Hu Jieming

Hu Jieming, born in Shanghai in 1957, is a pioneer in his use of digital media and video installation art. In 1984 he graduated from the Fine Art Department of the Shanghai Light Industry College. His works have been exhibited around the world. One of his most famous pieces is his “Raft of the Medusa” (2002) “Raft of the Medusa” is a pastiche or homage of sorts of Theodore Gericault’s famous work that currently resides in the Louvre. However, the decrepit and delirious passengers of Gericault’s raft have been replaced by images of contemporary China, set adrift on a raft made of soda bottles. Juxtaposing past and present, Hu Jieming expresses a stark image of current-day China in an elegant yet alarming fashion.

Liang Yue

Liang Yue was born in Shanghai in 1979 and primarily works with photography. Through her work she attempts to traverse the realm between the familiar and the unfamiliar, concrete and abstract. Some of her more recent work such as “In Summer” (2005) and “On the Bridge” (2006) show realistic images of life in modern China. “In Summer” depicts a man and a woman in pajamas lounging on couches, watching television. She employs natural lighting greatly to her advantage, and presents an image of harsh, sometime foreboding realism. Liang Yue has a solo exhibition titled Numerous opening May 8th at the Wuwei Creative Space, DCA-Solo Space.

Xu Zhen and Song Dong

XU ZHEN

Xu Zhen was born in 1977 in Shanghai, were he is still based. His work employs a variety of media: photography, video, performance, painting and installation. Shortly after graduating from the Shanghai School of Arts & Crafts, he co-founded the artist-run space BizArt Art Center and has organized large scale exhibition such as “Art for Sale.” But in 2009, Xu announced that he would stop his work as a solo artist and instead function under the company name Madeln. Madeln allows Xo to collaborate with over 10 artists and expand the diversity of his work. His most famous work is 8848-1.86, which is an installation piece that includes film and sculpture. His team sawed off the top of Mount Everest (the 1.86m tall peak is included in the exhibit) and documented the process through film and photography. The tools he used are also included in the exhibit. 

SONG DONG

Song Dong was born in Beijing in 1966. His work also uses various media, mainly performance, video, photography and sculpture. My favorite work of his is his exhibition at MOMA in 2009, titled “Waste Not.” The exhibit, which was located in the second floor projects gallery atrium of MOMA was, in effect, a tangible record of his mother’s (Zhao Xiangyuan) life. His mom was a hoarder, and after her husband died in 1989, the hoarding only got worse. Everyday object like shopping bags, bowls, chopsticks, etc. would enter their tiny Beijing home and never leave. In 2005, Song asked his mother if he could turn her home into an exhibit and she agreed, but only if Song’s sister, Song Hui, would help. The exhibit was first displayed in Beijing, and then at MOMA. The exhibit itself contains Zhao’s refrigerator and bed and then piles upon piles of meticulously folded clothing clusters of bottles and cans, groupings of stuffed animals. As a finishing touch, Mr. Song created a neon sign reading, “Dad, don’t worry, Mum and we are fine,” and hung it over the installation.

I like that both artists’work tends to question everyday life and is fairly relatable for the everyday person.

Satirical Works

Song Dong (1966) is a Beijing based artist whose focus is on creating conceptual art through his installations, performances, photography, and videos. Most of his works are made from inexpensive materials, consist of small scale constructions, and try to capture the rapidly changing state of society. One of his more notable work is entitled, “Eating the City” and is about the rapid development of Asian cities. For this installation, Song Dong constructed a miniature city made completely from biscuits. Most of the buildings in this “city” are inspired by real life buildings. Viewers are invited to consume the biscuits making this an interaction installation and creating the ephemeral state that he wished to portray. This witty commentary on the large scale and rapid development in China without regard to today’s problems is effective in that it does not upset people, yet it makes a sound statement. This installation has been recreated and exhibited in many cities worldwide.

Zhao Bandi (1966), another Beijing based artist, creates his artwork around scenes with his toy panda. Most of his works are consist of commentary on modern life in which the toy panda and other characters converse in the photograph through speech bubbles. In particular, his photograph, “Block SARS, Defend the Homeland,” depicts a young man dressed in military uniform and a toy panda. Both of them are holding toy guns behind trash bags with a brick wall behind. Like many of his other works, this photograph puts a twist on the past propaganda posters to comment on issues affecting Chinese society.

Both artists use clever methods to make a comment on modern Chinese society. Also, in both situations, the messages are hidden behind superficial images. Thus, the artists create deep impacts on those who seek to find the meaning of these works despite adding humor.

Minsheng Art Museum

The Minsheng Art Museum is quaintly located in the depths of the Shanghai Sculpture Garden—just look past the legs and Albert Einstein. The exterior is sleek and the interior has vast ceilings and stark walls. Liu Wei’s exhibit, Trilogy, is divided into three parts: Golden Section, Merely a Mistake and Open the Door.
The Golden Section holds oversized wood furniture (think armoires, dressers, desks, etc) that has been taken apart and re-pieced back together. Merely a Mistake is an even larger room with both wooden sculptures and oil paintings, all titled “Meditation.” The wooden sculptures look like the bare frames to a house or any other structure, but they have been stacked together to create intricate, geometric shapes. Some of the frames are also painted pale green, goldenrod and a faint lilac, making some of the structures reminiscent of Saarinen. The third, and my favorite, exhibition is titled Open the Door. The room is fairly bare, compared to the other two rooms and is also the only one which does not have overwhelmingly large wooden structures. On opposite ends of the room, there are neon lights, and in the center, there is a cluster of old fashioned tvs. The tvs sporadically take turns in powering on/off, and each time there is a booming buzz from the tv. The neon lights are also reminiscent of Dream House, which is located in Tribeca.

M50 on Moganshan Lu is an impressive collection of a wide variety of galleries and exhibitions. The location has a very industrial, minimalist feel, with most areas consisting of exposed concrete and metal. The galleries themselves are similarly bare, with paintings and statues scattered about drab, bleak environment. In a way, this helps the works of art pop out from their surroundings, but some of the galleries strived to give their space a unique feel. Vanguard is one such gallery, and they broke their space up into two sections. The first section has large black and white paintings by Sun Xun depicting surreal scenes from ancient China. These scenes were painted directly onto the wall, as evidenced by the black streaks of paint dried upon the wall. Within the paintings, wild animals run free and villagers seem perplexed by a fish with legs, among other oddities. Behind a black curtain, the gallery presents Sun Xun’s “Clown’s Revolution,” an experimental film depicting mosquitoes, faces, vultures, and other surrealist, avant-garde imagery.

The thing I noticed about many of the galleries we went to is you really need to be familiar with quite a few things to understand the full extent of the artist’s message. It is not even enough to be deeply familiar with Chinese history; one needs to understand the struggles of contemporary China, the history of modern art in China, and the individual artist’s previous work. Ultimately, perhaps ironically, amidst all the thought-provoking art within M50, the pieces that excited me the most were the street art on a lengthy wall on Moganshan Lu. These pieces of street art and graffiti are fully representative of the Chinese artists who painted them, and are presented outside, for all to see, whenever they’d like. These vibrant pieces are not up to sale, most don’t have a name attached, and exist solely to present a message. Meanwhile, a few of M50’s artists seem to be trying too hard to be avant-garde, and create a single motif they riff on over and over. Their art is commercial by nature, and many pieces just wash over the viewer. Perhaps there is a message in that, but as one not familiar with the Chinese modern art world, it comes off as pretentious and misguided. In any case, M50 presents a large number of striking, impressive works, and it is a highly recommended stop to any visitor to Shanghai.

A visit to Minsheng Art Museum Jane Jin Lu
I visited Minsheng Art Museum on 6th, April. Minsheng Art Museum is
located in the Red Town in West Huaihai Road. It is the first
contemporary art institution in Shanghai which is funded by a private
bank: Minsheng Bank. Now the ongoing exbihition is Trilogy: Liu Wei
Solo Show. Guo Xiaoyan is the curator of the show. The young artist
Liu Wei is one of the most active and dynamic artists working in China
today. "Trilogy" brings together works created by Liu Wei from the
past two years, including large-scale on-site installations, sound
installations and oil paintings.
"Trilogy" has three parts: Golden section, Merely a mistake and Open
the door. In the first exhibition area, masses of wooden furnitures,
steps and hangings all have the horizontal lines and vertical lines
which have golden ratio: 1:0.618. In the Merely a mistake exhibition
area, oil paintings named Meditation attracted the audience. The
colours of the paitings varied from black, grey, brown to red, orange
and pink. There are lots of colour lumps to show the process of
meditation. In the third exhibition area, old TV sets made a sound of
power on and power off unexpectedly. On the TV sets' screens, white
lights appeared within the sound of power on and off.
Micro politics, the confrontation of body and power, visual expression
and limited rights of power – these are the issues that Liu Wei takes
on in his work. His works often involve from the careful observation
of the techniques of conditions of survival, space and material
objects, alienation and the undercurrents of existence.
Visitors were fascinated by the show and really enjoyed it. Most of
the visitors are Westerners. But I think more and more local citizens
will come to visit this wonderful art museum.

Fiber Glass Creations - Response to the Shanghai Sculpture Space

Within the artistic space of Red Town is a field of sculptures, including a car made of bricks, distorted figurines of people, and several monuments in the form of a human leg. Towards the left of this field is a large building that used to be the former location of No.10 Steel Plant of Shanghai Steel Company. However, today, it is the location of the Shanghai Sculpture Space. Within the white walls, the museum carries a large variety of sculptures from the sleek and modern to the stylistically ancient. Other than plaques dotting the walls, there is nothing to distract the visitors from the artwork. Thus, curious visitors flock to this unique area to absorb the ideas communicated by these Chinese artists. One in particular that caught my eye was titled “The Green Arrow” made by Jiao Xingtao. This sculpture, made of fiber glass, is a blown up model of a Wrigley’s Doublemint chewing gum wrapper crushed into a ball. This piece would most likely be classified as a pop art sculpture and appropriately reflects the commercialism of the current time period. The stunning detail of the sculpture with its proportions and crinkles makes the sculpture fun, especially the little green arrow that would have been overlooked if not for the title. Another interesting sculpture is “Unforgetful Landscape” by Tang Yong. Made from fiber glass again, this piece consists of two people, one man and one woman, sitting with their arms folded in a way that creates a flat surface for a smaller girl and boy set of figurines. The children, seemingly a representation of the adults’ younger selves represent memories and the past. I enjoyed this sculpture mainly because of the message it carried about how memories are always carried with us. The style of the figures reflects this sweet sentiment well.

by Bo

50 Moganshan Lu in many ways is an artistic colony hidden in the great
urban landscape that is Shanghai. When visiting the galleries at M50,
one notices that each has its own unique style to which it exhibits.
No gallery is the same. Each has its own theme that forces the viewer
to think about the deeper aspects of artist's presentation.
One of the exhibits I visited was the Yun Lang Project
at Art Link. The artwork found here was part of a contemporary
documentary. The artists who were all students in art school went out
into the wild. There they created their works of art. When observing
the final project the viewer sees how the artist dealt with their time
in the wilderness. The layout of the exhibit represents the various
attitudes of each artist. Each artist was given their own place in the
greater exhibit. As a result, each artist essentially had their own
private exhibition. These mini expos one finds compete against the
other. The overall exhibition was a group project; one can't help but
praise one artist and criticize another. When walking around and
looking at the various installations at times the works didn't make
any sense. When there is no real order questions usually follow
through your mind. What were they thinking? One in particular was very
confusing and lacked true purpose. There was an installation that had
two twigs from a forest. The title of the installation was "ear plugs"
The presentation seems very lazy as if the artists just picked up some
sticks in the woods. The artist essentially didn't define what their
installation was all about. As a result, the viewer leaves confused.
The worst thing an artist can do is create a product
that is ambiguous. Though art should make you think deeply about
particular issues it should not leave the viewer wondering. Another
gallery I visited was the Vanguard Gallery which was holding an
exhibit by Sun Xun called the "Clown's Revolution" The exhibition was
centered on the animated film that even today I still have no clear
understanding. Visitors to the exhibition are drawn to a dark room in
the back. Here a short animated film is played that could be compared
to a nightmare. Still Sun Xun like any artist had a reason for
creating these crazy artistic features. By definition this exhibit is
an example of the free thinking nature that is contemporary art in
China. Its presentation shows that art in modern China is looking to
differentiate it's self from the Western mode.

Anne Lykes—Artists Info

Shen Fan

Shen Fan was born in Shanghai in 1952 and moved to the countryside as
a young child. He moved back to Shanghai to go to school, but upon
completing his education he returned to the country for six years
where he worked as a farmer. Painting every evening after work, Shen
Fan began his artistic career here. He moved back to Shanghai and
never stopped painting.

Shen Fan's work is a meditation on minimalism and abstraction. He
often uses a monochromatic pallet and his paintings are generally
composed of repetitions and patterns of lines and simple shapes. In
an interview, he has said of his style, "or many years, in fact, I
have been mainly engaged in creating a visual language from relatively
essential things. For example, I use less and less color because color
itself cheats character. Lines and dots are more essential; these
elements do not lie. After studying art and practicing art, at last I
found the art language that I use. However, I also can see that my
approach has many things in common with Chinese traditional paintings
and prints."

While the majority of Shen Fan's creations consist of works on paper
and works in oil, for the 2006 Shanghai Biennial he morphed his
typical painting style into an installation piece. Measuring five by
ten meters, the neon-light installation was made up of many small
light tubes arranged in a manner that follows how his brushstrokes
would appear in a painting. Since then, Shen Fan has continued to
work in this medium. Shen Fan has been shown extensively throughout
China and internationally as well. He currently lives and works in
Shanghai.

http://china.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/artists/name/shenfan

Zhou Chunya

Zhou Chunya was born in 1955 in Chongqing in the Sichuan province and
graduated from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1982. His painting
style is loose and blurred, calling to mind the work of the
Expressionists. His subjects often center around nature, and many
include individuals left alone in a natural setting.

Zhou Chunya is best known for his series of "The Green Dog," in which
he depicts his German Shepard in various manners, always painting him
green. The vast array of expressions Zhou Chunya is able to capture
belie his talent as a skillful artist and his deep understanding of
other beings. Zhou Chunya has experienced great commercial
success—his painting Peach Blossom sold at auction for $2.24 million
in 2010. Zhou Chunya now lives and works in Chengdu.

http://www.artnet.com/artists/zhou%20chunya/

Mao Xuhui and Wang Guangyi

The Artists of the Post Cultural Revolution and 1989 era: Trendsetters
in Chinese Contemporary Art

The Art of the Post Cultural Revolution has defined the very fabric of
modern China. The world of the post Mao years has seen China emerge as
force in many industries. This is especially seen in the artwork that
came after 1976. When examining the art from this period one must
understand that works presented represent the freethinking ideology of
the time. When Deng Xiaoping opened up to the West, the flow of
Western ideas and styles returned to China. As a result, artists like
Wang Guangyi and Mao Xuhui. The artists who emerged challenged the way
Chinese looked at art. They brought a more philosophical quality to
their works. In doing this they showed that people of a communist
nation had the creativity to change the way people looked at the
world.
Wang Guangyi is an artist who was born in 1956 during
the height of the Mao years. His family was very poor and he was
taught that he was part of a greater collective. Today when one thinks
of Wang Guangyi's art they think about his satire of Cultural
Revolution propaganda and Western consumerism. He graduated from art
school in 1984, four years before Tiananmen Square protests. After
1989, Wang Guangyi was a leader in the New Art Movement. He gained
much recognition for his series the Great Criticism. His artistic
style during this period was cool, revolutionary and creative. He
challenged China's communist heritage and addiction to Western
products. His most famous painting is the soldier, worker, farmer
alongside the traditional Coca-Cola emblem.
Wang Guangyi's artistic style is one that lures the
viewer in with the historic imagery of China's propaganda while
providing current commentary on consumerism. In doing this he
illustrates that China has gone from being a strict communist nation
that believed in government's story to a capitalist nation who is
consumed by consumer products. Essentially, his images poke fun of
both the past and the present. The dramatic nature of the figures
shows how people were so easily molded in to believing the Communist
ideology. The corporate logos placed on the painting illustrate that
consumerism is the new propaganda of China.
Another artist who was a major influence in Chinese
contemporary art was Mao Xuhui who came about during the 1980's. When
studying Chinese contemporary art, one finds that 80's produced the
forerunners that dramatically influenced later artists. Mao Xuhui
wasn't as popular as Wang Guangyi but his style was influential in
helping future artists think outside the box. He is best known for his
series of scissor paintings. These works were simple with very little
in the painting. These paintings were produced in 1992 only three
years after the Tiananmen protests. The scissor paintings are believed
to represent numerous sections of life and society in China. When
looking at these paintings one sees that they have a very modern
outlook. What the artist is trying to say is not shown directly.
Instead, the viewer is given the challenge to interpret what the
painting really means. Mao Xuhui was artist during a period in China
when the younger generation was fueled by intellectual curiosity. The
artists who came about after 1989 where artists who looked at art
through a deeply through a critical and philosophical lens. His
scissor paintings are a product of what he called "artistic
meditation" By picking scissors as the topic of his series, he made a
statement that he was breaking from the traditional mode.
The artistic era that came after 1989 is one that set
no boundaries for artists. Chinese artists were given the chance to
develop their own style and not follow the regimented style of the
government. What these two artists show is that China's artistic
movements challenged the traditional ideology. The greatest artists in
history are those that changed the way people looked at art. Those who
emerged after 1989 have made mark that will forever be associated with
the period that China allowed its people to think freely.