an adventure to use 'radicalism' instead of the terms that
have been habitually used for decades, not accurate for me but used
in a fixed manner, such as 'avant-garde' or 'modern art'.
Meanwhile, this naming provides a clear link with the modern cultural
and ideological trend in China. As some scholars say, rationalism and
radicalism are either face of a coin. For this reason, the
ideological base for radical art is rationalism. However, because it
is art, it inevitably moves towards a political romanticism by
believing in abstract liberation and passionate impulses in concrete
terms. Although this radical art can keep creating new patterns, it
is not art for art's sake as its ideological trend is of particular
importance, that is, its combat with the orthodoxy, which becomes a
harbinger of liberation. For this reason, this art in the 1980s
lacked a creation of genuine formalism as it was not the Western
modernism that had entered formalism but it intended to guide our
society in its movement towards 'modernization' through gaining
various kinds of liberation. The desire for liberation came not only
from a rebellion against long-term political restrains but it also
touched upon the understanding of the absolute importance of free
will in Western modernity. From the late 1970s to the early 1980s,
when radical art grew generally clearer about this issue, its
distinct ideological trend naturally joined forces with the
ideological liberation movement as one party to the then mainstream
politics in China and with the more minjian new enlightenment, in the
direction of total values, turning into the actively rebellious 85
Art New Wave Movement that spread across the country in the 1980s.
After radical art suffered a setback in the aftermath of June 4th,
1989, part of it was engaged in soul-searching around the time,
struggling to move ahead, and another part changed with the
transformation of the Chinese society or was abandoned. It is not
till the mid-1990s and the late 1990s, when the overseas market and
contemporary art system arrived wholesale, that the remaining 1980s
interest, in the face of a changing environment and changing issues,
gradually moved onto the next generation of art with renewed ideas.
The simple initiativeness of na lai, as proposed by Lu Xun, the flag-
bearer in the New Culture Movement of the last century, has now
become murky in the face of the West that is so important to our
'modernization', getting stuck in the deep entanglement of giving,
taking, buying and selling, colonizing, postcolonizing and
multiculturalism.
Radicalism as a term is not something entirely new. In the past in
the accounts of this area, it most often referred to a localised
direction in some time segments and was occasionally used as an
adjective. The radical art that here attempts to sum up and discuss
is not a school but a summary of forms of artistic practice in that
generation or over a longer period of time. It is characterized by
its concept and scope that emphasize its own ideological trends
although it certainly does not include all of the new-wave art in
those days. Before its diversion, turning away and wearing out, the
features of its vigorous action had actually provided an upsurge of
artistic energy for Shanghai and for the whole of Chinese society.

Xu Bing's Universal Language

Every time I ride the bus in Shanghai I wonder how the driver is still alive or how the driver has managed not to kill everyone inside his bus. I try to stand by the front of the bus to watch them and see how they turn the wheel or what buttons and levers they press and pull. This week, as I was watching one driver press gently on the horn button as we took a sharp turn, I started thinking about how driving is universal. For one thing, cars are all built the same. Engine, gears, tires, etc... and most importantly there is very little that is written in any specific language on any part of a car. Aside from the brand, everything else that needs to be labeled or written on takes the shape of a symbol. 

Xu Bing's latest project is an attempt to create a universal language of symbols, all inspired by signs in airplanes. In an interview with MoMA, he explains the project by describing how power today exists in the form of economic or commercial power. He goes on to to say how this requires new kind of fast communication that easily facilitates quick transaction. He sees this period of time as a great opportunity to create a new kind of pictography.

After listening to this short interview, I was prompted to ask what kind of activities require such pictography. Driving, for one, but what else? Is there a future in which directions are all printed in symbols. Perhaps IKEA has the right idea...

What Poly Auction is doing with all this money...

Poly Auction, one of the world's largest auction houses with close ties to the People's Liberation Army, is reported to have made over 42108000 RMB in their Spring 2008 auction, selling only 117 lots. Sold lots included works by Zhang Xiaogang, Lin Jian, Liu Ye, Wu Hao, Li Shan, among many others discussed in the course. 

So, what is Poly Auction doing with all of this revenue? They are putting large sums of it towards collecting ancient Chinese artifacts that were (according to Poly auction's website) "robbed out of China by western powers." In a recent case, 2 bronze statues were put up for auction at Sotheby's by Pierre Berge, the partner of Yves Saint Laurent, and sold to a Chinese man named Cai Mingchao for $18 million USD. As it turns out, Cai had no real intention of paying the hefty sum. Instead, he declared his bid an intentional disruption of the transaction and a feat of nationalistic fervor. He describes himself as a "consultant for a non-governmental group that seeks to bring looted artifacts back to China," and said he had "acted out of patriotic duty." According to some, this action was most likely encouraged by the Peoples Liberation Army and Poly Auction. Perhaps this is the "non- governmental agency" he is referring to. 

What is more interesting is that Berges has stated that he offered to sell the PLA and Poly Auction the statues for a severely discounted rate before the auction was set to take place, but the Chinese government refused, stating that the statues were too expensive. 

As of right now, Poly Auction and Poly Art (Poly Auction's museum) have collected many artifacts which are on display. Many of these have been purchased with the money of extremely wealthy Chinese business men, such as Stanley Ho (who, according to Forbes, is the 104th richest person in the world) in combination with the revenues made from the mass selling of contemporary chinese art. With 42108000 RMB made in just one season, it is a wonder that they refused to buy the statues at the price Berge's offered. I'm sure there is much more to this story, so if anyone has any information pass it along!

 

Matters of Faith at James Cohen Gallery

This Tuesday I finally managed to get over to James Cohen Gallery in the French Concession to see the Matters of Faith show but especially to see Nam June Paik's (the Buddha sitting in front of a TV watching itself). The show as a whole was really well done, with only four artists' works on display - one from Nam June Paik, two Anselm Kiefer pieces, a video by Bill Viola and an installation by Xu Zhen. The two Kiefer pieces were interesting: an assimilation of paint, clay, palms, plaster and some other materials used tomake two very earthy, yet somewhat majestic pieces. The palms were meant to invoke Christianity and thoughts of religion in the viewer. Personally I enjoyed the form moreso than the content (maybe that's just because I'm Catholic). Bill Viola's video showed two figures shrouded in darkness who slowly approach the camera, eventually passing under a waterfall that could not be seen beforehand. I still don't know whether the water was hidden with a trick of the light or in a more post-production phase. Either way the video was rather emotional and moving despite only being about 7 minutes long and having no sound. While watching it I could not help but think about resurrection or perhaps the concept of "seeing the light" a person may experience when they temporarily die in a hospotal. Our freind Xu Zhen also had a piece in the show, a model of a famous building in Tibet made entirely out of playing cards. It was made up of 3000 decks and is actually broke the Guiness World Record for largest house of cards. Again, the idea of faith is broguth up, with Zhen commenting on the fragility of faith and the situation between China and Tibet. Entertainment CompressedEntertainment Compressed was smaller than I had anticipated, but impressive nonetheless. Once again the idea of faith is touched upon, this time with the Buddha statue, however Paik simultaneously juxtaposes the actual statue with an electronic representation of the statue and has the both of them facing eachother. Both seem to accomplish the same thing which would, in a way, argue that seeing something on TV could be as good as actually seeing it in person. Also the concept of the TV and the digital world becoming a new sort of religion can be taken from Entertainment Compressed, which is even more relevant today than in 1994 when the piece was created.

Matters of Faith succeeded in bringing four artists from different places, who work in a variety of different media together, connnected via a similar and, as the show would argue, universal theme. Definitely worth a visit.

http://www.jamescohan.com/exhibitions/2009-03-27_matters-of-faith/

Mommy Foundation - Inauguration party

Date: May 1st 2009, 21:00
Venue: CANART Institute for Contemporary Art , Ding Xi road 727

Presented by
Mommy Foundation

Partner of event:
CANART Institute for Contemporary Art

Special Thanks to Split works
www.spli-t.com

Party Introduction
This party is to inaugurate the birth of Mommy Foundation and to
raise awareness of importance of supporting young talents and their
work in early stage. Party will feature number of young artist's
projects and interventions during evening

Don't miss the unique night in town. Free drinks for first hours,
good DJ and various artists and friends interventions during evening.
Come dressed in crazy colors and mommy mood
Everybody welcome and don't forget to bring your friends

Some of the artists projects to be featured Street Gallery: more than
60 artists from all over China will participate in project. Each
piece provided by artists will be on sale same evening with price NO
MORE THAN 100RMB

Birdhead's Patrol: Birdhead collective will provide their services on
site in collector's house and private setting, artists Li Mu , Gao
Mingyan, To Be Band great friends Lisa Movious and many many others
will make your evening more then special more then a only party

Mommy Foundation- A foundation for supporting young Chinese artists
and projects)

Interrupt. Jin Shan. German Student Show.

April 11th - Interrupt - Fei Contemporary Art Center
Stephen the Spectacular (jin Shan solo exhibition) - ddmwarehouse
April 14th - German Student Show - Shanghai Theatre Academy

While the pieces were quite different and unrelated, the Interrupt show lived up to its purpose - to have no purpose. This sounds like a negative thing, but in fact it was quite the contrary. The artists "interrupted" the flow of how art is made, displayed, viewed with a variety of different mediums including video, performance, installations, etc. While at first the pieces seem well executed, yet none too memorable, upon further examination and research, Interrupt becoems a remarkably brutal show. The content of the pieces carried with them an almost sinister edge, especially the works of Li Pinghu, Wu Ye, Li Ming and Wang Xiaofeng. The added element of danger greatly augments the effectiveness of the show considerably. The purpose of "interrupting" becomes more clear as the artists do not shy away from crassness of real blood or even death. Wang Xiaofeng's Source uses sound to spew pig's blood a few feet into the air. Each viewer let out a primal scream and watched the blood fly into the air. Upon reflection the interaction is quite morbid, however while doing it and not knowing that the pool was actually real blood, Source was really fun. Reminds me of primordial soup now that I think about it. More immediate was Wu Ye's Me Too, a video in which the artist spins around while holding a rabbit outwards. Eventually Ye loses his balance and the rabbit is launched away. It a horrifying site made even more horrifying when the artist gets up and does it again until the rabbit dies. I was taken aback but morbidly curious at the same time and thought of how a piece like this would not be possible in New York (showing this in New York would really be an interruption, to say the least). Other pieces include Li Ming's Doctor Ou Yang's Midnight - a short film about a doctor examining and being repulsed by his own body. While the video is certainly graphic, it seems like it's meant to shock and beyond that is just a chore to watch. Also Li Pinghu's performance (which I actually missed) where five men dressed in business suits begin to pick away at a layer of fake skin. The aftermath was not gruesome by any means, but the strewn papers and disrupted chairs remained untouched throughout the day. Aside from the more gross pieces were a number of playful installations such as doodles on packages and Yi Ming's 99 and 1, a documentation of an experiment done to determine the strongest egg of a batch of 100. While at first Interrupt seemed somewhat run-of-the-mill, it actually ended up being quite memorable for the artists lack of fear and utter disregard for the conventional method of art-making.

Li Pinghu performance

Wu Ye Me Too

Li Ming 99 and 1

Wang Xiaofeng Source

Next was ddmwarehouse to see Stephen the Spectacular, a solo exhibition by Jin Shan. I was very excited for the show from the pictures promoting it. While the show itself was enjoyable, it was strange and lacked the energy I had anticipated (maybe its because I was about 1.5 hours late). The performers didn't do much other than look bored, and most of the other parts seemed static both physically and artistically. I felt little walking through the makeshift shelter and even the operating table with the taxidermy goat. Perhaps it was the lighting of the studio shoot compared to the bright harsh lighting of ddmwarehouse that detracted from the work. Also the new location contained a great deal of unfinished construction that almost "infected" the show, even leading me to believe the show was perhaps unfinished. Following the visit I reread the artist statement, which in a way lowered my feelings about the show even more. I did not perceive the themes of martyrs, which Shan stressed. Overall Stephen the Spectacular has some interesting visuals and costumes, but overall was a bit of a let down.

Missed the Andre Kneibs opening at Contrasts much to my dismay. I'll probably go sometime next week.

While at the Jin Shan show we met some German art students studying abroad with a show on Tuesday at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. The cards promised "more cold beer" (there was some), but said little about the actual works. The show definitely had the feeling of a student show with a couple of pieces needing some work in terms of execution. However the opening was rather fun due to the organizer - Rainer...something. A teacher with messy hair and sunglasses, speaking to everyone and offering them alcohol that smelled exactly like ethanol. The only piece that stood out for me was a photography triptych that showed a red string starting at the ground, climbing past eye level, and finally disappearing into the sky. It was simple, but well executed and clean.

photos from Art-Ba-Ba Blog, http://www.art-ba-ba.com

Xu Zhen

The visits the other week to the two artists' studios in M50 was a valuable experience to get to talk with artists about how they've gone about their work. I know Xiaoxia mentioned in the previous post about exploring some of the artists' works before we go to talk with them which I completely agree with. Xu Zhen has that exhibit open now ("Matters of Faith") so here are some links to some web-pages about him and with some of his works (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) When Xu was talking about his history so far, I was intrigued when he was describing how he and his group of friends collectively decided to abandon several of the traditional media of art and focus solely on installation pieces. I didn't ask him at the time, but I am curious as to the specific benefits and limitations of each media, as he sees it related to his work and ideas, and what made the group shift their focus then later, as Xu explained most of the group eventually did, give up on installations.

I think the "In Just a Blink of an Eye" series is one of the more accessible collections and, at the very least, aesthetically interesting.

Shi Yong's 'Yearning'

The visit to M50 to visit Xu Zhen and Shi Yong's studios was of course, a welcome privilege.  However, I wish that we could actually see their works before going to talk to them.  It seems that all the research I do on these artists is post-visit, which I think is unfortunate since it is much more difficult to contextualize these artists after I hear their words.  I like connecting these artists to his or her work, and without a proper introduction, their words float around in a cloud of abstraction that eventually disappear without the aid of context (such as knowing the artist's biography or seeing the artist's works).  I digress, but I still think this is a valid point that needs to be raised in order for us to make the most of our precious time with these artists.

That being said, I still enjoyed the visit.  Xu and Shi's words concerning their own artistic upbringings and their takes on the current landscape of contemporary art in China were immensely valuable, especially Xu when he talked about how he and his friends started basically from scratch, exhibiting in almost-impromptu gatherings at their apartments.

However, after doing post-visit research on these two artists, I really found Shi Yong's work to be striking, especially, the works from 2000 entitled "Yearning", which I speculate came as a result of his photo the previous year entitled "Does Every Chinese Person Have BLOND Hair?".  The aforementioned work and the works in the "Yearning" collection are family portraits depicting a typical Chinese family (a set of grandparents, parents, and one child--a boy), however, despite this seeming ordinariness of it all, the family members all have headfuls  of strawberry blonde hair.  It echoes this perpetually recurring theme of how China looks towards the West: for industry, culture, and in the context of art (and the particular family in this piece), for aesthetics.  The historical contexts of Western influences upon China have trickled down to the foundations of Chinese society: the family.  Yong's comment upon Chinese families finds itself at an axis that is at the explicit convergence of Western influence upon China and the current trend towards globalization.  However, underlying the creepily saccharine semblance of familial bliss comes a damnation upon the Western influences and the forces of globalization.  What Yong seems to be arguing is that the picture is actually a facade where hopes and and ambitions are nothing more than an attempt to normalize everyone to a Western standard (in this case, the blonde hair as a standard of beauty).

[Photo from Shanghart]