Comments on society,

Upon entering Michael Lin’s exhibit “What a Difference a Day Made”, one has to question if they are in a gallery or a convenience store in Shanghai. Further exploration reveals a larger room equipped with screens playing video of a juggler, and cargo crates used as display cases for items – all of which is reflected back and forth on the mirrored pillars within the room. The result is an odd environment, where common items such as brooms and rice bowls are elevated to the status of high importance through their organized placement in the ‘display cases’. While casting ordinary objects up into the realm of art is not a new concept, here I really felt the effect was an invocation of the Shanghai people. Lin, an outsider, has managed to parallel the massive population in this city with a mass of objects that make up their daily lives to point out the value in each entity, the significance.

I also visited MOCA, and the exhibit there, “Butterfly Dream”. It was a really interesting collection of works, one particular that caught my attention was Shen Shaomin’s Bonsai. He uses the process of bonsai, of controlling the physical appearance through extreme force, to comment on humanity. The trees, trapped in an iron bondage, remain in the process of unnatural change. While the result may be appealing, the presence of all the chains and cuffs forces the viewer to confront the process of ‘beautification’. I really liked that the summary of the exhibition states that “China’s identity is not easy to isolate”, and that this work deals with total isolation and confinement but within the innately vast framework of society. In both western and eastern cultures, there are plenty of examples of manufactured beauty and control. This was a really provocative way to express this idea, utilizing a very real, existing example to represent the larger human experience.

What a difference a night made

On the Sunday morning of September 7th, after viewing Michael Lin's show and attending a dinner hosted by Shanghai Art Gallery for Lin's friends and collectors, I laid in bed paralyzed from a terrible food poisoning from Whampao club and started gathering my observations and experiences as to how I got myself into this terrible situation by going to an art show. I will share with you my observations, experiences and feelings of Shanghai's art scene, just as Michael Lin shared with us his experience moving to Shanghai.

After mingling around the Shanghai art scene throughout summer at MoCA (Museum of Contemporary Art), my initial interest in the art scene in China has shifted from focusing on the art to focusing on the people, the city and then the art. Shanghai prides itself as the commercial hub of the Middle Kingdom and it thrives on glitzy consumerism. As a business student, I like to observe the trends and fads of this materialistic city. Contemporary art is no doubt the current trend in town and a new event on people's agenda. Gallery and show openings have created a whole new social platform for the Shanghainese nouveau-riche to mingle with the artsy intellects. Nothing wrong with this except gallery/show openings in Shanghai seem to have a far more commercialized twist than artistic heartbeat. Using Michael Lin's exhibition as an example, I was there for few hour and I felt a little flustered and confused. For me, visiting galleries is a personal time, I like to have my own personal space and time to absorb and understand the artist's works and reflect on it. At Lin's opening, I was trying to go about my usual routine, scanning the exhibition, then reading the pamphlet, then scrutinizing each piece, then trying to absorb it all, but my routine was constantly interrupted by formal chitchats. Most conversations started with Lin's show yet swiftly changed to the next holiday plan, weekend plan, latest gossip and upcoming events. I also realized in Shanghai, if you are not somehow affiliated with the Chinese art scene, you tend to be snubbed and shun off. Those who already knew each other keep their conversations small and exclusive, unless you are introduced into the conversation, it is very hard to strike up random conversation with the people (however, do note that it is also a cultural factor). I have suffered my fair share of snubbing this summer. At many of these openings, we interns will somehow find each other in a sea of art collectors, artists, fashionistas and businessman, and will gather around in a corner exchanging experiences and opinions. Though it is still interesting but why can't we also hear from the artist and the gallery owners? If you approach them, they politely listen to your question before galloping off to the next collector/friend/artist.

Luckily this time at Lin's show, as his brother's friend & neighbor and former MoCA intern, I managed to get into this little circle. My night, as you might have guessed, turned out to be more of a social dinner than a show viewing. Nothing wrong catching up with old colleagues or exchanging the latest gossip, but deep down inside, I sometimes wish these events were more about the art and the artist's experience. These events are great places to network and meet people but it can also be awfully superficial. So I laid weak in bed wondering can the Shanghai art scene shed off its commercial side? But without this commercial drive, will Shanghai's art scene be as vibrant? Is it better to have people, who have no knowledge of art, come to support shows and fairs because it is a trend than to let the art scene be ignored and forgotten?
I still have yet to find that out.

There Is No There

As China steps into the spotlight of art and culture, many local artists are beginning to question their own relationships with their country. Two recent shows highlight this obsession with existence in contemporary China. Michael Lin, who was born in Japan, but spent time in Los Angeles, Taipei and Paris before recently moving to Shanghai, seems to be searching for a sense of place and a place to call home. This feeling of displacement is evident in his new show titled, What A Difference A Day Made. The title is taken from a song of the same title, originally composed in 1934, but used as the theme in renowned Chinese filmmaker Wong Kar-wai's 1994 film, Chungking Express. Like the film, Lin's solo exhibit demonstrates the loneliness of feeling like a stranger in one's own home. The exhibit revolves around various everyday objects all purchased from a local store in Lin's Shanghai neighborhood. The viewer enters the gallery through a cluttered room of supplies that accurately mimics the disorderly shelves of a typical convenient store. As the audience proceeds through the space they are greeted by several large projection screens displaying men juggling a random selection of these household items, selected at random from a nearby table. In the final part of the exhibit, Lin has meticulously organized and displayed the same products in velvet lined wooden crates. A seemingly trivial act of pointless organization, Lin at once dignifies the tools by isolating them, showing their individuality and purpose. Lin ultimately arrives where he started, but conveys an important message in the process: identity is inextricably connected to one’s relationship with their surroundings.

In Yang Fudong’s six-channel video installation, East of Que Village, a similar but less subtle message is apparent. The black and white films focus on the lives of several stray dogs scrounging for food and fighting for survival in desolate rural China. The artist uses the dogs (which he adopted from various places for the film) to present a bleak depiction of contemporary China and the feelings of loneliness and isolation he associates with his childhood. The piece questions the purpose of existence—if any—in Chinese society. Whether a bitter portrait of a barren northern landscape, or an optimistic suggestion of existence in a crowded metropolitan city, both Lin and Fudong seem to be fixated on their individual importance in an overpopulated world, and whether hopeful or grim their undeniably passionate relationships with contemporary China.

Naive Melody: This Must Be The Place

Trying to find a unique sense of place in Shanghai can be a daunting task. The city's history is fundamentally based on a hybrid relationship with Eastern and Western cultures, and the cultural identity of Shanghai becomes a mesh of the two. On a daily basis, the streets of Shanghai are a constant battleground between cyclists, pedestrians, street vendors, and locals and tourists alike, all vying for space in a huge but overpopulated city. Yet Shanghai runs on functional chaos, and there is a flow to the city that seems to be in constant motion. Michael Lin's What A Difference A Day Made uses the daily product store as a metaphor for the quest for identity in contemporary Shanghai. Lin's installation is an exercise in contemplation, trying to find order in seeming chaos. After first walking through a re-creation of a product store- a small space crowded with every type of domestic merchandise- the viewer is led into a dark, solemn space, with video images of acrobats juggling these mundane objects. Even further into the space, the objects are classified according to type, meticulously organized in wooden crates. By giving each object its own room to breathe and announce itself, Lin places a newfound importance on the individual object, in an almost meditative way. But how are we to view this gesture? Does it dignify the object or critique the mass-produced form? 

While the meaning of Lin's installation is intentionally subjective, Yang Fudong's East of Que Village makes well aware the sense of alienation that increasingly defines contemporary Chinese society (and for that matter contemporary society in general). Fudong's video follows a pack of wild dogs in a rural setting, trying to survive in an abandoned environment. The dogs become signifiers for the inevitable isolation and loss that the individual is to encounter, and paints a bleak picture for cultural progress. Michael Lin and Yang Fundong both explore notions of the self, and leave us with a central question: Is the road already paved for perpetual alienation, or is it up to us to set our paradigm? 

Nyu Art & New media class at MOCA

congratulations to concept director alicia framis and her team!