THE YOUNG GENERATION OF CHINESE ARTISTS AND THEIR AMBITIONS ______

A Thesis

Presented to the

Faculty of

California State University, Fullerton ______

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

in

Art History ______

By

Yuyang Tang

Thesis Committee Approval:

Professor Joanna Roche, Chair Professor Christopher Slogar, Department of Art Professor Christina Smith, Department of Art

Summer, 2016

ABSTRACT

In the 21st-century, Chinese contemporary art and artists have seen constant innovation and competition on a global level. The rise of a group of young artists marked the new era of the Chinese contemporary art. Their challenge has a positive impact on

China's future artists.

This thesis will explore three artists, Jin Shan, Sun Xun and Hu Xiaoyuan, who were among the 25 featured in the exhibition, “My Generation: Young Chinese Artists” held at the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) in 2015. This exhibition was originally curated by Barbara Pollack at the Tampa Museum of Art in 2014. Their aggressive works represent the struggle and transformation that Chinese youth have undertaken to reverse many traditional ideas of art held for generations by this ancient culture. Changes in Chinese society have shifted the social values, the public has begun to be interested in the art market, and overtly political art began to be phased out by the

Young Generation of Chinese. Young Chinese artists have had increasing chances to learn about and even train in Western art. American contemporary art has had a particularly strong influence on those young artists. Their philosophy is rooted in Chinese culture, but their thinking has absorbed the Western art movements. Through many artworks, several of which are discussed in this thesis, the Young Generation of Chinese artists are attempting to establish a new Chinese art style which will affect the future of the Chinese art market and can be considered to be a positive influence.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... ii

LIST OF FIGURES ...... iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... v

Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION OF CHINESE CONTEMPORARY ART WORLD ...... 1

2. THE NEVER-ENDING SPIRIT OF ENTERTAINMENT ...... 4

3. THE GROTESQUE OF THE NEW CHINESE INK SCROLL ...... 10

4. THE AMPHIBIOUS ARTIST OF MINIMALISM AND FEMINISM ...... 17

5. CONCLUSION ...... 23

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 25

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

1. My dad is Li Gang! ...... 5

2. Photography of man-powered tricycle ...... 8

3. Time Vivarium ...... 11

4. Time Vivarium ...... 11

5. Wood/Double ...... 18

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First, I would like to express my deepest appreciation to Professor Joanna Roche, the Area Coordinator for Art History in the department of Art at CSUF, who consistently encouraged and supported me to get this thesis across the finish line. She also introduced me to history of arts in the first place and opened the door to a greater world. My academic career could not be more successful and I could not attain so much achievement at CSUF without her selfless efforts.

I would also like to thank Professor Christopher Slogar as the second reader of this thesis, and I am gratefully indebted to his very valuable comments on this thesis. I also greatly appreciate Dr. Shane Shukis whose excellent writing class enlightened me about how to properly write.

Finally, I must express my gratitude to my parents and to my husband for providing me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement throughout my years of study and through the process of researching and writing this thesis. This accomplishment would not have been possible without them. Thank you.

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1

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION OF CHINESE CONTEMPORARY ART WORLD

Since the millennium, led by the Young Generation1 of artists, Chinese contemporary art is gradually changing and brewing a new innovation. The Young

Generation of artists are energetically performing in the art market.

Before the active period of Chinese contemporary art was an historically rare and horrible political movement known as the Cultural Revolution2 that subverted ancient

Chinese civilization. The mobilized thousands of Red Guards3 in mainland China to join the class conflict. It forced all schools to close, and university entrance exams were cancelled. In the first few years of the Cultural Revolution, China’s major educational institutions had been devastated at all levels, library books were burned, there was endless campus violence, teachers were publically beaten and humiliated, thus, the entire teaching and research system was stopped countrywide. The

Mao Zedong Thought in China during the Cultural Revolution became the dominant political and educational theory. As of December 1967, at least 350 million copies of

“Quotations from Chairman Mao” had been published. Mao’s prestige, more than any other revisionist tendency, will be subject to criticism. Since the Cultural Revolution,

1 The Young Generation: usually means artists borned after the mid-late 1970s. 2 Cultural Revolution is led by the ruling class— the Chairman of the China Communist Party and his Central Cultural Revolution Group 3 The Red Guards: a member of a Chinese youth movement that attempted to effect the Cultural Revolution.

2

Chinese art was limited to propaganda as a tool to educate the public. People should combine realism with romanticism in the style of Soviet Socialist Realist art (Yang, Tom

25). The national slogan: “Rebellion is legitimate! Revolution is guiltless!” was most prevalent, which entirely ignored the laws. Following up on this tenet, the fanatic Red

Guards destroyed a large number of precious relics and monuments, causing serious damage for China, as well as the cultural heritage of mankind.

The decade of Cultural Revolution is a long course where ancient Chinese civilization had been totally eradicated and eventually revived through its death. The

Cultural Revolution completely blocked the influence of traditional culture on modern

Chinese people, and generally distinguished three kinds of : the old society people,4 the suffering people during Cultural Revolution, and the Young

Generation. Most of previous generation of Chinese artists like Ai Weiwei and others had experienced the horrible time. Therefore, they would be more or less imposed their mind to the audience, and attempted to call people to join them in such ideas of violence, cynicism, and anti-government position is relation to the consequence of Culture

Revolution. Fortunately, the horrible impacts of Cultural Revolution have gradually weakened until the mid-late 1970s when the Young Generation artists started being born.

Apparently, the Young Generation was born in the new era, their life experiences are quite different compared to their predecessors. The Young Generation of artists grew up in a peaceful era, and so it can be argued that they will naturally perform in a neutral way instead of too excessively. In the essay “Ruins, Fragmentation, and the Chinese

4 Before the Cultural Revolution, Chinese were respecting the power of knowledge and science, the whole society pays much attention on education and so does every single family. Then the Cultural Revolution completely shattered this national value.

3

Modern/Postmodern”, Wu Hung suggests that the art images will demand more “visual, intellectual, or even commercial purposes after the Culture Revolution gradually residing to the past” (Gao 63).

Since 2000 the new generation of artists provide cultural exchange and dialogue under the globalization of the art world. Most of them were born after 1976 and are in the one-child policy, as well as the larger environment of rapid economic development. Whether or not they have been part of Western education, they were definitely all aware of the international art movement through the network and domestic art schools where American contemporary art had a greater impact on them. As part of the Young Generation of artists, Jin Shan, Sun Xun, and Hu Xiaoyuan are more likely to give the audience freedom to think rather than advocate a certain answer. They bridge cultural differences, attempt to build a playful feeling, and express individual emotions in a non-violent way.

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CHAPTER 2

THE NEVER-ENDING SPIRIT OF ENTERTAINMENT

So many absurd, terrible, and amazing stories emerge every day, and these stories become the inspiration for my work. — Jin Shan

Born in 1977 in Province and now working and living in , Jin

Shan is a young Chinese artist who has been very active in the international art market in recent years. He likes to use radical satire as a way to show his humorous confrontation with the surrounding social, cultural and political issues to his audience. His work aims to portray contemporary China’s status quo, at the same time, his study of the human motivation beyond the ethnic and regional chasm5—spreading to the hidden commonalities of human genes—shows people’s inordinate lust for power. He has witnessed the recent two decades of development in China and understood what the privilege means to Chinese people. Although he knows what Chinese power men’s capacities of enormous privileges and why Chinese people are excessively believe in

Guanxi,6 Jin Shan holds an objective opinion in his art to affect young Chinese to believe that the justice should above the privilege and his arts indicate that Chinese youths have

5 China has fifty-six ethnic groups. 6 The social phenomenon mainly exists in Chinese society. It means the personal relationships and mutual benefits are usually more important than laws and rules, in other words, the ordinary Chinese people could not see a better life without Guanxi. This phenomenon has a climax in the past thirty years, and eventually begins to weak since Xi Jinping’s new government in late 2012.

5 their thoughts and voices to denounce the occurrence of injustice. Today, the American spirit, the democracy and freedom also has a strong influence on Chinese youths. They are more accepting and respecting different cultures with open minds.

As one of the Young Generation of Chinese artists, Jin Shan got his fame in recent years. His art embodies the social environment where the young Chinese live. He is interested in the way they are thinking, the political scandals, real-time news, as well as hot online searches, all of which can be inspirations for his artwork. For example, take the following installation for the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University in 2012

(see Figure 1). Again, Jin Shan’s ironic humor witnessing the people’s frustration and helplessness of current Chinese corruption is evident.

Figure 1. Jin Shan, My dad is Li Gang! (2012). Mixed media, Photo by Shane Photography.

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Jin Shan named this sculptural installation My dad is Li Gang!, a short-hand satirical critique of the corrupt financial and political elite of China who believe they can avoid responsibility for the harm they have inflicted on others. My dad is Li Gang! is an internet sensation that refers to a political scandal that involved a traffic accident. On the night of October 16, 2010, a car accident occurred in China Hebei University, resulting in one death and one serious injury. The drunk driver Li Qiming attempted to escape but had been stopped by university security. At the time of the incident, he was not remorseful but arrogantly shouted: “Dare you have the ability to sue me, my dad is Li

Gang!”7 This event quickly became the focus of netizens and media buzz, then the netizens turned their anger into cynicism and launched a “Sentence Action.” Netizens adapted this event into various versions of the joke, including song and rap music via the network, literary satire such as a martial arts novel, and even Tang and Song Poetry. My dad is Li Gang! caused widespread social concern. Its popularity was mainly due to the spread of new media and the Internet. Young people are the dominant force in this propagation. In fact, behind the humorous “Sentence Action” is the important fact that people spontaneously formed together indicating the importance of freedom of speech in their denouncing this injustice on the Internet. Finally, due to overwhelming public opinion, the son was sentenced to jail, while the dad has been dismissed from his position, and his whereabouts are uncertain.

In his work, using the internet sensation phrase as his title, Jin Shan reveals in a seemingly humorous yet incompatible way, a series of social problems that are currently facing China. Apparently, Jin Shan chose a challenging title for his work. It seems a

7 Li Gang is the local public security bureau deputy director.

7 bright use of those words that can easily recognize viewers’ condemnation of the situation, but may lead some to ignore the artwork because the phrase is so well known.

On the contrary, the installation itself has nothing to do with the event of My dad is Li

Gang! This sculptural installation has three parts. The main components consist of a cast replica of man-powered tricycle (Figure 2) and a giant mirror-clad replica of China’s space station, Tiangong 1, which is surrounded by four standing plaster walls marked with models of the hands of migrant laborers. A man-powered tricycle is a tool used by those migrant workers for their livelihood, whereas the Tiangong 1 space station symbolized the successful development of the country in science and the high-tech industry. Without fictionalizing or exaggeration, each part of Jin Shan’s installation is the epitome of reality. Through his art he is trying to witness and convey this social phenomenon. There are two separate worlds in China. One is an official glamorized and wonderful homeland, the other is the less than perfect reality that Chinese people know from daily life. After all, there are still few people who can get a better life among the population of 1.3 billion people in mainland China. Ignoring many first-tier cities such as

Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, people who lived in the more remote parts are still struggling just for survival. Today the huge gap between rich and poor has become a great social problem in China that no Chinese citizen can ignore.

Even now, a full 40 years from the end of the Cultural Revolution, this horrible

10-year havoc has immeasurably hurt the Chinese people. Today, there is still a large number of never educated Chinese people and many born before 1960s have only low- level education; some of them are completely illiterate. However, due to China’s rapid growth in the economy and the urbanized rural population, one of the most common

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Figure 2. Photography of man-powered tricycle. A three-wheeled cycle worker on Hua Shan Lu, Shanghai. (May 2012). Photograph from Ian Alden Russell, “Jin Shan, My dad is Li Gang!” David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University.

social phenomena with Chinese characteristics is that some people will be forced to make a living by selling their labor. As shown in Figure 2, even in metropolises like and Shanghai, the man-powered tricycle is still a tool for some people seeking their livelihood. They work from dawn to dusk every day to expect merely low income, they are hardly surviving in the cracks of the increasingly soaring commodity prices and housing rates. They are the man power of the moving taxis, and they neither have insurance nor permits for this simple form of transportation. They are part of the scenery in the city, yet breaking the landscape. Their existence is like a cancer on the orderly road, constantly reminding travelers of the incompetence of the Ministry of

Communications Regulatory. Their presence is also like the blooms on the cliff, always

9 revealing the bravery of the underdog willing to live. Nobody cares about them and nobody wants to help them. Except to say that the people in China cannot be sick because they cannot afford medical treatment.

Jin Shan graduated from East China Normal University in 2000 and he has been following events in Shanghai. The man-powered tricycle plays a significant role in the congested traffic of that city. Thus, in this installation, the man-powered tricycle seems to have become a representative metaphor not only for tricycle taxi drivers but also for the country's vast numbers of laborers. In contrast, Shan juxtaposes the shiny spacecraft

Tiangong 1, one of the projects of the space industry that took China many years of effort and countless funds. The successful launch of the Tiangong 1 symbolized the country’s proud achievement. In this case, space exploration is one of the most extravagant investment projects in China. Jin Shan has selected the Tiangong 1 as an alternative symbol of the grandiose luxury of China's powerful and wealthy.

Jin Shan selected the sensitive words My dad is Li Gang! as a kind of hidden rhetorical question against authority. The many fingerprints around the plaster walls of the installation are not a provocation against social injustice, but more like the audience experiencing the people at the bottom of society or as spectators silently witnessing the current development of Chinese society. Jin Shan has the advantage through his work, expressing this meaning, while he is cleverly escaping from the authorities. To some degree, he praised the great achievements of the motherland, and his choice of subject matter also relates to young people's lifestyles as netizes. Therefore, Jin Shan’s installation can be easily seen as offering full recognition and support of contemporary

China as a changing society.

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CHAPTER 3

THE GROTESQUE OF THE NEW CHINESE INK SCROLL

The title of Time Vivarium comes from the artist Sun Xun’s experience of visiting the American Museum of Natural History in New York. When he was visiting the museum, the taxidermied animals from different regions of the world, labeled with various historical periods, brought him new inspiration. The work in the Chinese title names a time park, but a special meaning of park. Vivarium is an observational study of plants or animals, usually an indoor mini biosphere cultivation of species in closed glassware. The title Time Vivarium refers to a cultivation dish of time that clearly points to history, a theme that has always attracted the artist. There are two parts of the exhibition of Time Vivarium. The first part shows Sun Xun's painted works, a large colorful Chinese ink and wash painting and that includes a scene of painting and drawing similar to traditional Chinese folding screens (Figure 3). The second part displays four screens of short animations of the Time Vivarium images. Sun Xun established his π

Animation Studio since 2006 and he had already produced more than dozens animations before the Time Vivarium since 2003. In his previous animated videos, there are frequently recurring mosquitoes, crows, dragons, snakes, horses and other animals. This time, Sun Xun has changed his subject matter somewhat, namely, all kinds of birds.

Phoenix, owls, foxes, and tigers were placed in rich environments in a bizarre world

(Figure 4). Furthermore, as if the coin has two sides, the artist believes that a story can be

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Figure 3. Sun Xun, Time Vivarium. (2015). 4 channel video animation installation. © Sun Xun, Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York.

Figure 4. Sun Xun, Time Vivarium. (2014). acrylic and ink on paper mounted to aluminum. © Sun Xun, Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York.

12 understood in at least two different ways. For instance, the dragon is considered a symbol of majesty and good luck in the Chinese culture, and yet, the dragon is a fierce creature associated with violence in Western legends. So, the definition of art always depends on the audience.

The greatest characteristic of Sun Xun’s work is maximum dependence on the handmade. He avoids an overly technical component. Today we have Photoshop,

Illustrator, and Corel Painter for software, but Sun Xun still insists on hand-painted finishes on each drawing, trying to create delicacy in his rough drawings. Sun Xun is sophisticated at traditional Chinese landscape painting and has excellent ink painting training. Once, in an interview, he explained the reason he studied painting since childhood. His father was a good carpenter, and the old closet door would always need to be decorated. Sun Xun gradually learned traditional Chinese painting techniques under his father's influence on this closet door. He thought that becoming an artist would extend his father's ambition, for him as a traditional painter, but his subsequent development shows he is more interested in diversification and internationalization. Of course, as is typical of the generation of the 1980s, popular cartoons always influenced his childhood and adolescence. Moreover, avant-garde 1960s American pop art also produced an influence on him. His surrealistic use of bold color in paintings, combined with ink animation into films, is unprecedented in his traditional Chinese ink painting.

Animated film, as the name suggests is a form of expression that continues animation, and incorporates sound. It is a performing art which needs time and space.

When audiences watch his film, Time Vivarium, the surrounding environment, the theme of this exhibition, as well as light and sound effects, will all have an impact on the

13 audience. The artist does not control how viewers see and understand, the artist wants to show an imaginary history through the form of animated film. However, this period of history of a particular time and space will be reflected in the spectators’ eyes in each frame of Sun Xun’s hand-painted figures on screen. Time Vivarium represents the leaping memories of Sun Xun’s personal history. The dystopian imagery, the flying bird wings breaking the faceless head, the proletarian Red Guard’s faces covered with insects; all the combinations are unreasonable, everything is crazily spinning.

When Sun Xun grew up in Fuxin, a border town not far away from North Korea, he knew that China was a country with at least two histories. “During the day at school,

[I] studied the description of the official history.” (Sun Xun interview)8 This version excluded the painful chapter of the Cultural Revolution. “After sunset, his father would take a more personal view and talk about the real history and reveal the truths of what happened to his family” (Sun Xun interview). During the 1960s and 1970s, his grandmother had often been tied up and escorted to a square, forced to wear a tall hat because of her upper-class family background, many people would join the show, and rebuke her as a bourgeois traitor.

All of Sun Xun’s works are influenced by his complex history, which may come from his shattered memories of childhood or thoughts originating from Chinese textbooks of history. He is looking for a self-defined reference system and this search is seen in his questions in such animation. That is why the artist prefers not to use a computer for creating. It is not his mode, he said in an interview. In Time Vivarium, everything starts at a moment, each creature breeding small distractions, injuring and being injured by each

8 Sun Xun Discusses His Work in Ink Art: Past as present in Contemporary China. Video

14 other, phagocytizing and being phagocytized, thus mutually derived. The moment can be seen as the mind’s reincarnation of everything, or may just point to a line in the distance.

The Time Vivarium appears to tell of information about changing history of past Chinese society; some aspects have become permanent stories and cannot go back. Through his animation clips, Sun Xun has put history into a mysterious kaleidoscope, letting the viewer select the position and angle to peep into this history. However, the kaleidoscope never lets everyone get the same answer, so curious viewers may feel they cannot completely satisfy or share the same sense of magic. In fact, Sun Xun just painted pictures of birds, insects and then integrated them into a projector. All the emotions are the brief dreams belonging to the audience. Such demonstrations once again highlight the artist’s choice to be a storyteller, a narrator who insists on being objective in this combined history. Most of the time our concepts of history have been active or passive, more or less distorted. In Sun Xun’s opinion, history is just the process that people think of as history, rather than history itself. People create archeology, people create museums, even so, people may still show regret sometimes, when facing any imperfection they have already made.

On the other hand, many of the details of this animation also reflect a distorted humanity during the Cultural Revolution. During the Cultural Revolution, by following the slogan “Revolution is innocence! Rebellion is right,” the Red Guards brought horrible damage to the society. The damage distorted not only the Chinese historical relics and brought about moral destruction, but also had a severe impact on Chinese people's lives and social order.

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To destroy the Four Olds,9 a large number of Red Guards broke into the home of intellectuals, officials, and wealthy people, and burned their books, humiliating or savagely beating the owners of books, which sometimes even got them killed. They also occupied schools, teachers becoming the object of criticism, who were labeled as

“monsters and demons.” The religious system could not escape either: statues, monuments, paintings, antiques, and other objects also became the targets that Red

Guards were pleased to destroy. The Red Guards brought irreversible terrorist disaster during the Cultural Revolution, and Sun Xun’s animation presents those perpetrators and victims as animals.

The leading artist of the former generation, Ai Weiwei, shares a similar life experience with Sun Xun in that both of their families had been brutally persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. Ai Qing, Ai Weiwei’s father, was a famous writer and poet. People with such an intellectual family background during the Cultural Revolution would never have a good life. The ten years of the Cultural Revolution undoubtedly produced a huge impact on Ai Weiwei’s contemporaries. Their works were filled with violence, anger, or an extremely dark side. They had talent but no promise, they could not be satisfied with the painful life at this time and their art was a cry for those countless unfortunate people and their miserable lives. Political struggle has always been ruthless, even those families who had been provided a large amount of financial support by the

Communist Party during World War II and the civil war still suffered persecution during

9 Four Olds mean old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. “One of the stated goals of the Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic of China was to bring an end to the Four Olds” (Spence 575). The term “Four Olds” first appeared on June 1, 1966, in Chen Boda's People's Daily editorial, ‘Sweep Away All Monsters and Demons’, where the Four Olds were described as anti-proletarian, fostered by the exploiting classes, and to have poisoned the minds of the people for thousands of years” (Li 427).

16 the destruction and separation that marked the decade-long havoc of the Cultural

Revolution. Many upper-class families were sent to remote frontiers that were extremely distant with no return date. The property holdings of middle-class merchants and gentry landlords were all confiscated and they were banished back to ordinary people. Well- educated families of intellectuals became the enemies of the proletarian Red Guard. Sun

Xun was born in 1980, which meant he did not witness such brutal history in person, so he cannot understand the real panic and madness during the Culture Revolution, all his known story came from his father. In Sun Xun’s artworks, his stories and actors are often reflected by animals or insects, scenes full of chaotic of color and line are occasionally interrupted by conflict and weapons. Sun Xun’s art integrates different materials and instruments such as pigments, woodcuts, and ink wash paintings. He has successfully combined the tradition and modern values of Chinese and universal human stories.

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CHAPTER 4

THE AMPHIBIOUS ARTIST OF MINIMALISM AND FEMINISM

There are obvious differences among human beings, there are a thousand

Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes. — Hu Xiaoyuan

Hu Xiaoyuan, one of the few Chinese female artists, represents a Chinese feminist artist’s awakening. If one sentence summarizes her work, it is the endless tidal waves under a seemingly calm lake. Hu Xiaoyuan was born in northeastern China in 1977, a regional culture that is always known for its machismo. As a female artist witnessing the cultural impact of growth in this region, her consciousness has been constantly trying to break through the cognition and circumstances of her surroundings. Her art shows a unique and exquisite wisdom. Typically, the clean and simple response to the first sight of her work is like an intriguing scent from a shy girl, the top note of purity and freshness that has nothing pungent or aggressive. There seems to be a mysterious feeling luring people linger to see what is going on in her work.

For example, Wood/Double (Figure 5) is a part of her wood series from the recent

“My Generation” exhibition, which was exhibited at OCMA. Two white lacquered wood panels were hung on the empty wall, nothing attractive at first glance. But these same size pieces have actual subtle differences: on the right side one plank is 2 inch longer and has a smooth surface and a uniform wood grain, the shorter one has a fuzzy random grain and some random plaques. There are three deeper lines alongside the joint of these wood

18 pieces, that look like just a watershed or a gap that divided the woods in two separate meanings.

Figure 5. Hu Xiaoyuan, Wood/Double. (2011). Wood, Chinese ink, silk, white paint. left 195 x 90 cm; right 190 x 95 cm. Personal photo from “My Generation: Young Chinese Artists” at OCMA, October 2015.

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Hu Xiaoyuan said that the wood series is intimately related to her personal perceptions (My Generation interview). The methods of making this wood art are quite sophisticated and it is a repeating, labor-intensive action. This complicated production process is more like a visual illusion: it is normal wood when one first sees this work, but that is not accurate. First, the artist fixed translucent raw silk on the flat wood and applied ink to draw all the wood grains on the silk, and then removed the silk from the wood after finishing this process. She then lacquered the wood in white paint, repeating this process over and over again until all the original wood lines were invisible. When the white paint completely dried out, she put the textured silk back on the white finished wood very tightly with some tiny nails, very similar to stretching a canvas on a frame. The finished surface in front of the audience is an actual painting. The artist's work will reflect in part the processing of the first layer of raw materials, she has enlarged the visual details, her choice in this creative process, as is the transformation of the objective nature of the object of the original form, giving it a new language and properties. Behind this process is a repeated paradox and contradiction about the difference value and transform after of visual reality. But the only concern by audience here is the importance of the result, which is full of detail and distinct beauty from the artist’s long labor and the visual impact, which is quiet and complete, but seemed unintended.

Her process is that two pieces of wood sing out of a Northeastern Chinese woman’s life, or most Chinese women's lives in the past long years. A young woman gets married and then has children, becomes a cook-wife and good mother, day after day. This was a Chinese woman’s whole life in past times. In the past two decades, more and more

Chinese women no longer rely on men, but count on themselves. Chinese young women

20 are making a better life more than ever. The development of life is always full of change, even the heartbeat still has a rhythm. Hu Xiaoyuan’s wood, although they are ordinary planks, are given life. When the regular wood appeared as irregular grain and spots, it revealed its “heartbeat.” Hu Xiaoyuan took a very unusual path which was absolutely unpopular among most Chinese women. She has inherent self-possession and control, so she faced her material showing a calm and powerful voice. Her personality prevents her from losing the natural sense, even when she creates her most experimental works. She has a kind of artistic ability that she is rarely controlled by the material.

Hu Xiaoyuan's art frequently draws our attention to the details of materials, but at the same time neglects to point out the causes of our behavior. Perhaps, as she suggests,

“Being ignored never ends, just like the river,” (Hu, Web text) and this is just the way life is. As a young Chinese artist, Hu Xiaoyuan is trying to explain her feminism through her minimalist art, to sculpt her artistic values and philosophy from a different angle. Art is at the core, so everything becomes concrete and attractive in her eyes. She believes that everyone is an object, including herself. She believes that people’s experience is a process, which eventually becomes a symbolic or gradual (this can be seen as new energy in Chinese Art film as well). She is addicted to the artistic style of aimlessness and random occurrences. She always uses a complicated process to express particular objects.

Hu Xiaoyuan brings to her audience an experience of a female perspective, especially compared to Jin Shan’s big installation or Sun Xun’s dystopian animation. The gentle tenacity of a woman has been incisively and vividly developed in her work, which

Chinese male artists can never give their audiences. After all, the patriarchal phenomenon in current Chinese society is still evident, the relatively developed urban culture carries

21 fewer biases against women, but gender biases will always be there. The awakening of

Chinese female artists has exceptional significance for future female artists participating in the Chinese and global art market.

Hu Xiaoyuan attended the China Academy of Fine Arts High School in her teens, then finished her studies in design at the Chinese Central Academy of Art. She finally became a professional artist in design. Art had always been part of her life trajectory.

With China's rapid social and economic growth, the Younger Generation of artists were under the one-child policy. This led to an inevitable awakening of female consciousness.

The dogmatism or feudal ideology no longer hinders women to try for individual achievement and social identity. Women have become artists like Hu Xiaoyuan, who relies on her creative works to obtain a reputation that is still extremely rare in China. In addition to talent, time is the biggest driving force. Hu Xiaoyuan just seized this opportunity earlier than a lot of later female artists. She chose to respect her persistence and dedication and shared this precious faith with the media to a public audience.

The Wood/Double shows that Hu Xiaoyuan is very addicted to her neglect philosophy. Including herself, she believes that each artist will reach a turning point that may bring them to a state of panic, especially those artists who had once achieved a great fame, they would be afraid of falling down from the Maestro status. Hu Xiaoyuan experienced a difficult and embarrassing period, where she lost her inspiration of creation. However, she finally realized that the Young Generation of Chinese artists’ sense of competition would not give her time to hesitate and everyone in the global art market may possibly be ignored too. Hu Xiao Yuan then was inspired by American

Minimalist art and Process art that unlocked a new way to break through her limits. She

22 started to integrate the neglect philosophy into her artwork, because panic is a characteristic of human nature that is always existing in reality. Here, Hu Xiaoyuan focuses on delicate details, making these details appear as invisible things, marking them into the processing of wood planks. Thus, people can easily understand the artist’s statement if they were against this apparent negligence. Art acts as one way to return a pure representation of the social environment and can often give rise to a sense of disconnection. In existence, the average length of time in which visual information discarded is becoming harder and harder to predict: neglect is our normalcy. The artist discovers the symbolic, which relates to her personal experience, pulling out in a relatively precise language and abstract manner, to give “unimportant existence” an absolute meaning and visual value. It is actually possible to watch what happens between the audience and artists to establish an effective communication of doubt and negation, as well as the necessity and importance of an audience understanding Hu Xiaoyuan’s idea:

“Being ignored never ends, just like the river.”

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CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION

The three artists examined here were all born after the Cultural Revolution. Most importantly, they were born as ordinary people within a peaceful society, so they may not feel horrible things like the former generation of artists had experienced. They are seemingly unwilling to make any didactic conclusion about the Chinese government, but are more likely to express their criticisms via surreal metaphors.

“There are two kinds of museums, one is government-run institutions, the other is the private museum, which is often a part of real estate development schemes” (Pollack

146). Obviously, the government museum would prefer to show the public exhibitions with more educational purpose. Usually, artworks exhibited by official government can be international recognized and wild accepted. However, the curators’ purpose for the private museum may vary. They may prefer to show some creative artworks with less cost or to introduce some talent young artists to draw contemporary art buyer’s attention.

The private museums get well development recent decade due to commercial potentials of the real estate market. Private gallery has brought direct benefits to the public and

Young Generations of artists. On the one hand, they provide to the public more contemporary artworks with many different styles; on the other hand, young Chinese artists could receive more opportunity to display their talents and catch more fame. To

24 avoid some sensitive issues, and to embrace a better career, most young Chinese artists do not touch the political theme or openly criticize the government.

The Young Generation of Chinese artists seized the opportunity to display their talents and continually energize the art market. Unlike their predecessors, who had an obsession with political criticism, the young Chinese artists are much more excited over current issues that the general public likes to ponder. Their creative works and styles are diverse. Their inspiration comes from the life of young people. In China, contemporary art is most popular with the generation of the 1980s. It is an important reason why the

Young Generation of Chinese artists can get more understanding and support.

Throughout contemporary society, the entertainment spirit of modern mass culture is an indispensable seasoning of life. In this pluralistic world, everyone will have a definition of subversive imagination in their own minds of the entertainment spirit, and it seems that this world driven by the Internet will never stop revealing new entertainment sources. New media provides people with communication tools and the Internet creates a platform for communicating entertainment. In this era of rapid consumption, artists have also intensified their competition in the international art market. The contemporary art market is a worldwide arena where multicultural collisions produce more of an ever- changing visual feast to a global public.

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