The top exhibitors at Frieze New York

Contribution on Long March Space's presence at Frieze 2012 in Time Out New York.

Don't trust me: Zhao Yao

You Can't See Me, You Can't See Me is on at the Beijing Commune from June 12 until August 12

Back in 2008, when firereworks rained down upon the Beijing Olympics and affirmed China’s status as a rising global power, Zhao Yao produced the video piece ‘I Love Beijing 999’. Made from more than 30,000 still photographs, each featured the Beijing cityscape with the sun at its centre.

‘I didn’t have much to do at the time, so I spent around 200 days hopping onto buses,’ recalls Zhao. ‘I must have criss-crossed the city on nearly every bus route in Beijing.’ The images were all taken from bus windows, and are a journey through the city in space and time, taking viewers through the deep, dry winter with its pale, hard-blue skies and faraway sun to the melting summer of the capital’s Olympic heyday.

That work’s beauty and symmetry stands in stark contrast to the pieces now littering his studio. Made from flat wooden boards slotted together like paper cut-outs, crooked paint-sculptures – covered in gunk-like masses of acrylic, wire and other materials – lie among keyless keyboards, an electric saw, assorted spray cans and other evidence of Zhao’s recent endeavours. In places, edges of the sculptures are cut into a close pattern of spikes, reminiscent of a digital sound wave.

Each hails from Zhao’s 2011 solo exhibition, I Am Your Night. Drawing upon his training in graphic design, they have been labelled ‘ugly’ by some critics. Others say that they’re a conceptual tease aimed squarely at the art world eyeballing them. However, with a new exhibition in the offing this month, these are perhaps the best clues as to the contents of a show that the artist is keeping very quiet about.

Hailing from Sichuan, Zhao is now just over 30. He finally secured the attention of the art world in 2011, but his work had been evolving over the past five years. ‘I gradually realised I had been informing people about what is so-called “good art”. I had been providing them with a kind of belief about my art. But I soon came to see that this was pointless.’

He compares the change to quitting smoking, working up to a seemingly decisive break with previous concerns to create a more conceptual approach. As part of his newfound focus, he intends to force the audience out of their comfort zone; he wants to prompt viewers into thinking of new ways to revisit the question: ‘What is art?’

As a result, Zhao’s works are ‘no longer concerned with making something that is simply interesting in itself,’ he says. ‘They are informed by observations of what others are looking at, and how they are looking.’

At his studio in Heiqiao, he is working on a painting. Instead of canvas, a wooden frame is wrapped in mass-produced gingham and shows a strong likeness to ‘A Painting of Thought I-10’ (2011), from his previous exhibition. He shows me images of tall sculptures being finished at another space, also similar to those from I Am Your Night.

As we stand over this new, as yet unnamed, piece, he explains: ‘These pictures are imaginative. At the same time they are ready-made, taken from a series used to train kids to think logically; things like colour patterns and exercises to teach them to move shapes around and form a new design. By integrating these lessons with the mass-produced cloth, these appear as abstract works of art.’ Before adding: ‘It’s a bit of a joke because this piece is in itself a very superficial piece of art.’

Arguably, the new exhibition is targeted at people who pay close attention to the art scene. ‘It’s built on the foundations of I Am Your Night, but will alter certain impressions made upon people by some of the pieces,’ he hints, cagey about divulging too much. Most of all, he wants the exhibition to have an element of surprise.

‘I like it more when the audience doesn’t trust the artist’s perspective, when the artist doesn’t trust himself and when the audience doesn’t even trust itself.’ Playing games helps Zhao dodge expectations – as well as questions – but if he wants to convey one thing, he reminds me, it’s this: ‘Don’t trust me; don’t trust anything.’ We believe him. Clare Pennington

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

Review: Painting Is Collecting by Guo Hongwei

 Guo Hongwei’s new exhibition of watercolours is a mixed bag. Painting Is Collecting is divided into two rooms: in the first are paintings of animals, composed on a white surface, and in the second are plant and mineral specimens. They are arranged with care, and for the most part make for successful compositions.

For an artist who used a similar formula with his exhibition Things (2009), here he focuses entirely on watercolour, rather than mixing it with oil and turpentine as he did before. The subject is also new, inspired by natural history, rather than ‘things’ simply found lying around his studio. However, while

his technique is generally a refined one, his animals are less convincing. It seems too obvious that they have been painted from photographs, and even composed from them. The monkeys in ‘Animal Number 4’ look like cut-outs from a magazine, as their shadowy figures merge with the branches.

The plants, however, are a pleasure to look at. Many come from specimens the artist has collected himself, some partially dried or half destroyed. Here, as in the mineral paintings, is where we enter the world of art beyond documentation.

The plants, however, are a pleasure to look at. Many come from specimens the artist has collected himself, some partially dried or half destroyed. Here, as in the mineral paintings, is where we enter the world of art beyond documentation. Clare Pennington


Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

Review: As Seen by Karen Smith

Karen Smith is one of very few foreigners who has been able to see the Chinese art scene develop over the last two decades – and she’s still here. Having worked at one of Beijing’s first international contemporary art galleries, she has also curated at the Tate Liverpool, and is best known for her near-500-page tome Nine Lives: The Birth of Avant-Garde Art in New China, published in 2005.

As Seen is the sum of what Smith judges to be the most ‘notable’ artworks that were on show in China in the year 2011. Each of the 41 selected artists is given a few pages, and Smith describes what she considers to be their most important work from their 2011 exhibitions in vivid clarity.

Essentially, the volume serves as an introduction to what is generally considered hot in China’s contemporary art scene, with personal observations injected into each description. Zhao Yao, Ma Qiusha and Zhao Zhao are just a few of the younger artists Smith promotes, while sections devoted to art giants such as Zhang Peili and Zhan Wang are also included.

The book benefits from being a collection of short pieces, which helps lend clarity and purpose to a writer who, at times, struggles for conciseness. Its beautiful pictures, although unfortunately not always matched to the artwork Smith is describing, give a strong impression of each work. The selection of artists contains few, if any, points of serious controversy but the writer adds plenty of caveats to emphasise that the selection is deeply personal to her – just in case you don’t agree.

As Seen will be indispensable to those who were not there to see the exhibitions themselves – particularly collectors of Chinese art living abroad. It captures the zeitgeist nicely, and will undoubtedly become a key part of anyone’s contemporary Chinese art library. The year 2011 was an important one for the development of modern art in the PRC, particularly Beijing, and this book is surely a fitting testament to that. Clare Pennington

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

Review: Close to the Sea by Yang Fudong

Close to the Sea is poetry-made-film; cinema made video art. Yang Fudong presents us with a wavering and inconclusive tale of love, tragedy and loss. Surrounding a hanging screen are eight videos, each showing a musician (or pair of musicians), playing the trombone, xylophone, trumpet or double bass, all standing on yellowing rocks by a crashing sea. The music (by Jin Wang) surrounds you, slightly disjointed and menacing. The piece is accompanied by two films playing either side of a central, hanging screen.

The side facing the entrance shows a colour film. A young man and woman have been washed up by the sea. However, while ashore on a wooden raft, on which they lie perfectly still in the strong wind. As the camera focuses on the woman, drinking in her soft skin, faded nail polish and salt-stiff hair, she wakes and eventually stands, stumbling weakly in and out of the frame. The film pans back out, revealing her lover is gone. The instruments rise together, their flat keys building in horror and sadness.

Time flashes back, and we see her out at sea, clinging desperately to the raft as the waves crash into it, the man holding on, his head constantly swallowed and spat out by the roiling waves. Although we never witness the event, we are waiting for him to drown. Flash forward again, to the moment the woman wakes and discovers her lover lost, and the other side of the screen shows the pair running around the beach, grasping each other. In black and white, the dream-like scenario seems to cross into metaphor, a way to enter in upon the romantic relationship.

The two films are brought further together by visual references. The couple in the black-and-white film visit some abandoned tractors and walk up and down the shore. At the end of the colour film – the tragedy – the camera lingers on the empty tractors and a pair of footprints indented across the beach.

Visual echoes entwine both films together like two lovers made one. All the while, Yang’s framing moves seamlessly between noir and surrealist techniques. The result is a stunning opus that must be seen in the flesh. Clare Pennington

Originally posted on Time Out Beijing

Affordable Art Beijing

In the West, it is not uncommon for private individuals to own works of art, be it a plein air painting bought by a relative in France or a piece from a local gallery. It’s no surprise, then, that about 60-70 percent of art sold in the West goes for what experts deem an internationally ‘affordable’ price – meaning anything under 5,000USD.

The reverse is true of China. According to Tom Pattinson, the founder of China’s only affordable art-fair organisation, only 33 percent of all art sold here falls under the 5,000USD margin. That’s a big deal when estimates of China’s share of the global art market (in 2011) range around the 40 percent mark. ‘Art buyers here are mostly in the luxury market, and they associate these purchases with luxury wines, villas and so on,’ says Pattinson, on the culture of conspicuous wealth.

As Affordable Art Beijing (AAB) opens for its seventh year, the trend towards a less expensive art market is nevertheless growing, and quickly. In 2006, AAB received 400 submissions. This year, they received over 10,000, and the fair can boast that works sold six years ago for 8,000RMB are now fetching near to 50,000USD at auction.

Last year, the fair doubled its top threshold price from 10,000 to 20,000RMB, with the lowest selling for 200RMB. Pattinson’s marker of what counts as ‘affordable’ (he has calculated according to both the art market in China and the international top price of 5,000USD) reflects the growing disposable income of the middle class, as well as an increasing appetite for Chinese contemporary art.

Open for just two days, works last year sold at an average of two per minute in the opening hour. The vast majority are Chinese and come in a variety of mediums, including painting and sculpture – but the best works disappear fast. Collectors with an eye for Chinese art, get your skates on!
Clare Pennington

For more details, visit www.affordableartchina.com 

At 798 Space, 11am-6pm Sat 2-Sun 3
 
Originally posted in Time Out Beijing