on Kan Xuan

Born in An'hui in 1972, Chinese artist Kan Xuan originally studied
drawing and painting at the China Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou.
There she met Zhang Peili, and video installation became her main
choice of medium. She is a well-known, important female artist in
China. Her work is characterized by lightness, humor, and irony. One
of her specific works that interested me, and also one of her
well-known pieces, is "Looking, Looking Looking For..." (2001). It is
similar to her work with the toad series, which was her way to
confront her fear of amphibians by documenting a toad sitting on parts
of her body. Eventually she would skin the toad alive as the final act
of overcoming her fear. In "Looking, Looking Looking For..." Kan Xuan
explores a similar idea with a spider, having it crawl over intimate
areas of people's bodies like their mouths and stomachs. The video
shows a close-up view of the spider so that the viewer is forced to
focus on it, but the close positioning of the camera also only allows
parts of the people's bodies to be visible. This takes away a specific
identity to the person in the video, allowing the viewer to relate his
or her body even more to the one on screen. Accompanying the spider's
movements is a playful tune sung by young children about not being
afraid, and in several shots of the people's faces, smiles and even an
expression of laughter can be seen. I really enjoyed the contrast
between the music and the visual, and although the video made me
uncomfortable—which is probably the artist's intent—I was also too
engrossed to look away.
Other more recent works by Kan Xuan that I found interesting include
Love, which is an altered image of two birds side by side, and I Will
Be Happy? which is a photograph of a person's hand and forearm so that
his or her many beaded bracelets are visible. The bracelets are the
type associated with Buddhism and with bringing positive energy or
good fortunes to the wearer.
http://www.muscreen.com/Kan_Xuan.htm

On Xu Tan and Gu Dexin

Joon Nam
On Xu Tan and Gu Dexin

Xu Tan, or the Big Tail Elephant Group, is an artist group from
Guangdong that mostly responds to the rapid urbanization of Guangzhou.
It was founded by Lin Yilin, Chen Shaoxiong, and Liang Juhui. Xu Tan,
Zheng Guogu, Zhang Haier, and Hou Hanru later joined the group, and
each of the members creates a distinct work of art to address the
issues of urbanization drawn from their experiences in Guangzhou. Some
of their noticeable piece of work includes Chen Shaoxiong's "City
View" in 1999, Liang Juhui's multimedia installation "City", and Lin
Yilin's Installation "Basic Content" in 2002.
I feel that their works reflect not only the issues of urbanization in
Guangzhou, but also of the whole China as well. Historically a
majority-rural, agricultural based nation, China is becoming rapidly
urbanized, expected to tip the 50% mark of population's urbanization
rate by 2015 according to the UN. Clearly, this is introducing new
value and issues that many parts of China have never experienced such
as redevelopment, consumerism, traffic, population and sexual freedom.
These issues have been addressed in the works by Xu Tan, which merits
not only their artistic values, but also their social values.

Gu Dexin is a Beijing born artist who has been active since the
mid-1980's. He soon gained recognition through his provoking pieces of
art such as portraits of colorful aliens. His interests in rotting
materials resulted in exhibitions of site-specific installations
around the world that are made up of decaying materials to reflect
passing of time. Most, if not all, of his works are titled with dates
in which he completed them.
I find Gu Dexin's works quite disgusting, yet catchy exactly because
of the materials that he used to create his works. He sounds like a
guy who does not really care for what others say about his work
(according to the interview he did with Artzine China), and perhaps
that's a part of what made him such an avant-garde artist.

on Wang Xingwei

Minji Kim
18 November 2010

"Wang Xingwei reminds me of those master workers in the old factories
from times gone by, who were able to create something new by
assembling pieces coming from different old machines, just depending
on the function they wanted the newly made tool to have;" this is how
Xie Nanxing, a painter, expresses the unique style of Wang Xingwei. As
Nanxing states, Wang Xingwei is such a multifaceted artist. In his
paintings, Wang keeps changing and developing his styles and as a
result, his works display more diversity than those of other artists.
When looking at his works, they all seem to be done by different
artists since Wang shifts from one style to another as he produces
another work. An interesting fact about his paintings is that the same
man and woman change their identities to surreal golfers, sailors,
hostesses, and nurses, and the reshaping of the identities of
characters produce different moods: sexual, erotic, violent, or
landscape-like, for instance. Wang's works do never conform to one
specific style but create a distinct, unique atmosphere in each one of
them. Some of his pictures are very realistic while some others remain
almost cartoon like. Wang is also known for his inspirations from
cultural and historical references and for his great ability to mix
them together and integrate his new ideas into the combination. What I
found the most interesting in Wang's works was that a number of them
consisted of a "nurse" character. In Nurse and hostess in a raff
(2005), Two nurses (2005), Nurse Playing Badminton (2006), Computer
Nurse (2006), Wang displays a series of a nurse. They all seem to have
a link to each other and I want to explore more of his other works to
find out the behind stories of them.

*sources:
-http://new.artzinechina.com/display_vol_aid334_en.html
-(GALERIE URS MEILE)
http://www.kunstaspekte.de/index.php?tid=30290&action=termin

Liu Jianhua is a very famous ceramic sculptor and installation artist.
Based on his experience in porcelain factories in Jiangxi province,
Liu works for "his interpretations of China's emergence as the factory
floor of the world," and his works often include assembly lines, piles
of electronic waste, and broken porcelain figures. Liu collects the
garbage left over from international trades, such as crates, boxes and
trucks, and creates installations representing China's modernization.
Liu also uses clothing materials to reflect on China's positions in
the global stage. In the series of cheongsamed women, Games (2000),
Obsessive Memories (2000), Plate Scene (2001), and If You Need, Please
Choose (2001), Liu criticizes sexual discrimination against females.
The female sculptures lack arms and heads in many works and those
represent how women are being objectified and disrespected by men in
our society in general. I really like his way of criticizing female
objectification and questioning people's way of treating femininity,
since it gives a strong alert to viewers. Liu is an artist extending
his questions toward politics, the society, and the issues of
individual existence, and producing an analysis of "everyday life."

*sources:
-http://www.artzinechina.com/display_vol_aid517_en.html
-http://www.culturebase.net/artist.php?1487

Lu Chensheng and He An

In 2000, The 3rd Annual Shanghai Biennial was a sign of the continual
movement of the city into the world art scene, as well as a transition
away from the haunting realism of only thrity years prior into the
avant garde. The translated titled of the show was "Uncooperative
Approach," but the English title of the show, simply "Fuck Off." These
coarse titles were obviously made to shock the viewer as well as
represent a new attitude of artists in China that refused to cooperate
with the government's representative ideals. Both Lu Chensheng and He
An were featured in the Biennial.

Lu Chensheng was trained as a photographer at the China National
Academy of Fine Arts, but today works largely in photography and film.
His work crosses the boundary between documentary and fiction,
representing the mysterious with fixed camera angles as well as
techniques of traditional landscape photography. Lu says that in his
work the setting does not matter at all, anything he represents could
take place anywhere. Don't read into these surrealist situations he
dreams up, Lu is intends to make no reflection or critique on reality
but is merely representing his idea of the mysterious. Recently, Lu
extended his art into the creation of a feature length film, "History
of Chemistry Volume 2." The movie was filmed in London (but again,
place is of no difference) and for the first time scripted speech
lends itself to the dramatic quasi-narrative that never quite makes
sense. "History of Chemistry Volume 2" is premiering in Shanghai on
November 18, 2010 at Focus Shanghai.

He An was educated at the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts in photography
but now works primarily in neon lights. He references and collects
ideas from popular culture, the internet, and violence and erotica. He
presents these ideas in a very personal way in order to provoke
reflection. Much of his work has a connection to characters as well as
his desire to interact directly with the viewer. Recently, He had his
first solo show, "What Makes Me Understand What I Know?" He exhibited
neon lights collected from his hometown, Wuhan, that have the same
characters as his father's and his favorite Japanese movie star's
names.

Both Lu and He had a big start to their careers in the 3rd Shanghai
Biennial and their careers are continuing to grow today in Shanghai
and beyond. The artists take very different approaches to their work.
Whereas He is interested in the mysterious and surreal, He embraces
the realistic and seeks to make dialogue and conversation with people
about modern life.

Meredith Rankin

Huang Kui

from Mikael Larsson

Huang Kui, born in 1977 works and lives in Sichuan China.
He had a solo show at his representing gallery Shanghart 2009,
And was featured at the Venice Biennale with a performance called
Does god exist? in 2007.

Huang Kui started his career as a classical painter but has since
moved in to creating more performance and installation based pieces.

Just like for many other Chinese artists, it is at least in English
not easy to find much information about the works. I find almost no
descriptions and therefore have to guess and interpret myself how and
why works are made.

I find a PDF on Shanghart's website where in 2007 Huang Kui describes
his works as if peaces of a story portraying himself as Gong Fu living
A.D 181 – A.D 210.

This persona collects pubic hair from beautiful women, and in Huang
Kui's installation piece without an apparent name, jars of pubic hair
is displayed on black pillars,
While in the background a large triptych oil painting is displayed
showing one large strand of hair. Interesting composition, but really
without knowing more I cant fully understand. Maybe this persona he
created for himself is actually a mirror of his present self? Maybe he
himself is a drunken stalker, collecting girls pubic hair; I don't
know. Possibly.

By Day, By Night”

Minji Kim
Introduction to Contemporary Art and New Media
25 November 2010

Blog Entry

I dare to say that the "By Day, By Night" at Rockbund Art Museum was
the most interesting exhibitions among those I've visited in Shanghai
this semester. Rockbund Art Museum shows off its uniqueness, being the
only contemporary art museum in the Bund area with a long history.
Each floor of the museum was filled with very interesting works of the
world's active artists, but what interested me the most was Nedko
Solakov's I Want Back Home, Said the Frog; it was truly a new world to
me.
Solakov's work took the entire fifth floor of the museum. Solakov took
his journey all the way from Sofia, the capital city of Bulgaria, to
Shanghai with his wife and the dearest toy frog, Joji – and in this
process, he passed through Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, Mongolia
as well. One of the reasons that makes his work fascinating is that he
does not limit himself within one boundary but uses diverse techniques
including sketches, videos, photography, texts, and paintings. To
encounter with his work reminded me of reading a storybook when I was
a child. He vividly recorded 14 days of his journey, using narratives
and providing photographs. The videos he recorded in different places
of the globe, mostly when he was on train, helped me grab the scent of
each city he went. Solakov wittedly used Joji as the main element of
his work, and his explanation of taking Joji to what he was originally
from generated nostalgia at the same time. It also made me think of
taking the similar overnight train trip from Shanghai to Europe.
Honestly, I loved EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS WORK: his handwriting,
photographs, drawings, and a self-introduction written by himself.
This work was the most ADORABLE work I've seen recently!

“By Day, By Night” at the Rockbund Art Museum

Stephanie Hsu

"By Day, By Night" at the Rockbund Art Museum

The Rockbund Art Museum is currently presenting "By Day, By Night, or
Some (Special) Things a Museum Can Do" an exhibition curated by the
internationally acclaimed curator Hou Hanru. "By Day By Night"
showcases the works of nine Chinese and international artists in the
global art scene--Choi Jeong Hwa, Nedko Solakov, Perdo Cabrita Reis,
Sam Samore, Shahzia Sikander, Du Yun, Sun Xun, Tu Weicheng, and Zhou
Tiehai—who have been invited to spend a few weeks in residency to
explore Shanghai and create site-specific works for the exhibition.
The exhibition aims to engage the public in a dialogue with both the
global art world as well as the city of Shanghai about the rapid
economic, social, and cultural changes occurring in their
surroundings.

During our visit to the exhibition last week, our class observed the
diversity of themes, media, and styles of experimentation among the
artworks. The first work that we  looked at (and the one I enjoyed the
most) was Bulgarian artist Nedko Solakov's work "I Want back Home
(Said the Frog)," which occupied the square-ring shape of the gallery
space. The installation consists of video documentation of Solakov's
14-day train journey from Sofia to Shanghai, accompanied by his wife
and a large porcelain frog that the artist had purchased in New York's
Chinatown. Each day of Solakov's trip is depicted by a television
monitor and an accompanying vitrine that showcases the artist's diary
entries, collected souvenirs, sketches, texts, and photos— all of
which create a unique narrative of the artist's experience passing
through Siberia, Moscow, Ulaanbaatar, and Beijing. Solakov's work is
lighthearted and humorous, while demonstrating the artist's sharp
observations and appreciation of the simple details in his changing
daily surroundings.

A Guiding Light- Shanghai Biennale

http://marclafia.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/art-and-its-guiding-light/

Yesterday evening at Copper Union, I saw ‘A Guiding Light’ a 22 minute diptych video commissioned by Performa, for the Shanghai Biennal. What we see is 6, 7 attractive and well spoken artists speak to the role of the art exhibition, the artist and public. The setting is a sound stage and the format the self-examining, self absorption familiar to both an artist round table talk and the soap opera. In this soap, the actors, the artists are in search of an outside or a definition of the inside in which they are, which is the international or globalized art circuit.

The point of departure is the site and occasion of the art exhibition (The Shanghai Biennale) and the knowing torpor and malaise it occasions because no matter what one’s tact, one’s work, even if it’s a critique becomes spectacle recuperated by capital. This malaise produced by a longing to define, even inhabit an outside by artists, perhaps romantically, only reproduces and further engenders the very thing it wants to resist. Like the film, Exterminating Angel of Bunuel, the art exhibition and the artist’s work is within an entrapment and as such is the setting and endemic condition of the soap opera.

You can’t find a way out of a soap opera, and any way out or form of being and suffering through it is from the perspective of those outside, a self-pitying, a soap. What then, who then are we are and what are we doing, we, that are named artists. What is this condition of looking for A Guiding Light?

This condition of how to live, how to work frames and propels the desire to find an opening, a way to change or accept this condition. What is the way to carry one’s self in this soap opera?

The conversation looks back at the advent of the condition of the modern artist, who by the mid nineteenth century, no longer with a patron, becomes but another wage earner, though a special kind. But just what kind? So two positions are staked out around which the conversation turns. One voiced by the very attractive Bosko, who seeks out alterity, a space outside art defined by the exhibition and its attendant institutions, a space that meets the public, touches and is in touch with the everyman, an otherness that might escape globalization. The other by Shuddhabrata, posed and erudite, who suggests the artist feel comfortable as a wage earner and as such, feel no shame in earning a wage, and in being in the cog of capital and the swell of globalization. Along this line the others suggest that the artist be thought of as a practitioner, a doctor, a lawyer, a worker like any other. This as much so that the artist not be placed outside by either themselves or the public by a type casting that places them in the romantic idea of the artist and outside society. An outside, they argue which does not exist.

The group of contemporary artists, if not understood by the general public, ask then how to position themselves in their ‘work’ and with their work, vis a vis the public. Should they lobby to be thought of as a cognitive class toiling in the realm of representations, deconstructions, scenarios and situations. Shuddhabrata suggest they see themselves as a privileged aristocratic elite, the artist being an exemplary human, living precarity. Theirs is a living in the vanguard, whose erudition and elan give definition and example of how live to be alive, to be noble. The world will go on being the world, but the artist’s role is to live in the fullness of all its contradictions and definitions.

Returning then to its point of the departure, the exhibition then is a complex site and situation, on the go and contingent, a site in the flux of market forces and global capital. Its artists, curators, institutions, patrons, collectors, academics and public will keep the conversation going. The Guiding Light asks what is this conversation and where is it going. At this moment, too self-critical (perhaps) and too keenly aware of the fatigue of self, institutional and society critique, we find ourselves, like in the Bunuel film mentioned above, inexplicably unable to leave. This I think is a very knowing critique of this formally very astute piece. Where is there to leave as we always return to questions of how to live, how to think, how to feel and imagine ourselves and the world, and in turn how to act and make the world.

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.

Looking at the 2010 Shanghai Biennial

The Shanghai Biennial (curators Fan Di'an, Li Lei, Hua Yi and Gao Shiming), carrying the theme of “Rehearsal,” showcases many artists’ work from both China and overseas.

The first floor’s exhibitions are more strongly tied to the theme of Rehearsal (which aims to discuss and contemplate on the meaning of contemporary art). Featured works include those from Zhang Huan, Liu Xiaodong, The Long March Project, the MadeIn Company. I particularly liked the works in The Spread series from the Madeln Company, headed by Xu Zhen, particularly impressed me for its meaning. The works from this series, which claims to use the “media as a medium…to create media,” come together as a collage of paintings that represents both media and reality (the painting of the windows desktop screen with the clouds forming Kar Marx’s head is representative of this as the desktop screen represents the media and Karl Marx represents the ideology that has shaped the socio-economic-political conditions of China today). On a side note, Guan Wei’s works on modifying ancient Chinese landscape maps also adds an interesting combination between more traditional and modern art.

The next few floors display many interesting works, but do not flow as coherently as those on the first floor. For example, Yves Bernard and Yannick Antoine’s “The Gate” combines ancient Chinese painting elements and concepts such as ink paintings and more modern concepts, but does not really contribute to reviewing or reinventing contemporary art.

Lustful Opera, Censored, Befuddles Chinese

October 25, 2010

Lustful Opera, Censored, Befuddles Chinese

By ANDREW JACOBS

BEIJING — As any artist or performer in China knows, it is impossible
to predict what will set off the mercurial culture censors who have
sweeping power over the content of film, music, television and print.

On Sunday, it was the depiction of a sexually aroused, anatomically
correct male donkey and references to capital punishment that nearly
derailed an ambitious interpretation of the Handel opera "Semele," the
tragic tale of what happens when a lustful god, a vengeful goddess and
an impressionable young maiden are ensnared in a love triangle.

In the end, officials allowed the donkey to remain onstage, but they
insisted on a number of last-minute changes that significantly altered
the production and left the audience perplexed.

The opera, directed by Zhang Huan, one of China's most
boundary-pushing artists, sold out nine performances last year in
Brussels with its melding of Baroque music, Greek mythology, Chinese
cultural references and modern touches that included sumo wrestlers,
flashes of nudity and rousing audience participation.

Lady Linda Wong Davies, an opera patron whose London-based foundation
brought the production here for the annual Beijing Music Festival,
said her goal was to expose Chinese audiences to Western-style opera
and to build bridges between China and the rest of the world. "I
wanted to bring to life an 18th-century German composer's work through
the eyes of a contemporary Chinese artist," she said.

Even before the cast arrived from Europe, Chinese officials who saw
the production in Brussels insisted on a number of changes: they
vetoed the singing of the Communist anthem "The Internationale" during
the finale — too provocative, apparently — and suggested a costume
change for the Greek chorus, whose burgundy and saffron robes too
closely resembled those worn by Tibetan monks.

Those and a few other demands — no nudity, less violence and fewer
sexually suggestive gestures — were easy enough to meet, Mr. Zhang
said.

But after officials from the Ministry of Culture watched a dress
rehearsal on Saturday, they decided that the donkey — two actors
draped in fabric — was revealing too much of the animal's anatomy.
More ominously, they objected to a short documentary, which was
screened during the overture, that explained how the gracefully carved
frame of a 450-year-old Chinese temple had made its way onto the stage
of the Poly Theater in Beijing.

Three years ago, Mr. Zhang bought the building and its contents from
an impoverished family who had been its occupants for two decades.
While taking apart the structure, the director discovered a diary
written by the broken-hearted husband. The man, Fang Jixin, wrote
about how the adulterous behavior of his wife had driven him to
alcoholism, and eventually madness. In the end, after he murdered his
wife's lover, Mr. Fang was arrested and put to death.

"I was amazed how this tale out of contemporary China was like the
Greek tragedy, and it inspired me to do this production," said Mr.
Zhang.

Although he declined to discuss the censors' specific objections about
the documentary, others who worked on the opera said it was the
mention of the husband's crime, and especially his punishment, that
troubled the authorities.

Their solution was not very subtle. They demanded that the
Chinese-language subtitles be excised, and they forced the
projectionist to freeze the film before it could reveal the heart of
the tale, leaving the audience confused about the connection between
the documentary and the opera.

"To be honest, as of 2 p.m. on Sunday, we were not sure the show would
go on," said Mr. Zhang.

Given her desire to foster intercultural exchange, Lady Davies, too,
was not eager to criticize the last-minute bureaucratic deus ex
machina. The donkey, after all, was allowed to stay in the production,
even if officials asked that his lascivious behavior be toned down.

"I'm optimistic about the future of the arts in China, although it's
definitely challenging with a capital C," she said with a sigh. "Maybe
next time I ought to do a production of 'Mary Poppins' or 'The Sound
of Music.' "

Zhang Jing contributed research.

Interview with ECNU Art Students on the Source of Inspiration of Contemporary Artists in China

Interview with ECNU Art Students on

the Source of Inspiration of Contemporary Artists

in China

Date: 2010.10.18                                  Location: ECNU student's dormitory

Interviewer: Yuwen Shane Li                        Videotape: Nina Boys

 

Interviewee:

A.    Cheng Luyao, 21, art education

B.    Yang Yi, 20, industrial design

C.    Bian Congjuan, 22, public art

D.    Jiang Liping, 21, indoor design

Source of inspiration

A, Nature, forests, and art works from other artists.

 

Other people's work? You mean, imitation?

 

Not really, I got inspired by other's work. I imitated other people's work when I first started learning ink painting, but later when I started my creation, I created my own work. By creating, I mean reconstitution, expressing your own idea.

 

We also go to other places to paint the nature. Like Lu shan mountain, where there is water and mountains. And also gardens in Suzhou.

 

Gardens, must be good for ink painting.

 

B, to watch some pictures, borrow some good points, get some inspiration, and develop my own work. Borrowing good points, and surpass it. Just like what Japan has done. Japan imitated western design and improved it, surpassed it.

 

So it's a process of imitation and surpass?

Kind of.

 

C, more than gathering pictures of other people's work, I also read on the subject I am working on, a lot of reading. For example, when the professor gives a subject, some of the students will look for pictures, but I do it in my way, I will extensively read on the given topic, all kinds of books, not necessarily in art. I also carry a small notebook with me to write down anything that crosses my mind in case I forget. Not big ideas, but I think it's helpful to me.

 

D, I major in indoor design. When the professor gives a topic, we usually go on field trip to check out the actual settings, explore the space, find the problem and solve it.

Reading habit

A, I usually read about Chinese history, and Hua lun (comments on traditional Chinese paintings).

 

What is that?

It's just about traditional Chinese ink paintings.

 

Is it a text book?

No, it's Chinese critics' essays and comments on art works in the ancient times. It cultivated the arty characteristic in me.

 

Hua lun it's about swordsman's world, etc. Chinese culture is very inclusive, like five elements (Wu Xing), Yin Yang, Feng Shui, architecture, traditional Chinese medicine, all of this kind. It's really a massive data pool, and since I am learning ink painting, it's necessary for me to read about that.

 

B, yes, I've been reading literature lately, classics which are usually read by students in elementary school. Like 《pride and prejudice.》

 

Classics?

Yes.

 

So you majored in public art?

No, industrial design.

 

So how will classics inspire you?

Not necessarily inspire, but it helps me to have arty temperament (Di Yun).I think an art student should read extensively, know some basics in every field.

And also, Yi Jing, about eight elements. (Ba Gua).

 

C, I read extensively. Like what you have mentioned, philosophy, Nietzsche, I borrowed books on philosophy, but never finished reading them. I couldn't carry on because it's so profound and abstract so I didn't have the passion to read it.

 

So what you read most?

I like to read about Buddhism and Taoism.(Laugh)

 

Do you actually do that?

Yes, I have read three or four books on that this year.

 

You majored in public art, right?

Yes. I was influenced by one of my teacher. On one hand it's because of the teacher, on the other hand, I like some ideas in the Buddhism about how to view the world around me. Sometimes I felt so gloomy, and that helped me a lot. Also (Buddhism and Taoism) can add some deep implication into my work.

 

D， I do not read that much. Lately I've been reading books on career and time management, and books related to my major because I am going into the workforce soon.

 

So more "practical" books?

Yes.

About the reading fever

A.    I thought that people's interest in western philosophy began even before the anti-Japan war.

 

But there was Cultural Revelotion.

 

Well after that, I don't really know about that period.

 

So you don't really know about the reading fever twenty years ago?

No.

 

D, I don't know about that.

 

Do you know about the history period during 1970~1980? We know that Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, so there's a vacuum of history between 1976 to 1989?

Yes.

 

So you don't know that in the early 80s what was going on in the art circle?

No.

A universal force influencing contemporary artists in China?

A.    Nowadays artists are trying to combine western art and eastern art. This process is completed in the west. Chinese art has been following the western. Chinese contemporary artists are still experimenting on that. I don't know whether this will succeed or not.

 

C, I think in today's university, such kind of reading fever does not exist, but we are now pulling by another force.

 

What's that?

 

Like, ( think really hard)

 

Pop culture?

 

That's something. But people are exploring the characteristics of our own time. 80s babies, 90s babies, we are searching for our identities and rediscovering our classics.

 

B, the society? Social affairs.

 

C, I think nowadays artists emphasize individualism more. I don't see any collective influence.

Art and the reality

A.    Literature reflects the reality.

 

So you think artists draw inspiration from literature which depict the status of the society, is that so?

 

Yes.

 

C, in my work, I tend to expose some social problems, to reveal them in the form of art. 

Life philosophy

A.    Go with the flow.

B, find a good husband.

 

Oh really?

 Well it remains a problem whether I can find one or not.

 

C: I would strive for my own happiness. Take it step by step. I want to practice my interest in art and be a freelancer.

D, I want to be a career woman. To work for a big design company and climb the career ladder.

 

 

 

 

 

Translated by Yuwen Shane Li.

Shanghai art world this week

Much is happening this weekend in the art world, and we do not want you to miss any, as they will also be feeding the classroom and your midterm papers.

Thursday October 21st:

// Sun Xun solo show opens at Minsheng Bank Museum

// Friday October 22nd

Get Louder opens.

Schedule of events:

http://www.getitlouder.com/EnNewXQ.aspx?ID=85

//Saturday October 23rd

Shanghai Biennial opens from 3 pm onwards 

www.shanghaibiennale.com/

Also, Johnson Chang's China- India show opens (West Heavens). (see details below) 

Venue 1. Ground Floor, 128 West Nanjing Rd; 

Venue 2. 79 & 107 South Suzhou Rd (The Bund, south end of Wai Baidu Bridge)

// Sunday October 24th

4 pm , Who Cares? 16 Essays on Curating in Asia- Book Launch by Michael Lee (also a Sh Biennial participant)

at OV Gallery . 19 Shaoxing Road . Shanghai

http://arthubasia.org/archives/who-cares-16-essays-on-curating-in-asia/

630 pm

"By Day, By Night, or Some (Special) Things a Museum Can Do"

Rockbund Art Museum, 20 Huqiu Lu (close to Beijing Lu, near the Bund)

-------------

OPENING OF WEST HEAVENS EXHIBITION

come meet the artists, our venue hosts and friends,

23rd October Saturday, SHANGHAI

16.30 - 18.30 Viewing at Venue1: 128 West Nanjing Rd (across the street from Shanghai Art Museum)

18.00 - 20.00 Opening & Cocktail Reception at Venue 2: (Chapel) 107 South Suzhou Rd (on the Bund, south bank of Wai Baidu Bridge)

                                18.30 OPENING CEREMONY at Venue 2

(buses will transport visitors between the venues from 5.00 to 7.30 pm)

West Heavens Exhibition: Place·Time·Play: India-China Contemporary Art

Dates: 23rd Oct to 20th Dec 2010

Venue 1. Ground Floor, 128 West Nanjing Rd; 

Venue 2. 79 & 107 South Suzhou Rd (The Bund, south end of Wai Baidu Bridge)

Lecture/Forum: West Heavens India-China Summit on Social Thought 

(Lecture Hall, Shanghai Art Museum, 325 West Nanjing Rd. Shanghai)

Dates: 7 lectures/forums from 24th Oct to 18th Dec, 2010.

          Please see website for details.

First Lecture by Prof Sarat Maharaj on 24th October Sunday

(Lecture: 10 to 12.30 am; Forum: 3 to 6 pm) Reservation call 021-63272829 ext 200

Simultaneous Interpretation Provided for Lectures in Chinese and English.

 

"By Day, By Night, or Some (Special) Things a Museum Can Do"

"By Day, By Night, or Some (Special) Things a Museum Can Do"

Rockbund Art Museum, 20 Huqiu Lu (close to Beijing Lu, near the Bund)

Opens, October 24th

To help celebrate the 2010 Shanghai Biennale, Curator Hou Hanru has
brought together nine Chinese and international artists known for
their playful and offbeat style to interpret the city and its rapid
transformations. Through the exhibition, the Rockbund hopes to
stimulate a discussion of the role an art museum can play in a city by
encouraging public participation and a dialogue between the art world
and society. The curator and eight of the artists will take FCC
members on a guided tour of the exhibition before it opens to the
public.

Venue details: Rockbund Art Museum
20 Huqiu Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai 200002

About the Artists:

Choi Jeonghwa is a Seoul-based artist who uses a wide spectrum of
materials in his work, including wires, lights, televisions, plastic
animals and real and fake blood. He is inspired by chaotic outdoor
markets.
Pedro Cabrita Reis is a Lisbon-based painter, sculptor and
photographer whose work revolves around the themes of housing,
habitation, construction and territory. Along with art based on
everyday life, such as tables and chairs or doors and windows, he
creates expansive installations that fill exhibition spaces.
Shahzia Sikander lives in New York and Texas. She specialises in
Indian and Persian miniature painting, a highly disciplined
traditional form. She reinvents the technique-driven form by blending
Eastern focus on method and precision with Western-style
experimentation.
Du Yun was born and raised in Shanghai. She is a composer who is
equally adept at writing for concert halls, art shows, experimental
theatre, modern dance and pop songs.
Nedko Solakov's sharp wit and offbeat humour have made the Bulgarian
artist an internationally-celebrated conceptual artist. His work
tackles serious matters with absurdity.
Sam Samore is a New York based artist who explores privacy and myth in
society. His work includes film noir-style black and white photographs
of himself posing as the victim at a crime scene investigation.
Zhou Tiehai is a Shanghai-based artist whose work satirizes modern
Chinese art. He is best-known for his series playful portraits of
cigarette advertising icon 'Joe Camel'.
Tu Wei-Cheng is a Taiwan-based artists who created his own imaginary
ancient civilisation, "Bu-Num" -- and created artifacts and legends
for it to explore status and systems of myths.
Sun Xun is a Hangzhou-based artist who mixes hand-drawn images and
traditional imagines with new media to create animation inspired by
history, politics and nature. (NB: Sun will not be at the preview)

About the Curator:

Hou Hanru is the chair of exhibition and museum studies at the San
Francisco Art Institute. Born in Guangzhou in 1963, he has been
teelling stories through art for more than a decade. His "Cities On
the Move" project ran from 1997-2000 and involved seven cities and
more than 140 artists. He has also curated biennales in Venice,
Gwanju, Brisbane, Istanbul and Johannesburg. He lives in Paris and San
Francisco.

Invitation From WEST HEAVENS PROJECT

nvitation From WEST HEAVENS PROJECT
Exhibition: Place·Time·Play: India-China Contemporary Art Exhibition
(Site 1. Ground Floor, 128 West Nanjing Rd; Site 2. Ground Fl, 600
East Yan'an Rd., Shanghai)
Forum: West Heavens: India-China Summit on Social Thought (Lecture
Hall, Shanghai Art Museum, 325 West Nanjing Rd. Shanghai)

The "West Heavens" project includes a group exhibition of 17 artists
(12 from Indian, 5 from China), and a series of 7 lectures by major
Indian scholars, all to take place in Shanghai between 22nd October
and 20th December, 2010.

"West Heavens" is China's first major exchange of contemporary art and
scholarship with India. It is planned as an inter-Asia dialogue: all
artworks have been created in the spirit of direct dialogue; all the
Indian lectures are newly written with the Chinese audience in mind.
For each scholar we are publishing in advance of the lecture a
bilingual Reader, so as to better prepare both Chinese scholars and
the public. With the inter-Asia dialogue of "West Heavens", we hope to
implant in China an imagination about India. In India we see
approaches to modernity that open up the possibilities of Asia.
For more than a century Chinese vocabulary about modernity has been
exclusively tied to the West. The terminology is China/West or
East/West. We now want to look not just at the West, but also at the
West Heavens.

Exhibition Opening: Oct 22, 2010 Friday 5pm (128 West Nanjing Road Ground Floor)
Forum Date:1st lecture/forum Oct 24 Sunday 10am (Shanghai Art Museum);
other lecture/forum dates please see website.
Please visit the project website on: http://westheavens.net
Contact Email: westheavens@gmail.com
Simultaneous Interpretation Provided for Lectures in Chinese and English.

Get It Louder

A not-to-miss event for you all- a show featuring the youngest talents
across fashion, music, and arts-  plus all the talks below. Yes, it
will be a very busy weekend, and you should all get ready!
http://www.getitlouder.com/EnNewXQ.aspx?ID=85

Get It Louder

2010-10-22  Friday

Sharism Forum
AM 10:00 – AM 10:20 | 800 Show Theater

Introduction

10:00 AM - 10:20 AM

Introduction and Framing, Ou Ning

Session 1: THE WORLD OF SHARING

Moderator: Ou Ning

10:20 AM - 11:00 AM

Isaac Mao, Sharism: Open Up a New World

11:00 AM - 11:30 PM

Hu Yong, Citizen Jounalism and the Revolutionary Scene of the Netizen

11:30 PM - 12:00 PM

Q&A with Ou Ning, Isaac Mao, & Hu Yong

SESSION 2: THE FREEDOM STACK

Moderator: Jon Phillips

1:00 PM - 1:30 PM

Mike Linksvayer, eval("freedom_stack.push(culture)") || The Creative
Commons Solution

1:30 PM - 2:00 PM

Nate Prodromou, Building the Federated Social Web with Status.Net,
Diaspora, Google and You!

2:00 PM - 2:30 PM

Li Gong, Successful Sharing at Mozilla Created Firefox

2:30 PM - 2:55 PM

Panel discussion, Jon Phillips, Mike Linksvayer, Evan Prodromou, Li Gong

FEATURE: ART TALK

3:00 PM - 3:25 PM

Philip Tinari, Art and the Information Edge

3:25 PM - 3:45 PM

Fu Xiaodong, Get It Louder and Sharism in the Art Scene

Session 3: THE SCIENCE OF SHARING

Moderator: Christopher Adams

4:00 PM - 4:30 PM

Jack Qiu, The Sharing of Mobility and the Mobility of Sharing: Beyond
Class Boundaries

4:30 PM - 5:00 PM

Brianna Laugher, Clash of the Encyclopedias - Is Competition Good for Sharing?

5:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Gino Yu, The Science of Sharing: Sharism as a Way of Life

5:30 PM - 6:00 PM

Q&A with Christopher Adams, Brianna Laugher, Gino Yu and Jack Qiu

OPEN PANEL: SHARING ENTREPRENEURS

Moderator: Isaac Mao

6:15 PM - 7:00 PM

Edmon Chung (DotAsia), A Public Service & Identity Built on a Vision of Sharing

Zafka Zhang (China Youthology), Sharing With Genuineness and LOVE:
Breathe the Youth Culture and Live in the Community

Liu Yan (Xindanwei), Five Big Reasons You Should Start Coworking Today

Closing

7:00 PM
Closing Remarks

PM 7:30 – PM 9:30   | 800 Show
Opening party of 2010 GIL Shanghai

2010-10-23  Saturday

AM 10:00 – PM 11:00  | 800 Show Theater
Artist Talk: LVXIAO——Double Pleasure: Understanding and Sharing
Da Guo Li, Host: Fu Xiaodong

AM 11:00 – PM 12:30  | 800 Show Theater
Artist Talk: A Sense of Narrative——3 Minute Group and Chen Zhou
Chen Zhou, Host: Fu Xiaodong

PM 1:30 – PM 3:00  | 800 Show Theater
Designer Talk：Practice, Practice, Practice
David Leven, Rama Chorpash from Parsons The New School for Design

PM 2:00- PM 4:00  | Black Box
Liu Waitong

PM 2:00 – PM 4:00  | 800 Show Theater
Writer's Talk: Stories and the self
Hari Kunzru, Host: Eric Abrahamsen

PM 4:00-PM 6:00 | Black Box
Tso Shoying

PM 4:00 – PM 5:30   | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Crossing the Mountain

PM 5:30  | 800 Show Theater
Conversation with the Director: Yang Rui

PM 7:00  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Chasing Cats and Cars

PM 7:20  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Flower in the Pocket

PM 9:00  | 800 Show Theater
Conversation with the Director: Liu Chengda

2010-10-24     Sunday

AM 10:30 – PM 12:30  | 800 Show Theater
Literature Talk: The Private and Public in Poetry
Liu Waitong, Tso Shoying, Host: Eric Abrahamsen

PM 2:00 – PM 4:00  | 800 Show Theater
INS Shanghai Declaration on Inauthenticity
Tom McCarthy、Simon Critchley

PM 7:30 – PM 9:00   | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Karoy

PM 9:00  | 800 Show Theater
Conversation with the Director: Zhanna Issabayeva

2010-10-25  Monday

PM11:00 – PM 12:30pm  | 800 Show Theater
Artist Talk: Why "forget art" ?
Ma Yongfeng, Host: Fu Xiaodong

PM 2:00  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Living in the Nanking Road

PM 3:50  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Rough Poetry

PM 4:40  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: The High Life

PM 8:30  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Soundless Wind Chime

PM 10:20  | 800 Show Theater
Conversation with the Director: Kit Hung

2010-10-26  Tuesday

AM 11:00 - PM12:30  | 800 Show Theater
Artist Talk: Museum of Unkown
Liao Fei, Host: Fu Xiaodong

PM 2:00 – PM 4:00  | 800 Show Theater
Designer Talk：1+1+1
Rich Brilliant Willing, Host: Aric Chen

PM 4:00 – PM 6:00  |  800 Show Theater
Literature Discussion:The Future Tense
Lu Yang,Chen Wei, Hosts: Eric Abrahamsen

PM 7:00  |  800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema:Tape

2010-10-27  Wednesday

AM 11:00 – PM 12:30   | 800 Show Theater

Artist Talk：The Story of Double Fly Art
Zhang Lehua, Host: Fu Xiaodong

PM 2:00 – PM 3:00  | 800 Show Theater
Odyssey: Architecture and Literature Press Conference
Ou Ning,Lu Nei,Zhu Xiaofeng(architect)

PM 3:00   | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: The Seventh Medical Ward

PM 3:45  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Farewell, Beijing

PM 6:30 – PM 8:30   | 800 Show Theater
Literature Discussion: Curse of the post-70s
Ren Xiaowen, Lu Nei,Zhou Zhou, Chen Wei, Host: Eric Abrahamsen

PM 8:30  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Crossing the Dust

2010-10-28  Thursday

PM 2:00pm – PM 4:00  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema：Falling from the Sky

PM 4:00 –PM 6:00  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema：A Song of Love, Maybe

PM 6:30 – PM 8:30  | 800 Show Theater
Writer's Talk: Visible Cities
Hosts: Tina Uebel,Eric Abrahamsen

PM 8:30  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Huacho

2010-10-29   Friday

PM 2:00  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Clouds of Yesterday

PM 3:40  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Japanese Anna

PM 4:10  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Aria

PM 7:30  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Three Small Animals 1、2

PM 8:20  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Martian Syndrome

PM 9:45  | 800 Show Theater
Conversation with the Director: Xue Jianqiang

2010-10-30  Saturday

AM10:00  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Happy to Death

AM 11:40  | 800 Show Theater
Conversation with the Director: Hu Lifu

PM 2:00  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: 607

PM 2:15  |  800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Oxhide Ⅰ

PM 4:05  |  800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema: Oxhide Ⅱ

PM 6:20  |  800 Show Theater
Conversation with the Director: Liu Jiayin

PM 8:00  | 800 Show Theater
GIL Cinema：Er Dong

PM 9:30  | 800 Show Theater
Conversation with the Director: Yang Jin

--
-----

Invitation From WEST HEAVENS PROJECT从西天到中土

Invitation From WEST HEAVENS PROJECT

Exhibition: Place·Time·Play: India-China Contemporary Art Exhibition (Site 1. Ground Floor, 128 West Nanjing Rd;  Site 2. Ground Fl, 600 East Yan'an Rd., Shanghai)

Forum: West Heavens: India-China Summit on Social Thought (Lecture Hall, Shanghai Art Museum, 325 West Nanjing Rd. Shanghai)

 

The "West Heavens" project includes a group exhibition of 17 artists (12 from Indian, 5 from China), and a series of 7 lectures by major Indian scholars, all to take place in Shanghai between 22nd October and 20th December, 2010.

"West Heavens" is China's first major exchange of contemporary art and scholarship with India. It is planned as an inter-Asia dialogue: all artworks have been created in the spirit of direct dialogue; all the Indian lectures are newly written with the Chinese audience in mind. For each scholar we are publishing in advance of the lecture a bilingual Reader, so as to better prepare both Chinese scholars and the public. With the inter-Asia dialogue of "West Heavens", we hope to implant in China an imagination about India. In India we see approaches to modernity that open up the possibilities of Asia.
For more than a century Chinese vocabulary about modernity has been exclusively tied to the West. The terminology is China/West or East/West. We now want to look not just at the West, but also at the West Heavens.

Exhibition Opening: Oct 22, 2010 Friday 5pm (128 West Nanjing Road Ground Floor)

Forum Date:1st lecture/forum Oct 24 Sunday 10am (Shanghai Art Museum); other lecture/forum dates please see website.
Please visit the project website on: http://westheavens.net

Contact Email: westheavens@gmail.com
Simultaneous Interpretation Provided for Lectures in Chinese and English.

--

MoCA Shanghai Envisage III

Stephanie Hsu
Contemporary Art and New Media in China
Blog Post #5
10/14/10

MoCA Shanghai Envisage III
Our Contemporary Art and New Media class had the opportunity to visit the MoCA Shanghai's Third Envisage Biennale, "Reflection of Minds," in the last few days before the exhibition's closure. "Reflection of Minds" was curated by Wang Weiwei and the renowned Ding Yi, a Shanghai-based abstract painter who has exhibited his works internationally. Having recruited young artists in China to participate, The MoCA Envisage 2010 sought to present the various directions of the Chinese contemporary art scene and the broad scope of ideas and concerns engaging young Chinese artists today. Through the works of these artists, the MoCA Envisage aimed to discuss the social and environmental issues of the rapidly changing contemporary world, as well as their impact on spirituality and aesthetics.
At the exhibition, I observed the wide variety of media, subject matter, and stylistic approaches among the works, finding myself both gripped by the distinctiveness of each work and searching for the logic that brought them to a shared space. Among all the works in the exhibition, I felt most engaged with Hu Xiaoxiao's sculptural installation "Black Dwarf" and Chen Wei's photography pieces "Everlasting Radio Wave" and "Honey in the Broadcast."
Hu Xiaoxiao's "Black Dwarf" consists of three sculptures of streetlamps and the "light" they emit. The three streetlamps range in height and employ three types of media to portray the solidified "light"—concrete, iron, and plastic. Through its contrived representation of light, the installation juxtaposes the natural and the purposeful with the artificial and the futile.
Chan Wei's type C-prints both show the intrusion and outbreak of something undesirable into a closed space. While "Honey in the Broadcast" deals with a swarm of bats, "Everlasting Radio Wave" depicts throngs of small black insects; in both pieces, the face of the human subject in the scene is not visible to the audience. Chan Wei's two works evoke strong feelings of isolation, discomfort, and imprisonment.
While the exhibition also featured paintings and sculptures, I felt most drawn towards the installation, photography, and video pieces—the installation pieces, for their creative manipulation of a basic gallery space, and the photography and video pieces, for seeming to grapple more effectively with the exhibition's focus on social and spiritual issues that are emerging with the changing times.

on MOCA

Minji Kim
Blog Entry 4

On October 7th, our class went to MoCA Shanghai envisage III. While
there were some interesting works, I thought that it would have been
much better if everything had a concrete explanation next to the work,
which might be difficult in reality since many works aim for
abstraction. Looking at different installation artworks, one piece
called "Try hard to forget" stood out to me, maybe because it was a
little easier to recognize its theme than other pieces' were. This
piece was done by Yu Tianzhu and it was to express "a personal and
collective amnesia, deliberately affecting identity, value, and
everything," according to the given pamphlet. In this mixed media
work, there were hundreds of people with all of their faces scratched
off. When I first looked at it, I thought it was to display feelings
of hatred, since the touch seemed quite rough. (Again, another
magnificent trait of art is that audiences can interpret it whichever
way they want it to be.) There was no explanation next to it, so I had
no idea what Tianzhu was thinking when making this piece, and still I
am unsure of his intentions behind it. But what attracted me was that
I 'felt' it somehow. In the photograph, people were all gathered
together to cheer for something, and even though I couldn't see their
facial expressions, I knew that they were smiling, laughing, and
delightfully talking to each other. It was strange to see faces
without physically seeing them. Within the overall
"seems-to-be-pleasurable" atmosphere, each individual's rubbed face
added opposite feelings of calmness. It was strange. But if I have to
define this work, I would say; serenity within clamor, sadness within
happiness, forgetfulness within effort for memories.

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai presented an exhibition
entitled "ReFlection of Minds" from September 12, 2010 to October 8,
2010. According to the curators' statement, there is a new way to
enjoy beauty in response to the conflicted and yet elevated
spirituality of today's young people. In modern times, the information
boom has created an emphasis on serious, somber world issues. The
current generation's entire lives have been bombarded with grievous
news, and as young adults now look at the world with an honest, albeit
pessimistic eye. In response to this new mindset, the exhibition's
curators, Ding Yi and Wang Weiwei, sought to unveil "hidden,
camouflaged beauty in things" and pair this aesthetic with the
"freshness and curiosity of daily life." Walking through the exhibit,
"pretty" is clearly camouflaged. The space appeared dark and somber,
as did the artwork. Hu Xiaoxiao's installation "Black Dwarf" sought to
mold the shapeless: light, a metaphor to the inability to define
freedom without it becoming a jail. This speaks to the restricting
effects of people's efforts to define and prove themselves. This idea
of removing importance from the self carries throughout the
exhibition. In fact, there are no clear faces depicted in any of the
artwork. I believe this is a bold statement of the detachment of
individuality and personal importance in the world today. We are all
free in this world, but trapped by modern society. What frees us
ultimately confines us.

Meredith Rankin

ReFlection of Minds – MoCA Shanghai Envisage III

Mikael Larsson

 to me
show details 12:57 PM (8 hours ago)
THIS IS MY BLOG ENTRY
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Duration: Sep. 12 , 2010 - Oct. 8 ,2010

This was my first visit to the Museum of Contemporary art in Shanghai.
Located in the heart of the Peoples park in the center of the city lies the

Fantastic building that is MoCA. Not particularly large, at least not
in comparison

to most contemporary museums I am used to, but not surprisingly as the
museum seems to operate in a different way. MoCA Shanghai seems to
focus on one or two shows at once, Instead

of showing their own collection.  With two floors surrounded by
encapsulating glass windows and with a ramp hugging the back wall to
the second floor, The museum has an open feel, more like

a gallery than a museum.
The biannual show on view, ReFlection curated by the famed Wang Weiwei

shows a fantastic slice of the what contemporary Chinese artists do.
Some works feel like they are not quite yet ready, and some works
don't reach their full potential, but it really does not bother me
that it at points feel like an art school show. The artists are very
young and don't have the experience or access to material as artists I
am used to see in western biannuals, but the ideas are there and they
are brilliant. Especially the photographic art captures my attention
especially do I love Liu Bolins playful photographs of himself painted
in front of buildings.

In the end the MoCA is a museum I will revisit and recommend others to
do to, especially this show.

MOCA: Reflection of Minds

The Reflection of Minds (Curator: Ding Ying and Wang Wei Wei) exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art is a fairly large exhibition featuring many different artists. The works displayed in the exhibition were all very diversed; ranging from oil and acrylic on canvas to sculptures to photographs to videos. All of these works showed large deviation from traditional art and ideals. For example, Tang Dixin’s “Food in the Air” portrays a shark preying on blimps in midair, showing great breakthrough and deviation from traditional ideas and expectations.

What caught my eye in the exhibition were Ding Li’s series of untitled works and Liu Bolin’s series of photographs. Ding Li’s untitled oil paintings on canvas all have a dark tone that cools my mind. I can tell that there is a scene in his paintings; however, I can’t seem to make out what’s in the scene as if they were part of a dream. Liu Bolin’s series of photography, “City Hiding,” depicts himself blending into a certain environment by having someone paint on his body the shapes and color of the surrounding environment. My favorite out of the series is the photo titled “Supermarket.” The photo depicts Liu blending into stacks and stacks of cans at a supermarket. It’s almost as if he’s not even there!

The Reflection of Minds

Joon Nam
Week 5
Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai
The Reflection of Minds

The Reflection of Minds at MoCA Shanghai exhibited the works of both the first generation and the current generation of China's contemporary artists. Some of the works on the display include Gao Minyan's installation titled "Misunderstanding", Wang Yuyang's installation named "A Painting", and the untitled works of Ding Li, who is also one of the two curators of the exhibition. Although some of the pieces were visually amusing and impressive, I was left with a mixed view after walking around the exhibition. Works like "Warmed up Ice" by Lu Jiawei were visually appealing and easy to make a sense out of. However, other ones such as Li Ming's "The pool", was not as easy to make a sense of, and I was left bewildered. It was not until the professor, Francesca, came to me and explained her take from the pieces that I came to grasp some of the meanings to them. It is true, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. However, I came to ask the same question that I had when I look at
the works back in New York; should the art works made in such a way that the audience can easily understand them? What is the point of creating a piece that only the creator can understand and exhibit it to the public? True, there is no answer to this question. However, I believe that it is worth a while to ponder about it.

Museum of Contemporary Art – Reflection of Minds

by Cori Huang

The Fall 2010 exhibit "Reflection of Minds" at the museum of contemporary art displayed an array of work from young artists in an attempt to show what the younger generation in China is thinking about. Upon entering the museum, we were greeted by the curatorial statement, which talks about a "lighthearted mocking" and "the insistence of enjoying life" conveyed through the works. After perusing the actual works on display, I found that most of it dealt with very dark qualities. Artist Xiao Jiang's paintings, for instance, depict scenes from movies particularly dark street corners with a single eerie light. They capture lonely and somewhat creepy atmospheres devoid of people. Only Lu Pingyuan's work showed a slight hint of lightheartedness. His whimsical vehicle, crafted almost haphazardly from wooden strips, tissue paper, and foil reflect a child-like quality. The milk drawings also convey a sense of wonder and experimentation. The artist's unconventional medium, milk baked on paper, is even somewhat whimsical. However, the faded drawings and sadly nonfunctional craft are also depressing, almost pitiful. The disjointedness between the curatorial statement and the actual works themselves show some sensitivity to censorship, where what is written and said aloud is not always what is displaye

SEX

The trip to “MoCA Shanghai Envisage Ⅲ Reflection of Minds” last week was very inspiring. I was especially impressed by the sculpture work of Tang Yin “Origin: No.11 bronze”. It is one of the series which “are a positive confirmation about the power of life, a new understanding and essential explanation about the origin of human being”( quoted from the work information). Obviously Tang Yin thinks that the origin of life is sex, so the series of sculpture feature two people having sex, more people having sex, people and snake having sex, etc. I found it interesting that the Chinese artist used snake in this work. As far as I know, the story of snake and original sin is told in the Bible, not in Chinese religion. Why does a Chinese artist have to express a sexual idea using implication from other culture? Chinese do have a very open attitude towards sex in the history. There is a “Chinese Museum of Sex Culture” in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province. It is the only one of its kind in China. There are a lot of topics for artists who interested in sexuality to explore, and sexuality is not a very common subject in contemporary art in China. The past fifty years are probably the most conservative period in China in terms of sexuality. People today will still feel embarrassed to talk about sexuality in public. But artist should be the pioneer of changes of social concepts. That is why I am looking forward to see more interesting works portraying the topic of sexuality in China.

Photography at “Useful Life 2010”

Stephanie Hsu

Contemporary Art and New Media in China

10/7/10



Photography at “Useful Life 2010”

ShanghART H-Space at 50 Moganshan Road in Shanghai is currently presenting “Useful Life 2010,” a mixed media exhibition by Yang Fudong, Yang Zhenzhong, and MadeIn, an art collaborative founded by Xu Zhen. Following up “Useful Life 2000,” the exhibition that launched the three artists’ careers a decade ago, “Useful Life 2010” claims to be “more a challenge rather than a continuation,” as stated by the text on the introductory wall panel. The text continues: “The art environment, artists’ creative concepts, their ways of expression, even their identities, all changed. How to face a new context, how to find one’s place?” During my time in the gallery space, I felt most engaged with these questions while viewing the exhibition’s two photography series, “International Hotel” by Yang Fudong and an untitled work by Yang Zhenzhong.

As I looked at “International Hotel,” the series of five photographs by Yang Fudong, I thought about the exhibition’s concern with the process of re-contextualizing identity over the course of time. To me, the black and white photographs of young Chinese women posing by a swimming pool were reminiscent of the “modeng nüxing,” or “modern girl” of the pre-World War II era, whose stylish, sexualized image in cigarette advertisements and film posters came to represent the liberation of women from long-standing social and cultural customs. The photographs strongly conveyed the strong male gaze of the photographer, with the bright flash capturing the women smiling and seeming to respond coyishly to an unseen subject behind the camera.

Yang Zhenzhong’s untitled series of 25 portraits also implicated the strong presence of the photographer. The portraits depicted 25 subjects, who all seemed to be of Chinese descent, but varying in age and gender. The subjects were all smiling widely and appearing to be inspired or amused by their interaction with someone behind the camera. While most of the subjects seemed genuine in their expression when I observed them individually, I found that as I scanned the portraits one after another, the series quickly revealed its artificiality. The bright flash of the camera, the studio setting, the hardened expressions of a few subjects, and the sheer intensity of having 25 of these 100 x 100 cm portraits placed in succession all pointed towards the series’ attempt to contrive feeling and sentiment through performance. A large, plastic red star, resting flimsily in the corner opposite of the portraits, seemed to give context to the series as a sardonic commentary on the artificiality and constructed-ness of nationalistic feeling during the Cultural Revolution. Thinking about propaganda and performance, I was reminded of film stills of the Yang Ban Xi, many of which depict the staged, exaggerated expressions of the opera’s protagonists. Like Yang Fudong’s “International Hotel,” Yang Zhenzhong’s series seemed to grapple with historical memory by contextualizing the past in the present.

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

Beginning September 9th and lasting until November 5th, ShanghART Gallery presents an exhibit curated around the theme “Useful Life.” Featured artists are Yang Fudong, Yang Zhenzhong, and Xu Zhen. I found Yang Fudong’s film “The Fifth Night” to be especially memorable. Upon entering “The Fifth Night” exhibition space, I was instantly struck by the presentation: seven large screens simultaneously played black and white film. Yang refers to this technique as “multiple eyes film” as it allows the viewer to experience one scene from seven vantage points. At first glance, this was disorienting as it was impossible to follow the film’s plot. This loss in comprehension was replaced though with heightened senses that drew awareness to individual movements and expressions. Even the most mundane actions became nearly monumental, examined carefully and followed slowly. The “multiple eyes film” technique is in part a result of Yang finding beauty in randomness. Since true randomness cannot be created, Yang found it in the cameramen’s subtle adjustments, and the actors’ slight reactions to the multiple lenses. As I continued to observe the film, I attempted further to dissect the theme, but found myself enthralled with the drama of pending moments. Even the smallest steps gave way to a near ominous feeling. This mood forces the viewer to slow down, to observe the drama of time. Finding perfection is randomness and change is indeed a characteristic of a “useful life;” however, the over-plasticity of the actors counteracted this. By reducing the human element, the viewer was distanced from the scene. The overall effect brought attention to time and movement, but in a near surreal world.

Meredith Rankin

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.

Transitory Material, Lasting Beauty

In recent field trips I got to know several art works that are made of transitory materials: incense ashes and laundry powder. I am deeply impressed by their transitory existence and their lasting impact. Zhang Huan, a Buddhist and contemporary artist, employed incense ashes in his sculptures in 2007.  In this series, tons of incense ashes were used to form Buddhist head (Ash Head No.1, Long Ear Ash Head), ancient Chinese official (Smoking Buddha) and sitting Buddha (Berlin Buddha). Because of the transitory nature of the material, those sculptures will crumple and collapse in the end, but no one knows when. This is a perfect metaphor of life—eventually everything goes back to where it comes from, but no one knows when. Also the material itself is very mysterious—incense usually represents piety and prayer. It is ironic to see how the incense ashes—people’s belief fall. 

Maya Kramer employed washing powder in her art work. She cast the scull of tiger with glued laundry powder, and put it under a glass box with water drops running through it constantly(Showed at ‘There is nothing you can measure anymore’, Ai Ke Gallery). Laundry powder contains phosphorous, a chemical pollutant, and will be resolved by water. The scull of tiger has a certain beauty that is so fierce while so fragile. It reminded me of wild tigers being hunted and animals endangered now. They will distinguish if people do not stop killing or destroying. By this piece of work, the artist tried to convey the message: Death and disintegration are natural states. All things move towards their ends. All beauty is nothing but illusion. There exists no real standard of lasting beauty.