Until the End of the World

Tang Contemporary - Until the End of the World is a dedication to the medium of film in Chinese art, and includes works from five mainland artists known for working in this format. The exhibition focuses on the older generation of heavyweights – Zhang Peili, Wang Gongxin and Lin Yilin – while also including work from younger artists Liu Chuang and Chen Zhou.

Perhaps the most interesting work is ‘Q&A and Q&A’ (2011) by Zhang Peili, who is widely acknowledged to have produced the first piece of video art in mainland China with ‘30 x 30’ (1988). The installation occupies a temporary room, fitted with three pairs of screens protruding from three corners of the room. The middle pair features a policeman on one screen, with a suspect who is undergoing interrogation on the opposite screen. The other two pairs of screens show the words the two men are exchanging (one pair in English, the other in Chinese).

But words are often played out of time, sounds are distorted or, in the case of the suspect, omitted entirely. The only speaker is situated in the fourth corner so that image, text and sound are separated and re-layered.Zhang took this video from a real-life interrogation. The elements of what really happened, in a scenario where the purported aim is to discover the truth about a crime, are warped. Although ‘Q&A and Q&A’ raises more ethical and philosophical questions than many of Zhang’s other works, his focus remains questioning truth and reality by playing with our senses.

Since Zhang is often considered as the father of Chinese video art, it is apt that his pieces are set alongside works from ensuing generations of video artists. Taken in order, Wang Gongxin, a pioneer of video art in the mid-1990s, follows. On entering the exhibition space, one is confronted by his five visually arresting, hanging screens. Each closes in on a face, smeared with brightly coloured foam. As time passes, the coloured bubbles of artificially bright blue, green, yellow, red and purple peter out to reveal the individual beneath. Each colour’s purpose is to suggest a mood for the subject, but their face only truly appears once this mask has receded.

The aesthetic focus of this piece conflicts sharply with the adjacent works of Lin Yilin, whose ‘Scandal’ (2010) documents a public performance, in which the artist never actually appears. Liu Chuang, meanwhile, takes video display into a sculptural dimension, exhibiting two screens in two facing symmetrical boxes that emit blue light towards each other. The works of these artists come together as pieces that consider the nature of video art itself, as well as reflecting the individual voice of each artist. By contrast, Chen Zhou’s output, shown separately upstairs, is preoccupied by personal identity. His video documents the artist Wei Honglei rifling through old photographs and talking about how, as a boy, he liked Jeff Koons.

This show is a meaningful and considered presentation of video art in China, presenting the cohesion and divergence between these five artists in a pleasurable format that avoids the wearisomely simple curatorial format that so many video ‘surveys’ suffer from. Clare Pennington

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

Water Work: Yun-Fei Ji

After Hurricane Katrina rocked New Orleans in 2005, the world was shaken by the realisation that even the mighty US government was unable to help some of those worst affected by the floods. Then, in China, cracks in the Three Gorges Dam in 2011 meant the sudden resettlement of 300,000 people – adding to the million already relocated by the mega-project.

Both are moments that defined our modern age with their images of devastation and suffering. In Water Work, the artist Yun-Fei Ji sets out to re-record the effects of these and other examples of mass human displacement through an unexpected medium. He does so through Chinese traditional ink and watercolour painting, lithography and printing; an ancient form of social commentary for which literary and artistic giants such as Du Fu (712-780 AD) are still revered. What’s more, he does it well.

Inside the exhibition space, ‘Water Rising’ (2006) takes the shape of a long scroll winding around the corners of the narrow white exhibition hall. Viewers must move in order to follow its tale, as it depicts chairs piled up amid bundles of belongings, and nearby waters creeping up diminishing mountains. The trees seem half-razed, shorn of their former majesty. The works in this exhibition might stand as witnesses to their time, but they are also filled with inventiveness, poetic gusto and artistic creativity.

‘The Last Days of Village Wen’ (2011) begins with a chapter written in clear, clerical calligraphy. It tells of the flooding of Wen: ‘There was no rain for eight months,’ the scroll begins, before describing the need for villagers to become itinerant workers. Then, in a way not only creative, but deeply emotive, it narrates a sudden flood that kills enough fish to feed Wen for years.

Other pieces are interwoven with legendary creatures and animalistic humans. In ‘Boxers’ (2003), the myths and realities of the Boxer Rebellion are treated with analytical and artistic fervour; some Chinese figures are depicted as half-pig, while a few of the foreign colonialists, singled out by their rounded beige helmets, viciously gobble down whole women. Tragedy and political satire sit side by side.

Elsewhere, in ‘The Last Days Before the Flood’ (2006), officials armed with whips float god-like behind streams of people, moving them on like herds of cattle. Ji makes his points with efficiency. This exhibition is both a visual feast and a sharp and timely commentary set in the wider context of global history. 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

Static Electricity: Ma Qiusha exhibition

Showing at Beijing Commune until Thursday 19 April

When a static electric charge builds up, you can feel the air around you change: your skin tingles, your hair stands on end, and then you get the hit! But Ma Qiusha’s latest exhibition isn’t about the moment of inevitable shock. In Mandarin, its title is Jingdian, referring to the static build-up – it’s all about the anticipation.

On the wall of Beijing Commune, three flat screens hang in a row, each showing differently coloured melting ice blocks. In ‘Red/White/Yellow’, the first rectangular lump is made from blood, the second from milk, and the third from urine. We glimpse the first minutes of melting, as the white-frosted texture of each block begins to darken, revealing a clear film of latex over the ice. The colours are meant to recall the coding of the audio jacks you would use to connect a TV to a sound system – a charge locked inside a protective plastic casing (in this case a condom). The artist links this to the intensely private, sexual and even insanitary fluids that make up our daily routine.

Although the link between static and these visceral elements seems a little tenuous, Ma’s works are often unsettling. ‘Token’ shows a dark road illuminated with a single, dim beam, filmed unsteadily as if from the back of a moving trolley. Across the dark tarmac, roughly cut organs are intermittently and violently thrown – a large kidney, brains, a liver – all accompanied by a feline purring, distorted like something from a horror film. Hot steam from the offal fills the screen and quickly disappears.

Ma’s works are as visceral as ever, yet here they are made up of traces, things left undefined. ‘Fog’ is a painting consisting of layers of watercolour built over a pattern of lace. The textures of the material remain on the paper, although the material itself has been removed. We are left only with the remains of bodily fluids, viscera and elements of man-made lace.

If this exhibition evokes in us anything, it’s a feeling of underlying foreboding and mortality. As the title suggests, it’s not about the shocks, but nor is it for the faint-hearted. Clare Pennington

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

Art news: UCCA

 The UCCA's upcoming exhibitions and its future with multiple funders


This Saturday, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) will open its first exhibition Inside a Book a House of Gold: Artists' Editions for PARKETT with new director Phil Tinari as curator.  He has brought together a wide range of works commissioned by the Swiss journal Parkett, results of a collaboration between the publication and various artists.  As the founder of the Chinese bilingual arts magazine Leap （艺术界） an interest in recording, assessing and archiving is clearly one that can be seen in his own visions for the future of the UCCA.  A retrospective of works made in collaboration with Parkett was held at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) back in 2001, featuring giants like Andy Warhol. This time round, there will be 192 artists including the likes of Yang Fudong and other Chinese peers who have more recently been launched into the international art scene.

 

The upcoming Gu Dexin exhibition will follow a similar trend. It represents an attempt to gather as comprehensively as possible a group of works in the possession of various private collectors. And the UCCA will certainly be dipping into the Guy and Myriam Ullens collection for this one.

 

But what about the art centre itself? The role of director is not just one of curating. After last year's Sotheby’s auction, caused many to lament the partial breaking up of the Ullens’ art collection, doubts about the future of the UCCA were also circulated. That the centre was also looking for local patrons such as banks and businesses to replace the Ullens family did nothing to quell rumours that the Ullens were abandoning China.

 

Happily the UCCA is restructuring with both its space and staff becoming more 'localised,’ according to Tinari. If you’ve been to 798 recently you might have noticed that Switch, the short-lived UCCA-owned restaurant has now shut down. ‘The UCCA’s resources are perhaps not best spent operating a restaurant,’ says Phil Tinari. ‘Reshaping the UCCA is not about ego or a curatorial vision’ - Jérôme Sans, Tinari’s predecessor, helped to determine how the UCCA’s space would be used from the beginning of his own tenure until he left last year - ‘It’s about making who we are manifest itself onto the street.’ Work is being undertaken to move the old UCCA shop, a small space near the hidden main entrance, to where Switch was, facing 798’s central road. The old shop space will then become another exhibition room, which You Yang, the centre’s new assistant director, says will be used to showcase parts of the Ullens collection.

 

And there’s more. What about the lease that we heard would be running out in 2013? ‘Different areas of the centre actually have different leases, so it’s down to details at this point. We have no plans to move,’ says Tinari, before moving on to telling us a little bit about the board of Chinese patrons the UCCA is developing. He’s not giving us the numbers yet, but says, ‘We are moving away from a single-funder situation to one like any international museum…about half of the patrons have subscribed at this point, and they are people who are very influential in the art world.’ Clare Pennington

 

 

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing