Art Radar Asia News conducts original research and scans global news sources to bring you selected topical stories about the taste-changing, news-making and the up and coming in Asian contemporary art.
For a long time in the West, the image of Asia has relied on popular, and almost always Western, media imagery. From medieval travel literature to films in today’s time, the tropes of the orient repeat itself with every kung fu movie. At “Shanghai“, at the Asian Art Museumin San Francisco, the image of China comes from the subject itself.
Taking a cue from the 30th anniversary of the San Francisco-Shanghai sister-city relationship, “Shanghai”presents a portrait of a city evolving over 160 years. Accompanying the exhibition are year-long festivals, concerts, workshops, film screenings, talks and discussions. The exhibition features more than 130 artworks including China Trade oil paintings, Shanghai deco furniture and rugs, movie clips, revolutionary posters, and video and contemporary art installations.
Nanjing Road From Series of Views of Shanghai, after 1937. By Zhao Weimin (dates unknown). Chromolithograph on paper. Collection of the Shanghai History Museum.
Mirroring the life pulse of Shanghaiover a century and half are its art and art objects. Neatly divided into four time periods, “Beginnings” (1850–1911), “High Times” (1912–1949), “Revolution” (1920–1976), and “Shanghai Today” (1980–present), the exhibition presents a rare glimpse of Shanghai’s visual culture in transition from a modest Chinese port town to a bustling cosmopolitan city.
The success as well as the challenge of this exhibition lies in presenting a complex and multi-layered visual culture within the framework of a linear narrative. Beginning with China Trade paintings from the 1850s, painted in large numbers to document the world of European colonialists, the exhibition moves forward to highlight artists from the Shanghai School who broke away from the traditional mode of landscape painting and created expressive and dramatic works for wealthy Chinese patrons. The later arrival of print technology lead to mass production and there are a number of posters and other graphic art on display, including the infamous large-format colorful government propaganda posters.
Landscape-Commemorating Huang Binhong-Scroll, 2007. By Shen Fan (b. 1952). Installation with lights and sound. Courtesy of the artist.
“Shanghai Today” presents a rare opportunity to interact with works produced exclusively by artists based in Shanghai. Embracing installation and video art, this section features some important Shanghai artists. A highlight of the show is Shen Fan’s 2007 installationLandscape-Commemorating Huang Binhong-Scroll, an homage to one of China’s great artists of the twentieth century. This installation piece utilizes computer-operated neon lights and music.
The city as a direct subject is very much present in the works of installation artists Zhang Jianjun(b. 1955) and Liu Jianhua(b. 1962). Both artists deal with the contemporary realities ofShanghai and its city space.
Zhang Jianjun’s work Vestiges of a Process: Shanghai Garden is an installation composed of two silicone rubber Taihu rocks, manufactured from molds of real Taihu rocks that are prized in traditional garden culture for providing city dwellers with symbolic access to nature. The rocks are accompanied by a silicone rubber vase and both are arranged on a pavement of gray antique bricks which have been acquired from the demolition of Shanghai houses constructed between 1923 and 1926. Visitors are invited to walk through the installation.
Shadow in the Water (detail), 2002-2008. By Liu Jianhua (b. 1962). Installation with porcelain and light. Collection of the artist.
Liu Jianhua’s Can You Tell Me? consists of a series of stainless steel books suspended from a vertical wall. Each book presents two questions aboutShanghai’s future, one on each page, that are translated into five languages: Chinese, English, French, German and Japanese. Ever-changing, propelled by its role as an economic powerhouse, the city suggests endless possibilities, some of which Liu asks visitors to contemplate.
For sometime now, thevideo formathas been the preferred medium for manycontemporary Shanghaiartists and the exhibitioncloses with contemporary video art, one of the mediums in which Shanghai artists are taking a worldwide lead. Yang Fudong (b. 1971) is a contemporary video artist who features prominently in this section with three video works:City Light (2000), Liu Lan (2003) and Honey(2003). A celebratedphotographer, videographer, and film maker, Fudong frequently explores feelings of longing and displacement. His works often focus on the lives of young urbanites who, despite possessing admirable qualities such as education or beauty, may not be well-adjusted to the environment in which they live.
The AW Asia gallery in New York has just released a valuable new resource for collectors and researchers intererested in Chinese contemporary art. Searchable by artist or museum its database, which is available online at no cost, lists Chinese artists held in permanent museum collections around the world.
According to AW Asia, the “Chinese Contemporary Art in Museum Collections” database is the first international compilation of its kind, which currently represents 42 contemporary Chinese artists and 67 domestic and international museums.
Artists include heavyweight internationally-recognised multimedia artists such as Ai Weiwei, Cai Guoqiang, Zhang Huan and Xu Bing, photographers such as Cang Xin, Hong Hao, Weng Fen and Hai Bo, ink artists Gu Wenda and Yun-fei Ji , Cynical Realist artists such as Yue Minjun, sculptors including Zhan Wang and video artists Yang Fudong and Yang Zhenzhong.
AW Asia, a private organization in New York City that promotes Chinese contemporary art through institutional loans and acquisitions, curatorial projects, publishing, and educational programs.
Although the database is not yet comprehensive, it starts to shed light on which international museums are validating contemporary Chinese art. If you are a curator or museum representative with additional information regarding Chinese contemporary art in a permanent museum collection, AW Asia would like to hear from you. Please write to info@awasiany.com.
As the database is still under development Art Radar would like to suggest an additional feature: a feed so that news sources can be alerted to the latest additions to museum collections. In the meantime, congratulations on creating a useful new resource.
“Admirably …the conservative, government-run museum goes beyond its usual comfort zone” says The New York Times in its review of the Hong Kong Museum of Art’s latest show: ‘Louis Vuitton: A Passion for Creation’ which runs until 9 August 2009.
Hong Kong Museum of Art wrapped for Louis Vuitton Passion show
In a generally positive review, the few criticisms are not sharp:
To hard-core followers of contemporary art, the exhibition can seem like a “greatest hits” compilation. But it is a rare opportunity to see in Asia — outside of Japan — some of the biggest names in global culture today. And offerings like the huge triptypch “Class war, militant, gateway” by the British duo Gilbert and George and the “Xanadu” installation by Robert Boyd, with an Olivia Newton-John soundtrack, can be fun.
The big name artists include Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gilbert and George, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Andreas Gursky, Pierre Huyghe, Jeff Koons, Bertrand Lavier, Christian Marclay and Richard Prince.
Also on show are Chinese artists: Paul Chan (a New Yorker) and two young new media artists Cao Fei and Yang Fudong. Though the latter two artists are making a name for themselves internationally — Melissa Chiu of the Asia Society identifies them as two of the most important emerging Chinese artists of the next generation — The New York Times review of their works was little more than a listing:
Ms. Pagé (the artistic director of the Louis Vuitton foundation) gives prominent spaces to three works by Chinese artists: “RMB City: A Second Life City Planning by China Tracy,” a 3-D animation by Cao Fei; “Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest,” an experimental black-and-white film by Yang Fudong; and the installation “no man is an island,” a contemplation of the Sept. 11 attacks by Paul Chan, a Hong Kong-born New Yorker.
Provoking more questions than answers, the piece was only a little more forthcoming about the lesser known but emerging Hong Kong artists (Nadim Abbas, Lee Kit, Leung Chi Wo, Pak Sheung Chuen, Tsang Kin Wah, Adrian Wong and Doris Wong) who were invited to participate in the show.
Hong Kong artists were recently showcased for the first time at the Sotheby’s Spring Auction in Hong Kong and Pak Sheung Chuen will be participating in the 53rd Venice Biennale. With growing interest in Hong Kong artists, we wondered what The New York Times had to say about them.
Commissioned works by seven Hong Kong artists are featured in an upstairs gallery. The toys of Naddim Abbas, word-based projection by Tsang Kin-wah and the squawking, duck-themed installation by Adrian Wong, stand out.
Not enough to sate us. Over to you…
How do you think their works stand up against the big international name artists? Which artists do you think stand out? If you are able to see the show why not leave a comment below.
More reviews: Redbox Review – as always a meaty read over at Red Box
Australian curator and writer Melissa Chiu of the Asia Society New York discusses the newest trends from China in a video called Inside The Contemporary Art Scene.
She identifies several emerging changes:
young Chinese women are emerging as a force for the first time
new technology is being adopted and young artists are excelling at video and other new media
China’s experience as a world centre of manufacturing has influenced the scale and construction of art from China and beyond its borders, particularly evident in the activities is Zhang Huan
influence of artists in their fifties driven abroad by the Cultural Revolution and now returning to work in China
two emerging artists are singled out : Cao Fei for her work on Second Life and Yang Fudong for his videos
Art-Report, a German art website, has published a list that ranks the top 30 living contemporary video artists globally. By video artist, it refers to artists whose works are based on video and film as their preferred medium.
Although Asian artists are still in the minority, four artists – Yoko Ono, Paul Chan, Kutlug Ataman and Yang Fudong – are included in the rankings. Find below links and video clips for the three artists who have East Asian roots.
Ranked 3rd place is Yoko Ono. The Japanese avant-garde artist is dedicated to the formulation of conceptual and performance art. One of her representative performances is Cut Piece, in which Yoko Ono asked members of the audience to cut away her clothing piece by piece until she was almost naked.
On 6 June 2009, her achievements were once again recognized as she received a Venice Biennale Accolade –the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.
At the 16th rank finds Paul Chan’s name. Paul Chan is Hong Kong-born but New York-based artist. Chan defines himself with a dual identity as an artist and activist. His works are characterized by the amalgamation of political, age-old, cutting-edge, religious and erotic elements.
Light and Drawings is Chan’s first major museum presentation in Europe in Stedelijk Museum. According to AbsoluteArts, Chan intended to make a group of works that delivers a physical experience and simultaneously provides a commentary on a world on the edge of disintegration. With one exception, the Lights are projected from the ceiling onto the floor, or partly on the floor and wall. The works are structured as a cycle of day and night, sunrise to sunset.
The last Asian video artist in the list- Yang Fudong- stands at the 26th place. Carnegie International describes this Chinese artist’s films as psychologically dense, visually beautiful meditations on the philosophical questions of existence as they are played out in the exterior world and the interior lives of his subjects.
Below is a link to an article about his best-known work -“Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest”. The work depicts the journey of seven poets and artists as they move through various phases of experience in their quest to transcend their earthly lives.
Helpful sources of objective and rigorous judgement, museums provide an independent voice in an art world populated by more unscrupulous personalities and poor research than is ideal. But how can we find out what the top museums are acquiring and what they are holding in their storage rooms?
Public institutions are often happy to share this information if you give them a call though of course this is not necessarily the case with private museums. Some institutions are now giving the public digital access to their entire collections and the Pompidou Centre is one of these. Its collection comprises over 61,000 works by more than 5,500 artist around the world making it the largest collection in Europe of modern and contemporary art.
The collection is dominated by French works (24,000) and there is a substantial group of US works (9,000) with the bulk of the remainder coming from Europe. It seems that the Pompidou has been active in acquiring Chinese, Indian and Iranian works recently. We have made a list of links to some Asian artists’s works in its holdings:
Chinese modern: Zou Wou-ki, Walasse Ting, Xu Beihong and a number of other 1930s born artists
Chinese contemporary: Cai Guo-qiang, Kai Cui, Georgette Chen, Chen Zhen, Cui Xiuwen, Fang Lijun, Huang Yong Ping, Li Yongbin, Liu Wei, Wang Du, Wang Jian Wei, Wang Jin, Weng Fen, Yan Lei, Yan Peiming, Yang Fudong, Yang Jun, Yang Zhenzhong, Zhang Huan, Zhang Peili, Ming Zhu.
Japan: 16 pages of works including 1960s photography and architectural works and furniture from 1960s to 1980s, Yayoi Kusama, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Rika Noguchi, Yoko Ono, Yuki Onodero, Hiroshi Sugimoto
Chinese Contemporary Art: 7 Things You Should Know – Melissa Chiu
In China today, contemporary art is readily available in public museums and private galleries in burgeoning gallery districts, and in three new art fairs in Beijing and Shanghai. Abroad, Chinese artists are the subject of museum retrospective exhibitions and grace the covers of international art magazines.
Chinese contemporary art has come of age; yet there are few reference books for the reader who wants a quick but precise history of the field. This book aims to fill that gap. Short and to the point, it is arranged into seven sections outlining the rudiments of Chinese contemporary art: what you need to know about the artists, the art market, and what can legitimately be called a new art movement, perhaps the first great art movement of the 21st century.
Sections:
Contemporary art in China began decades ago
Chinese contemporary art is more diverse than you might think
Museums and galleries have promoted Chinese contemporary art since the 1990s
Government censorship has been an influence on Chinese artists, and sometimes still is
The Chinese artists’ diaspora is returning to China
Art Radar Asia 