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