Zhang Wei at His Studio in Shunyi District, Beijing, on May 28, 2014

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INTO OVERDRIVE PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST Zhang Wei at his studio in Shunyi District, Beijing, on May 28, 2014. Zhang WEI By FABIEN FRYNS hile visiting Zhang Wei’s vast studio complex on the northeastern outskirts of Beijing, it strikes me that the situation has changed beyond recognition for artists in China in the last four decades. Wei, who was born in 1952, paints using one of his Harley-Davidson motorcycles as his brush, riding it back and forth over a large canvasW splashed with oil paint. It’s a stark contrast to the life he and his contemporaries led in Beijing in the 70s. Firstly, his studio used to be a small flat in a “unit building”—which, crucially in a China still reeling from the Cultural Revolution, provided more privacy than the single-storey courtyard houses which were a more typical residence for most people. Secondly, at that time the government had a strict “anti spiritual pollution” policy, aimed at resisting the invasion of Western thought. In the early 80s Wei, Zhao Gang and Zhu Jinshi discreetly started to explore abstract painting. They often met at Wei’s flat, where soon an underground, avant-garde salon of open-minded and independent artists came into being, encompassing the impressionistic No Name group and, later, the more politically engaged Star Group. They all shared the goal of stirring up the status quo with new Western abstract developments. And they made their art not because it had any commercial prospect, but because they thought it was the right thing to do. The resulting works are exceptional, energetic and engaged. Zhang Wei in those early days was already not only a gifted and recognised artist, he was also an inspiring organiser. In 1974, his flat was the setting for the first underground show. It was there, too, that he entertained many foreign officials and artists, most notably Bernardo Bertolucci, who was filming The Last Emperor in 1984, and, in 1985, Robert Rauschenberg—the first Western contemporary artist to exhibit in the country, unleashing shock waves in Beijing and attracting more than 300,000 visitors during his show’s three-week run. In 1982, Wei organised an underground abstract painting exhibition that was to trigger a stunning series of works in which he explored the limitations of canvas, throwing buckets of diluted volatile oil on to the walls to create the biggest abstract painting in the country at that time. But these practices had their own limitations in China. After Wei organised the semi-abstract 10-artist Graffiti exhibition, which was closed down by police on the very day it opened, many artists were discouraged. Some migrated to Berlin; some, like Li Shuang, to Paris; others, like Zhao Gang and, later, Ma Kelu, chose the USA. Zhang Wei arrived in 1986, and, after participating in Vassar College’s Avant-garde Chinese Art exhibition that year, remained in New York until his return to Beijing in 2005. As the Chinese contemporary-art market surges, Zhang Wei will no doubt continue to cut a swathe through the scene on that Harley-Davidson. Where might the open road lead? � xx PHOTOGRAPH BY BEN MC MILLAN NOVEMBER 2014 www.vanityfair.com VANITY FAIR ON ART.

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