Mei Moses art index founder plans Chinese version, optimistic about Chinese art

CHINESE ART PRICES

The current state of Chinese art prices was discussed  before members of the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of China who had gathered at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) to hear a dialogue between UCCA director Jerome Sans and Cheung Kong GSB professor  Mei Jianping.

Mei Jianping is founder of the Mei Moses art index. Using a database of over 15,000 art pieces drawn from publicly available Sotheby’s and Christie’s auction prices, the Mei-Moses index demonstrates that investments in quality art, in the long term, deliver higher returns than bonds and gold. The index has received criticisms from some quarters for survivor-biassed results  – the index only tracks the prices of works which sell and ignores works which remain unsold. Supporters point out that stock market indices are similarly biassed and ignore companies which drop out of the index or go bankrupt. Despite these contrary views, the index remains one of the most widely referenced indices by press sources.

Professor Mei noted that

art prices frequently track the economic development of the artist’s home culture, citing how most American art from the 1950s has dramatically increased in value since. He then went on to describe prices at the peak of the Chinese art market last year as artificially high, buoyed by speculation.

Director Sans noted that

• any trend with 10 years of momentum behind it cannot be regarded as mere hype
• half of the top 20 selling artists in the world are Chinese
• no collection or retrospective of contemporary art today would be complete without one or two Chinese artists which is a dramatic change from a decade ago.

At the conclusion of the talk Mei Jan-Ping affirmed his belief that the “long-term prospects for Chinese art as an investment, in spite of the current economic climate, were great”. He is sufficiently optimistic  about the long term interest of the Chinese people in the art market that according to Chinese Radio International he is now working on a Chinese version of his index.
Source: Cheung Kong GSB News 

Related categories: market watch, art index, Chinese art, art recession

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• Mei Moses index founder talks about the impact of the crisis on art Sep 2009

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New roles for art collectors, organisations created by Cao Fei on Second Life – Uli Sigg is RMB City governor

Cao Fei RMB City A second life city planning 2007

 

INTERVIEW CHINESE ARTIST CAO FEI

Editor of Asia Art Archive’s Diaaalogue, Sue Acret spoke to Chinese artist Cao Fei about her Second Life project RMB City which was officially launched in January 2009. In this project which uses as a medium the online virtual world called Second Life, Cao Fei develops new roles for collectors and art institutions which blur the lines between digital and real.

Susan Acret: Please tell us about your avatar China Tracy and the RMB City work and how the online world of Second Life became a platform for these works.

RMB City – a city utopia with Chinese aesthetics

Cao Fei: During the creation of i.Mirror and the China Tracy Pavilion (A machinima-documentary about China Tracy’s first explorations of Second Life, and the large-scale installation where it premiered at the 2007 Venice Biennale), I started to think about creating a place that belonged to China Tracy within Second Life… her own ‘city utopia’. China Tracy felt that since most cities within Second Life were Western in style, she wanted to represent some of her concepts about Chinese urban development in a space that incorporated Chinese aesthetics and identity, albeit in a surreal hybrid style.

Blurred boundaries between real and virtual for modern generations
S.A: You’ve said that your generation, brought up in a digital world, ‘will always compare virtual and real’ and that sometimes the boundaries between the two can be blurred. Your art reflects this movement between these two spheres. What opportunities do virtual worlds offer artists that are not available in the ‘real’ world?

C.F: Second Life is a world where the conventional free-market economy still applies. Although we call it a virtual world, its economic structure and the virtual currency is tied with the ‘real’ economy. From a visual perspective, Second Life appears to be hyper-real and excessively imagined. Combined with its uncertain identity, it can be mysterious and enigmatic to people. On arriving in this virtual world, China Tracy was attracted by the hyper-real prison, but also felt an unavoidable sense of oppression.

Cao Fei, i Mirror Second Life Machinima, 28 minutes

Although the boundary between virtual and real is becoming more and more blurred, the way the virtual world contradicts and coincides with reality offers something ambiguous and complex. This, to a certain extent, enhances our lives as a whole, providing a reference for the exploration of individuality and the nature of life.

Another reason that the virtual world appeals to me is that it transcends obstacles in reality, despite being hyper-real. It offers a virtual platform for human beings to experiment with a possible utopia, such as building an individualistic heaven, drafting laws and systems, generating new discussions and thoughts, etc.

 
S.A: How many collaborators have you worked with for your RMB City project? How do you find your collaborations with these ‘real’ people?

C.F: Collaborators involved in RMB City include collectors, galleries, scholars, researchers, artists, schools, various exhibition projects, commissioned projects, biennials and triennials, etc.

New roles for art collectors organisations, Uli Sigg is RMB City governor

1. Collectors
We invite collectors to actively participate in the actual development of the city. For example, we invited Mr Uli Sigg to be the first governor of the city (for 3 months), in order for him to oversee and propose a blueprint for the utopia of RMB City in terms of its systems, construction and direction.

2. Public organizations
We are now working closely with Serpentine Gallery. They are one of the real information centres for RMB City. Also, UCCA which will collect RMB City, will have a virtual art gallery and other independent projects. Some art organizations are willing to rent spaces to be involved in this project and also develop their own projects.

3. Exhibition/ Project
I have realized personal projects for biennials and triennials via RMB City, for example, for the 2008 Yokohama Triennial and New Orleans Biennial, as well as on some consigned projects, such as H Box’s video project. I would like to some overseas artist residency programs to take place the RMB City’s platform.

4. Other
We invite different parties (not just limited to the art field) in the real world to participate in the virtual world. We also invite Second Life avatars who are interested in our project.

Therefore, RMB City insists on ‘the cooperation of virtual and real’: collaborators should come from both worlds. Through this process, we hope to improve conventions and develop a new path.

Cao Fei Cosplayers, video 2004

S.A: Your use of internet platforms such as You Tube and Second Life is a democratic, open way of creating work, insofar as it is available freely to large numbers of people all over the world. Do you often get feedback from ‘non-art’ audiences on the internet?

C.F: Yes. I have received emails and messages to China Tracy in Second life, and comments on my YouTube videos, and friend-offers via My Space and Facebook.

I quite like these different forms of feedback from different channels, and meeting different people in different worlds.

S.A: Born in the late 1970s and brought up in the ’80s, can terminologies such as Generation X (the consumerist generation) or Generation Y (the Net-generation or Generation Why) describe who you are? From COSplayers to the RMB City project, are your art projects the result of generational influence or your personality?

C.F: Since 1978, China has undergone an inevitable reorganization. Before we were ready to respond, we were already receiving all kinds of influences from a new time. Everyone is the product of a generation; ‘I’ am an individual as well as a transcendental object. Perhaps a young person who attempts to influence the world or China Tracy who surfs around the virtual world, are indeed coming from the same route. And as for me, I remain extremely close to yet with an appropriate distance from any of these worlds. This gives me a macro view of the ‘world’. And then I decide how I should deal with it and derive my system to process all the complex messages of life. In Chinese terms, it involves entering (reality) and renouncing (the virtual) the world simultaneously. This journey is to experience both worlds while constituting the two.

This interview is edited. For the full version of this fascinating interview and more images go to Asia Art Archive.

Related categories: Chinese artists, virtual art, reports from China, video art, emerging artists,  new media, Uli Sigg, art collectors

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Video of Miami Beach Art Asia 2008: art scene influencers discuss emerging Chinese artists

ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH ART ASIA 2008 VIDEO

Watch the Miami Beach Art Asia video here

Andrew Erdos, a young US artist who has exhibited in China, attends the Preview Party of the Art Asia and interviews leaders of the Asian art scene including Ethan Cohen, founder of Art Asia and Jim Becker Project Coordinator of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing.

Not only valuable for putting faces to the names of influencers in the current Asian art scene, there are snips of interesting content for example:

• Ethan Cohen points out that 13 of the top 50 contemporary artists are Asian and
• Jim Becker introduces the intriguing work of Feng Mengbo, a Chinese artist who recodes video games to include Chinese iconography creating a form of art which can be played.

Though titled ‘The Influencers of Art Asia’ the video is heavily biassed towards Chinese art.

Other artists covered in the video include Huang Yan (photgrapher, sculptor, painter and promoter of arts), Wang Xiaodi an emerging Chinese artist and Yue Minjun.

Watch the Miami Beach Art Asia video by PlumTV here

Two decade survey of Chinese contemporary art ‘Our Future’ at Ullens Center Beijing to 12 October 2008

 SURVEY EXHIBITION CHINESESE CONTEMPORARY ART BEIJING to 12 Oct 2008

This series of exhibitions, site commissions and educational projects entitled “Our Future” aims at opening its door to the future of art in China.

The exhibition will give wide-angle view of the work and artistic practice of several generations of artists. Through special commissions and new acquisitions, work rarely seen before will be viewable to the public.

Featuring around 60 Chinese artists, the exhibition will present no less than 92 works by such prominent names as Chen Zhen, Gu Wenda, Huang Yong Ping, Wang Guangyi, Wang Du, Zhang Xiaogang.

New projects, performances and educational works from Cao Fei, He Yunchang, Qiu Zhijie and Yang Jiechang have been especially created for the Our Future exhibition.

“Our Future: Site Commissions” is a long-term project and has commissioned installations, murals, paintings and sculptures especially designed for the exhibition site by artists such as Ai Wei Wei, Michael Lin, Wang Du, Wang Jianwei, Wen Fang, Yan Lei and Yan Peiming.
Throughout the interior and exterior of the building, the organizer will pay tribute to the work these artists have accomplished over the past two decades in bringing Chinese contemporary art onto the international art scene by devoting its entire 8,000 square meters space to sustain their artistic creations, beyond the exhibition halls.

“Our Future: The Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation Collection”
Exhibition Date: 19 Jul 2008 – 12 Oct 2008

See (in new window)

• exhibition details at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art site
• more on surveys of Asian art
• more on Chinese contemporary art

If you are interested in this post, you might also be interested to read more about the UBS four decade survey of contemporary art on show in Beijing to November 7 2008.

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