A Late Review of the Shaghai Contemporary Art Festival

I had high hopes for the ShContemporary festival. Many of the galleries exhibiting I had been previously familiar with and I thus overestimated the quality of work at the show. The venue (Shanghai Exhibition Center) was really interesting, as the building is a completely evokes the days of Maoist China when everything Soviet was all the rage. Rather ironic, considering the marketability of contemporary art. However, venue and organization aside, the fair was disappointing. I felt that much of the art was merely mediocre. The following were a few artists that I considered to be the highlights, and only one of them is Chinese.

Chen Qiulin (b. 1975, Hubei Province)
Chen Qiulin is from small town on the Yangtze river which was submerged by the Three Gorges Dam. Much of her work responds to this tragedy, as well as the phenomenon of growing up as an intelligent woman in an increasingly westernized China. In Hometown (pictured,"Ellis's Series No. 2"), Chen is dressed in white, like a western bride, sitting at a dressing table while food is being thrown at her (she doesn't appear to notice). This scene takes place amidst the the rubble of the destruction of a presumably Three-Gorges town. She presents the viewer with a contrast of beauty and construction, juxtaposed with vivid suggestions about her character and identity. She is perhaps suggesting her own fears not only as a woman facing the age when one is expected to get married, but the increasing invasion of Western culture into China (symbolized by the wedding dress). (Biography: http://www.chinesecontemporary.com/chen_qiulin.htm)
Chen was represented at ShContemporary by Max Protech (New York). He had several striking photographs exhibited, two of which are pictured at left and below.






Garden No. 7, 2007



Garden No. 1, 2007

Ken Kitano (b. Tokyo, 1968)
Ken Kitano's work was the most innovative I saw at the festival. From Osaka, Japan, Ken's portraits have an eerie, other-worldly quality to them.

Kitano achieves these effects by layering dozens of photographs of people on top of one another. Of his unorthadox methodology and the idea behind it , Kitano explains in his artist statement,"The more faces get printed, the more the contours of an individual become blurred and the expression and age more ambiguous in the final portrait, which I call 'Our Face'. The contours of an individual become blurred in a 'Portrait of Our Face' but it expresses 'time and light', which should be unique to the particular group. Needless to say, there is no ranking of the cultures or people. The project intends to link people of various positions horizontally, without regard for rank or importance, as if each one was a part of a continuous chain. It is like a big circle of images of people with no center. " The issue of globalization and global unity seemed to permeate many of the works exhibited at ShContemporary, but I particularly admired Kitano's approach in tackling what is clearly a deeply complex subject. Whereas many Chinese artists are feeling defensive of their culture and history in light of globalization, Kitano sees it as an opportunity to emphasize the likeness between all humans. He hopes that in light of recent blendings of so many different cultures, mankind will finally be able to set aside its differences, culturally or otherwise. Kitano's work can be seen here.

Isa Lorenzo (b. 1974, Manila)
Lorenzo is the creative director of the Silverlens Gallery in Manila. She is also a fantastic photographer, creating dreamy collages from bits of photos old and new. I found her photographs to be a mix of nostalgia and tranquility. The images shown are easily dated, they can be easily tied to a specific time or place. However, the feelings they evoke are universal and timeless.The works of her latest exhibition, "Isa Lorenzo, 003: The Moro Negatives," which opened last week in Manila, employ the same technique. The Moro Negatives (named after her Moro Lorenzo) is a series of photographs chronicling the life of her late father in Mindanao, Philippines. The negatives used in this exhibition span three decades of her fathers life and tell his story by visually piecing together the different stages of his life. Details on her work can be found here.

The Business of Art

When different artists combine their works into a group show, there is always the risk of an inconsistency and an awkward result. With “Comfortable”, I didn’t feel that at all, and I think it’s because of the setting within an actual apartment. In a home, things don’t need to necessarily match in order to feel right, and that response carries over into this show, - it was comfortable. There was something natural about the way the gruop of artists got together to exhibit their works. I particularly liked the room with the foam and tiled floor. It simply was very cool and unique. The whole exhibit was actually rather unique; the way each installation contributed to the greater picture but was able to stand on its own, with its own meaning and purpose while really connecting with the idea of the artist existing within a community outside of a formal institution.

This sense of pure community I was feeling dissipated quickly upon arrival at the “ShContemporary 08” art fair. I feel the need to preface this entry with a disclaimer about how I really am not into the commercial side of the art world. What I saw, was a market of new wealth that has lead artists and galleries to create and support really commercial works of art in order to cater to this new group of customers who may now know anything of art except that it is fashionable and shows off their status. A booth at the fair, occupied by a magazine held a sign that put this manipulation and pretention best, “No one knows china’s rich better. Influencing the spending of china’s richest.” I saw a trend of works that tried to be very provocative, deep, and revolutionary, but just came off as contrived and un-unique. An example of this is a statue of a monk (I think it may be Gandhi but I’m not sure) with an ipod, a juxtaposition that I find to be extremely obvious and boring –shock value that fails to shock. Of course I understand that it is a business after all and catering to your market is just smart, but I can’t help but feel it is being done at the expense of the art, that art wasn’t being created for a reason other then to be a commodity.
It wasn’t all bad though of course. There were works by artists whom I knew of, and other I hadn’t head of before. In this way, I really appreciated the fair for exposing me to new and different talents, and to show me old favorites. I really enjoyed checking out the whole show –even the parts I didn’t agree with. Especially, I really was taken with Miao Xiaochun’s re-imagining of Heironymus Bosch’s ‘garden of earthly delights’, “Microcosm.” Using digital imagery and adding modern accoutrements such as phones, lamps, and other electronics, he has created an extremely fascinating piece of social commentary. Unlike the statue mentioned above, here I do think the inclusions of items of contemporary pop culture are appropriate given the nature of the work and for the message conveyed. It’s very cool that the work is a complete take on such an old classic but can definitely stand on its own. I have since done a little research on Miao Xiaochun and have discovered that he has digitally interpreted several classic works, each containing his own take of course. All in all, I can put my feelings about the business aside because even with all the mediocre, there always seems to be something special to find at these big group shows.

Image World

We live in an increasingly virtualized world, where the image of reality comes to define reality itself. The invention of photography can be said to have transformed an entire worldview, constructing a particular way of perceiving ourselves and the world around us.  It is a state of constant paranoia. Just like Foucault’s theory of the panoptican, there is a sense that we are constantly being watched, and in return, that we are constantly watching. This element of surveillance is found in one particular work in the "Comfortable" exhibition. Set in a makeshift gallery space that resembles a functional apartment, the piece consists of a telescope that points out the window, directing towards an apartment balcony of a high-rise building above. It is ambiguous as to where the viewer should be looking. The placement of the telescope suggests an intentional location to monitor; yet there is little to no activity to observe. The piece recalls Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film “Blow Up”, where the protagonist, a photographer, seemingly photographs a murder in a park. Yet, the more he blows up the image, the grainier the images gets, and the loss of detail makes it impossible to prove what is actually taking place in the photograph. Such is the ambience of the "Comfortable" exhibition's telescope, where the viewer is left in a state of confusion as to what the telescope aims to reveal. Just as our image-mediated world provides an overload of information, the message is lost in the act of looking. In contrast to the traditional notion of observation, which serves as a means to an end, the act of looking becomes a means in itself.

Osang Gwon’s Black Slider, showcased at the SH Contemporary Art Fair, illustrates a similar theoretical framework but focuses on the effect of the individual psyche. Osang Gwon’s sculptures are made entirely of photographs that cumulatively constitute the body.  It suggests that our modern way of knowing is a process of fragmentation. Just as we catch glimpses of ourselves through storefront windows as we pass busily through the city, we understand ourselves as parts. Similarly, it could be said that our identity is constructed through a collection of fragmented images of who we think we are supposed to be. In any case, it is the image that defines who we are, and one might ponder just where authenticity stands facing such a predicament.

 

Art Fairs

SH Contemporary 07

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