pop art in Shanghai: Moganshan galleries

My favorite show at the Moganshan galleries was the “Alex Katz: Recent Paintings and Selected Prints” show at the James Cohan Gallery. His portraits have a strong pop-art, Andy Warhol-esqu influence, which I suppose isn’t too surprising since Katz is from New York City. His paintings aren’t nearly as commercial as Warhol’s silkscreens, but they share a few common traits. Both utilize a brightly colored, solid background and have one subject. Warhol’s subjects tended to be persons of interest: celebrities, political figures, pop stars, etc. While Katz’s subjects aren’t celebrities, they tend to be well-dressed and stylish women and men.
In particular, the subject of Ulla (2009) looks like the Venezualen fashion designer Carolina Herrera. Also, Blue Coat (Vincent) (1993) is a portrait of an exceptionally well dressed gentleman. These portraits capture a certain uptown attitude, yet convey downtown cool. I think it is the background which most effectively conveys the mood of the piece. Ulla has a harsh black background, which contrasts with the subject’s crisp, white button down. She looks at us straight on, hair slicked back into a tight chignon, hardly showing emotion. The self-portrait Black Hat (Alex) on the other hand features a cheery yellow background. Katz is seen smiling while wearing a black fedora, wayfarers and a pinstripe jacket—tres chic for an 84 year old!

Xu Zhen

Xu Zhen is a Shanghai-based artist who experiments with a wide variety of art forms, including installations, video performances, photography, and paintings. His works are also widely featured on the international stage, such as the Venice Biennale (2001, 2005), and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2004). He has also curates many shows in his career. Xu Zhen was the head of the BIzArt, a Shanghai based art organization that also creates a wide variety of art. He is currently the head of the MadeIn company, which has taken over the exhibition space at the M50 in Shanghai in the place of the
BizArt Space. The MadeIn company’s works mainly respond to world issues. For example, their works that are displayed at the 2010 Shanghai Biennale are mainly responses to the media that shapes today’s reality.
Xu Zhen’s art tends to challenge social norms. An example of Xu Zhen’s creativity is his video installation “8.848-1.86” (2005) documents an expedition to Mount Everest. Here, he removed 1.86 meters of the mountain’s peak and transported it home to be exhibited in a large display cabinet, which represents the extent he will go to oppose social and cultural norms.

Useful Life 2010

Below and attached is a copy of my blog.

Thanks,
Cori


M50 Art District: “Useful Life” Exhibit
The exhibition “Useful Life” at the Shanghai Art Gallery H Space displayed the photographs, film, and sculpture pieces by the artists Yang Fudong, Yang Zhenzhong and Xu Zhen. In the large, warehouse-like space of the gallery, Yang Zhenzhong's series of photographs called Extras displayed meter tall faces of people smiling. Their faces gleam and the crows feet and creases around their mouths are accentuated by their smooth skin. The faces are all beautiful, but after looking at more than twenty photographs of lovely, smiling faces they begin to look very plastic. Similarly Yang Fudong's series of photographs, called International Hotel also uses beautiful, smiling people as subjects. The ladies in the series are all beautiful; they remind me of the Shanghai Lady posters from the 1930s. In Yang Fudong's “The Fifth Night” video installation, it is another beautiful scene shown in black and white from seven different camera angles. At first, I was pulled in by all the different shots, It was like being a security guard watching multiple screens. However, after several minutes I still wasn't sure if I understood what was going on.
The show dealt a lot with beauty, particularly beautiful people, and created an almost surreal atmosphere in the space. However, it was also, as many descriptions mention, the artists “revalidating” the exhibition from ten years ago. This exhibit certainly brings their show back to the limelight, though I am not sure how successful the exhibit is this time.

M50

Minji Kim
Blog Entry 3
Two weeks ago, our class visited M50 area to look around various art works done by talented artists all over the world. One of the most memorable exhibitions to me was the one with cosplay photographs, which was held by Epson. Cosplay refers to “costume play” which people wear clothes or accessories imitating a fictional character in Japanese cartoons. I was actually grown up with diverse Japanese cartoons when I was back in Korea. I was always mesmerized by the way the characters were drawn and how storyline was built. Even though I loved Japanese cartoons and their characters as a child, however, I always gave a cold glance to people who did cosplay. In school, those kind of people who were obsessed with cosplay were to be called ‘geeks’ among peers, and I never tried to understand them, nor I was able to understand them. However, it was a bit different this time. I will definitely be really embarrassed if someone asks me to do cosplay, but when I looked at the exhibition carefully, I could (sort of) understand why people did that performance art. It might be a way of escaping a reality and becoming whatever or whoever you want to be. You can do whichever you want, and your capability is never limited at least at the moment of performance. Cosplay is a form of art that would bring you to an imaginary space. Every human being has inclination of destroying the walls around you and being a whole different person. The cosplay artists would see their performances as a bridge from the reality to illusive ideal.

M50

Joon Nam
Week 4
M50 Shanghai

The visit to M50 last week on September 30, 2010 took me by surprise since I was expecting to visit a temple instead. Located little to the north west of Shanghai, M50 is an art community that perhaps symbolizes the rapid growth of China’s (and the East Asia’s as a whole) contemporary art scene together with 798 of Beijing. The visit to Shanghai Contemporary fair earlier in September gave me a good outlook of the today’s art scene in China, and I was able to spot some familiar works that I saw at SH Contemporary when we were walking around in M50.

The first gallery we walked into was Aike Gallery, which was holding an exhibition called “There is nothing you can measure anymore”. It was a short stop before the main gallery we went to, but “Retired Pillar” by Jin Shan proved to be a quite interesting piece. It was a deflated rubber sculpture in the shape of a pillar, which represented the Western culture that is present in Shanghai but heavily modified to be localized.

The main exhibition that we visited, “Useful Life 2010” at ShanghART, proved to be a bit of a disappointment, however. Most of the works that I saw was uninspiring, especially “Iternational Hotel” by Yang Fudong, which to me was just a series of photographs of pretty Chinese girls with no artistic meanings. His other exhibition, a film work called “The Fifth Night” was a bit more interesting, yet I did not see any direction in the film and came to be disappointed as well.

M50 “Useful Life”

Nina Boys
Contemporary Art and New Media in China
M50 “Useful Life”
10.06.2010


The exhibition “Useful Life 2010” featured in the artsy area “M50” in Shanghai featured the three prominent Chinese artists; Yang Fudong, Yang Zhenzhong and Xu Chen. It was a reprisal of an exhibition that went by the same name ten years ago featuring the same artists. While I had not had the opportunity to visit “Useful Life” in 2000, I could still sense the diversity of inspiration among the different works, and in a sense, the evolutionary thread that tied the exhibition together. From hyper-realistic portraits of various citizens by Zhenzhong entitled “Extras” to Fudong’s multi-perspective black and white feature called “Fifth Night” to Zhen’s “Spread”; a rainbow printed forest that stood majestically in the center of the room, the very title “Useful Life” both referencing and satirizing the artist’s life, career and spectrum of work. Upon doing further reading on the artists’ take on the exhibition it is interesting to note that while ten years have passed, and certainly with that time came changes in technique, inspiration and material, all of them reflect on the fact that that which should not have changed, hasn’t. The artist’s core identity is still reflected in the way in which he perceives the world around him. While this is not necessarily a quantifiable change, I can imagine that the exhibition that premiered a decade ago would reflect what I saw in the present-day, with the changes more in the artist’s style and the fundamental changes that have occurred in our world over the past decade, with the artists’ core character still shining through strong as ever.

Useful life 2010

Here is my blog entry: Mikael Larsson

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Useful life 2010
Duration: 2010-09-11 to 2010-11-05

The exhibit useful life being shown at ShanghArt H-Space at M50 Art district
In Shanghai is not necessarily a retrospective of the three now established contemporary artists, MadeIn, Yang Fudong & Yang Zhenzhong. Instead it seems to be a display of what their current art and possibly future direction will be. We see to where they have evolved to since their first exhibit with the same name “Useful Life” was put up 10 years ago. Unfortunately I was not here to see the first show, but looking at their early works you see the stronger presence of a carved out style and the difference in the use of material and production that before must have been unobtainable for them.

I was especially drawn to Yang Zhengzhong’s discarded star sculpture.
Maybe for its underlying social message craftsmanship and beauty, but most likely for the same reason the entire exhibit is attractive; due to its high level of commercial appeal.
Red is after all the best color: at least according to this ehow guide on abstract art.
http://www.ehow.com/how_5710588_pick-colors-great-abstract-art.html

The overly commercial tone that is seen through out the show is especially obvious
in Yang Fudong’s movie installation where it seems most effort has been put in to expensive equipment and production.
But who can blame them, success and commercialism seem to go hand in hand these
days in art. The more you can sell and the more recognizable you are the better. I suppose I really see nothing bad with it. But sometimes true innovation and magnetic pull to a work is missed. To always have the same overly used mental buttons pressed gets dull after a while.
I for one know! that the color red always gets me.

The M50 art district has many interesting displays. What caught my eyes were the Cosplay photo exhibition from Daniele Mattioli and Yang Chang Hong and the “Useful Life” exhibition by Yang Zhenzhong.

Cosplay is a Japanese concept, meaning costume play, whereby a person dresses up as a fictional character (usually from video games or Japanese manga). The cosplayer usually socializes with a group of other cosplayers at a cosplay event, with the primary activity being posing for pictures. At the cosplay photo exhibition, I was quite impressed with the quality of the pictures. Being quite familiar with cosplay culture, I didn’t know that still scenes of cosplay could be so cool. Also, I was also quite surprised that I didn’t know many of the characters the cosplayers portray.

As for the “Useful Life” exhibition, which is also a photo exhibition, I really appreciate the idea portrayed by the artist. The photos of the women in swimsuits, taken at InternationalHotel, portrays, in my interpretation, a general concept of the word “beautiful,” which is a central theme in the artist’s exhibition. The rest of the photos, are a series of different faces, each with an extremely happy, almost euphoric expression, really expresses the idea of happiness. I suppose when these very different people has a truly “useful life,” they will have this expression. I was quite surprised that the artist was able to capture so many solid emotional expressions.

Amy Chou
A Little History of 798 Dashanzi Art District

798 Dashanzi Art District in Beijing's Chaoyang District, compared
to many other creative centers, such as M50 in Shanghai, has a unique
history of its own. 798 was originally built by the East German
government as reparations for World War II. The strange thing is that
those reparations were meant for the Soviet Union. The factory
buildings were built as an example of a "harmonious collaboration
between Socialist countries" and the efforts were led by the Soviet
Union. The complex, built during the 1960s, was built in the Bauhaus
style. The style, known for its simplicity and functionality,
symbolized Mao's ideals of "an advanced Socialist state founded on
heavy industry and Communist ideology." Eventually in the 1990s, the
spacious military electronics factories were abandoned when the
government began to decrease its subsidies for state-run factories.

The first group of artists to use the abandoned complex as art
studios was from the Central Academy of Fine Arts. The large spaces
with many windows for natural light and cheap rent seemed perfect for
the school's sculpture department. Around the same time, an artists'
village near the Old Summer Palace was shutdown by the government.
Contemporary artists, who were evicted from their run-down houses in
1993 and seeking new refuge, discovered 798 and began moving in. While
converting the factories into gallery spaces, many of the artists
requested that the construction workers preserve the high-sweeping
arches of the ceilings and the Communist slogans. The simple factory
facades, red bricks, and old slogans act as echoes from the past.

798 Dashanzi Art District seems to be disconnected from the rest of
Beijing. Compared to the hustle and bustle of the city, 798's serene,
tree-lined roads create the perfect haven for artists and visitors
alike. Due to government restrictions on where foreigners could live
in the 1990s, Chaoyang District became a central location for foreign
embassies and institutions. The galleries in 798 received much foreign
exposure when they first started up and now rely solely on 798's name
to attract visitors from all around the globe.

blog collection by Daniel Kekacs

Outstanding Art: Underwhelming Experience

 

I saw a sign for Contemporary Art in M50 the other day and decided to check it out. Outstand Art Gallery was having an exhibition featuring the works of artists Yu Jin, Wei Ru, Qin Shengxian, Zhang Yuyin, and Jin Shi, among others. I was curious to see how this contemporary art would compare to the works we mention in class, but ultimately I was somewhat disappointed. Too much red, too many of the same cultural symbols, too much Mao. Yu Jin's Red Guard series depicted black and white young adults with something prominently red, like the flag of China, or their arm bands. They stood around and didn't really do anything, nor did they do anything for me. Jin Shi's masks featured disgustingly obese and effeminate men doing uncomfortable things, their lips painted a bright, luscious red, not unlike Wei Ru's Sentiment series, featuring the familiar combination of black and white people with only one color: red lips. Buddhas smile in the background. My favorite piece was a silhouette of Mao, with Buddhas in his face. It felt completely uninspired. The plaque describing Zhang Yuying's inspiration for painting animals seemed interesting, but the paintings were, again, somewhat uninspired. Cute donkeys, dogs, pigs, etc wandered around with sad faces while easily recognizable landmarks (like the Imperial City) floated in the background.

 

Whether it was their response to pressure from the external world or their own conception, I hope that emerging artists will discard the notion that Chinese art can't be Chinese unless it contains the same tired cultural symbols (Mao, the Imperial City, propaganda-style posters, emphasis on the color red, etc). I'm sick of Mao in every possible way, and I never want to see him ugly mug again.

 

Zhongjian: Midway at Eastlink Gallery

 

Seeing something that looks like a bird skeleton wrapped in cabbage is kind of cool, but only the first five times. Are six nearly identical, bone-white bird skeletons wrapped in cabbage necessary for anything? Does the fourth one convey some message that the first three, either individually or collectively, do not? Or the fifth? Eastlink's Zhongjian – Midway exhibition just opened on Sunday, and I was still in Shanghai, waiting for an erroneously-booked Monday flight home, although in retrospect I'm glad I got to have the extra two or three days to settle down before leaving. In addition to Shen Shaomin's cabbages, Zhongjian featured the works of Liu Qinghe, Julie Bartholomew, Zhang Qing, and Jin Sha, who was also the curator.

 

Liu Qinghe's paintings of waif-like girl I mistook for a calligraphy painting at first glance, thinking their wispy hair was strands from a willow tree or something similar. Not the case, fortunately. I particularly enjoyed Jin Sha's Fading Away, the plaque for which discussed the commoditization of culture, and like how so many aspects of China before, it, Chinese culture too would soon become defined, delimited, and purchasable anywhere you want, except in the places where it used to be. Based on my time in China, I have the same fears: that something that used to be natural and unique will become just another Chinese export, as fake and plastic as everything else in this country.

 

Huaihai 570

 

Right down the road is the art center at 570 Huaihai Lu. Its open space and nicely renovated buildings aren't as shabby as those of M50, the entire space is far more open and inviting, which I much prefer to claustrophobia. In this sense, it sort of reminds me of 798 in Beijing than the A ring of galleries and cafes surround a relatively open green space, where various sculptures have been installed – multicolored feet, a tantalizingly inviting bicycle with one open seat that reads, "Do not touch," and my favorite piece, a massive, hulking, metal bull. Part animal, part machine, the bull charges, frozen in time, the power conveyed by its size and posture amplified by both the impenetrable metal from which it is made and the pipes, bolts, and gears that gradually take over its body from head to toe. Its horns are almost 1/3 of its entire length, and they are slim, graceful, and deadly.

 

Right across from the bull is the Red Bridge sculpture gallery, a space that I really enjoyed and strongly recommend checking out. With maybe 100 sculptures inside, the space was very inviting and many of the artworks were both interesting and innovative. Xiang Yi's simple Waiting for the Next Bus resin sculpture depicted a man leaning forward and peering with an intense scrutiny, ostensibly waiting for the next bus. His body was all white, except where shadows were suggested in dark blue. The plaque describing the work expanded the simple act of waiting for a ride home into a metaphor for life in general: "Life is full of occasions where we are waiting alone for something to come. Life is full of dreams that are to be realized through everything that we are doing. We experience the tune of growing up in the course of expecting one after another." At the risk of getting too personal, this piece struck me because I felt like I've spent far too much time waiting alone for something to come or something to happen, a passivity that I have always disliked about myself, yet I also suspect I am far from being the only person who feels this way. Thinking back to the sculpture, I could see how much energy the blue and white man had invested in simply waiting, and I wondered what else he might have been able to do right now. This sculpture reminded me that in order to live the lives we want to lead and experience the things that we want to see and feel, we can't be content with simply waiting for things to come to us – we must become active participants in our own lives in order to make our dreams and desires reality.

 

Jin Xing and Modern Dance

 

Frankly, I was surprised to discover that the Chinese army was so supportive of the arts, let alone a transsexual dancer. I knew that the PLA was a major patron of the arts in China, currently trying to purchase Chinese works from all around the globe to bring them back to China, but I was surprised that they seemed so personally invested in the life and success of Jin Xing, especially in light of her transsexuality.

 

How did the army come to be such a major destination for children whose parents want them to pursue a future in dance? It seems strange that an institution that so many associate with power, control, and "evil" could have produced someone as progressive and potentially controversial as Jin Xing. Sylvie Levey's documentary did an excellent job capturing the emotions, motivations, and methodology of both Jin Xing and her peers, and I was glad that it was more than just a sensationalized documentary on a sensational subject. We previously watched another of her documentaries and even had a chance to talk with her in class The City and the Environment. She followed the lives of a relatively poor family in Shanghai for seven years while they waited to receive the news of their home's demolition and the plans for their future relocation. While she was forced to abandon filming before any conclusion ever came, while editing and producing the film back home she received the news that their relocation had been ultimately successful. Both documentaries were excellent and I would love to see more of her work in the future.

 

Blackboard Exhibition at ShanghART H-Space

 

While I wasn't expecting to find 20 different blackboards made by 20 different artists decorated with chalk landscapes or portraits or covered with Hello Kitty stickers at the Blackboard exhibition, I was pleasantly surprised to discover an exhibition more creative than I had thought it would be. The first piece visitors encounter is He An's blackboard, which is neither black nor a board. Colored neon lights frame a large white space as each side and color illuminates, clockwise, in turn. It felt like an advertisement for something ("Car Wash!" or "99 cent Hamburger!"), but where any text or photo might have been, instead was an open white space, freeing the viewer to imagine anything they wanted inside of this "blackboard."

 

Cheng Ran's blackboard was exactly the opposite: it was an entirely spray-painted black creation, a cutout scene where physical layers provided the only way to differentiate between this black and that black… for whatever reason my first thought was of Halloween, which of course made me miss every kind of chocolate other than Dove (like Hershey's!).

 

Jin Shan did use an actual blackboard to create his work, but not in any way that you might be expecting. He tied a rope to the board and strapped it to his back, stood on the side of the road, and created a six minute video of himself asking passing motorists to take him to New York, thus the title of the piece: To New York. If Jin Shan has ever seen an episode of Candid Camera, the concept might not be all that creative, but it was an enjoyable video at least, and certainly used the blackboard in an unexpected way. I'm not sure whether the performance was staged or not, but the video ends with the driver of a white van agreeing to load his blackboard into the back: they drive off into the distance, before the video fades to black. I'm not sure they made it to New York.

 

My favorite piece was Qiu Zhijie's blackboard, which he sprayed black before lending it to various committees, organizations, and even a farmers' market to use for periods of time ranging from a few weeks to a few months. He photographed the blackboard in use at each location, wiped it clean after the final use, and attached the four photos to the blank slate.

 

 

Tiananmen 20 Years Later: Art from a Soldier

 

A former soldier who was present at the Tiananmen square events in 1989 is turning his photographs into oil paintings, despite pressure from officials. Stationed at the square to subdue the protests in June 1989, Chen Guang took photographs of the event as a routine procedure, but ended up keeping nearly 100 of the photos. Showing once again the army's connection with the arts, Chen was only a soldier for a little longer before transferring from a military art school to the Chinese Academy of Fine Art.

 

I am curious to see what these paintings will depict, how they will be received, and if they will ever be displayed, or even viewed, and even if they are viewed, will anyone discuss them? There are almost too many variables to consider. I also wonder why he is converting photographs into oil paintings – does this legitimize them as artistic instead of the complete realism that photographs contain? Is Chen afraid that photos of such a sensitive event would be considered too 'dangerous,' while oil paintings are completely harmless? I do not think this is the case, but I am interested what the content of the work will be, and also to see how it will be received within China. "I'm not doing anything wrong," he said. "I'm just talking about my experiences."

Read the full article at the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/world/asia/04soldier.html

 

Performance Art and Experimental Theater

 

Saying that I struggled to make sense of Gerry Pryor, let alone his video of Chance Running, would be an understatement. He's a colorful character, and I would have liked to see some of his other performances too, because I don't think I was the only person who felt a little confused about what they had just seen and who they had just met. My only real issue was the barely-suppressed glee with which he proclaimed, "Using my body in this way is sort of like a sin. Every time I create art... I'm actually sinning." He seemed tickled to death by this fact, but I'll leave my criticism at that.

 

Last week, we watched a variety of performance art videos with Zhao Chuan, and these were somewhat greater in scope and in length of time than Chance Running. This type of art is definitely abstract, but never to the point of meaninglessness. While I won't claim to be able to extract a single, clear, direct message from any of these works, it is still more than possible to take something away from them. Thinking about Li Ning's work in particular, as emphasized by the frequent nudity, the human body is an essential component of the performance art we saw. As simple as it sounds, I was especially struck by how the actors/performers moved in strange ways, and in ways I wasn't expecting. Eventually, I made a list of what these performances were all "doing." Sure they were running around naked and lighting meat on fire or whatever, but generally these videos emphasized:

1. Thinking about and using our bodies in new ways, and

2. Interacting with and moving through the world in different ways,

both concepts that I think easily translate to a larger, more accessible "meaning," raising questions about anything from the fragility of the human body or the fragility of humanity in general, to posing questions about our roles as individuals within the world or in society, and to what extent our lives and our ways of thinking are shaped (or constrained, or guided) by the particular environment in which we live.

 

Finally, I was almost surprised at how much I enjoyed the grass stage performance last Friday. I know that accessbility isn't a requirement of any form of art, but I found that a lot of the material presented or addressed in the show felt quite relevant to either my own life and experiences or to humanity in general. It was also a fun opportunity to get to talk to a few of the actors later at the Mommy Foundation party, and hear about how the ways in which they invented and developed the performances, and where they found inspiration for their individual characters.

 

James Cohan Gallery

 

Last week Xiaoxia and I spent an absurd amount of time trying to find Stephen the Spectacular at ddmwarehouse, failed, but did manage to see the exhibition at the James Cohan gallery. Featuring works by Xu Zhen, Bill Viola, Nam June Paik, and Anselm Kiefer, Matters of Faith is a small but surprisingly enjoyable exhibition (although it took me a while to figure out that the creepy, giant monkey guarding the bathroom wasn't actually part of this show).

 

The painted palm leaves didn't manage to engage me at all, and Xu Zhen's model of the Potala Palace built from thousands of miniature playing cards seemed like it was tedious to build but not overly innovative, but I particularly enjoyed the two video art installations. Nam June Paik's Enlightenment Compressed presented a small bronze Buddha watching its own live image displayed on a television screen a few inches in front of it. At first whimsically comical (Buddha seeking enlightenment by contemplating his own image, and on a TV screen, no less), but gradually encountering the layers of meaning, I wondered whether this Buddha was meditating, or merely in a mindless trance. And what about my own childhood, mostly spent inches away from a similar TV? Was Sesame Street really just a vehicle to reaching nirvana? Something tells me no.

 

Finally, Bill Viola's video featured two women, initially obscured by wierd fuzz. As they approaced the viewer, their forms passed through a grey veil of water before emerging into a world of clarity and color. Upon reaching this world (our world?), a mix of apprehension, outright fear, longing, and hope flashed across their faces. Ultimately, either defeated or disappointed, one woman seemed unable to bear the sight of the new world she had discovered, and fled back through the sheet of water into shades of grey; her companion, after a final warm glance, allowed herself to be pulled back through as well. I found this work to be the most engaging, and I enjoyed hypothesizing what lay on each side of the veil: knowledge and ignorance? order and chaos? Or maybe it was just a room full of monkeys, and the grey-haired lady had a bad childhood experience.

 

Lin Fengmian

 

With a relatively limited knowledge of Chinese art, I wanted to do some research for my blog this week. It seemed logical to begin with one of the pioneers in what can be considered modern Chinese art: Lin Fengmian.

 

Lin Fengmian was born in 1900 in Guangdong, China. The son of a traditional Chinese painter, Lin studied European styles in France and Germany before returning to China in the mid 1920's. His work primarily attempted to synthesize Eastern and Western artistic styles, blending traditional Chinese methods with European modernism. After gaining much fame for his innovative style, Lin Fengmian helped to found the National Academy of Art in Hanghzou, a school that focused both on developing Chinese culture and on integrating Eastern and Western art.

 

Lin Fengmian produced a large number of paintings depicting autumnal landscapes, many of which are relatively dark and emotive.

 

Unfortunately, many of his works have been destroyed, first during the Japanese invasion that began in 1937, and later during the Cultural Revolution, when he destroyed many of his own works due to criticism from the Communist Party and the Gang of Four. Despite this, he was still imprisoned for nearly four years, after which he moved to Hong Kong in 1977, where he lived until his death in 1991.

 

Hello from Hangzhou

 

While I didn't check out any galleries or studios this weekend, I did get a chance to see something that I think I'd be unlikely to see while exploring Shanghai: nature (or something like it). Specifically, I saw big trees, green grass, and blue sky this weekend in Hangzhou – three things I have yet to see in this gray, hazy metropolis. Sure, I'm from Maine, where we have a lot of trees, but I wasn't expecting every inch of this city to be paved over. I've seen a lot of places here where there's plenty of room for a patch of grass or even a little bush, but instead it's just a big empty space covered with pavement or dirty tiles.

 

Yet even in Hangzhou, where trees are more than 30 feet tall, the fields of surprisingly green grass were off-limits, and in a park the size of ECNU on the shore of the West Lake, there were something like 10 benches for 10,000 people. Although beautiful, the throng of people trying to enjoy the weather were forced to keep moving, walking on paving stones through this artificial and untouchable landscape.

 

In the end we decided to jump the fence and play a game of cards on the grass. Four thousand Chinese followed our example. I wish I had before and after pictures of this phenomenon, but all I have is a "before-the-police-arrived-to-kick-us-out" picture of everyone finally enjoying themselves, sitting on the grass. Just because it's simple doesn't mean we don't need it. Does China hate nature? Probably not – but where has it gone?

 

Panda Propaganda

 

If not necessarily a record of China's growth as a nation, the Propaganda Poster Art Museum in Shanghai is at least a unique view into the ideological growth of the Communist Party. A chronicle of propaganda posters from the Mao Era, the artwork enables viewers to construct a sort of timeline of events occurring within China and around the world during this time. Yet even with my limited knowledge of modern Chinese history, the world depicted in these posters feels more like a parallel universe from The Twilight Zone than anything close to reality: when I saw peasants happily working in the fields with baskets full of food, I guessed that at the time this poster was created, China was probably starving, or close to it. When hundreds of tanks, airplanes, and soldiers had their guns pointed toward Taiwan, I tried to imagine how threatening Taiwan and its American allies must have seemed.

 

More interestingly, the characters depicted in the propaganda posters highlight an interesting evolution in China's perception of itself and its allies. Older posters prominently feature Stalin, Lenin, Marx, and Engels superimposed onto pictures of Chinese commoners, industries, or military, reinforcing the link between these older philosophers and China's present reality. Eventually, perhaps as the relationship between China and its Soviet uncle declined, Lenin and the others are nowhere to be found, replaced by Mao himself as the ideological leader of China. Still later, one can observe through the posters as Mao transcends from mere human to a revered symbol of China as a whole.

 

Finally, my favorite poster was one of the last posters in the collection, a futuristic scene from 1979 that reminded me of the intro of The Jetsons. Set in a forest of futuristic buildings, the viewer is surrounded by warplanes, elevated railways, cars, bizarre helicopters, spaceships, and cargo trucks as they try zoom out of the poster and into my face, into the future, but they can't quite make it. Even 30 years later, this utopian vision of a modernized China is still incomplete, and I'm not sure when, if ever, it will become a reality.

 

An Instant in the Process

 

Common themes among the projects of the Intrude: Art and Life 366 exhibition at the Zendai MoMA were those of identity and change. In a constantly changing world, and especially in a city like Shanghai, how does one define or even create his or her identity? A culture in flux and a city under construction complicate this process, endlessly replacing old cultural landmarks and traditions with newer, arguably less meaningful ones.

 

Zhang Jianjun's chalk and painting performance, "An Instant in the Process – 2008 Shanghai Shikumen Scene," highlights both the endless progression of modern life and the inevitable recession of the present into mere memory. Zhang chose two locations where traditional stone gate shikumen houses were being demolished to make room for new apartments or office buildings as locations for his performance. After painting the scenes on paper with water, he invited young children, the new generation of Shanghai, to come draw the scenes on the sidewalk with chalk. Zhang's paintings likely faded within a few hours, and the children's chalk might have lasted a few days, but all eventually faded from sight, as will the shikumen homes, brick by brick. Ultimately, very little will be left of these uniquely Shanghai buildings other than memories, perhaps preserved for another generation in the minds of the children who helped Zhang Jianjun with his project, but in time even these memories will fade.

 

Interestingly, a project directly beside "An Instant in the Process" provided some comfort for those seeking to reconnect with the past. Huang Dehua's green tile installation, "Echo," consisted of patterned green floor tiles from the 1970's and 1980's placed in various locations within Shanghai. The patterns of the tiles were supposedly well-known, and had "become part of the collective memory of a whole generation." In this way, these simple tiles gave people "a sense of nostalgia and security" that the endless cranes and construction sites around the city likely do not. Things that are constant, and images of daily realities, are always comforting to see, "reminding people of the simple beauty of the past." Though neither a solution to the difficulties of retaining traditional cultural symbols nor a resolution for the tension between old and new, the tiles at least allow for some brief moments to remember a time when things did not feel quite so uncertain.

Graham Bannon - Blog Posts

Graham Bannon

Blog Posts

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.

Zhu Yu

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.

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.

Pop-Mao

Yu Youhan and the Mao Series:

I think Yu's series of pop-art styled paintings of Mao Zedong are very
interesting. What fascinates me about this series, is the
juxtaposition of reverentials. What works about these pieces is their
grounding in the hyper-politicized period of China from the late
sixties well into the seventies - the cultural revolution. Mao's
status became (as it was already becoming), something no longer human.
His image instead took on its own life independent of the physical
Mao. In the pop-art series (the one with Whitney Huston is a great
example) we see this revered image that is so part of the public
consciousness next to and within a style (as well as with the images
themselves) of the new generations revered culture. With the advent of
capitalism, consumerism - as well as Westernism in a more general
sense - these have taken on a sort of quasi-divine status that is
held, by and large in the public conscious, as the new fixation of the
public cult of worship. This fits into the increasingly depoliticized
world that China has descended into (as well as the art scene). The
use of Mao in the art work serves to remind us of the recent hyper-
politicization and where the current political and social world stands
and has changed, with a satiric eye towards the similarities.

Chinese art market in the global scene and it's meanings

I've been reading up about the contemporary art scene and it's
position in the global art and political world and have come across
several interesting things. The growth of importance of the Chinese
art scene upon the global world has walked hand-in-hand with China's
emergence upon the world stage as a major player. I'm curious about
the relation of the two. Is sudden interest in Chinese contemporary
art linked with a growing inquisitiveness about the people behind this
new global player. Does interest into the Chinese art scene correlate
to an attempt by the rest of the world to better understand
contemporary Chinese culture and society as well as the spirit and
feel of the average Chinese citizen. Does insight into the art of a
culture provide insight into the people of that culture as well and
help us better understand the Chinese as human beings?

Or is the interest just another attempt to jump onto the profitable
Chinese-market wagon? Works by big name contemporary Chinese artists
were (and still are to a lesser extent) selling in the millions of USD
at auction. Is this an appreciation of the art movement here or an
attempt at a smart investment? On the Chinese side of it, is the art
movement still connected to its roots or has it too been sucked into
the world of high monetary returns? With the "good artwork" produced,
there has been a horde of "junk being traded as 'meaningful
work,'" ("Chinese contemporary art bubble goes flat") producing art as
a commodity for the sole means of profit. Now however, there seems to
be a burst in the Chinese art bubble pointing to the idea that maybe
all this interest was just an overexcited fad. Or maybe not; works by
the big names, although not reaching Christie's auction expectations,
are still fetching price tags in the millions.
Propaganda Museum

I found the propaganda exhibit to be the most interesting of the
galleries we have visited recently. It was fascinating to walk along
the posters noticing the developments of styles and messages
presented. It is, in a sense, a historical lens into China's recent
history and the social, political and economic desires of the
government. The early posters had a surreal cartoonish style to them
reminiscent of European early forays into the new medium of large-
scale industrial print propaganda. As the Korean war drew to a close,
you can see the entrance of more Socialist-realism influences with the
idealized and heroic workers in their utopian communities. An
interesting side note was the influence of the 1930s Shanghai calendar
girl poster on some of these 1950s posters. The change to the red-art
style of the cultural revolution and there violent and militaristic
themes is a sudden shift that gives the reader some impression of the
mood of the time.

I was most interested in he collection of big-character posters
(dazibao) tucked away in the back room. These posters to me are the
most powerful work of the cultural revolution. Each poster is so bound
up with fear, violence, paranoia, and chaos with students denouncing
teachers for being reactionary because they actually believed or they
were too scared not to attack and look like a rightist-sympathizer.
The mention of these works of calligraphy on paper as art pieces in
themselves (as opposed to historical documents) brings up ethical
considerations about what art can be used for and what it can do. Many
people's careers (and more) were ruined by such posters (it is
possible that someone's life was ruined by one of the posters on
display). And yet many of the posters were imaginative creations,
bearing almost no link to any truth, standing as works contained only
within themselves yet still having such a real ability to drag the
physical world into the reality of their illusions

366. New China and Old Nostalgia

There were several pieces from the exhibition, Interlude: Art and Life
366 at the Zendai MoMA that I found to be interesting. A common theme
that i found interesting in many of the works is the changing nature
of life in Shanghai, and China as a whole. The work "Line of Sight,'
by artist Maldev Lopez took the approach of examining the increase of
advertisements upon the city's visage. In the work, Lopez set up a
several large orange panels that, when observed at a certain angle,
blocked out all of the surrounding logos and advertisement. What i
found fascinating about this piece is seeing a side of China that is
not wholly comfortable with the sudden onslaught of capitalism that
has taken hold of China, especially Shanghai. There is a whole
population that has come, and is coming of age in a China so radically
different from that of their parents. This generation has no
connection to the communism of the past except for a vague and often
mythicized history that frames the past in a reverent tone that is
often off limits for discussion. A sense of nostalgia for a past many
never lived seems sprout up every now in then when listening to he
younger generation that is mistrustful of free-market, anything goes
capitalism, which they often see as cold and uncaring

The piece "Echo," by artist Huang Dehua provides an interesting
viewpoint to this. The work is an artistic recreation of old cheap
floor tiles from the '70's and '80's that have entered the collective
memory of an entire people. This memory, and this nostalgia, remains
as a constant in so many as the world around them is razed block at a
time as new rows of high-rises spring up at a dizzying rate. There is
a comfort in those old floor tiles and a pleasant notion that one
didn't have to worry as much about their place in the world, about
being left behind - there is a comfort in living in the past, a past
removed from reality and hardship, and idealized into a dream.

Shanghai Ballet

The Shanghai Ballet, this weekend, put on a performance of several
mainstays of the Western classical repertoire as well as several
pieces by contemporary Chinese choreographers. The production value of
the performance was on the whole, rather low. The music was not live
and was of a noticeably poor quality projected through the speakers.

Of the pieces performed, the contemporary Chinese pieces were the most
interesting, the Western pieces feeling uninspired and unsure of
themselves. The show opened with a piece by a contemporary Chinese
choreographer performed with a solo piano accompaniment, the dancers
making use of simply brightly colored outfits telling a tale of
courtship of the single female dancer. The finale was a choreographed
version of the final movement of Beethoven's ninth symphony. This
piece above all was a poor choice of closing, though it is an
interesting selection in what it is. The performance was meant to
showcase the range and depth of ballet and the classics, bringing in
the Western classics to give an unfamiliar audience a taste of Western
ballet. As such, that they picked Beethoven's 9th – arguably the most
famous piece in all of Western music – is rather funny: showing off
the best there is to offer. The problem being that piece is not a
ballet, but a symphony, and the pinnacle of the form, and so any
choreography comes up as wholly lacking compared to the music. It came
off far to gaudy and inappropriate to the piece, the dancing more akin
to a poor Hollywood production.

One piece worth mentioning however was a contemporary Chinese dance
piece performed before the finale. The piece incorporated Chinese fan
dancing but in a much less traditional way, utilizing modern ballet
techniques combined with a decidedly more Chinese feel.

Speedism

The Belgian futurist architecure/visual design duo "Speedism" on
Saturday gave a preview of their work as part of a symposium on
futurism and architecture in Shanghai held at Lounge 18 on the Bund.
The duo presented a computer rendered tour of a strange model of a
future (and possibly futurist-based) Shanghai. The piece, while quite
colorful and at times intricate, was overall much too silly to really
have a point. I was reminded more of small games and movies I used to
make using Flash that, while fun to make, weren't really worth much
more. And though the panel gathered for the occasion repeatedly
informed us audience members that this duo was doing some really
"provocative," "daring," and "new" designs that are "leading the
architecture world forward" and that will surely have "a lot of
influence in the architecture world," I never got the answer of what
exactly it was about their works that were these things, or for that
matter that this stuff really even had anything to do with
architecture, and not just some guys creating weird looking things, on
their computers.

Dutch Pavillion for Expo 2010

On Saturday at Lounge 18 this past weekend, the architect, John
Körmeling, of the Dutch pavilion for Shanghai's Expo 2010 gave a short
presentation of his upcoming work as well as talked about his
experiences as an architect and as an architect working in China. An
interesting note about his piece for the Expo 2010 is the fact that
the entire pavilion is lacking doors and is meant to be experienced as
a single entity, as opposed to a series of rooms. The pavilion is
built on an elevated spiraling road with buildings almost hanging off
the edges. The overall effect looks something like a mix between
Shanghai's elevated highways and a 17th century traditional Dutch
styled town. Of note in Körmeling's talk was a statement that China
provides a level of freedom and experimentation to the architect (and
not to mention the commissions).

Blackboard

The exhibit Blackboard held in Shaghai's M50 district at ShangART
asked artist to create works around the central theme of the
Blackboard, a tool that has played such a large role in the
development and education of an entire country and that holds such a
definite place in the collective conscious of the Chinese people. Many
of the artists took radically different approaches to the task
producing works as varied as: neon lights shaped like the outline of a
blackboard to a small garden attached to a physical blackboard. Of the
exhibit, one specific piece worth mentioning was one in which several
large pieces of a computer hard drive were attached to a board and
spray painted black to look like a traditional blackboard. The work
points out the changing structure of the modern classroom with
electronics playing an ever larger and larger role, pushing out the
traditional tools such as the blackboard. The piece succeeded as well
in retaining an aesthetic balance, the black spray paint at first
making the complex and intricately designed computer chips look overly
simple from a distance, yet at close range revealing the true, and
beautiful, nature of the sight.

Titanic

Zhang Liaoyuan's new video installation Titanic, presented at the
Shanghai Gallery of Art (Three on the Bund), shows three videos of
people performing everyday activities (shopping for groceries, at a
library, eating at a restaurant) while water sprays at them. The
effect is supposed to call to mind the Titanic as it sank, sprouting
high-pressure leaks as the ship's hull was breached. The point of the
work is supposed to be a comment on modern society, as if we are like
those passengers of the Titanic. However, where the actual passengers
of the Titanic were surely fleeing for their lives, the actors in
Zhang's work remain calm, as if to say our society is trying to
pretend that those life-threatening leaks in our world don't exist.
The problem with Zhang's work is it is too blunt, to clichéd, and too
simple without enough context or explanation. Sure he thinks our world
is going to Hell. Why? He could explore why the people aren't fleeing
for their lives, but he doesn't. He could explain what those "leaks"
in our society are, but he doesn't. In fact, he doesn't even make an
attempt. The work is overly vague and ultimately meaningless, coming
off as more pretentious than anything else.

Daily Rituals

This weekend, on May 23th, Shanghai Art Gallery opened up a new
exhibition entitled Daily Rituals, with works gathered from previous
exhibitions. The exhibit's linking theme is that the works all are
explorations by the artists of the everyday. It seems like a very
broad definition and it is. Works range from Zeng Li's photography of
Chinese streets to Qiu Shi-hua's abstract lanscape paintings to Zhang
Liaoyuan's "sculpture" piece of public lockers (meant to "question our
desire for security in public space and the way in which we accept and
comply with a synchronized order in return"). One of the few
noteworthy pieces at the exhibition was Yang Jiechang's "100 Layers of
Ink." Yang, trained in traditional Chinese ink paintings, in "100
Layers of Ink" does just as the title suggests, puts 100 layers of ink
on paper. As the ink dries, it constricts, crinkling the paper. When
the work dries, the cracks and stretch lines present an abstract image
– a newly created aesthetic from an old medium.

Video Gaming in Art

The idea of video gaming in art presents an interesting new range of
possibilities in the interactive, individual, unique, and random
nature of art. In works we have seen in class, video game technology
has been used to allow the audience the ability to affect the art as
it is going on. This creates a new dynamic where the art becomes more
fluid, and the audience becomes part of the art. This is an idea that
has been firmly entrenched into contemporary art theory over the past
40 years, yet has new means of exploration now. Other fields opened to
this are the roles of chance now opened up into the artworks. Like the
aleatoric music of John Cage, video game technology allows new ways
for chance to be written into the "score." I would be curious to see
where these developments lead and to what degree they will be
connected with the world of video game industry, which has a major
step forward in the range and depth they can create in a program.

The Art Scenes of Beijing and Shanghai - A Comparison by Doreen Ho

Chinese contemporary art in Shanghai has developed a persistent momentum in the past few decades and continues to develop with the encouragement of creative clusters, namely creative spaces such as 50 Moganshan Road and Tianzifang. Yet, Shanghai, as an international, leading economic metropolis, has not yet seen the magnitude of commercialism and renown as Beijing’s 798 Dashanzi Art District has experienced in the past ten years. Why hasn’t Shanghai’s art scene been able to attain the international recognition and success of Beijing’s art scene? In what direction is Shanghai’s art scene heading?
In order to understand this divide, it is important to understand Shanghai’s unique history and development within the past few decades. Following the Opium Wars in the 19th century, foreign concessions were established in Shanghai, most prominent of which were of British and French influence. Thus, early on, Shanghai was exposed to the influence of the Western world. Today, Shanghai has become an international metropolis, the city that represents modern China and the possibilities for the future. Beijing hosts a different city dynamic, however. Politically central, Beijing protects the ancient traditional Chinese architectural constructs such as the Forbidden City and is the home base for the government. Artists from all provinces have convened in the nation’s capital, all striving to produce their works. Perhaps the city allows an identity that conditions artwork produced in the nation’s capitol to be deemed authentic Chinese contemporary art, as a strong nationalist pride in Beijing reckons it the cultural center of China. Additionally, Beijing hosts the famous academic art academies in the nation, including the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA).
Contrastingly, Shanghai, the global metropolis of business and the economic hub of China, has established itself as the quintessential modern international city of the world that developed from a history steeped in international identity. Additionally, the art scene in Shanghai has grown from a grassroots movement, under the artists’ advisement, that has been less commercial than Beijing’s 798. The battle to represent contemporary Chinese art continues to oscillate between the two cities.
Shanghai’s art scene has developed out of a distinguished history. Shanghai’s art development has been continually interrupted since the 1930s, during which works were lost, burned, and damaged during the Sino-Japanese war and during the period of civil war unrest that ensued. By 1949, art was solely used as a political mechanism, controlled by the Communist Party as a means to carry out massive, sweeping political campaigns, such as the Cultural Revolution. Only in the early 1980s, after the initiation of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms and the opening of China’s doors to the world, did art begin to develop for art’s sake and experimentation become a new way of expression. In retrospect, the Chinese contemporary art scene is actually quite young. Throughout the 1980s, artists explored and learned from Western art books, catching up on over 150 years of the progression of modern Western art. China had been isolated for nearly 30 years following the inception of Communism, so it was only beginning in the 1980s that artists could gain exposure and exchange with the Western art world. It was beginning in the 1980s that artists had the new opportunity to experiment and explore art for themselves and for art’s sake, and not for the people or to push wide spread government policy. It was also not until the year 2000, when the Shanghai Biennale was the first time the government officially allowed multimedia projects to be exhibited to the public.
The concept for an art community like 50 Moganshan has been somewhat successful, as these creative spaces have become commercialized, attractive and accessible to tourists and foreigners. Whereas, the concept for a creative cluster such as 50 Moganshan and Beijing’s 798 is a strategic means of connecting with the local environment, these creative spaces have also emphasized the great contrast between Chinese contemporary art as it is viewed domestically and internationally. While innovative in theory, Shanghai’s 50 Moganshan attracts foreign art collectors and tourists, which begs to question whether or not more local faces can become a greater demographic of whom the Chinese contemporary art world can effectively reach. At a recent studio visit, artist Xu Zhen remarked on the importance of capturing a wider audience and forging connections with Chinese citizens. He noted that the art scene might develop stronger if there is attention for Chinese art beyond the art community. Art must reach out to the people-- and maybe this could develop better in Shanghai if M50 had more of a user-friendly atmosphere, including more cafes and shopping in the area, similar to 798. Moreover, it is crucial that local Chinese citizens are given the opportunity to engage within the development of art culture in Shanghai and in the nation. This kind of local grassroots approach is essential to establishing a strong art scene in Shanghai and within China.
Notably, the “A Starting Point: Intrude Art & Life 366” exhibition at ZendaiMOMA gallery was a forward step towards addressing this issue. The exhibition brought creative art, performance art, and new media art directly in contact with Chinese citizens. The local Chinese held a leading role in the art created for the year long project. Furthermore, “A Starting Point” explored many contemporary social issues that China faces today. From the right to privacy and youth identity, to consumerism, prison reform, women’s rights, and how to live in a harmonious society as the nation with the world’s largest population, the exhibition provided a looking glass into China’s new struggles and the challenges that face the nation’s stability and identity as it strives towards rapid development and change initiated by the government and pressure from the international realm. There exists an underlying tension, internal and external forces that are pulling China in different directions, in a paradigm of pressures and expectations. Is China ready to live up to its title as an economic power and its consequential implications, socially and politically? In recent years, China has been the center focus as a rapidly developing nation, an economic powerhouse, with the potential to expand its military might. It seems that everyone wants a piece of the development—China is developing ties with all nations, with dense pressures from the global economy and especially with the onset of the recent global financial crisis. Chinese contemporary art struggles with international pressures as well, and more and more often, it must reconcile external perceptions with domestic perceptions, or rather, a readiness attitude, that come from within the nation; this is the foundation for development that spans multiple disciplines, including the Chinese economy and art world. Are the people ready to change, to move, to develop? Inevitably, infrastructure may change and develop at a fast pace, but the Chinese people must also be ready for that change as well. Otherwise, Shanghai and China will be built with infrastructure but no real foundation to maintain and encourage future growth.
Chinese contemporary art is realizing this identity struggle that involves the complex interweaving of Chinese contemporary art being its own art, and not a mere imitation of Western modern art. Moreover, the international art market, and the international realm in general, all have their eyes on China. They see rapid change and potential. However, China must change on its own from within its nation. More importantly, Chinese contemporary art should be allowed and accepted to stand on its own. Herein lies another divide: the concept of East and West is still quite foreign to today’s newly emerging globalization and interconnected world. Until the word “foreign” can be diluted to mean less of what it means, certain divided notions of what Chinese contemporary art should be compared to what Western contemporary art has already established will still exist.
The development of identity spans across disciplines; music and art are in the midst of developing a strong identity that is solely Modern Chinese. Arts culture may also be dependent on the economic well-being of Chinese citizens. As more and more local Chinese reap the rewards of the market economy, perhaps the income disparity gap will seem less apparent and art will be accessible to both the foreigners/expat world and local world alike.
Another significant factor that influences the momentum for development of art in Shanghai is invariably the issue of censorship. Censorship continues to impede on the free expression and possibilities for experimentation in the art world. The Fuckoff Exhibition in 2000 was a striking example of the gravity and sensitivity of government censorship in art exhibitions. The exhibition, featuring 46 avant-garde artists’ works, was closed by Shanghai police due to controversial works, most notably, the performance art installation of “Eating People” by Zhu Yu. Censorship continues to be a sensitive topic in the development of experimentation in Chinese contemporary art.
Additionally, a generation gap has formed among different aged artists in China. This ultimately has affected the different experimentations and artistic works produced in the past thirty years. For example, artists such as Yu Youhan have produced works that touch upon Maoist era content, while artists such as Shi Yong and Xu Zhen have focused on more of China’s contemporary social issues. Qiu Zhijie’s recent exhibition, “Breaking Through The Ice”, at the UCCA in Beijing’s 798 District explores the idea of “total art”. Total art refers to the social and cultural research of Qiu’s work and his presentation of the historical significance of the Nanjing Bridge against today’s social backdrop; his installation combines his research and emanates social awareness. Qiu’s installation work creates a model for artistic experimentation via pushing the limits of what one can and cannot do within the constraints of government censorship. More and more experimental conceptual and performance art have been created in the past ten years and continues to push the limits of censorship today.
For some artists, such a Shi Yong, Chinese contemporary art is trying to find expression in new forms; for Shi, he found this new expression in installation art. He was looking for a new form of expression that built upon the abstract art thru the 1980’s and the political pop he felt was “too kitsch”. He wanted to build a new language, a new style, a new identity to Chinese contemporary art. However, in forming his own artistic language, he realized the challenge of trying to balance his own artistic ideas while being careful of not losing his audience. Therein lies a tension: how far can one push the limits in art experimentation? However, this point must also coincide within the same plane as the artists’ vision and the government’s censorship. With artists being arrested and exhibits being closed down on the day they open, it is difficult to measure how much experimental artistic action an artist can take. There is a constant fear of the Propaganda Department that creates a censorship dilemma, a dilemma that emanates in the back of everyone’s mind.
The artists’ initiative in organizing large-scale art productions is a testament to strength in numbers and continues to be a grassroots movement that allows discussion and experimentation and engagement with local Chinese. Social constructs have helped build a social art community, in which artists live in artist villages and exchange ideas and opinions, and even come together to work on special exhibitions and large-scale creative projects, such as the Long March Project and the Twelve Artists’ exhibition held in Shanghai, which was the first exhibition organized by the artists themselves.
I’d like to see art develop within the country first— it takes time and also, developing a domestic audience. It is important to learn from the examples of artists in the West; however, it is also important to let Chinese art grow from its own soil. A deeper exchange between the East and West will facilitate growth of contemporary art in China. Also, art may be more effective if it is fed deeper into daily life for locals to access arts culture information via media and in education. The art world must continue to draw an ever-widening audience; it must open up, reach out and relate to the Chinese people.
With a long history of international expats and foreigners mixed with local Chinese, Shanghai has begun to intertwine these demographics along economic lines. As the economy continues to raise the quality of life in China, new Chinese wealth will help Shanghai facilitate a flourishing art scene as new collectors and help develop a higher appreciation for arts culture in China. This gradual opening up and exposure to the art scene will allow exploration and continued experimentation in the art world. Furthermore, the booming of internet users and thriving netizen bloggers in China have aggregated efficient and widespread resources to information. The internet is now making censorship more and more costly for the government, as it is becoming harder and harder to stop the free flow of information, internationally and domestically. Censorship may gradually dissipate or at least become less apparent as time goes on. It is crucial that experimental art continues to push the limits further and further, challenging censorship and building a foundation for contemporary art in China. It is only a matter of time before Shanghai’s art scene will flourish and open up economically, socially, and politically from its present stance.

Letting Go by Drew Gibson

Drew Gibson

4 June 2009

Letting Go

Speed on Shanghai on Speed

Background

"I think we were invited [to Shanghai] because of the way we work in our projects, why doing and thinking at the same time is somehow linked to the Chinese way of urban planning, urban architectural planning, where they also try to be extremely fast and are also forced to think and to produce at the same time... more producing and less thinking. Just letting it go." Julian Friedauer, Speedism

Speed and dynamism propel the city of Shanghai like never before. The special status granted to the city in recent decades has unleashed massive amounts of international and intercontinental activity that have landed the city once again at the forefront of Asian and world metropolises. The startling pace of the city's renewal has spiraled the once-static city into complete cacophony as modern skyscrapers and infrastructure appear to sprout from the ground, shaking the very foundations of the place and rendering the landscape much more pointed and oblique. But the flurry of activity that has descended on the city is directly the result of a national dialogue now extended far beyond China's borders and engaging directly with Western countries. So with the resulting economic exchange has naturally come a great wave of multicultural inputs and influences that have exploded the boundaries of Shanghai's art world and blurred the lines between different media.

  The artist-architecture collective called Speedism is a natural entryway into the newly multicultural realm of the Chinese art culture. The duo consists of Pieterjan Ginckels of Belgium and Julian Friedauer of Germany, and they have now participated in Chinese art events on multiple occasions. What they perform is a kind of spontaneous, live-action rendering--- Often set to music, their complex images come together in a way that connects architecture, urban design, music, choreography, and the visual arts. What defines their creative process is the notion of speed as a self-sustaining and life-giving force toward creativity, that speed and spontaneity in urbanism and design can allow for a kind of stream-of-consciousness unraveling of the self that gives rise to an architectural order. "In 2009", Ginckels explains, "peple take a bit of everything and they build their own person together out of stuff or superficial sides of stuff. I think that's what you see in our images and projects. There's more input and output than just urbanism or architecture". So Speedism's image-making process has a lot to do with the way real-world cities are built, albeit the spontaneous process is channeled through the individual rather than through the physical builders of an urban society.

Shanghai Urbanism and the Chinese Dream

"I think we're visual tourists, we're formal tourists. So we kind of get off on specific buildings and mistakes in buildings. They're probably not buildings people want to come see in China-- in Beijing, it's not really CCTV that we're looking at but the ugly Venturi-meets-Superstudio toilet pavilions in the park, that kind of stuff. Since we're always playing with fiction, these things all find their place in a story we have not really invented yet. Slowly, everything shapes together." -Pieterjan Ginckels

The architectural legacy of Shanghai has always been about some kind of dialogue with the West. Of course, such a dialogue wasn't always on such positive terms as it is today, as the origins of Shanghai are very much tied to the colonial settlements of the English, French and Americans. Even so, the European presence was seminal in building the city into a major port and commerce center, and brought the metropolis toward a form much closer to what we know today in terms not only of urban planning but in the extreme diversity of the structures that began to appear and shape Shanghai's identity on multicultural terms.

The imposition of the European powers on the city's urban fabric began to test the patience of the native Chinese, however, and many visionary ideas for the city began to brew from the lingering angst of their presence. The government in Nanjing granted the city its municipality status in 1927 which greatly expanded its political powers, although these powers did not extend to encompass the French and International settlements. Among the most famous and outlandish proposals, then was dreamt by Sun Yat-Sen, who envisioned a rerouting of the Huangpu River to the east of the city and the construction of a new Chinese Bund: the "Great Port Scheme", as it was called. The Europeans to the west would thus be left to languish in their increasingly obsolete settlements. "Cut off from their access to the sea, the foreign bund would literally be left high and dry"[1], says author Thomas J. Campanella.  Another plan involved building a wall of Chinese settlements extremely densely around the foreign concessions to effectively isolate the Europeans from the mainland. This kind of urban planning warfare did not actually come to fruition but it caused a definite anxiety for the foreign powers, who saw an increasingly strong will among the Chinese to build Shanghai on Chinese terms.

The plan that was actually acted upon was slightly more practical, though no less visionary: the plan called for the construction of a new Civic Center to the north of the established city on the Huangpu River, to eventually rival if not overshadow the foreign concessions. Among other structures a magnificent municipal building was built, but the plan was put to an agonizing halt by the Japanese invasion in 1937. The municipal building today houses the back offices for the Shanghai Museum of Sport.

The revitalization of Shanghai's dreams did not occur until decades later when the Shanghai municipality made the distinct choice to consult with French architectural groups in charge of the Paris metro area as they began the construction of Shanghai's sprawling Pudong New Area, which aside from the engineering feat it represents also serves the symbolic function of uniting the two landmasses on either side of the river, lending the cityscape on each side a much more dramatic flair as they look onto one another in a gesture of unity. And as the two sides are brought together we see the long-awaited influx of international inputs that has electrified the city with a new wave of spontaneous growth and activity. Shanghai is the kind of city that thrives on this energy, and the presence of artistic collectives like Speedism as well as high-profile construction projects from international architects is making the place that much more of a magnet for a renewed cosmopolitan discourse.

The New Landscape

"We [and the architects] are on two different sides of one big story, somehow. We think the Chinese kind of architectural visualization tries to help the Chinese Dream to come true, this somehow political dream of the perfect city, the perfect architecture, the perfect life in Chinese cities. It's somehow a dream but we say it's a sad dream, and our images are on the other side. What we do is somehow a "doom" version of it, which is not really "doom" as much as a happy doom." -Julian Friedauer

 If Speedism are not architects per se, they certainly operate like them: Ginckels on a loose napkin offers his description of the social mechanisms underlying the new China. Beginning with the revolution, he says---not the political revolution or politicized "Cultural Revolution" but rather the real cultural revolution that began with the economic reforms of 1979, China has been on a course to realize its own Dream, which Ginckels represents with a straight diagonal arrow, moving constantly upwards. We in 2009 are about on the halfway point of this arrow. At this same moment we intersect with an equal and opposite arrow moving downwards—the ever-present potential for Doom, for chaos, disarray. Two sides of one story, wherein one can transform into the other almost undetected. So Speedism images are a sort of parallel for the architectural renderings that give way to mammoth structures in the real world, exposing in rendering the potential for their opposite consequences.

If we were to translate this into physical terms, it might be useful to think of the "dream" as something like a modernist dream. So the modernist slabs at this point have thrust Shanghai into a transitional moment, where there is a bizarre interplay of gleaming highrises and small-scale lilongs below, an interplay of chaos and order that is threatened by the looming monotony and homogeneous scale of the modernist constructions.

In the art world there's been a kind of backlash against the perceived threat of homogeneity, and this can be seen in the widespread adoption of abandoned spaces for the purposes of the local arts scene. Both Beijing's 798 and Shanghai's 50 Moganshan Road arose from this backlash, proclaiming in their own way that the old and new need not stand in conflict with each other. Xue Song was the first artist to rent space from M50 in the year 2000, perhaps at the point when the new structures in the city really began to threaten the city's vibrant social spaces and traditional culture. So the artistic aims of the Shanghai arts scene are not very different from the aims of the city at large—namely, to carve out an identity for the city and the country at large that straddles the border between tradition and reinvention, between the national and international.

It's an alternative sort of development pattern that has taken hold only during the past decade and has seen outgrowths throughout the city, not only to preserve the old street life and city fabric but for commercial reasons as well—the Xintiandi development near People's Square has been criticized as a Disneyfication of the urban landscape, but at the same time grapples with the same East-meets-West architectural paradigm as M50, but this time deliberately caters to the wants and needs of foreign visitors. In the greater scheme these efforts look like small attempts to get a grasp on the vast mechanism of change that thrusts the city ever closer to the dream/doom it is apparently destined for.

On the other hand, if these counter-movements appear to hinder the speed of change in Shanghai, perhaps it's worth considering that they very well could be accelerating them. That is, the power to shape the city's creative identity is apparently undergoing another transformation, from something that exists solely in the hands of the municipal or Beijing governments to something that is already becoming more democratic and open to more voices within the city. Something inside more of an open forum that allows for greater internal spontaneity. If the productive forces in the city change hands, we are likely to see a reorientation of the Dream itself, from the utter singularity of the Modernist columns to a greater diversity and integration of edifices and alleyways.

 Media and Contemporary Arts

"So we propose a visual doom, a fictional doom-- because our projects are fiction-- that grows together with the dream. ...the opposite of what all the rendering offices are doing. But at the same time we play with the rendering and visualization to create something. As much as the render is real, our images also are real and have a kind of power." -Pieterjan Ginckels

Other artists like Allard van Hoorn have launched exhibitions like 2007's Platform for Urban Investigation[2], which bring together people as diverse as artists, architects, and photographers as they jointly contribute projects based on different elements of the urban experience, and particularly that of Shanghai. The projects range from Jian Jun's Household Objects (simply, objects plucked from the urban environment and placed in galleries) to something as abstract as Christian Leibenger's Tricycle House, a traditional Chinese home (in miniatore) built atop a tricycle, destroyed gradually in movement, and in a fashion meant to reflect creative destruction and urban change in Shanghai.

The overriding theme is that of the urban landscape as an aesthetic and intellectual experience, as a set of near-abstract spaces that we exist within that has more to do with the ideas that bring them together than with the physical properties of the places themselves. These kinds of excursions expand the boundaries of an arts scene already leaning on the interdisciplinary, elevating the arts and architecture to a place equally under the umbrella of "experience". 

 "I don't want to give away too much because if you have many inputs then you play it out on many levels, so you have to tell ten stories when you make the image. It's at once the power of the image that you can generate so much with it, but at the same it it's a bit of a hassle that it's always that much. Doom is a bit like that." –Pieterjan Ginckels

 What Speedism apparently does is offer a solution to what to make of this kind of multimedia convergence, and that is to take it to its natural limits. Because the images, as Pieterjan explains, draw liberally from all the elements of design, urbanism and art nearly indiscriminately, the best resulting approach is to continue to draw from them and avoid filtering our output with the natural impulse to categorize. "We Might Be Wrong" they proclaim in their website's Manifest, as if anticipating the natural backlash that might greet such unrestricted spontaneity. If Shanghai has loosened the filers on the kinds of influences that pour in from the Western powers it has always grappled with, then as we transition toward Dream or Doom we will naturally see other forms of expression follow it toward a place no longer hampered by categorization or the necessity of identity.

 

Works Cited

Campanella, Thomas J.

The Concrete Dragon: China's Urban Revolution and What it Means for the World

Princeton Architectural Press, 2008

 

Hoorn, Allard van.

Platform for Urban Investigation: Shanghai II (2007)

http://www.allardvanhoorn.com/biography_pui_shanghai_2.asp#Folding

 

Interview with Speedism: Partial Transcript

 

Drew: Do you view your work as a mirror of real-life urban processes?

 

JF: We don't know if it's that in general but we can say it's definitely a link to Chinese urban life, real life. We've been already to Beijing for five weeks in December and I think we were invited because of the way we work in our projects, why doing and thinking at the same time is somehow linked to the Chinese way of urban planning, urban architectural planning, where they also try to be extremely fast and are also forced to think and to produce at the same time... more producing and less thinking--- just letting it go. That's also somehow.. we work together----

 

PG: Yeah I think it's what Julian says, but also, and that's where we're actually somehow far from the architects, that in the first place it also interests us, or it's not only in urbanism that you find this kind of random... throwing everything in together, superficial network-- you build your identity with stuff. It's a kind of collage, and I think maybe in Shanghai the most or in China, people don't really care if they copy the whole thing or if they copy something or they just copy the formal part of it, like extermal or... but in general you can see that in 2009 people take a bit of everything and they build their own person together out of stuff or superficial sides of stuff.. I think that's where you also see in our images and our projects... There's more input and output than just urbanism or architecture.

 

Sometimes some things fit together and they're not from the same domain, they're not both from architecture, but we can have a song, like the piece with the black mirror had, and we combine it with architecture--- more randomly, less specific than we're talking now.

 

Drew: Is the modern Chinese city in particular an important part of your work, and if so, do you find yourselves thinking about it in terms of its "Chienseness" or what otherwise sets it apart from European or Western Cities?

 

PG: I think one point we have to make clear is that we're not really hardcore researchers. The things you think of when you think of the Chineseness of the Chinese city are not things that we really grasp or that we tend to use when we think of the Chinese city in our projects. So again, as much as people construct complex things on a superficial level, we also kind of superficially understand or quote the Chineseness of the city. I guess there's lots of formal input we take from the Chinese city, and we kind of recognize the way that the city is built up here, and the way that we build up our images, but I don't know if you take a very specific input like Chinese cities are, they have this graph of population, this graph of investment and all of this... I don't think we ever try to look at such levels of understanding.

 

JF: I think it's the way you explained it: We're not so much researchers, we are much more like travelers, or tourists. We pick only things we like, and they don't have to be Chinese. So it can be like, in our last project, can be something to do with feng shui, it also can be something like the cheap dvd copy of the cool film we found on the street, which has nothing to do with China. The content of that film can be anything.

 

PG: I think we're visual tourists, we're formal tourists. So we kind of get off on specific buildings and mistakes in buildings. They're probably not buildings people want to come see in China-- in Beijing, it's not really CCTV that we're looking at but the ugly Venturi-meets-Superstudio toilet pavilions in the park, that kind of stuff. Since we're always playing with ficiton, these things all find their place in a story we have not really invented yet. Slowly, everything shapes together.

 

Drew: Since you're working with the medium of rendering, do you think there's a reltation between what you do and the officlial architectural renderings that anticipate physical structures?

 

JF: We're on two different sides of one big story, somehow. We think the Chinese kind of architectural visualization tries to help the Chinese dream to come true, this somehow political dream of the perfect city, the perfect architecture, the perfect life in Chinese cities. It's somehow a dream but we say it's a sad dream, and our images are on the other side. What we do is somehow a "doom" version of it, which is not really "doom" as much as a happy doom.

 

PG: It's got a short intro text, like everything I don't want to give away too much because if you have many inputs then you play it out on many levels, so you have to tell ten stories when you make the image. It's at once the power of the image that you can generate so much with it, but at the same it it's a bit of a hassle that it's always that much. Doom is a bit like that.

 

So we propose a visual doom, a fictional doom-- because our projects are fiction-- that grows together with the dream. ...the opposite of what all the rendering offices are doing. But at the same time we play with the rendering and visualization to create something. As much as the render is real, our images also are real and have a kind of power.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] Campanella, Thomas J. The Concrete Dragon, 2008

[2] http://www.allardvanhoorn.com/biography_pui_shanghai_2.asp#Folding