digital digest asia
The art scene in China today could not be more different. The exposure to international art and the
opportunities now available to young artists are unprecedented, with open lines of communication, new arts
education programmes and huge foreign interest in any art labelled Chinese. Artists are now regularly invited
to participate in international biennials and museum shows. Contemporary art has gone from being a
dangerously subversive activity to a nationally celebrated phenomenon, with recent, though tempered,
government support and a nascent Chinese art-collecting community. Following the rapacious market,
galleries both foreign and Chinese are multiplying in the Moganshan Road warehouses of Shanghai and,
especially, in the formerly industrial district of 798 in Beijing, where the number and size of galleries, interspersed
with cool cafés and regular performance events, rivals Chelsea in New York.
Without the impetus of ideological charge that galvanised the first generation, or any clear opposition to define
itself against, more contemplative and intimate work has been emerging in recent years. It’s still often socially
engaged and funny, but made from a more personal viewpoint, and with increasing awareness of international
artists and audiences. Unsurprisingly, artists now are less easily defined by a particular style, media and agenda
than their predecessors. Cao Fei, Yang Fudong, Xu Zhen, Qiu Xiaofei and Song Kun – most of whom were
born during the late 1970s – are all very different in style and tone, but represent a sampling of a new generation
of artists that contrasts sharply with the styles many people continue to associate with Chinese art.
A resident of Shanghai, Xu Zhen is a maverick in the Chinese artworld, an artist and curator who has little
patience for banalities and convention. His video work 8848 Minus 1.86 (2005) focuses on Mount Everest,
declared by the British in 1856 to be 8,848 metres in height, a figure that still officially stands despite conflicting
evidence. In May 2005 the artist made a video of himself and a team climbing Everest, and sawing 1.86
metres, Xu Zhen’s own height, off the top. He shows the video alongside a vast glass freezer with the supposed
lopped-off mountaintop inside. Should you believe what you see? The work plays with notions of authenticity,
and also demonstrates a coy awareness of international unease about China’s disregard for the environment.
Identity is also a prevailing concern. What it means to be Chinese – when old communism is all but dead and
people are only beginning to rediscover the rich intellectual traditions and history Mao tried to erase, and
when attention is so heavily focused on the future – is not necessarily clear. “It’s almost like there is no present,”
says Groom. “In Shanghai especially you see, for example, these amazing new shopping malls full of high-end
designer shops, totally deserted for the time being but optimistically ready for a future when people will be
rich enough to shop there.”
Visually arresting and intensely poetic, Yang Fudong’s films capture this in-between state perfectly. In his
ongoing film series Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest (2003–) he creates modern adaptations of the
traditional Chinese stories written by the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. The story comes from the mid-
third century, and recounts sages exiling themselves to the bamboo grove to contemplate life’s meaning
during the difficult transition period between the Wei and Jin dynasties. Fudong’s films, of which only four
have yet been made, feature his friends making similar contemplative journeys, but with modern concerns.
Perhaps the most direct contrast between the new and older generation of artists is visible in painting. Gone
are the brash political works, in favour of intimate scenes. Qiu Xiaofei’s paintings are constructed around the
idea of memory – itself a fraught subject since during the Cultural Revolution personal memories could
dangerously contradict the officially enforced social history. The artist depicts objects from his childhood,
Xu Zhen, 8848 Minus 1.86, 2005, video and mixed media installation. © the artist distressed as if from the passage of time – contrasting sharply with the newness of modern China. Song Kun is
best known for her series 365 (June 2005 – June 2006), for which she made a painting of the same 27-by-35-
centimetre format every day for the period of one year, documenting some aspect of what she did that day.
Many of the older, now very wealthy generation of artists, who are after all still only in their forties and fifties,
are also making interesting new work. But with all the market hype, they face the same issues as younger artists
in trying to break with the brand of Chinese art associated with their earlier work. For some of them and the
younger artists, who have a procession of art aficionados marching through their studios before they are even
out of university, the temptation to pander to the market can be overwhelming.
Despite this, the number of artists of depth and international importance coming from China is growing, just
as the country itself is gaining international confidence and standing. Some might look back in history to the
time when China was a pre-eminent kingdom, arguably the most sophisticated and cultured in the world.
“There is a sense when you are talking to people that they feel the last 200 years is a blip”, says Groom, “and
that China feels now it is taking the steps to rise to its former, middle-kingdom glory.”
159 Artreview
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