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AN ARTISTIC POSITION ON THE EVOLUTION OF SHANGHAI’S HISTORIC CITYSCAPE


Noor Chadha & Mikael Larsson
Contemporary Art & New Media
Fall 2010

It Snows in Shanghai
It is currently zero degrees Celsius outside and delicate flakes of white are floating down to the earth, frosting Shanghai over in a soft layer of white – a sight one would never have fathomed in the unbearable heat of Shanghai summers.
Both Shanghai’s art scene and the city itself have been developing at a rapid pace, emerging at break-neck speed from a time where any true creativity was suppressed or re-tailored into what the government deemed appropriate for the public. As this evolution has picked up momentum fairly recently, especially in the past couple of decades, the intrinsic method of what should and should not be emphasized in China’s cultural atmosphere has also been constantly shifting. This fall in Contemporary Art and New Media, via in-class lectures, documentaries, artist interviews, site visits to various commercial galleries, independent exhibitions, museums, and simply through our own general observations and experiences living in Shanghai over this past semester, we have found that for Shanghai, this past century has been a constant battle of writing and re-writing history. How do we deal with the past? Who determines history? What stays, what goes? What will be remembered and what will be forgotten? What is the relationship between history and value and what significance does the past have for the present? Does “true” objective past even exist?
In response to these questions, we initiated an on-going artwork that mirrors the layering that has been taking place in Shanghai and will continue to shape the future history of the city.

The Premise
On a 40” x 47” using acrylics and a 4-inch wide brush as their only weapon of choice, Mikael and Noor embarked on a journey of creation and destruction, ownership and censorship under the title Layercake. A game of drunken dice decided that Mikael would create the first layer of the work keeping the following five rules in mind:

一 Only one artist may be active on each layer. (both conceptually and technically)
二 The artists cannot communicate with each other during the process of creating a layer.
三 Only the active artist may decide what to keep and what to dispose of from the previous layer of the canvas.
四 Only the predetermined tools may be utilized.
五 Once a single layer is complete, the other artist takes over.

Holding these rules intact throughout the process of the artwork, Mikael and Noor initiated Layercake, taking turns at separately shaping the artwork, layer by layer.

Inspiration
Our interest in starting a project like this was sparked by the 2010 Shanghai Biennale and a couple specific artworks within the exhibition. The theme for this year’s Biennale was Rehearsal, the concept that the final product of an artistic process is not necessarily the most important – that within every stage there is substance and in some cases, the “rehearsal” stages may be even more essential than the final artwork. In one of the rooms, there was no “artwork” as such, but an actual studio of the artist Ma Leon. This focus on process rather than product encouraged us to dispel ideas that the actual painting we have been creating together is what is important but the concept and entire process is what the work is all about: that meaning is brought out by the actual evolution, destruction, and reworking of each layer.
In the biennale, Qiu Zhijie’s work “Qiu’s notes on Colorful Lantern at Shangyuan Festival” and a layered painting piece by Liu Xiaodong especially caught our eye and got us to start thinking about how to deal with the past: ideology, traditions, history, and got us to start thinking in layers.


Writing and Re-writing History
In the process of Shanghai’s rapid evolution, several layers of Shanghai’s history are constantly being visually wiped out. The 2010 World Expo center with its pavilions represent the future the Government wants to keep, while the previous inhabitants of the site are now relocated and have had their dwellings and personal history with the site, removed. Now that the Expo has come to a close, the pavilions are once again going to destroyed – the only pavilion left standing as a reminder of what took place on the site will be the China pavilion.
The area of Xintiandi is another example of destruction and recreation as most of the area’s original inhabitants have been completely relocated, their humble neighborhoods that initially characterized old Shanghai completely revamped into a hip modern area with skyrocketing real estate prices. Only one original street has been kept, but changed into something luxurious, far from its previous history. The Urban Planning museum presents this “old” street as an achievement of the Shanghai government – a tribute to their effort of preserving older aspects of the city.
Yet again, someone has to make a decision of what will be kept on ever site, what history and culture will remain for future generations. In history class we have been taught how the Chinese Governments attempts to recreate and mold history to suit their own agenda and goals happen often. Mao might be placed in situations he actually never attended, and the yellow river is painted out to seem as the origin of the Chinese population. (Professor Andrew Fields)
In Layercake with each layer being painted, history is changed and molded into the current artist’s ideal of present. The idea “winners write the history” and the concept of censorship and ownership heavily influencing each following layer.
Utilizing Censorship to Present an Image
Through the vessel of art, we are constantly making and unmaking history, evaluating and reevaluating every aspect of life as we know it. By looking to the past by visual representation, the values of any one time period are made more apparent as a whole but the truth is, we are only able to learn about the past from what there is left of any specific time period in terms of artifacts and literature. Destroy the evidence, and no one will ever know it happened. Hide the evidence, and only few will find out.
One of our first site visits was to the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre. Because times have changed, the once public posters are now situated in the basement of a completely nondescript residential compound in Shanghai as to stay below the current government’s radar. The Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre is one of the only venues in Shanghai where these rare political posters are on display. Nonetheless, this instance of censorship in the form of lacking presence demonstrates the way in which the government has utilized censorship to force the posters into having a minimal role in representing China’s history to the masses.
The Chinese propaganda posters were serving the purpose of building a future empire by instilling very specific concepts and images into the people’s minds. China has always placed importance in patriotism, controlling the image of the country, and keeping it’s people ideologically in line. In this moment of strong political zeal, the propaganda posters served the role of CNN or Fox at the time, communicating the incumbent regime’s ideology to the masses through text and art of the posters. The posters’ lack presence in modern shanghai because perhaps the government no longer wants to show those messages to the current public.
In Layercake, we also had first-hand experience at deciding what should and should not be seen. Each layer of the piece had a specific intention which was born in each artist’s head but the only the next artist had the power to decide the fate of the previous artist’s vision. In certain instances, much like the propaganda poster situation, parts of previous layers remained faintly visible in newer layers. For example, the portrait of Mao in Layer No. 2 remained faded in the sunset of Layer No. 3 and even more covered up, almost unrecognizably so, in Layer No. 4. On the other hand, the incomplete star of Layer No. 1 was immediately and opaquely covered up by Layer No. 2, no longer physically existing but only existing in the records of the work.

On Limitations & Censorship
We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity of talking with artists Li Mu, Gao Ming Yan, and Jin Shan on this very topic and found that each artist has a different response to censorship. Jin Shan felt that it is difficult for ideas to improve or for an artist to make progress when working within a limited system and that government censorship generally has a negative impact on the authenticity of artworks because certain artists begin to self-censor their work so that the work will not be censored later on in the system. On the other hand, Gao Mingyan feels that freedom is not always a good thing and that too much freedom, the type of which he has encountered in exhibitions overseas, is in fact a bad thing. For him, censorship and limitations force him to use a higher language of art to surpass the system. The inward pressure makes his body want to explode with ideas whereas he feels if there were no limitations, no pressure, his work would have less meaning.
Our five self-imposed limitations on Layercake were both disablers and enablers. The large nature of the brush forced both of us to focus on the bigger picture rather than get carried away in details of the work. It also forced us to think around the brush and figure out ways to force the brush into creating our individual visions. The fact that we were not allowed to communicate with each other during the process of the work also turned out to be much more of an enabler rather than a limitation because this rule insured that each layer was purely the creation of a single mind rather than a collaboration between two artists. We feel this more accurately mirrored what has been happening in Shanghai in terms of the government’s limitations on artists from the early 80’s onwards.

Ownership and Collectives
Layercake also forced us to take a closer look at what it means to be in a collective and how when working in collaboration with another artist, ownership of an artwork shifts as the artwork itself evolves. The collective of Li Mu, Gao Mingyan, and Jin Shan agreed that final ownership is a bit of a touchy subject when it comes to working together because an idea can always only be traced back to the mind of a single person but in the end, the credit goes to the whole group. Moreover, individual identity is intrinsically compromised when working in collaboration with others, because as ideas and art styles merge, identities merge as well.
In a way, our rule of not communicating with each other during the actual creation of the work allowed us to hold on to our individual identity more so than if we were completely merging artistic styles. However, the piece Layercake is not about the individual layers but about the layering process itself and in that sense, we are presenting this project together as a partnership and not as individuals. We feel that within Layercake we found a good balance of individuality and ownership by holding on to our individual styles and visions while creating a coherent conceptual project together.


Layer No. 1 – Mikael



The incomplete yellow star and bright red background represents the beginning. How Chinas art world is still in its cradle and far from having found its own clear identity. It is a representation of the insecure strokes in the early stages of shaping history.

Layer No. 2 – Noor


All that remains from the previous layer is the trademark red color that characterizes China. A stern young Mao overlooks China’s many layers both future and past as a spirit that has left the body.

Note: 靈魂出竅 － ling hun chu qiao – the spirit has left the shelter/soul has left the body
Layer No. 3 – Mikael

Mao still slightly present in the background, yet a new dawn is upon Shanghai and China. The rising skyline of Pudong and the Suns rays shine on the new. Although the past is still present, New China is shooting out of the ground with all the optimism it brings.

Layer No. 4 – Noor



The Shanghai sky darkens towards night when the city comes alive with neon lights and skyscrapers reaching for the moon and the few stars in the bright city sky. The overarching figure of Mao fades further into obscurity.

流星趕月－ liu xing gan yue – a meteor catching up to the moon
Layercake Today




New York University in Shanghai has kindly accepted to keep Layercake on display while the artist’s are out of the country. You may visit Layercake today at the NYU Academic Center in the ECNU Science building.


Enjoy!

Artforum Top Ten

Qiu Zhijie is an artist, writer, curator, and educator, based in Beijing and Hangzhou. A major retrospective of his work opens this coming fall at the Zendai Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai.

JOSEPH BEUYS’S FINAL SPEECH
In January 1986, eleven days before his death, Joseph Beuys gave a speech as he accepted the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Prize in Duisburg, Germany. He said that Lehmbruck had taught him not only to understand sculpture in spatial terms, but also to take spiritual power as the fundamental motive behind the act of giving form. Beuys connected this notion to his own ideas about political reform and social evolution. The influence of Beuys’s integrated concept of art is well known, but what interests me most here are Beuys’s insights into how concepts are transmitted and passed on through generations. He saw any two individual lives as the medium for the transmission of a concept, and from this basic understanding of how humans influence one another, he formulated the idea of an intimate connection between a given human and humanity writ large. When I first read Beuys’s lecture in late 1989, it helped me come to terms with the massive social trauma my generation had faced earlier that year, and healed my personal wounds.



ZHUANGZI

The great ancient Chinese Taoist thinker Zhuangzi used lively tales and romantic language to offer an all-encompassing critique of culture’s value systems—he was the Nietzsche of his day. Famously, he once dreamed that he had been transformed into a butterfly, but then doubted himself upon waking up: Had he dreamed of being a butterfly, or was he a butterfly dreaming that it had turned into Zhuangzi? Such stories are a source of basic wisdom for many Chinese, and his book—also known as Zhuangzi—has generated the most set phrases of all the classics. My basic understanding of contemporary art as a game is deeply influenced by Zhuangzi’s writing. For example, he writes that a tree that is too small will be cut down and used for kindling, but one that grows too large will be felled and used for lumber, so a tree—like an artist or a particular work—will thrive best somewhere in the middle.


MAGRITTE’S DRAWINGS

In the early 1990s, I saw a small Magritte drawing from a set of drawings published in the journal La Révolution Surréaliste in 1929 under the title Les Mots et les images, showing a horse standing next to a painting of a horse on an easel next to a person saying the word horse. The piece obviously anticipates Joseph Kosuth’s famous 1965 work featuring a chair, a photograph of a chair, and chair’s dictionary definition—and it immediately led me to a better understanding not only of Surrealism but also of conceptual art, and it later encouraged me to connect Wittgenstein’s ideas about language as an autonomous system to the internal logics of modern art. Thus this one work has given me a completely new perspective on both art and art history.



TIBETAN ART

I first encountered traditional Tibetan art in the early ’90s, and I subsequently traveled to Tibet many times in order to see its stone carvings, sand mandalas, images painted with grain upon walls, sculptures made of yak butter, and ubiquitous ruins—as well as to grasp the Tibetan understanding of travel and the miracles of daily existence. All of these things showed me the power of materials, the symbolism that sprouts from everyday life, and the meaning of art for people who live simple lives in extreme hardship. In recent years, reading Tibetan history has provided me with much material for understanding colonialism.



DA VINCI’S SKETCHES

The drawings Da Vinci made for his design of a tank and a helicopter—as well as for research into human anatomy and motion—indicate how art is not merely an investigation of beauty but a path to understanding. Combining depictions of existing objects with designs for objects that did not yet exist, Da Vinci’s sketches are certainly beautiful, but their exemplary value lies in how they make art into a tool that furthers comprehension of the world and life—a way, in other words, of better understanding human existence.

LUCAS SAMARAS, MIRRORED ROOM, 1966

By placing a table and a chair covered in mirrors inside a cube composed entirely of mirrors, Samaras created a room of infinite depth and changed our perception of space. For not only do the mirrors induce visual vertigo, but they carry a psychological metaphor as well: Visual experience and philosophical reason are integrated perfectly; existing objects are hidden from view; and what appears visually does not necessarily exist. Such a clean and rich work is difficult to surpass.


BILL VIOLA’S “BURIED SECRETS”

This exhibition in the American pavilion of the 1995 Venice Biennale brought the power of the senses to bear directly on the body, creating an exquisite aesthetic experience for viewers. The shock of seeing Bill Viola’s work led me to experiment in earnest with video, and even to become something of a missionary for video art in China. At the same time, Viola’s method of actively constructing a spiritual genealogy out of cultural experience encouraged me to more actively seek my own personal place within Chinese culture.


THE “ORCHID PAVILION PREFACE” AND THE YANG ER STELE

My first piece to receive wide attention involved writing the “Orchid Pavilion Preface—a classic work by Eastern Jin Dynasty (317–420 CE) calligrapher Wang Xizhi, that ranks among the most important works in Chinese art history—one thousand times on a single sheet of paper. For me, the literary value of the “Orchid Pavilion Preface” transcends its calligraphic value: Wang articulates a Chinese intellectual’s consciousness of time, namely, the idea that our present view of the past is the same as the future’s view of the present. By contrast, the anonymous inscription in stone on the Yang Er Stele in Shandong province is famous neither for its calligraphy nor for its narrative. Yet the text, which describes the fate of an ordinary individual (Yang Er, literally “the second son of the Yang family”) by way of the reactions of his friends to his death, shows an ordinary Chinese person’s understanding of family and memory. If the “Orchid Pavilion Preface” represents an elite Chinese attitude toward time, the Yang Er Stele serves as its popular counterpart. Together, the notions of time and by extension history articulated in these two texts have been incredibly significant for me.

PINK FLOYD THE WALL (1982)

When this movie was first made available to Chinese youth in the late ’80s, it offered a powerful form of spiritual enlightenment, and, like others, I was influenced by its treatment of the strong conflict between individual will and social systems. In fact, the idea of the “wall” and breaking through it has become a major concern in contemporary Chinese art over the past decades.


LI SHUTONG

The calligraphic works of this early-twentieth-century Chinese artist—who was active in painting, theater, poetry, music, and other fields and eventually became an eminent Buddhist monk—have a distinctly strange and powerful style. On the eve of his entering the monastery, he entombed all the seals he had used as a layperson inside a wall of a printing plant in Hangzhou, marking the suspension of his life as an ordinary individual and the beginning of his life as a monk. As a child I studied with the old calligraphers of my hometown, and Li was a natural point of departure. To me he represents the whole Chinese calligraphic tradition, not only in terms of technique or style but also as an entire lifestyle or philosophy. His work still provides a basic methodology for my creative practice.

Translated from Chinese by Philip Tinari.

EXHIBITION: NET, curated by Wu Hung

For Immediate Release
September 1, 2007

EXHIBITION: NET, curated by Wu Hung

DATES: Sept 20 – Nov 3, 2007

Seven years after the opening of Chambers Fine Art in New York in 2000,
Christophe W. Mao is pleased to announce the opening of Chambers Fine
Art in Beijing on September 20th. Opening at a time when the interest
in contemporary Chinese was becoming an international phenomenon,
Chambers Fine Art became one of the primary showcases for the work of a
wide range of Chinese artists in the United States. As the art world
has become increasingly globalized in the last seven years, the
significance of Beijing as a cultural and artistic center has grown
enormously, leading to the decision to open a gallery there.

The striking new gallery, designed by Ai Weiwei is located in the Cao
Changdi district, a choice location which is rapidly becoming one of
the major centers for contemporary art in Beijing. The first exhibition
to be held in the new space, Net: Reimiganing Space, Time and Culture
is organized by Wu Hung, who has served as chief curator for many of
the biennials held in China and South Korea including the Shanghai
Biennale (2000) and the Gwangju Biennial (2006) and influential
exhibitions held in the United States and Great Britain (Between Past
and Future: New Photography and Video in China, 2004).

Wu Hung's first association with Chambers Fine Art began in 2000 with
First Encounter: Lu Shengzhong. For the current exhibition which brings
together specially commissioned works by seventeen artists associated
with Chambers Fine Art, Wu Hung has investigated the concept of a "net"
which "transcends any given time of space, history and region,
specificity and abstraction. At the same time it also inhabits any
given time and space, history and region, specificity and abstraction."
The meanings of the word range from the simple fishing net to Laozi's
use of the word as a political metaphor, and continue into the present
day with the omnipresence of the internet. As Wu Hung points out: "To
modern and contemporary artists, the "net" has become a favorite
subject of their work, mainly because this image allows them to explore
the connectivity and fluidity between the phenomenal world and the
conceptual world… Because of the complexity of this concept, the show
is expected to address many issues, from history and culture to its
status as a fundamental image."

Included in the exhibition are works by Ai Weiwei, He Yunchang, Hong
Hao, Hong Lei, Lu Shengzhong, Qiu Zhujie, Rong Rong, Shi Jinsong, Song
Dong, Wang Jianwei, Wang Tiande, Wu Jian'an, Yin Xiuzhen, Yu Hong, Zhan
Wang, Zhang Peili, Zheng Guogu. Representing several generations, the
selected are notably diverse stylistically and in the nature of their
relationship to the overpowering presence of the culture of classical
China. Their attitude to the massive transformation of Chinese society
in the last two decades, unparalleled in history, also ranges from
outright rejection to enthusiastic acceptance.

In the various phases of his development, Ai Weiwei has attempted to
emulate the achievements of classical art, on occasion to rescue it and
to demolish it altogether. Wang Tiande, Qiu Zhijie and Zheng Guogu have
turned to calligraphy to examine how it might become something other
than an antiquarian pursuit. Lu Shengzhong and Wu Jian'an have delved
deeply into the traditional world of Chinese paper-cut and have turned
away from the face of contemporary China. For Zhang Peili in his
photographic works, and for the searching Realist paintings of Yu Hong,
on the other hand, it is life as it is lived today that is of primary
importance. Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen have used video, performance and
installation in their investigation of personal and social issues. Rong
Rong, Hong Hao and Hong Lei have used the contemporary medium of
photography as a means of creating haunting pictorial illusions while
Wang Jianwei and Zhang Peili have made major contributions in the field
of video. The disturbing performances of He Yunchang, one of which will
take place during the opening, in which he frequently puts himself in
situations of extreme discomfort or even danger, contrast with the
steely perfection of the sculpture of Shi Jinsong in which the element
of risk is an essential part of its appeal.

Christophe W. Mao has remarked: "It has been a rewarding experience
for me over the past seven years to work with this group of artists,
all great individualists unmoved by trends and what is currently in
vogue. Finally - and thanks to Wu Hung - I will be able to see what it
is that attracted me to them in the first place. Installed in the new
gallery their works will speak to each other and I will be able to see
not only what unites artists with similar interests but also artists at
the other end of the artistic spectrum from each other. Is there any
connection between the performances of He Yunchang and the sculptures
of Shi Jinsong and Zhan Wang. Or between the paper- cuts of Lu
Shengzhong and the paintings of Yu Hong. The "net" that Wu Hung
described will occupy real space from September 20."

A catalog on the exhibition will be available
For further information, please contact the gallery at (212) 414-1169
or cfa@chambersfineart.com