Edward Burtynsky, Jiang Zhi, Shyu Ruey-Shiann, Gao Brothers, Cai Guo-Qiang “Nice Painting” in Hong Kong Et Al

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2012 V OLUME 11, NUMBER 6

INSI DE

Artist Features: Edward Burtynsky, Jiang Zhi, Shyu Ruey-Shiann, Gao Brothers, Cai Guo-Qiang “Nice Painting” in Hong Kong et al. Contemporary Art Spaces in Xi’an

Vitamin: A Conversation with Zhang Wei and Hu Fang Possibilities for the Page: Artist’s Books

US$12.00 NT$350.00 PRI NTED IN TA I WAN

VOLUME 11, NUMBER 6, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2012

CONTENTS  Editor’s Note 34  Contributors

6 Displaced Cultural Landscape and Manufactured Landscapes: The Three Gorges Project in Art Zhou Yan

15 "Nice painting" et al. – Different Kinds of Painting and Related Practices in Hong Kong Frank Vigneron 41 34 Jiang Zhi’s Faulty Display Mathieu Borysevicz

41 Gleaned Memories: The Art of Shyu Ruey- Shiann Gilles Guillot

48 The Gao Brothers and The Execution of Christ: A Conversation Voon Pow Bartlett, Le Guo, Carrie Scott, Sheng Qi, and Haili Sun 61 61 Leaving Chang’an: Establishing Contemporary Art Spaces in the Ancient Capital Yang Wang

70 The Institution of Forgetting? Contemporary Chinese Art, Crititque, and the Academy Julian Scarff

83 Nutrition Spaces: Vitamin, Guangzhou, and Beijing 83 Edward Sanderson

92 Possibilites for the Page: 88BOOKS and Artists' Books in China Joni Low

103 Cai Guo-Qiang: Sky Ladder Orianna Cacchione

110 Chinese Name Index

Cover: Cai Guo-Qiang, Crop Circles, (detail), 2012, reeds, 103 plywood, approximately 800 x 3600 cm. Photo: Joshua White/ JWPictures.com. Courtesy of the artist and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

We thank JNBY Art Projects, Canadian Foundation of Asian Art, Mr. and Mrs. Eric Li, and Stephanie Holmquist and Mark Allison for their generous contribution to the publication and distribution of Yishu.

Vol. 11 No. 6 1 Editor’s Note YISHU: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art  Katy Hsiu-chih Chien   Infoshare Tech Law Office, Mann C.C. Liu Yishu 53 presents a number of features that   Ken Lum explore the work of artists who live in various -- Keith Wallace parts of the world. Zhou Yan points to the   Zheng Shengtian   Julie Grundvig difference between how Torontonian Edward Kate Steinmann   Chunyee Li Burtynsky depicts the phenomenon of Three   Larisa Broyde Gorges Dam compared to the way Chinese   Michelle Hsieh Maryon Adelaar artists portray it. Mathieu Borysevicz talks about    Chunyee Li Beijing artist Jiang Zhi’s unexpected entry into   the genre of abstract art, but, as it turns out, Judy Andrews, Ohio State University his work is not so truly abstract. Gilles Guillot Melissa Chiu, Asia Society Museum John Clark, University of Sydney proposes that Taipei’s Shyu Ruey-Shiann’s Lynne Cooke, Museo Reina Sofia recycling of everyday materials is an extension of Okwui Enwezor, Critic & Curator Britta Erickson, Independent Scholar & Curator his personal life and family history. Beijing artists Fan Di’an, National Art Museum of China the Gao Brothers's remarkable sculpture that pits Fei Dawei, Independent Critic & Curator Gao Minglu, University of Pittsburgh Jesus Christ against a small army of Maos is the Hou Hanru, San Francisco Art Institute subject of an in-depth conversation in London. Hu Fang, Vitamin Creative Space and the shop Katie Hill, University of Westminster Orianna Cacchione reviews New York-based Cai Claire Hsu, Asia Art Archive Guo-Qiang’s exhibition in Los Angeles, where Martina Köppel-Yang, Independent Critic & Historian Sebastian Lopez, Critic and Curator he continues a long-standing engagement with Lu Jie, Independent Curator the idea of communicating with extraterrestrials. Charles Merewether, Director, ICA Singapore Ni Tsaichin, Tunghai University Frank Vigneron argues for making a distinction Apinan Poshyananda, Ministry of Culture, Thailand Philip Tinari, Independent Critic & Curator in Hong Kong painting between artists who have Chia Chi Jason Wang, Independent Critic & Curator come to be referred to as “Nice Painters” and Wu Hung, University of Chicago Pauline J. Yao, Independent Scholar those who might seem to be affiliated with them but are not.  Art & Collection Group Ltd. 6F. No. 85, Section 1, Chungshan N. Road, While Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Taipei, Taiwan 104 Phone: (886)2.2560.2220 Shenzhen represent the most vital centres Fax: (886)2.2542.0631 for contemporary art in mainland China, Yang E-mail: [email protected] Wang offers an overview of the art scene in    Jenny Liu Xi’an, China’s ancient capital city, and the new Alex Kao   Joyce Lin opportunities for contemporary art that are   Perry Hsu establishing themselves as the city expands. Betty Hsieh  Chi Wei Colour Printing Ltd. We conclude with three texts about alternatives.   http://yishu-online.com Julian Scarff responds to a critique of art   Design Format institutions by Zhou Yan (not the same Zhou Yan  1683 - 3082 who is represented in this current issue) that Yishu is published bi-monthly in Taipei, Taiwan, and edited was published in Yishu 49 and examines some in Vancouver, Canada. The publishing dates are January, March, May, July, September, and November. All subscription, options that exist for artists in taking a critical advertising, and submission inquiries may be sent to: stance within Chinese institutions. Edward Yishu Editorial Office Sanderson speaks with Zhang Wei and Hu Fang 200–1311 Howe Street Vancouver, BC, Canada about discovering ways of working within a V6Z 2P3 private gallery that fosters an experience of art Phone: 1.604.649.8187 Fax: 1.604.591.6392 that is more than mere consumerism, and Joni E-mail: offi[email protected] Low discusses Vancouver publisher Ho Tam’s   88BOOKS series in the context of artists' books 1 year (6 issues): $84 USD (includes airmail postage) both within China and abroad. 2 years (12 issues): $158 USD (includes airmail postage) 1 Year PDF Download (6 issues): $49.95 USD (http://yishu-online.com)

   Leap Creative Group   Raymond Mah Keith Wallace   Gavin Chow  Philip Wong

No part of this journal may be reprinted without the written permission from the publisher. The views expressed in Yishu are not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 200251

2 4 (Larisa Broyde) 6 (Chunyee Li)

15 (Philip Tinari) (Judy Andrews) (Britta Erickson) (Melissa Chiu) 34 (Sebastian Lopez) (Claire Hsu) (John Clark) 41 (Pauline J. Yao) (Martina Köppel-Yang) 48 Lynne Cooke Okwui Enwezor 61 Katie Hill Charles Merewether Apinan Poshyananda

70 83 856 : (886) 2.2560.2220 (886) 2.2542.0631 [email protected]

Yishu Ofﬁce 92 200-1311 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2P3, Canada : (1) 604.649.8187 (1) 604.591.6392 : ofﬁ[email protected]

103 Leap Creative Group, Vancouver 108

http://yishu-online.com Design Format

Contributors

Voon Pow Bartlett, Ph.D., is an artist, curator, Gilles Guillot is an independent researcher and lecturer, and writer. She was born in Beijing and art producer based in Lyon, France. He received a educated internationally. Her focus is on exploring Ph.D. in Chinese and Transcultural Studies from the an expanded field in the study of the complex causal University of Lyon (Jean Moulin) and is a member framework influencing the global discourses on of the Institute of Transtextual and Transcultural fine art. She has taught cultural studies and fine Studies (IETT). From 1995 to 2005, he worked in art practice at the B.A. and M.A. levels, at various East Asia (Taiwan, Shanghai, Japan) as a manager universities in London. She studied at the School of of the cultural centres belonging to the cultural Oriental and African Studies, University of London; network of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Chelsea College of Art and Design; and Central His current research interests include globalization, Saint Martins College of Art and Design; in London, identities, Asian contemporary art, and the cultural United Kingdom. She now works at Tate Research development of Asian cities. Centre: Asia Pacific, in London. Le Guo was born in China in 1964. He received an Mathieu Borysevicz is an artist, filmmaker, writer, M.A. in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College and curator, and is former director of the Shanghai of Art and Design, United Kingdom, and a B.A. in Gallery of Art at Three on the Bund. Since 1994, Fine Art from North West Normal University, China. Borysevicz has written widely on contemporary He has lived and worked in London since 1990. His Chinese culture, focusing on the intersections of work explores the dichotomous worlds of conflict social transformation and artistic production. He and balance, proposing solutions that generate is Artforum’s former editor in Shanghai, and his fluidity within the fragmented mind. writings have appeared in Art in America, Tema Celeste, Art Review, Art Asia Pacific, Modern Painters, Joni Low is a freelance writer and independent and Yishu. Several of his essays are featured in curator currently working at the Vancouver Art Chinese Art at the End of the Millennium, and he Gallery. Her writing has appeared in exhibition has published essays in many exhibition catalogues. catalogues and in publications such as Canadian Borysevicz’s latest book project, Learning from Art, C Magazine, Fillip, Ricepaper, and Yishu. She is Hangzhou, a semiotic analysis of urbanization interested in the relationships between visual art and in Hangzhou, was chosen by the New York Times language and art that exist outside the context of as one of the “Best Architectural Books of 2009” conventional exhibition spaces—art that continues and given the prestigious DAM (Deutsches to destabilize and create new understandings of the Architekturmuseum) Book Commendation in contemporary experience. Frankfurt. Borysevicz’s artworks as well as his films have been exhibited and broadcast widely. Edward Sanderson is an art critic and editor based in Beijing. His writing focuses on contemporary art Orianna Cacchione is a Ph.D. student in art in China, with a particular interest in alternative history, theory, and criticism at the University artistic practices. He is a staff writer for international of California, San Diego. As a visiting scholar at reviews website ArtSlant.com, and has written for the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, she is Flash Art, LEAP, and other print and online media. currently based in Beijing. She received her master’s He is also currently writing and editing a monograph degree in contemporary art theory at Goldsmiths, on Chinese artist Cang Xin. University of London in 2008. Her current research focuses on how transnational art practices shape Julian Scarff is a freelance writer with a B.A. in critical discourses about the internationalization Fine Arts and Cultural Studies and L.L.B honours of the contemporary art world. She is interested degrees in Asian and International law from the in the movement, circulation, and translation of University of Melbourne, Australia. He has also contemporary art works and discourses. completed a L.L.M. in Regulatory Governance at

4 Vol. 11 No. 6 Monash University, Australia. In 1997, he undertook Frank Vigneron received a Ph.D. in Chinese art an exchange scholarship at Peking University, Beijing history from the Paris VII University and a Doctorate and returned after graduation to live and work in of Fine Arts from the Royal Melbourne Institute Beijing for a further four years. Julian has organized of Technology. He is now teaching in the Fine Arts contemporary art and film exhibitions in China and Department of the Chinese University of Hong Australia and has written on contemporary art for Kong. His publications include Pour et Contre Art Asia Pacific, Asian Art News, and the Far Eastern l.Académie: Les traités de pratique picturale en Europe Economic Review. aux 17e et 18e siècles (2010), Académiciens et Lettrés: Analyse comparative de la théorie picturale du 18e Carrie Scott is collaborating with SHOWstudio as siècle en Chine et en Europe (2010), and I Like Hong Director of the SHOWstudio Shop. Before starting Kong . . . Art and Deterritorialization (2010). her own company, CS&P Art Advisory, in 2009, Scott was Director of Nicole Klagsburn Gallery, New York, Yang Wang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department where she worked closely with artists such as Beth of History of Art at the Ohio State University, Campbell, Matthew Day Jackson, Rashid Johnson, specializing in modern and contemporary Chinese Mika Rottenberg, Adam McEwen, and Storm Tharp. art and visual culture. She is writing her dissertation Prior to that, Scott was curator of the Hedreen on regional ink painting movements in the early Gallery at Seattle University’s Lee Center, Director of years of the People’s Republic of China, for which the James Harris Gallery, and a freelance curator. In she just completed a year of research in Xi’an as a addition to her curatorial practice, Scott is also an Fulbright researcher. arts writer and has an M.A. in art history, with a focus on sound art. Zhou Yan is an art critic, independent curator, writer, and translator based in Toronto. She received a B.A Sheng Qi is a Beijing-based artist known for an act in Chinese language and literature in Northwest of defiance he carried out following the events in University, Xi’an, China and an M.A in museum Tiananmen Square in June 1989: cutting off the little studies from the University of Toronto. Currently she finger of his left hand. Since then, he has incorporated is curating a tou ring exhibition, Tense Gestures: New the image and concept of self-mutilation into Chinese Female Art in the Past Decade, which will his work, which includes photography, painting, be shown in T oronto in 2014. Her current research sculpture, and performance art. His recent work interests focus on contemporary Chinese art with continues in the vein of subtle but firm subversion an emphasis on feminism and female art, landscape and quiet political protest. Sheng Qi graduated from painting, and land art, Chinese art exhibition history the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, in North America, and poetry and art. She is a London, and returned to Beijing in 1998. Since prolific writer on art and poetry for some Chinese returning, he has been selected to participate in the online media such as douban and Heilan, and is a Nippon International Performance Festival (1999) contributing writer for Land Magazine. A selected and an exhibition entitled Between Past and Future translations of Rainer Maria Rilke Letters on Cezanne (2004) at the International Center of Photography, and the essay “The Passage of Commemoration: New York, where his photographic work was selected Betty Goodwin’s Art Life” will be published in the for the cover of the exhibition catalogue. second issue of Land Magazine in October 2012; a series of articles focusing on land art and earth works Haili Sun was born in 1960 in China and graduated art will also be published in the same magazine at the from the Fine Arts College of South-West China end of this year. University, Chongqing. He also obtained a master’s degree from the Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London. He is now based in the United Kingdom.

Vol. 11 No. 6 5 Zhou Yan Displaced Cultural Landscape and Manufactured Landscapes: The Three Gorges Project in Art

oying with odds and ends may be regarded as . . . providing emotional outlets. They are "displacement" T or substitute activities, common enough in human life. E. A. Armstrong, Bird Display and Behaviour 1

Displacement Sometimes her eyes lidded in afternoon sun the skin of her hands butterﬂy-wing-thin paper watermarked by streaming clouds she opens and closes the conjoined

red paper-cut ﬁsh as if each half were the slowly clasping and unclasping wing of a perched butterﬂy the twin carp having turned gills to lungs able to sip

and ride air’s currents as they did water’s this kissing couple displaced from their river home as she from hers on her perch now dream-catching the river’s whisper in

rapids of trafﬁc far below the white concrete raft of their balcony so some nights one with the undammed ﬂow from the apartment’s ductwork her daughter whispers

her from weeping no cause for tears with child and grandchild here your cane chair your own grandmother’s Yixing teapot your husband’s photograph yet none of them the same all

ghost-thin to her eyes wanting the play of water lights in the old riverside house their bodies drowned with it with unripe peaches in the orchard unpicked beans with

the river itself its feathery voice lost under the reservoir’s mountain of water she remembers how the end crept up through the last days no sawtooth waves

ripping the shoreline no dragon bellowing only a slow theft of land each step the ﬂood took no higher than the width of a spider leg you could see nothing

6 Vol. 11 No. 6 happening but whenever you turned around something gone the garden narrowed by one row the small green butterﬂy barred from its pumpkin blossom by a pane

of sky that separated what was alive from what had lived and she wondering then and now how could she live apart from the air that had danced with and married

her breath her unrivered heart withered thin as the red paper-cut fish whose wings she now flapped who could take flight no more than she twice bereaved a riverbank’s widow.2

John Reibetanz’s poem “Displacement” visually pictures “a riverbank’s widow” bereaved of her home and of a life entwined with the Yangtze River because of the Three Gorges project. Reibetanz explained the theme of the poem as follows:

The poem’s title [and its epigraph] puns on “displacement,” which is a psychological term referring to a surrogate activity, at the same time as it refers to the physical experience of removal. I wanted to stress in the poem that the two versions of displacement are related to one another, and that when a person leaves a place, part of that person stays behind.3

Edward Burtynsky, Dam #2, Reibetanz has never been to the Yangtze River. Many people who live in Three Gorges Dam Project, Yangtze River, 2002, colour China or outside of China have never seen the Yangtze River. However, many photograph. © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy of people know the river through innumerable poems, images, and stories. In Nicholas Metivier, Toronto/ Sundaram Tagore, Hong Kong. the last two decades, the Yangtze River, a symbol representing ﬁve thousand years of Chinese culture, has attracted the world’s concern because of the Three Gorges Dam—the largest hydro-work on earth—and the consequent displacement of millions of people who have lived there for generations.

The great rivers of China such as the Yangtze River and the Yellow River have witnessed the rise of Chinese civilization, but they have also threatened that civilization from the beginning. Each dynasty and almost every emperor fought with ﬂood control. For the Chinese, reining in the rivers and turning them into the use of people has been a dream never eclipsed in history. In 1994, harnessing the Yangtze River and turning it into an electricity generator for a modern industrialized China came into reality. However, modernity and nationalism are two war machines4 that have kidnapped the Chinese since the 1840 Opium War, and, together, they actualized the dream of China to become a strong, prosperous, and modern country but also deformed this

Vol. 11 No. 6 7 dream cruelly with the damage they have brought to people and nature. The Three Gorges Dam is the evidence and victim of this double-headed dream, which is both productive and destructive.

Zhuang Hui, Longitude 109.88° E and Latitude 31.09° N (location map), photograph, 1995–2008. Courtesy of the artist.

Zhuang Hui, Longitude 109.88° E and Latitude 31.09° N, 1995– 2008, photograph. Courtesy of the artist.

Since the declaration of the Three Gorges Dam project, artists over the world travelled to the site to witness something of this historical moment and the loss of a richly embedded cultural landscape. Since the 1990s, Wu Hung, the renowned art historian, art critic, and curator of contemporary Chinese art, has done extensive research on Three Gorges Dam-related art. In 2010, he organized the exhibition Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art, at the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago,5 and through his research and the exhibition, he introduced Chinese artists who have made work about the Three Gorges Dam project. For example, Yun-Fei Ji used classical Chinese painting forms and skills in his various series addressing Three Gorges Dam migration,6 picturing traumatic ruined souls—alive and dead—in a traditional landscape that is now deformed. Zhuang Hui’s site-speciﬁc land work Longitude 109.88° E and Latitude 31.09° N designated the loss that the artist felt he had to memorialize with the Three Gorges. He dug holes at historical landmark spots of the Three Gorges Dam in 1994 and took photos of these holes; thirteen years later he presented these photos after all these spots had been submerged in the water. These works are typical of many Chinese artists who responded to the project with a focus on the loss and pain suffered by individuals, and they bear witness to a disappeared lifestyle. Their landscape art could be referred to as “traumatic landscape" as described by Wu Hung.7 Liu Xiaodong captured “the psychic landscape of the new China”8 in his three series of paintings about the Three Gorges Dam project. He aimed to portray the everyday lives of common people.

Liu Xiaodong, Great Migration at the Three Gorges, 2003, oil on canvas, 200 x 800 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

In the process of modernization, the countryside is hollowed out when in most villages and towns young people leave for developed regions of the country to perform work like what Chinese called yi min (ant-like people)

8 Vol. 11 No. 6 in the supply chain of the global economy. This displacement from the homeland is not only about the loss of a past, but also about the future, an unclear future. And the impact of the Three Gorges Dam project is not only about environment and culture, but also about how the former residents of the area will live through the present time and where they will go. What embittered the hearts of Chinese people is the impact of the Three Gorges project on the “silent majority.”9 The Chinese people as a silent body accepted their tragic fate without rebellion. Up the Yangtze10 and Still Life11 are two films that tell stories of the lives of common people during construction of the Three Gorges Dam and their eventual relocation. According to the films, these displaced people wept for their fate but accepted it because that would benefit a strong and prosperous country. This mentality is deeply rooted in Chinese Confucian culture, one that esteems the family and holds it to be more important than the individual, while holding the nation to be the most important of all. Only when one sacrifices for the betterment of the country, the family, and others in general, can the achievement of one’s own highest ideal value be attained.

Edward Burtynsky, Feng Ji In Written on the Wall at West Forest Temple (1084), Chinese poet Su #3, #4, Three Gorges Dam Project, Yangtze River, 2002, Shi wrote: “From the side, a whole range; from the end, a single peak;/ colour photograph. © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy of Far, near, high, low, no two parts alike./Why can’t I tell the true shape of Nicholas Metivier, Toronto / 12 Sundaram Tagore, Hong Kong. Lu-shan?/Because I myself am in the mountain.” Edward Burtynsky’s Three Gorges Dam series and his other photos of industrialized China show a China that Chinese live in, but they are too emotionally stricken and pessimistically immersed in it to see or present it in the way that he does. In his “manufactured landscapes”13 series, which includes photographs and a documentary ﬁlm,14 Burtynsky presents the massive scale of the Three Gorges Reservoir and the devastation of a homeland demolished by people with their own hands along the Yangtze River. His panoramic, seemingly mechanical, and almost lifeless industrialized landscapes capture the soul of technological society and its effects on nature and human life, bringing his audience to encounter with awe a landscape that has been, nevertheless, transformed by human activity. Behind Burtynsky’s manufactured landscapes, there is a rich artistic tradition of nineteenth-century North America landscape art, abstract art, and earthwork art, and the way that Burtynsky perceived Three Gorges Dam is different from Chinese artists’ culture-and-history burdened perspective.

Vol. 11 No. 6 9 Manufactured Landscapes Burtynsky was born in 1955, in St. Catharines, Ontario, a city nicknamed “The Garden City” for its parks and trails. In Burtynsky’s childhood, the Welland Canal stirred his imagination about the past glamour of the marine commerce era and when General Motors of Canada was the major industry in the city. Industrialization and the preservation of nature form the background of Burtynsky’s vision of landscape; it is grounded in the co-existence of the two in North America.

John Brinckerhoff Jackson said that landscape is not a natural feature of the environment but a synthetic space, a man-made system superimposed on the face of the land, functioning and evolving not according to natural laws but to serve a community. He asserts Mircea Eliad’s expression that landscape “represents man taking upon himself the role of time,” 15 which means that nature is not only shaped and changed by the passing of time, but also by civilization. Burtynsky is clearly aware of this concept. He said in an interview:

What I ﬁnd interesting is that the idea of nature was only recently introduced in the human vocabulary. The early Romantics came up with it because they recognized the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It was a reaction to industry. They recognized the dehumanizing effect of industry on the landscape and I think the word “nature” was derived because it was something outside of industry.16

He has remarked that the consistent aspect of his work is that he has always sought out “speciﬁc landscapes which demonstrate the largest expression of the incursion of industry on the land,”17 thus his designation of the landscape captured in his camera is “manufactured landscapes.”

This concept is contrary to the Chinese concept of landscape. In Chinese culture, when people talk about landscape, it usually means mountains and rivers and sometimes also includes countryside scenes. Landscape art originated around the Jin dynasty (265–420), when a sovereign Confucian ideology faced its ﬁrst decline and converged with Daoism and early Chinese Buddhism. It ﬂourished in painting, poetry, and music at the time, and the tradition has continued and evolved over the past 1,700 years. Landscape is the spiritual dwelling place of the Chinese people, where they enjoy imagination and freedom, seclusion and contemplation. Landscape offers great happiness that helps one to create balance between a spiritual life and everyday life. This concept and its manifestation in classical Chinese landscape art has greatly shaped the Western imagination about the real Chinese landscape. Burtynsky’s works from China, however, resist the ideology of Chinese landscape art.

Burtynsky’s distinctive artistic language, in his conveyance of the sublime, contributes to the shocking grandness of his photographic works. The sites in his images have a sort of grandness of scale, but they also have an appearance of the residual, as found at mines, quarries, and ship-breaking workplaces. These sites have been transformed by man’s exploitation of

10 Vol. 11 No. 6 nature, yet in these vestiges of nature that often seem to represent chaos, the geographical texture or the forms of objects has a beauty of natural order. The conﬂict between the chaos and the beauty evoke a sense of shock.

While the sublime as an aesthetic concept is centuries old, its re-emergence in the eighteenth century reﬂects a disenchantment with the natural world and the encounter with a burgeoning man-made industrialized world. Edmund Burke described the sublime as the passion caused by the great and sublime in nature. The feeling of the sublime at its most powerful engenders astonishment accompanied by some degree of horror, but it also produces an effect of admiration, reverence, and respect at a level that is inferior.18 Caspar David Friedrich’s landscape paintings best represent Burke’s deﬁnition of the sublime. Some early Canadian landscape artists such as Lawren Harris attempted to seek out a Canadian sublime; they found that the grandeur of Canada’s northern landscape inspired people to search for the true soul of the “new” land and hence infuse a feeling of sublime into people’s spirit.19 Modern art movements such as abstract expressionism and the land art/earthworks art of the 1950s–70s also explored new interpretations of the sublime.20

Burtynsky’s works evoke the sublime in a contemporary context. He said that if he had been born one hundred years ago, he would search for the sublime in nature.21 However, in our modern time he wants to show what is relevant to the world he lives in, “how we have changed the landscape in signiﬁcant ways in the pursuit of progress.”22 In comparing three mountain images by Caspar David Friedrich, Richard Long, and Burtynsky, we can see an ongoing engagement with the sublime.

Left: Caspar David Friedrich, All three artworks have a remote towering peak that is framed by two pier Hochgebirge, 1824, oil on canvas, 132 x 167 cm. mountains closer to the foreground. Physically approaching the peak seems destroyed in 1945. impossible. The central peaks may suggest some symbolic meaning, such Middle: Richard Long, A Line in the Himalayas, 1975, as a formidable kingdom, an otherworld, a spiritual dwelling, a challenge, black-and-white photograph, 86 x 128.4 cm. © The artist. or a denial to mortal endeavour. In Friedrich’s paintings, that position Courtesy of Tate Britain. Right: Edward Burtynsky, is sometimes occupied by a church, such as in Cross and Cathedral in Carrara Marble Quarries #20, 1993, colour photograph. © the Mountains (1812). In Long’s photograph, it seems as though the line Edward Burtynsky, courtesy of Nicholas Metivier, Toronto / could cross over the snow and lead to the peak, but the snow at the foot Sundaram Tagore, Hong Kong. of the peak blocks the way. Burtynsky’s Carrara marble photo can be taken as his homage to the Italian Renaissance, in particular, his reverence for Michelangelo,23 in the sense that the image both refers to a landscape depicted in the background in many Renaissance paintings and the place where marble was extracted for the sculptures of Renaissance artists.

Vol. 11 No. 6 11 These works all share a similar visual composition, balanced at the front of image with the perspective extending deeply to the back of the image. This perspective evokes the feeling of an unreachable goal—it might be the known or the unknown—and it is within this ambiguity that the feeling of the sublime emerges.

Burtynsky’s work Dam #6 in the Three Gorges Dam Project also employs this Edward Burtynsky, Dam #6, Three Gorges Dam Project, kind of composition, but it is a cropped version. The far end central focus Yangtze River, 2002, colour photograph. © Edward is now forward and dwarfed, visually mingling with objects on either side Burtynsky, courtesy of Nicholas Metivier, Toronto / of it. The open space between the two opposite sides extends in parallel to Sundaram Tagore, Hong Kong. them into the distance, thus altering of the point of focus from that of the previous Western artists’, and suggesting there is no longer a pursuit of a spiritual uplift in the image. This massive scene of chaos with all its details has already fragmented the feeling of the sublime and what remains is lifeless industrial residue.

I mentioned earlier Burtynsky’s use of scale. He likes to capture the greatest expanse of landscape, and he likes to explore how people actually exist within it. He said: “We need to put human perspective into these images, and our presence is dwarfed by the space we’ve created. It’s an interesting metaphor for how technology seems larger than life, larger than our lives.” Classical Chinese landscape painting employs a similar strategy in contrasting the human presence within the landscape. The visual effect between Burtynsky and Chinese painting in terms of comparison of human-scale with that of the environment is similar; however, the expression of it is completely different. In a Song dynasty (960–1279 AD) painting Travelers Among Mountains and Scenery, the miniscule ﬁgures

12 Vol. 11 No. 6 travelling with mules suggest that man is but a traveller in the world, and the greatness of the world will not be transformed by his traces. In Burtynsky’s image, the humans are small and the industrial landscape massive. There is, however, a paradox in that these small ﬁgures have done so much to transform the immensity of the landscape.

Edward Burtynsky, Dam #7, Three Gorges Dam Project, Yangtze River, 2002, colour photograph. © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy of Nicholas Metivier, Toronto/ Sundaram Tagore, Hong Kong.

Fan K'uan (active tenth–early It is unlikely that Burtynsky’s “manufactured eleventh century), Travelers Among the Mountains and landscapes” could have been created by a Chinese Streams, hanging scroll, ink and colour on silk, 206.3 x artist. His art historical background, his familiarity 103.3 cm. Collection of The National Palace Museum, with industrialized society, and his global vision Taipei. make his images unique to a Chinese audience. His photography explores the ruins of our society and the ruins within the landscape.25 While Chinese artists are more concerned with the loss and pain of individuals and the decline of a cherished cultural tradition within a displaced landscape, the seemingly cold, concrete industrialized images of Burtynsky evoke a powerful vision of what is happening in the world. From the mutilated and psychologically displaced landscape there comes a call to preserve the co-existence of nature and human life, for thinking of an earth that can ache and cry, an immanence that Gilles Deleuze describes as a life.26

Felix Guattari suggests that in the domain of social ecology, individuals may feel obliged to make decisions on common objectives and act like “little soldiers,” in other words, like good activists. He recommended that people act and not rely on institutionalized reformation, but, rather, on each individual action.27 I believe we must take such a position, no matter who we are or where we are. I will use Edward Burtynsky’s statement from his China catalogue as the epilogue of this essay—it represents the feeling, thinking, and sense of hope that I have wrestled with throughout it:

Vol. 11 No. 6 13 I no longer see my world as delineated by countries, with borders, or languages, but as 6.5 billion humans living off a precariously balanced, ﬁnite planet.28

Notes 1 Edward Allworthy Armstrong, Bird Display and Behaviour: An Introduction to the Study of Bird Psychology (New York: Dover Publications, 1965), 36. 2 John Reibetanz, "Displacement," Vallum, no. 1 (2010), 58–59. In 2011, the poet also published a poetry book, Laments of the Gorges, which is exclusively about the theme of Three Gorges Dam project. 3 John Reibetanz wrote this explanation of the poem in an e-mail message to the author on October 21, 2009. 4 “War machines” is a term coined by Gilles Deleuze. Mark Bonta and John Protevi have explained the term as “the mechanic assemblage that effectuates the abstract machine of creativity in the world by forming a smooth space which maintains social formations in a far-from-equilibrium or ‘intensive crisis’ condition. They further clarified that “war machine” is the counterforce to the State’s stratification machine and that creativity is the key element of “war machine.” They also pointed out that in contemporary time, the war machine “is completely taken up by its own process of productive material creativity, both social and technological,” and when the war machine failed to be productive and turned negative, it becomes a State apparatus capable only of destruction. I use the term here to signify the power of modernity in creating a strong nation and its massive destructive ability in manipulating human life and nature when it combines with nationalism. See Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: Athlone Press, 1998), and Mark Bonta, Deleuze and Geophilosophy: A Guide and Glossary (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 165. 5 Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, October 2, 2008, to January 25, 2009. 6 Yun-Fei Ji’s Three Gorge Dam-related art work is Migrants of the Three Gorges Dam (2009) created for the Museum of Modern Art, New York. 7 Wu Hung, Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art (Chicago: the University of Chicago Press, 2008), 18, 103. 8 Jeff Kelley used the phrase “psychic landscape” in the exhibition The Three Gorges Project: Paintings by Liu Xiao Dong, which he curated in 2006. His curatorial review of the exhibition Art as Complaint” can be found at Liu Xiaodong’s Web site, http://www.xiaodongstudio.com/. 9 “The Silent Majority" is an essay written by Chinese writer Wang Xiaobo (1952–1997) in 1997. In the essay, he compared the child in Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum with the spiritually dwarfed Chinese people, to criticize the enslaving tradition in Chinese culture. An English translation of the essay can be found at http://media.paperrepublic.org/files/09/04/The_Silent_Majority_Wang_Xiaobo.pdf/. 10 Up the Yangtze, directed by Yung Chang, Eye Steel Film & National Film Board of Canada, 2008. 11 Still Life (sanxia haoren), directed by Zhang Ke Jia, Xstream Pictures & Shanghai Film Studios, 2006. 12 Shih Su, Tung-P'o: Selections from a Sung Dynasty Poet, trans. Watson Burton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 101. 13 Lori Pauli, Manufactured Landscapes: The Photographs of Edward Burtynsky (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). 14 Manufactured Landscapes is also an awarding-winning documentary film directed by Jennifer Baichwal. The film records Burtynsky’s travels in China photographing the ongoing industrial revolution there and its impact on the country. See http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/Sections/ The_Film/Manufactured_Landscapes.html/. 15 John Brinckerhoff Jackson, Landscape in Sight: Looking at America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 305. Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. 16 Edward Burtynsky, "Interview by Jeremy Finkelstein, Behind the Lens," (2007), http://www. worldchanging.com/archives/006356.html/. 17 Ibid. 18 Edmund Burke, “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful,” in Land and Environmental Art (London: Phaidon Press, 1998), 193. 19 Lawren Harris, The Story of the Group of Seven (Toronto: Rous & Mann Press, 1964). 20 Barnett Newman wrote about the abstract expressionist artists that “the present painter is concerned with the penetration into the world mystery, and his imagination is attempting to dig into the metaphysical secrets, therefore to that extent his art is concerned with the sublime.” Newman had a great influence on abstract expressionism, minimalism art, and color field painting. See Barnett Newman, “The Plasmic Image (1943–1945),” Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 25–26. 21 Lori Pauli, Manufactured Landscapes: The Photographs of Edward Burtynsky (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 47. 22 Ibid., 47. 23 Ibid., 24. Also at Edward Burtynsky, Quarries: The Quarry Photographs of Edward Burtynsky (Göttingen: Steidl, 2007), 21. 24 Ibid., 53. 25 Ibid., 48. 26 Gilles Deleuze, Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life (New York: Zone Books, 2001). 27 Félix Guattari, The Three Ecologies (New Brunswick, N.J.: Athlone Press, 2000), 51, 59. 28 Edward Burtynsky, China: The Photographs of Edward Burtynsky (Göttingen: Steidl, 2005), 7.

14 Vol. 11 No. 6 Frank Vigneron “Nice Painting” et al.—Different Kinds of Painting and Related Practices in Hong Kong

Tim Li, All Together, Unfolding Painting and Other Forms of Art the Possible VIII—Dance with Lions, April 2009, public As much as one can ﬁnd important the kind of art that has recently been performance in front of the HSBC headquarters in Central called “community-oriented,” often involving performances and group District, Hong Kong. Courtesy of the artist. participation, it does not mean that the only way to address societal issues is to turn to these practices. Such artistic practices include the works of artists like Tim Li, who, in 2009, organized a series of community-based works involving groups of people performing a sort of “dragon dance” with the folding beds that were once used to measure available living space in government housing units in Hong Kong. As successful as it may be—and Tim Li made it a really festive event whose meaning was made even more explicit by the participation of large groups of people—it was not necessarily more successful than a more “traditional” form of art like painting. If a community-oriented art practice was the right choice for what Tim Li wanted to convey, a painting could be just as successful in translating ideas that could also be extremely evocative of our relationship with the past. These two forms of art do not function in the same way— one creates participatory circumstances for the viewer while the other’s requirements are more passive and reﬂective. They certainly cannot achieve either the same reactions or the same effects, but they can both be seen as trying to awaken in the viewers or participants ideas that might otherwise lay dormant.

The project Celia Ko undertook during her residency at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, titled That Moment Now (2008), was a series of paintings

Vol. 11 No. 6 15 Celia Ko, Grandma at that Moment, Now, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 183 x 228.6 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

Celia Ko, Grandpa at that Moment, Now, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 183 x 228.6 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

exploring private and collective memories that, through the observation of the artist's past and family, allowed viewers to reminisce about their own past and family. In the catalogue for this exhibition, Celia Ko provides a recollection of her grandparents and their lives as well as comments on the motivation for each artwork “By cropping my grandparents’ images in a contemporary style, I try to ‘cast a modern gaze’ on their formal photo- portrait to free them from their dated hairstyle and attire. I imagine how I can perhaps bring back to life a much younger couple, reconnecting myself to them in the moment long gone.”1 Of the paintings depicting lacquer objects that belonged to her family, she wrote: “I associate lacquer objects with my grandmother’s narrative world of stories I know intimately that happened a long time ago. The darkness of their surface, both objects and paintings, embodied my impression of the past that lived vividly in my mind.” The fact that the two most important images in the Lingnan

16 Vol. 11 No. 6 Celia Ko, Narrative I, 2008, acrylic on paper, 122 x 128 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

Celia Ko, Narrative III, 2008, acrylic on paper, 122 x 152.4 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

University show were made with acrylic paint also raised the question of what constitutes a “traditional” form of art, an issue I have raised in the context of Chinese painting in a previous article.2

“Nice Painting” Celia Ko defends the idea that independent artists do not have to turn inward to ﬁnd their own voice. Although every expression by each artist when faced with his or her own art practice is necessarily personal, it is not entirely private, while, on the other hand, something made in the mode of relational aesthetics, like the works of Tim Li, is not necessarily something personal although it is still art. Many artists making images in Hong Kong in recent years—let us say, starting around 2005—have taken as their subject matter certain experiences that no one else other than the artist has experienced. Some commentators have been quite critical of this kind of painting to the point of rejecting painting not because of any inherent weaknesses, but simply because it is painting and does not ﬁt into the idea of the contemporary such as, for example, new media artwork does. On the Kunsthalle Kowloon Web site (now renamed Sammlung Saamlung), Robin

Vol. 11 No. 6 17 Peckham and Venus Lau refer to what they have termed “nice painting,” “a loose movement in mild-mannered and polite oil painting and drawing.”3 In a text originally posted on their Web site, Peckham and Lau rewrote in the form of an article an interview they made with Lee Kit on the subject of certain painting practices in Hong Kong. In his statement about Nice Painting, Lee Kit refuses to make any value judgment and deﬁnes it as “neither good nor bad”:

There is a turn now from a local politics toward a local aesthetics. The work of the majority of young Hong Kong artists tends to emphasize this so-called “local aesthetics,” involving the styles of the chacanting, the jiulou restaurant style, the old public buses, and childhood games. The artists of “nice painting” are the classical example of this category. In recent years this particular circle of artists has expanded from around a dozen artists to a more mainstream phenomenon. . . . The group of young artists that has appeared in recent years has observed the changes that have occurred within the Hong Kong art circle and know how to prepare themselves for success. Their visual language is relatively narrow. The concepts of their work should be able to go far, but in reality they all stay relatively close, lacking sufﬁcient dynamism. . . .

Of course their works are not merely good-looking. This isn’t a problem for individual artists, but, rather, one of their environments as a whole. The idea of “nice painting” touches upon the old refrain about Hong Kong art: that because spaces here are small, works produced can only be personal or narrow-minded. This kind of thinking inﬂuences the artists, causing them to think that, as Hong Kong residents, they have no way to resolve such aspects of their physical conditions. It’s just like saying that because spaces in Beijing are big and powerful, and because political and social pressures are enormous, works produced there can only be grandiose. “Nice painting” as a class is neither good nor bad—it is a phenomenon, or a condition. I look forward to seeing this kind of work bring forth from considerations of form within the face of the painting content on another level.4

Since the research Peckham and Lau are doing on this trend is still ongoing as I write these lines, I can only guess, with Lee Kit’s comment, which painters they have chosen to put into this category. Thanks to a recent critique of an exhibition by Choi Yuk Kuen by Peckham, who refers to her work as belonging to the “nice painting” movement,5 it is obvious that another artist, Elise Lai Yuen Shan, who I will discuss later and who was her classmate at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, falls under this category because of similar strategies in her choice of subject matter—what Lee

18 Vol. 11 No. 6 Kit calls “local aesthetics”—and the insertion into her painting of highly personal experience.

With Bouie Choi Yuk Kuen the personal becomes the subject matter and the material of her work. Having no fear that an understanding of her work might remain obscure for the viewer who is confronted with riddles. Bouie Choi Yuk Kuen presents in her canvases a multitude of insects and objects, all of them accompanied by other visual elements whose meaning remains opaque and painted with a subtlety of touch that seems to hover between scientific drawing and fine Chinese brush painting. One of the first things she mentions when asked to speak about her art is how she could never manage what she calls “heavy painting,” referring to the difficulties inherent in the proper use of oil or acrylic paint (one not familiar with these techniques would likely not understand how long and complicated a process it is to apply many layers of thin paint to obtain a properly modulated form). One of the reasons an early series of Bouie Choi Yuk Kuen’s paintings consisted of tiny canvases—each representing a solitary object like a shoe, a paint bucket, a book, etc.—was precisely that she did not like the thick impasto and the multi-layered demands of these mediums, a dislike that led her to explore how to use them in a watered-down, fluid state. It is these watery traces of paint that allow her to obtain the subtle effects in her current paintings.

Her dislike of “heavy painting” might also have something to do with her art education at the Fine Arts Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong where a large portion of the program is dedicated to the practice of traditional Chinese painting. She might have seen in the use of the “erasing medium” of acrylic, as the art historian Norman Bryson used to say of oil paint, something unlike her own character as an artist, but she also might have been conditioned by the frequent use of more ﬂuid media like Chinese ink and colour to which the delicate nature of her use of acrylic might be compared. But this can be said only of her own visual vocabulary and not of the surface of the canvas upon which her images are painted, which is sometimes so thick that it evokes metallic surfaces.

Very much like the animist cultures that were once dubbed “primitive,” Bouie Choi Yuk Kuen believes that there is a living spirit within all things that surround us, spirits that manifest themselves in either assisting or contradicting us. For example, the printed numbers next to many of these objects indicate, according to the artist, their power, but what kind of power she actually refers to, we will never know. And the ever-present insects, often central within her paintings, are related to the spirits of the deceased. Her first realization of the way spirits inhabit insects, something that comes almost naturally to the Chinese whose traditions relate insects to the spirits of the dead (especially during a period of mourning), happened when her own grandfather passed away. For the ancient Greeks, the soul was thought to come back in the form of a butterfly, but Bouie Choi Yuk Kuen could not bring herself to see sweetness in such absence and, concluding that there could not possibly be any butterfly involved, she was left with only a fly, an

Vol. 11 No. 6 19 20 Vol. 11 No. 6 Opposite page: Bouie Choi Yuk insect that for her came to represent the presence of a benevolent spirit. From Kuen, Removing Curse, 2011, acrylic and mixed media on that ﬁrst conclusion, she came to believe that other insects could be used canvas, 122 x 122 cm. Courtesy of the artist. as a conduit by the spirits of the departed, a step that manifests itself in her painting with the addition of painted numbers reminiscent of automobile license plates in Hong Kong, but, once again, the meaning of these numbers is not apparent and is only available to those asking the artist directly.

The largest painting from the Reversed Fortune series, titled Removing Curse, represents a veritable battleground. Circumscribed by a series of Chinese characters simply meaning “enclosure,” four battalions led by insects are ready to attack spiders in the centre of the canvas. The spiders, representing the bad luck she wants the paintings to reject, are trying to repel these attacks (to make sure there is no doubt about that, they are surrounded by the Chinese character for “repel”) and protect the Chinese character for “ﬁre” painted in an archaic calligraphic form. They are also accompanied by a series of antique Chinese tripods, objects usually associated with rituals in China but used here only because phonetically they can also mean “to stop” in Cantonese. The benevolent insects are accompanied by war planes for attacking, fans for providing fresh air, and bicycles for wandering around, all supported by chrysanthemums looking like the halos of the saints and Buddhas of yore.

Bouie Choi Yuk Kuen, About Bouie Choi Yuk Kuen is not shy about the Love, 2011, video and installation. Courtesy of the seeming absurdity of her explanations, artist. and she believes an artist has to be sincere about her or his own creative process, sincere to the point of appearing to be almost naïve. In one of the video works in a March 2011 exhibition, she is eating a chrysanthemum, an act that easily could be read as the artist desiring to absorb the essence of the flower. The video was initially shown alongside a kind of jewelry box one would expect to find in the bedroom of a young girl. In the drawer of the jewelry box was placed, proudly, the artist’s turd, not exactly what one would normally associate with the purity of the white flower. Salvador Dali once explained that a turd was the only thing produced by human beings that received the imprint of the human soul because of it being processed by the human body. Thinking about her work in that way, it makes more sense to see the turd as a product of the human soul, an embodied soul shaping the spirit of the flower into something that our human cultures have generally rejected as refuse (at least our non-agricultural cultures). There is no provocation in a second video either, where she indicates her desire for a good sex life by painting with cosmetics a mole on her chest; the Chinese, according to an interview I had with her at the time of the exhibition, believe that the presence of a real mole on the chest indicates a healthy libido.

As an art historian, I could not help relating her attitude of keeping the meaning of her work hermetic to a sort of anti-avant-garde philosophy—

Vol. 11 No. 6 21 not in the sense that she would be opposed to the European avant-garde of the period between the two World Wars (whose goal was to change everyone’s life by making a new kind of art), but in the sense that her own strategies are not aimed at an elusive “public” who one might assume represents everybody. Instead, these strategies are aimed at herself, a single person whose destiny might be changed by these simple acts of representing, albeit cryptically, the events of her own life. In this respect, the work is so intensely personal that at times it feels like the viewer has become a voyeur and is taking a peep at something that was not meant to be so public.

So how can we respond when confronted with such works? Is an explanation by the artist necessary? Not so, according to my conversation with the artist, who is completely open to any other personal interpretations that might be formulated by the viewer. Here, too, we have a narrative, the return of “allegory” according to Craig Owens (who saw in its reappearance in the art of the late 1970s the end of modernism), but one that possesses a particular quality since Bouie Choi Yuk Kuen’s allegories are exclusively personal and not related in any sense to the “universal.” It is an attitude similar to what we ﬁnd in the works of one of her classmates who I mentioned earlier, Elise Lai Yuen Shan.

As in the works of Bouie Choi Yuk kuen, the implied meaning (what would be called in French non-dit) in the book Elise Lai created on the occasion of her graduation show for an M.F.A. at the Chinese University of Hong Kong also stemmed from personal experience. Titled Some Leisure, Treasure and Pleasure (2010), this hand-bound book contains texts and photos the artist describes in the following way:

Most travelling guides in book stores are about entertainment or famous tourist spots. As a traveler, I have a desire to collect and make a travelling guide with some personally recommended places away from home from different peoples, we can see some relatively personal and intimate travelling recommendations in this book. This is a travelling guide of the collective memories of everyone I interviewed, the conversations between me and each of them were held in a usually comfortable and causal way like having a dinner, drinking coffee, and chatting in a private place. To hear, share, penetrate and substitute to their experiences in an interesting way to communicate, as if I was able to grasp a part of their memories as well. It is a kind of distant intimacy, reachable yet unreachable.

The same idea of “distant intimacy” also can be found in the series of framed images and texts whose authors were left anonymous, but the difference of tone in the language used in each set clearly shows that different individuals had written them. Whether it was the artist or the writers who made the images was not provided to visitors at the gallery, no doubt precisely to have the viewers imagine for themselves who may have produced them.

22 Vol. 11 No. 6 Top: Elise Lai Yuen Shan, By presenting the work in the form of Some Leisure, Treasure and Pleasure (pages 8 and 9), 2010, framed texts and referring to personal handbound book. Courtesy of the artist. experiences, it is reminiscent of the work Right: Elise Lai Yuen Shan, Some Leisure, Treasure and of Sophie Calle, an artist mentioned Pleasure, 2010, photographs and text. Courtesy of the artist. several times in the MFA thesis written by Elise Lai. This thesis also frequently references the philosophy of the “everyday” as developed by Michel de Certeau and Henri Lefebvre. Even though she approaches the idea of intimacy with a subtlety that might seem insipid to some viewers familiar with more trenchant forms of conceptual art, Elise Lai proved in her research that she took her artistic direction with full knowledge of what it implied; that is, that it could be seen as “cute” and even superficial. She thus chose to keep these texts and images at the level of a light-hearted game, but without the superficiality; they are reminiscent of what Italo Calvino once defined as “lightness”—that is, something located at the juncture between melancholia and sadness.

This lightness is also present in her painting. None of it addresses social or political issues, but, as with her other artworks, this is something she accepts and defends; here, too, there is no naiveté on her behalf when she paints. For the same exhibition she wanted to put forward her identity as a painter in a series of canvases representing what a traveler could see from an airplane window. I asked her why she chose painting in her attempt to communicate the notion of the everyday, something that is important to her, since painting is associated more generally with high art and does not necessarily possess the quality of “everydayness.” She responded, with a

Vol. 11 No. 6 23 Elise Lai Yuen Shan, left to right: Strange Steps, Flow Sweetly, Hang Heavy, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 70 cm each. Courtesy of the artist.

hint of impatience, that she was a painter and that the practice of painting represented her own form of everyday. Like Lee Kit, who chooses to merely note the existence of “nice painting,” I am not so critical of its development, especially in light of the intensely private narratives that inform these artworks, and it is their very opaqueness that I personally ﬁnd intriguing. In this respect, although there might appear to be some degree of superﬁciality in the works of some of these “nice painters,” a number of them manage— albeit sometimes just as an afterthought—to base their art practice within strong concepts obtained through well-disciplined academic research.

. . . and Its Counterpart While the “nice painters” have developed entirely private narratives, Celia Ko has chosen another path and makes portraits whose function is to delve into the personality of the model she is representing, leaving a reading of the work much more transparent. Her strategy relies less on private stories and focuses more on how she represents other people through her own particular gaze. One could argue, however, that it is not really possible to reveal something of a person through an image, and twentieth-century psychology emphasized the fact that what gets revealed in a painting has a lot more to do with the painter than with the sitter.

The portraits of Celia Ko’s grandparents were based on old family photographs and not from life sketches, a technique she prefers to employ when painting portraits of people she knows personally. Since she is interested in representing people, she could be seen as afﬁliated with artists who would not necessarily use the medium of paint to produce portraits, that being photography. The portraits made by the Hong Kong photographer So Hing-keung, who now works in mainland China, for example, could exemplify the more “objective” relationship with the human face many art lovers expect from such a medium. In large glossy photos, the aloofness conveyed in the faces of these peasants from the Chaoyang district in Beijing6 seems to emphasize the idea that one cannot understand the Other, that the artist can never really communicate the mind of the sitter in spite of all his or her efforts. On the other hand, when one views the works of Celia Ko, it is hard to avoid the feeling that communication might be possible after all, that there is in her faces an openness, a dramatic intensity that reminds me of the faces in ﬁlms by Ingmar Bergman or his Danish predecessor Carl Theodor Dreyer for whom the human face was the most startling, mysterious, and ultimately the most interesting subject of art. But, where Bergman offered a somber meditation on the ultimate

24 Vol. 11 No. 6 failure of art to truly translate reality, Celia Ko ignores such concerns, and her portraits are as much a reﬂection on the way images produce meaning, a manifestation of her love of past masters (especially the great painters of the seventeenth century, such as Velasquez), and a personal statement about her own friends and, ultimately, her own life.

So Hing Keung, Chaoyang, The large portraits of her young friends and the smaller paintings of other China, 1996, colour photograph. Courtesy of the such friends in her studio provides the opportunity for her to make both artist. ambitious images, ones destined for public spaces, as well as intimate ones, the sort of quick renderings that appear to have been made for herself. Where she differs the most from the “nice painters” and their opaque narratives is, however, in her large portraits such as the series of images of a young man in oil and pastel standing in front of what appears to be an abstract background, but what are in fact paintings made by Tony Ng Kwun Lu, with whom she shares a studio. There is even an allegory in which she represents Tony Ng painting one of his abstract paintings, which are so reminiscent of traditional forms of Chinese landscape, with a “muse” posing next to him complete with the drapery one would expect from such a character. While the relationship between artist and model makes clear reference to Gustave Courbet’s The Artist’s Studio (1855), the viewer might wonder why this draped ﬁgure is modeling for an artist painting a large

Vol. 11 No. 6 25 Celia Ko, Boy Landscape I, 2004, oil on linen, 122 x 183 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

Celia Ko, Boy Landscape II, 2004, pastel on paper, 82 x 118 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

Celia Ko, Boy Landscape III, 2004, oil on canvas, 122 x 183 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

26 Vol. 11 No. 6 Celia Ko, Artist & Muse (aka abstract canvas before realizing Chai & Tony), 2006, oil on canvas, 25.6 x 30 cm. Courtesy that it’s possible she is posing for of the artist. another artist who is positioned outside the picture frame. Although the reference to a painter of the past is made through this interesting mise-en-abyme, one has to look at another series to really understand Celia Ko’s fascination with the most ﬂamboyant forms of oil painting from Western art history.

Celia Ko, Vikki, Sam, Chris, 2010, oil on linen, 122 x 183. Courtesy of the artist.

When I first saw a triple portrait titled Vikki, Sam, Chris (2010) standing on an easel in the middle of their small studio, it was a startling image conceived with a sense of the medium that I have seldom seen in the work of any other painter in Hong Kong. There are many talented painters working in oil and acrylic in Hong Kong and I also find a number of what Peckham and Lau call “nice painters” very interesting, but it is seldom because of their technical prowess. I prefer not to use the term “technical” because that would be one of the last things on the mind of a viewer when looking at this kind of painting, but it remains that if painting is a form of language, it is more effective when the artist is fluent in its usage. Through its powerful composition, the strange blurry lines that seem to double the silhouettes of these unfamiliar faces, Celia Ko demonstrates an attention to the medium that can be accomplished only through years of practice. But, again, it is not her technical mastery that strikes the viewer when confronted with these large paintings, but more a sense of narrative and a deep psychological insight.

In a message sent by the artist with the image of Vikki, Sam, Chris, Celia Ko specified that her paintings “although a lot of times . . . are of humans, as subjects, deal with the idea/concept of painting/suggesting/image- making, ‘narrative’ hopefully being the job of the viewer.” Her technical fluency accompanies therefore a reflection on how the medium of paint has carried through the centuries as an ideal companion for “narrative.”

Vol. 11 No. 6 27 Even though she prefers to let viewers create their own stories, that strategy is very different from that of many “nice painters” who rely on an entirely private language. In other of Ko’s works, knowledge of the painting of the past allows for a great deal of information to be conveyed; not only in her interest in the tradition of portraiture but also by the many direct references she makes to art history in terms of iconography. For example, the pomegranates in Red Fruit Rhapsody are a frequent presence in European religious painting, and the way one of the ﬁgures pinches the nipple of another ﬁgure is reminiscent of a famous painting, Gabrielle d’Estrées and One of Her Sisters (late sixteenth century), from the Fontainebleau school during the French Renaissance.

Celia Ko, Red Fruits Rhapsody, 2010, oil on canvas, 53.35 x 249 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

Of course, one might question why a Hong Kong artist (albeit one who grew up and received her art education in the USA) would ﬁll her paintings with such references to Western art history. As much as I tend to be guilty of preferring signs of a Hong Kong identity in the works of local artists, it is necessary to remember that the themes of Hong Kong culture are not necessarily the subject matter in all art made in Hong Kong. Instead of labeling “Hong Kong art” as only that which revolves around issues of local identity, which would limit greatly the number of artists that would have to be considered in a survey of art practices in Hong Kong (if anything, this would ignore, for instance, the practitioners of more “traditional” forms of Chinese art), it is more accurate to consider all the practices present within the political borders deﬁning the SAR territory. In any case, Celia Ko is just as much a Hong Kong artist as, simply because she has been working, teaching, and exhibiting here for many years. However, since she addresses her own background and the history of her Hong Kong family in types of work other than painting, Celia Ko could also fall under the category of those artists dealing with issues of local identity, an identity; as we will see, steeped in the relationship the territory always has had with the sea, merchant navigation, and the rest of the world.

From One Practice to Another Although Celia Ko often identifies herself as a painter, she by no means limits herself to that medium. Her installation, Crated Memories (2009), is about personal family memories, but it is also about a desire to preserve her past within the narrative of Hong Kong’s past, a clear orientation toward the idea of “collective memory” that has become so essential in Hong Kong around the turn of the twenty-first century. Painting still occupies an important place in Crated Memories, but it is presented in conjunction with old photographs of her family, with none of them shown in the “traditional” format of being displayed on a wall. She rejected the format of wall display for this piece for two reasons; first, it was a statement on the activities of her family’s past, in which the large wooden crates used in the shipping industry

28 Vol. 11 No. 6 Left: Celia Ko, Crated was an appropriate component, and, second, it was an adjustment to the Memories, 2010, mixed-media images on crates, approx. circumstances of the group exhibition it was designed for. In her original 582.5 x 975 x 213.3 cm, 2010. Courtesy of the artist. proposal, Celia Ko played with the idea of “parking” because the original idea Right: Celia Ko, Crated for this group exhibition, which took place in Fotan in 2009, was to put all Memories, 2010, mixed-media images on crates, approx. the works on display in a parkade for cars and trucks, a strategy that was later 582.5 x 975 x 213.3 cm, 2010. Courtesy of the artist. abandoned. Celia Ko says of Crated Memories:

I grew up by the shore of Hong Kong harbour and my family history is woven tightly to this place. For generations we have sailed and shipped across far seas, but always our roots remained here. I grew up enchanted by the tales of my elders, taking it for granted that one day I too would live a vision of worlds far away. I see my family’s complex history as vivid threads running through the tapestry of Hong Kong’s history.

Crated Memories comprises eight wooden crates of the type commonly used for packing and shipping goods. The crates are piled to merely hint at the outline of a ship. Here we see the cargo on a commercial vessel, the lifeblood of Hong Kong’s shipping business, the trade that has for so long contributed to Hong Kong’s status as a vital international port. This is a consignment of personal thoughts, memories, imagination and reﬂections inspired by family stories. The walls of the crates reveal an older Hong Kong: here is the Whampoa Dock in Hunghom where my grandfather and grand-uncles forged careers as chief engineers in commercial vessels; here are views of the old harbour, maps, images of antique lacquer items and snapshots of past generations from family photo albums, here are paintings that reﬂect a wondering mind. Thus are time and events reconstructed, connecting and layering past lives, culture, places and memories.7

Celia Ko has also been engaged in the creation of wearables, a form of art that challenges the limits between art and craft. By juxtaposing images from the artist’s past, the cultural past she lived in, and the many signs of her loves and interests—ranging from literature to visual culture and even

Vol. 11 No. 6 29 Celia Ko, Conception, 2005, wearable. Courtesy of the artist.

Chinese medicine and stones—these wearables, blending clothing and ornament, deal with memory and culture much the same way as Crated Memories. Celia Ko’s statement about the wearables is as follows:

I am always being fascinated by sages [the scholars of the past who wore ornaments on their belts] and dangling ornaments women and men in old times hung from their waist. My “belt/sage-like” piece was inspired by such fascination. It was supposed to move while the user walks around. I chose to use this traditional fabric which is made of raw silk, and which also used to be very popular among the Southern Cantonese area for centuries, but instead of the usual common black tough shiny silk, this one appears to be darker, more ancient, golden, and hence more solemn and nostalgic, carrying a sense of an accumulation of dust in history. I am trying to suggest the atmosphere that I remember at the beginning of my existence.

1. My first image (the first one has the photo of Mom and me in her lap when I was two weeks old) accompanied by a small “palm-reading” diagram on the left and a “face-reading” diagram on the right. The flowered-heads bearing numbers of my day of birth.

30 Vol. 11 No. 6 2. An old drawing from Tung Shing (Cantonese almanac) describing the growth of a fetus in the womb within nine months.

3. A little decoration with a traditional jade pendent very similar to the one that was given to me when I was born.

4. A small metal doll of “Buddha,” these metal dolls are a traditional ornament for newborns’ head bands in Old China.

5. A photo of me age three or four under a tree in front of Victoria harbor, dated 1970s.

6. A photo of Queen’s Road West in Hong Kong with a rickshaw dated 1874.

7. Another photo of the Hong Kong Central District, depicting the once Supreme Court (now House of the Legislative Council), dated 1910.

8. On the both sides, there are Chinese phrases dangling. Famous words come from the Neo-Confucius Doctrine by Chu Tzu the scholar (Ming Dynasty, sixteenth century). The right side reads, “Although Ancestors are distanced, and although the descendants not clever,” the left side reads, “One must always remember the source of our daily meals with gratitude.” Such teaching represents the value passed down to me from my family.

9. Consists of jadeite, agates, crystals, a couple of computer chips, electronic parts, beads of different materials and various ornaments.8

Within the specific themes of each object, the list of books, things, and images arranged by Celia Ko in these wearables represent a selective array of what any Chinese in Hong Kong would carry within themselves as their own cultural baggage, but she chose to make of these constitutive elements of the mind and memory something to adorn the body, putting quite literally on the skin what is usually seen as pertaining to something internal. Among them, three examples are particularly interesting for those looking for signs of cultural identity in her work. The pictures from the Cantonese almanac Tung Shing, published in Hong Kong, still convey today a strong sense of what the past might have been and maybe still is; every year, many of the pages from the twentieth century editions of the almanac are simply being reprinted, indicating an enduring set of concepts in the form of images and texts shared by the participants of this culture. This is not so much “Hong Kong-oriented,” since it could just as much belong to mainland Chinese or Taiwanese culture, and the reference to the famous Confucian maxims of Zhu Bolu (1617–1688), or Chu Tzu, that regulate the relationship of family life (Zhijia Geyana) also occupy pride of place. From the most personal photographs to profoundly political statements, from painting to installation and body ornaments, Celia Ko is also an artist whose reflection on present art strategies has led her to multiply her roles and identities in the art field.

Vol. 11 No. 6 31 Painting as Part of Multiple Strategies It is tempting to tie some of the tendencies of “nice painting” to the expectations of the “post 80s” movement in Hong Kong, a generation of cultural and political activists who are trying to preserve their birth place from the destructive impact of “big business,” such as the land developers of Hong Kong who have been responsible for the destruction of a large part of the architectural heritage of the former colony, as well as the growing inﬂuence of mainland China in the political affairs of the SAR. In that sense, there is no pursuit of a cultural identity in “nice painting,” its practitioners having no doubt as to who they are and what their role must be in society. On the other hand, some of choices made by a more mature artist like Celia Ko could be related, with little effort, to the quest for cultural identity many practitioners who lived parts of their lives outside Hong Kong have been pursuing. Donning the identity of a painter is still a viable strategy for many Hong Kong artists, even though it is often seen as a strange, old-fashioned one by artists outside Hong Kong and China at large. Many European artists visiting or residing in Hong Kong often exhibit disdain for painting and are quite startled by the presence of so much of it. Even Choi Yuk-Kuen, mentioned at the beginning of this text and studying for a Master of Fine Arts in London as I write these lines, has resolutely turned towards video and body art and no longer understands what she considers the conservatism of the students in her alma mater. How much the approach of artists is conditioned by the choices available in their early art education is obviously the subject of intense deliberation, and all the more important because of questions around the very notion of individuality and originality that is still the foundation of art education in many institutions around the world.

All the same, there are many artists in Hong Kong who are still so attached to the identity of being a painter that they restrict all their activities to it, while others are no longer satisfied with the mere practice of painting, as we have just seen exemplified. The struggle to keep a viable art practice in the domain of painting for artists using Chinese media, like the brush and ink used by the literati of the past, one that could be identified as contemporary, is not as pressing an issue as for those using media like oil or acrylic. The question of whether it is viable for contemporary artists to restrict themselves to the practice of painting becomes even more urgent at a time when Hong Kong artists are starting to enjoy much wider recognition. The three painters discussed in this article have chosen, in the end, not to restrict themselves to painting. All motivations to explore new ways to be an artist are beneficial, and they come from conflicting desires; that is, the desire for more visibility in the new internationalized art market of Hong Kong and the desire to explore personal or public issues.

In Hong Kong, where painters from mainland China in many mediums, from ink to acrylic to oil, have been visible for a long time (let us remember that Chang Tsong-Zung at the Hong Kong-based gallery Hanart TZ was already promoting this art in the middle of the 1980s), there is still a strong attraction to painting by local artists, an attraction that might eventually be reinforced by the active art market that has descended upon the territory in the last few years. As the history of any booming art market has shown repeatedly, painting is always attractive, since its commodiﬁcation is so easy

32 Vol. 11 No. 6 to establish. This is not a criticism of the choice to paint or of the choices made by collectors, gallery managers, and auction houses: painting is just as good a choice as any other, and supporting it is a matter of personal taste.

All the same, the recent becoming of Hong Kong as the third largest art auction market in the world, the establishment in the Central district of commercial galleries from New York (Gagosian), London (Ben Brown Gallery, White Cube) and Paris (Galerie Perrotin)—where painting generally occupies a very prominent place as the most accessible kind of commodity—has not inﬂuenced local artists into submitting to anything else other than the internal requirements of their own art practice. Of course, the fact that these galleries are more interested in showing mainland China painters than local artists, with only a few exceptions like Chow Chun Fai and Lam Tung Pang, might also very well be another reason why local artists do not feel the need to adapt to the demands of the these important art exhibitors by limiting their production only to painting. Most of these galleries, and the departments of auction houses specializing in contemporary art, were drawn to the SAR for two reasons: Chinese and local collectors are starting to buy contemporary art from around the world and exports of artworks are not taxable from Hong Kong. But these institutions can also be active promoters of forms of art creation other than just the non-perishable, easy to commodify, objects they have been exhibiting over the last three to four years in their Hong Kong branches. When they are not obsessively selling commodities, we can hope that they will start looking at local practitioners and the variety of their art practices to present them as individuals just as worthy of attention as their mainland counterparts.

Notes 1 E-mail message sent to the author, August 15, 2011. 2 Frank Vigneron, “Mining or Undermining ‘Tradition’: Shifts in the Work of Tony Ng Kwun Lun,” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 10, no. 4 (July/August 2011), 6–20. 3 “Lee Kit on Nice Painting, text by Lee Kit as told to Venus Lau and Robin Peckham,” http://saamlung. com/blog/575/ (posted on December 27, 2010). Robin Peckham and Venus Lau also describe Lee Kit (and other artists of about the same age in Hong Kong, like Chow Chun Fai, born 1980; Kwan Sheung Chi, born 1980; Pak Sheung-Chuen, born 1977; and Lam Tung Pang , born 1978; all educated at the Chinese University and all very active in the Fotan community) as exerting a profound influence on younger artists. 4 Ibid. 5 “A core member of the movement in nice painting, young artist Bouie Choi demonstrates the possibilities of pattern derivation and the role of superstition in a recent set of attractive if unengaging works on board. Influenced by the delicate line drawings of insects associated with Angela Su and the colorful patterns and borders of Au Hoi Lam, Choi unites these elements in configurations that combine the textures of drawing, painting, textile, and rubber stamps; her strongest contribution to this conversation comes in the form of geometry, organizing her compositions around the unifying principles of totems and talismans that become, graphically speaking, much more interesting than the subject matter involved. The most impressive piece, Blessings (2011) involves 17 distinct panels, each with a natural wood border and colored corners framing a treated central surface, all arranged in a fascinating spatial relationship that points ambiguously to a totemic or talismanic function of imagery; the images themselves, however, fail to impress. Depicted on the boards are geometric insect drawings, stickers, stamps, and scribbled text--though the placement is alluring, something fails to add up. The same could be said for Peace on Earth (2011), in which an eye-catching orange field frames a geometric abstraction of the basic human form literally underlined by lines of text. Ultimately, the work defeats itself in its attempt to pack in layer upon layer of meaning.” Robin Peckham, “Entomology for Aesthetes” (http://www. artslant.com/cn/articles/show/22185)/, article about Comfort Terrace, Choi Yuk Kuen’s exhibition at Grotto Fine Art, Hong Kong, March 2 to 26, 2011. 6 A number of photos of this series are visible on the Hong Kong Art Archive Web site, created by David Clarke, at the University of Hong Kong: http://www.fa.hku.hk/hkaa/artists.php?artist_id=049. 7 From the artist's statement sent in November 2009 to the curator of the exhibition ‘If you park here’ (Fotanian Open Studios 2010, January 16 t0 31, 2010), where Crated Memories was on display. 8 Caption written for the group exhibition Guan Guan—Observing the Senses, Counihan Gallery, Moreland City Council, Melbourne, Australia, April 2005.

Vol. 11 No. 6 33 Mathieu Borysevicz Jiang Zhi’s Faulty Display

Things are not what they appear to be: nor are they otherwise.1

t the outset of 2010, the forty-one-year-old Beijing-based artist Jiang Zhi did something drastic. He began painting. For someone who is A considered not only a pioneer of new media art in China, but one of its foremost representatives and, moreover, perceived as a true nonconformist to market demands, this slip into a traditional—read bourgeois—medium aroused great murmuring among critics, especially as the paintings appeared to be abstract!

In our twenty-first century contemporaneity, when the commitment to one particular medium or style was undermined long ago by license to unbridled pluralism, not to mention an epidemic of Internet-fueled attention deficit disorder, and when financial sustainability as an artist, especially one approaching his mid-career, is not only trendy but a necessity, any accusations of betrayal against Jiang Zhi seems somewhat inflated. But, then again, everyone expects something different of Jiang Zhi.

[P]reviously known deﬁnitions of “Jiang Zhi” or “the Jiang Zhi style” are dissolving. In other words, the artist seems intent on disappointing our expectations. Impolitely, perhaps, Jiang has jettisoned our accustomed discourse and opinions about his artistic practice and its meaning . . . The answers these paintings reveal are to questions that we have not asked.”2

Indeed, these new paintings mask Jiang Zhi, Object in Drawer, 1997, colour photograph, 150 x unsolicited questions, but what in fact 100 cm. Courtesy of the artist. was or wasn’t being asked of Jiang Zhi? Having begun his creative career in Shenzhen as a cultural journalist, it was Jiang Zhi’s involvement in the legendary Post-Sensibility, Alien Bodies and Delusion exhibition of 1999 that launched him onto the Beijing art circuit. The Post Sensibility Show, curated by Wu Meichun and Qiu Zhijie, was not only signiﬁcant for bringing new media experimentation, conceptual photography, and gruesome (some works were made from stillborn fetuses, human body parts, skin grafts, and animal

34 Vol. 11 No. 6 bones) installation work to the forefront of contemporary Chinese art, it also outright rejected market speculation and the illustrative painting that deﬁned much of the 1990s. This rebellious show, held in the fallout shelter of artist Sun Yuan’s then apartment building, not only created a precedent for young Chinese artists at the outset of the new millennium, it also framed the disciples of this new expressionism, Jiang Zhi included, in a box from which it was hard to escape. Surely this spunky renegade would not show up one day with abstract paintings.

Thankfully, Jiang Zhi’s development as an artist is a genuinely personal pursuit that resists conforming to anyone’s idea of evolution. He is also someone for whom writing played a profound role in helping to chart his artistic quest. Whether in elliptical poetry, introspective philosophy, or the titles for his work, Jiang Zhi’s texts record the meanderings of a tenacious mind as it grapples with the self and its creations. This discursive writing became especially important in the context of this perplexing new body of abstract paintings. Over the course of a few months Jiang Zhi composed three texts that helped to illuminate his thinking behind the new series.

Jiang Zhi's Object in Drawer (1997), included in the Post-Sensibility exhibition, consisted of personal belongings and damaged human body parts placed in three opened drawers.

Life is a course of losing. Time rushes away memories, cutting bodies apart. The pain of losing time projects itself on objects. Memories attach on personal belongings, giving them Individual lives and feelings.3

When Jiang Zhi ﬁrst introduced his abstract paintings in 2011, the terrain of the Chinese art world had changed dramatically from the wild Post Sensibility days. The market had ballooned to the point of bursting, and then, with a giant hiss, retracted; the Post Sensibility crowd was no longer considered vanguard but, in fact, part of the artistic canon, and Jiang Zhi’s socially conscious focus had shifted to more esoteric terrain. Like many of his peers, Jiang Zhi had also taken license to gravitate away from so-called new media. In fact it was the work of another Post-Sensibility comrade, Liu Wei, whose work was considered to have visual afﬁnities that initially complicated Jiang Zhi’s introduction of the new paintings.

As early as 2001, I’d come up with some images, but I didn’t start actually working on them until early 2010. One of the reasons, of course, was the perceived similarity to a series of oil paintings by Liu Wei, even though the way in which the images were created was completely different. 4

Liu Wei, who designed images on a computer for his canvases, had, by this point, already gained considerable attention for his paintings. Certainly, employing the computer to aid in painting wasn’t exactly novel, and, while, from a superﬁcial point of view, the similarity of these two artists’ work was evident, the ideological underpinning was completely different. Liu Wei was interested in the computer as a way to foreground an aesthetic effect that

Vol. 11 No. 6 35 Jiang Zhi, Content Control— Sorrow, 2011, oil on canvas, 160 x 280 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

reﬂected our cyber age. Jiang Zhi, on the other hand, took the computer as a point of departure to probe the phenomenological aspects of what an “image” actually is.

I didn’t process or draw the images on the computer, nor are the images drawn from reality. . . . They are mostly randomly generated, but are they really “images”? That is what I’m interested in- the conditions which form an “image” (they’re actually human psychological conditions) . . . the moment of becoming an image . . . images which never form, or have not yet developed . . .5

While Jiang Zhi’s paintings convey no recognizable imagery per se, the artist maintains that they are “representational.” In order to understand just what these paintings represented and why it led him down the rabbit hole searching for the psychological roots of how an image is produced, it is important to backtrack brieﬂy and consider the works themselves. In Jiang Zhi’s own words, this is how they came to be:

This group of work is derived from images of “system errors” from my computer screen. When I drag the conversation bubble on my computer screen, it leaves a trace of jagged lines, which is eventually obliterated by the continual overlapping of this line.

These traces become images and are shaped to form “a vision of the world.” They seem to come from an internal and abstract world that is created instantaneously and can be changed and renewed any time, but it is (more) vulnerable, accidental, variable, and transitory.6

Simply put, Jiang Zhi’s painted images originated from his computer screen when the operating system fell short of memory and, unable to render an intelligible display, left a pattern trailing behind the mouse’s every move. For some, the whimsical results created from doodling with this “faulty display” would sufﬁce as fodder for a slick new body of paintings, but for Jiang Zhi it presented a critical departure point.

36 Vol. 11 No. 6 Jiang Zhi, Add cc—Ecstacy No. 2, 2010, oil on canvas, 330 x 160 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

For many new media artists, realistic imagery forms the core of their practice. Photo and video technology, as well as the ever-expanding archive of Web-based imagery helps to dictate this. Jiang Zhi’s work up to this point was deﬁned by its recognizable iconography—photographic, singular, and mostly ﬁgurative compositions that relayed a certain psychologically charged narrative. Now faced with not only an abstract image, but also what seemed to be itself a convoluted abstraction, Jiang Zhi began to probe even further the question of what an "image" is. Painting was merely a convenient way to manifest his inquiry.

In Chinese painting, representation has never been the goal. I think that because it is the painting’s “heart” and “spirit” that are seen as most critical. When we talk about spiritual brushstrokes, it means the birth of a painting in between the ink lines, an allusion but not a representation. In traditional painting the objective is to capture the spirit of the subject, not its exact likeness.7

The question of subject was certainly vital for Jiang Zhi, as was the relevance of traditional approaches to representation; furthermore, the works outwardly evoked the legacy of hard-edge abstraction, but discourses solely related to the discipline of painting were not in Jiang Zhi’s interest.

These are not abstract paintings. First, these paintings are based on actual images of what the computer screen shows. Second, an unconscious computer cannot distinguish and judge what is real or abstract.

Yet, are they realistic paintings? If so, what is real, and where is reality?8

Jiang Zhi’s inquiry is not dissimilar to those posed in his earlier bodies of work, and can even be considered one of the main concepts that he has wrestled with throughout his practice, namely, the question of subjectivism.

This group of paintings is a continuation of my exhibition Attitude, which focused on emotions and their bodily reactions such as laughing, crying, shyness, anger, fear and trembling. As our bodies produce such natural responses, we believe that such feelings are from the “true self” and

Vol. 11 No. 6 37 thereby conﬁrm such “true self” which in fact hides the real “I” from beneath. We then build up a bridge of reality from the so-called “true self” and view those objects or events which generate emotions and reactions as real and so believe that such objects, events, and even the world are real, but none of this is an objective truth. Observing emotions has led me to the observation of the origin of our emotions as well as its object.

Therefore, I want to deny what I said previously. The paintings do not derive from the computer.9

Jiang Zhi’s elliptical prose points back to the subjective nature of reality; the paintings are not derived from the computer, but make manifest what our subjectivity ﬁlters from this experience. For Jiang Zhi the process of experiencing “sensation” and perceiving “imagery” originate in similar territory.

Jiang Zhi continues to meditate on these unintelligible images, not only from a metaphysical but also from a neurological perspective; that is, what correlation can be drawn between so-called concrete information that a computer yields and human cognition?

For example, we cannot directly see a cup in front of us. Science tells us that the image is reﬂected into our eyes, translated into an electrical signal and transmitted to the optical cortex in our brains. It is only after another process of translation in the brain that we get an image out again. The brain tells us “I see this cup, it’s like this . . .” (What is interesting is that we haven’t seen it directly; it is the brain that tells us we’ve “seen” it.) But what is this process like? What is it before it is translated into an image, as an electrical signal? What kind of decoding software can translate that signal into this image? Any decoding software has its own speciﬁc properties, different from other decoding approaches. So what are the properties of the decoders installed in the human system (or in one individual’s system)?10

Here, it is interesting to consider the titles of Jiang Zhi’s paintings that combine, even equate, terminology for human emotions with computer functionality. Content Control—Sorrow, Add cc—Ecstasy No. 2 and Cropped Immortality No. 1 allude to incongruous commands, as well as a sense of thwarted expectations or lack of control over our own destiny. Perhaps this control has been forfeited to the multiple computing devices upon which we rely everyday, and onto which we project immeasurable expectations? In the computer, such as in life, expectation sets one up for disillusionment. While man and machine are still vastly different, certainly Jiang Zhi’s own personal disillusionment and emotional stress cannot be ruled out as contributing factors for his obsessive probing into the so-called objective or external world.

38 Vol. 11 No. 6 Jiang Zhi, Cropped— In another text he describes Immortality No. 1, 2011, oil on canvas, 220 x 300 cm. Courtesy this external world—the object of the artist. of our emotions and visual information—as a second-hand realization, something that we obtain indirectly, so that the discernment of reality is relegated to a subjective feature of our consciousness. Once again, for Jiang Zhi the logic of the computer is analogous to human cognition, and when this logic fails, it raises some fundamental questions about the nature of reality itself.

The external world we can never see directly. If we can never truly experience the external world, does it really exist? What we can attain is only our own world. We each stare at our computer screens and what we see, perhaps, is only a reﬂection of an illusion of our own representation. What our computer screen shows is what we so-call “our world.”

The images on our computer screen, the display mechanism properly set up by the engineers, mimic our visual processes. At the start, what we see is just “data” (that’s the most we can say—I don’t know what comes before data). The graphics card and other systems working together form a display function. This is a properly calibrated translation device.

When a fault develops with this device, it causes a “broken image” to appear, so when my mouse drags a dialog box, it smears across the screen. But this “image” is not formed through a natural process. It has no deﬁnable origin . . .

Those “broken images” that appear on a monitor were never originally meant to be images. The computer at this juncture has no intention and no ability to make images. They are meaningless lines (even calling them “lines” is an exaggeration. They’re actually abnormalities, patches of pixels reproducing themselves over and over as if they’re afﬂicted with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). When we drag that dialogue box around and around, the regular abnormalities seem to be performing some kind of communicative dance.11

The imagery that luminesces from Jiang Zhi’s computer seems to have been made without instruction, logic, or ordain, as if there is a ghost in the machine. Perhaps the association between man and mechanism is the most to be gained from these bold, colourful canvases? Alas, a new-media pursuit after all.

Jiang Zhi’s meditation on the computer screen as a source of both artistic inspiration and answers to the meaning of life resonates profoundly in an

Vol. 11 No. 6 39 age of widespread Internet addiction. We are now living in an age where computing devices not only are essential tools of survival but also producers of new subjectivities. The story of the Korean couple that let their three- month-old baby starve to death for the sake of raising a virtual daughter online spells out exactly how warped things have become. (Oddly enough, the online game that the couple was addicted to allowed them to help their virtual daughter develop emotions and memory.)12

As institutions all over the world brace themselves for social ills affected by people spending too much time in alternate, computer-ﬁxed, realities, Jiang Zhi’s ontological inquiry, as well as his paintings, continue to dazzle.

It’s a strange collaboration between man and machine: the computer display is at base just a form of transcription—into this process a faulty transcription intrudes—faulty image— to a second translation into my brain—an image which is accepted—which I then translate into a traditional picture using paints and canvas . . .

In this process, the boundaries between the correct and the faulty, the abstract and the concrete are lost.

Are they images? We don’t know yet.

Because the character of these images is so unstable I use the method of traditional oil painting to make them concrete. Oil paintings are ofﬁcially “images”.

It is like putting a dream on trial.13

Notes 1 Author Unknown, Suramgama-sutra, is a Mahayana sutra and one of the main texts used in the Chan school of Buddhism, (c. 700). 2 Wu Zhongsheng, “Jiang Zhi: A Thought Arises,” trans. Jiajing Liu, Leap Magazine, February 2012, 184–85. 3 Jiang Zhi, artist's statement for Objects in Drawer, September 9, 1997, posted on http://www.jiangzhi. net/?p=426/. 4 Jiang Zhi, artist's statement, November 28, 2011, unpublished. 5 Ibid. 6 Jiang Zhi, “Faulty Display,” in Jiang Zhi: A Thought Arises (Shanghai: Shanghai Gallery of Art, 2011), 9. 7 Jiang Zhi, artist's statement, November 28, 2011, unpublished. Jiang Zhi, “Painting Statement 2.” 8 Jiang Zhi, “Faulty Display,” in Jiang Zhi: A Thought Arises (Shanghai: Shanghai Gallery of Art, 2011), 9. 9 Ibid. 10 Jiang Zhi, “Decoding,” November 30, 2011, unpublished. 11 Ibid. 12 “S Korea child 'starves as parents raise virtual baby',” BBC News, March 5, 2010, http://news.bbc. co.uk/2/hi/8551122.stm/. 13 Jiang Zhi, “Decoding.”

40 Vol. 11 No. 6 Gilles Guillot Gleaned Memories The Art of Shyu Ruey-Shiann

nspired in 1999 by Jean-François Millet’s painting The Gleaners (1857), French film director Agnes Varda directed a documentary entitled IThe Gleaners and I.1 It is a kind of road movie traversing France and presenting people who are gleaning or who are devoted to waste recovery. For reasons of economic necessity or ethical choice, these gleaners gather and use products, materials, or foodstuffs that are no longer wanted by others. This film is an invitation to think about our wasteful consumer society, but it is also a mise-en-abyme of the work of photographers and filmmakers in that Varda too presents herself as a gleaner, too—that is, a gleaner of images.

Ethical and aesthetic reasons motivate Shyu Ruey-Shiann2 to tirelessly collect and assemble recycled materials in order to create artworks that are both unusual and emotional—sculptures animated by complex mechanisms. While his work is close to that of a mechanical engineer, the poetic and spiritual universe of his varied constructions leave no ambiguity as to the creativity involved in the processes of this Taiwanese artist. In the Taiwan contemporary art scene, when numbers of his colleagues are moving toward using new technologies, Shyu Ruey-Shiann stands out by transforming raw material, mostly taken from industrial leftovers, into artworks. This strong artistic commitment, which can be interpreted on many levels—a political level with the militant act of recovering waste; an intellectual level with the diversion of daily objects; a psychological level with an introspection on our consumer society—owes nothing to chance, but originates from the life of the artist.

The head of Shyu Ruey-Shiann’s household is his mother, who worked hard all her life raising her children and ensuring a harmonious equilibrium within the family despite the violent outbursts of her alcoholic husband. This Mother Courage is part of the army of scavengers who walk Taiwan’s streets and alleys all day long, pushing heavy carts in search of their pitiful haul. To enhance the daily standard of living for her family, she also prepares and sells biantang—the popular Taiwanese lunch box—to ofﬁce employees in the business district of Dunhua Street, in central Taipei. Since childhood, Shyu Ruey-Shiann has often “toured” with his mother, and knows how waste collectors face great social and personal stigmatization. Waste is what has no more value, what we want to get rid of. And this negative image of collected stuff can easily apply to the person doing the collecting. The transformation of waste elements into works of art, which

Vol. 11 No. 6 41 places value back into objects, can be seen as an attempt to restore the dignity of these people, and, what is more, as a tribute to his mother.

The work of Shyu Ruey-Shiann also alludes, in its own way, to the gradual disappearance of Taiwanese industrial production. Indeed, it goes beyond that, because in the context of a consumer society characterized by planned obsolescence, in which industrial and consumer goods have a limited life span, it is the global economic system itself that is showing its limitations. The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman reached a similar conclusion when he stated:

Desire for any one speciﬁc product is not expected to last, and to keep it alive for long would be a sheer waste of money. Nothing boots the desires so unfailingly and promptly as the “new,” “improved,” and best of all the “new and improved” formula. Designers, producers and merchandisers of consumer goods, as Nigel Thrift found, “now live in a permanent state of emergency, always bordering on the edge of chaos . . . in a faster and more uncertain world, one in which all advantage is temporary.”3

Shyu Ruey-Shiann, Time and Being, 2011, metal construction, motors, paint brushes, paint knives, wires, transformer, censor, 236 x 43 x 184. Photo: Kuo Heng-Huang. Courtsy of the artist.

Shyu Ruey-Shiann’s approach is to put life back into the most degraded of objects, and this artistic commitment seems to have afﬁnities with that of the Nouveau Réalistes in 1960s France. Indeed, according to Pierre Restany (art critic and theorist of this artistic movement), Nouveau Réalisme is deﬁned as a “poetic recycling of urban, industrial, and advertising reality.”4 This comparison is even more meaningful with the sound and kinetic sculptures of the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely. However, while Tinguely’s works are distinguished by their amusing and useless appearance, those of Shyu Ruey-Shiann evoke a powerful feeling of nostalgia. It is clear to the Taiwanese artist that his machines have to put into motion processes of individual and collective memory.

42 Vol. 11 No. 6 A Sensitive Machinery When he was still a student at the Aix-en-Provence Art College in southern France, Shyu Ruey-Shiann decided to devote himself to the design and construction of elaborate kinetic sculptures. A work created in 1997 ironically entitled Self Portrait (Zihuaxiang) can undoubtedly be regarded as his manifesto for kinetic art. This work consists of an assembly of myriad metal components. A motor enables the overall system to move along a wire stretched horizontally, high in the air, making the piece appear like a mechanical tightrope walker. The sight of this surprising spectacle leads one to forget the heaviness and the deafening noise that accompanies this metallic structure, and what emerges is a fragile machine that progresses across the gallery while trembling on all sides. “Move forward at all costs” seems to be its main message.

Shyu Ruey-Shiann, Self Portrait, 1997, metal, motors, 164 x 130 x 110 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

But above all, we may see this work as a metaphor for subjectivity. Indeed, this is clearly expressed in its title, since the issue of subjectivity is at the very heart of the practice of the self-portrait, in which artists carry out some soul searching within themselves and perhaps seek social and artistic recognition. In his famous painting, The Artist’s Studio (1855), Gustave Courbet brings various people (politicians, aristocrats, artists, labourers, lovers, peasants) into his studio; each individual in his cast of characters illustrates someone the artist needs in order to live his lifestyle. Courbet coined the contradictory term “real allegory” to categorize his painting— that is, a complicated mix of real and symbolic factors. This deﬁnition can apply perfectly well to Shyu Ruey-Shiann’s creations, through which he seems to say: “This is what I need to express myself, to show who I am.” And we have to note that Shyu Ruey-Shiann’s composite arrangement of different elements ultimately forms a coherent whole. This is undeniable proof that subjectivity is a process of construction—both in the literal and ﬁgurative sense.

From a broader perspective, The River of Childhood (Tonghe, 1999), a work that is so ﬁrmly rooted in Shyu Ruey-Shiann’s intimate experience, can be understood as an allegory of memory and nostalgia. This work is composed of sixteen bases, each enclosing an electric motor, which are placed directly

Vol. 11 No. 6 43 44 Vol. 11 No. 6 Vol. 11 No. 6 45 on the ﬂoor. It also includes electric cables that snake through the midst of Previous page: Shyu Ruey-Shiann, The River these iconoclastic facilities. The bases each support four rods upon which of Childhood, 1999, metal construction, copper parts, is ﬁxed a faithful ceramic replica of a paper boat. When the machinery is ceramic boats, wires, motors, censor, and transformer, 400 x activated, sixty-four ships bob up and down at a slow pace, while clicking 240 x 57 cm. Photo: Jui-Chung Yao. Courtesy of the artist. sounds evoke the lapping of river waters.

In this work, it feels as if Shyu Ruey-Shiann is thinking back to his childhood, recalling the years he spent living in a modest family environment, a time when a sheet of folded paper was enough to create a fantasy world and to escape his everyday worries. We can ﬁnd here an irony with respect to the work’s origin in Taiwan because the country was for a long time the largest toy producer in the world. However, Shyu Ruey-Shiann did not have access to these products when he was a child. Now, when children are overwhelmed by offerings of new technological toys and games, the simplicity of the folded paper enhances the nostalgic atmosphere that infuses his work. The folding of paper into boats also refers back to the idea of recycling materials.

All of Shyu Ruey-Shiann’s creations have Shyu Ruey-Shiann, Pregnancy, 1997, metal something to do with human identity. But construction, rubber, wires, pulley, transparent resin in the man-machine relationship, his works cover, motors, censor, and transformer, height 56 cm, seem to run counter to technical progress diameter 100 cm. Photo: Jui- Chung Yao. Courtesy of the and current biotechnologies. While some artist. trends are oriented toward technological parts implanted into the human body, Shyu Ruey- Shiann’s purpose seems to be to introduce some humanity into his machines; he gives them a little more soul. This is especially evident in Pregnancy (Yunsheng), created in 1999. The work takes the form of a large porthole mounted on a white wall. Inside this glass womb appears a complex mechanism made of motors, pulleys, and wiring that looks like a kind of robotic fetus. A switch on the “navel” allows the viewer to activate the mechanism to create a rotary movement. Strong overhead lights cast a shadow of the contents onto the white surface of the wall, providing a feeling of serenity and warmth that is in complete contrast to the cold beauty of the metal skeleton. Thus, it is far from the nightmarish and phantasmagorical world of biomechanical works of art, like those created for example by H. R. Giger, the Swiss artist who created the visual effects for the ﬁlm Alien.4 Of course, an obvious connection could be made between the theme of mother (father)hood and the process of artistic creation. However, this work is not dealing with birth, but with re-birth, which appears truly to be the ﬁrst principle in what could be Shyu Ruey- Shiann’s manifesto: Giving new life to used objects.

Life: A Journey A recent solo exhibition, entitled Journey5 and held in November 2011 at Tenri Cultural Institute, New York, featured several works of art that were linked together by the theme of exploring cycles of time and space. All of

46 Vol. 11 No. 6 Left: Shyu Ruey-Shiann, Traveler’s Wings (detail), 2011, metal construction, copper plate, motors, wires, transformer, censor, 244 x 244 cm. Photo: Kuo-Heng Huang. Courtesy of the artist. Right: Shyu Ruey-Shiann, Traveler’s Wings, 2011, metal construction, copper plate, motors, wires, transformer, censor, 244 x 244 cm. Photo: Kuo-Heng Huang. Courtesy of the artist. the smooth and precarious rotation systems were those of powered units, but they also represented memory processes. For example, Shyu Ruey- Shiann’s work Traveler’s Wings (2011), similar in concept to The River of Childhood, consists of sets of wings—made from French railway tickets reprinted on copper ﬁlm—installed on a motorized base that opens and closes the wings. The movement and the sound of the ﬂapping wings refer to the notion of travel and bird migrations, but they could also symbolize escape and dreams, such as a voyage into the world of memories, the underlying theme that is embedded in all his work.

Shyu Ruey-Shiann, The In the art of Shyu Ruey-Shiann, it is Beginning, The End, 2011, metal construction, steel bar, the combination of wheels, cables, iron pipe, plumb-bob, motor, dimensions variable. Photo: and motors that allows the artist to Lih-Huei Lai. Courtesy of the artist. travel through his memories and to meditate on the meaning of life. Where does it start? When does it end? Will it ever end? How much do we actually learn from our stories, from our lives? Each work of Shyu Ruey-Shiann is a poetic attempt to raise these questions, and we embark on this journey that he has constructed for us, knowing that in life, despite breakdowns and failures, the wheel is able to turn again.

Notes 1 The Gleaners and I, directed and written by Agnès Varda, France, 82 mins., 2000. 2 Shyu Ruey-Shiann (Xu Ruixian) was born in 1966 in Taipei, Taiwan, and currently lives and works in New York and Taipei. He studied at Fu-Hsing Trade and Art School, Taipei (1986), Chinese Culture University, Taipei (1992), and École des Beaux-Arts d’Aix-en-Provence, France (1997). In 1998, Shyu was awarded the Taipei Award by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, and in 2006 the Yageo Tech-Art Award of the Asian Cultural Council of New York. 3 Zygmunt Bauman, Society under Siege (Cambridge: Polity, 2002), 145. 4 Pierre Restany, 60/90: Trente ans de Nouveau Réalisme (Paris: La Différence, 1990), 76. 5 H. R. Giger, born in 1940 in Chur, Switzerland, is recognized as one of the world’s foremost artists of fantastic realism and biomechanical surrealism. 6 Shyu Ruey-Shian, Journey, solo exhibition at Tenri Cultural Institute, New York, November 4–29, 2011.

Vol. 11 No. 6 47 Voon Pow Bartlett, Le Guo, Carries Scott, Sheng Qi, Haili Sun The Gao Brothers and The Execution of Christ: A Conversation

Left to right: Carrie Scott, Sheng Qi, Voon Pow Bartlett, Le Guo, Haili Sun. Courtesy of SHOWstudio Shop, London.

s part of the SHOWstudio Shop gallery summer exhibition Death, we invited contemporary artists Le Guo, Sheng Qi and Haili Sun A along with curator/academic Voon Pow Bartlett to discuss the show’s central piece, The Gao Brothers' The Execution of Christ, while we streamed the conversation live over the internet.

The grandiose, life size, bronze sculpture is typical of the Gao Brothers’ highly politicized work, tackling subjects of oppression, violence, and hypocrisy. Interested in how the strictures imposed by Chinese authorities would affect the Gao Brother’s practice and this work in particular, we invited the group featured in this discussion—who have directly experienced the limits on expression that are prevalent in China—to not only give us their interpretation of the work, but also shed insight into how censorship there has changed and developed since the 1980s.

We deliberately chose not to delve into the exhibition as a whole, which also included works by Nick Knight and Claire Morgan, because the show itself was focused on the liminal moment the sculptures all exist within; most dramatically, a space between life and death, but also between presence and absence, the secular and the religious. For the purposes of the conversation we instead focused on The Execution of Christ as a springboard for debate so that our speakers could discuss their own practice in the context of the wider situation in China and unravel some of the implications of its recent history related to contemporary art today.

48 Vol. 11 No. 6 Carrie Scott: The central piece of the exhibition Death is The Execution of Christ, and we are interested in getting into the nuances of the piece and digesting the political nature of the work as well as more generally how the Gao Brothers have positioned themselves as artists. We are also interested to hear a little bit more about their perspectives as artists who have lived and worked in China and who understand what that experience is. First I will introduce our guests to everyone. There is Sheng Qi, who is a painter— although you actually work in multiple mediums—you came to the UK to study at Central Saint Martins, and your work is very, I would say, focused on looking at human experience in historical terms. Voon Pow Bartlett is a scholar and artist whose interest is primarily with Beijing artists, yes?

Voon Pow Bartlett: Yes, I am interested in art on a global scale and have also spent some time in Beijing to get to know its local art scene.

Carrie Scott: Le Guo is a painter who also studied at Central Saint Martins. His work is balanced between abstraction and ﬁguration—and I sort of see these in opposition to one another. There’s a struggle in the work.

Le Guo: Yes, some say it’s about angst and desire and spirituality—these sorts of things.

Carrie Scott: Excellent. Haili Sun is an installation-based artist, and you look at nature in all of your work by bringing natural materials into a man- made space. You also came here for a master’s degree, correct?

Haili Sun: Yes, at Wimbledon Arts College.

Carrie Scott: I’m most interested in beginning with the Gao Brothers piece and some of the references that are within it. Because it’s a work that’s very nuanced and very layered, you can look at it and appreciate the immediate impact of it with the seven ﬁgures of Mao pointing guns at a symbol of Christianity, which is Jesus. So, on its most basic level, it could be seen to represent communism and oppression, but of course there are multiple layers beyond that; it’s not simply about that. I would love to hear about any of the symbolism that our guests have noticed within it and how you feel about the work.

Sheng Qi: Mao said that the most important thing is to recognize who your friends are and who your enemies are. So this particular sculpture made by the Gao Brothers has guns pointing at Jesus, which suggests Jesus is Mao’s enemy. Mao struggled with this question of who were his friends and who were his enemies. He could not always ﬁnd the real answer because he didn’t know the principle of how to apply certain criteria that would determine the meaning of friendship. Because when you have a standard of principle, you know who is your friend and who is your enemy. Most of the time Mao’s friends, in the end, became his enemies. So for me this piece seems like Mao is facing all his enemies, in the form of Christ, and I ﬁnd this piece very important.

Vol. 11 No. 6 49 Voon Pow Bartlett: I think Top: Gao Brothers, The Execution of Christ, 2009, obviously, on the face of it, bronze, steel. Courtesy of the artists. it’s an ambitious piece of Left: Édouard Manet, The political work, and I am full Execution of Emperor Maximilian, 1868–69, oil of admiration for the artists in on canvas, 252 x 302 cm. Collection of Kunsthalle China who make work about Mannheim, Germany. China that is not necessarily approved of or is censored. But I’m also impressed by how the Gao Brothers grabbed hold of the mantle of Western art history, if you like, with both sets of hands, by quoting Édouard Manet’s The Execution of the Emperor Maximilian (1868–69). They are actually grappling with the genre of History Painting in the West. Manet already stripped History Painting down to its essentials in The Execution of Maximilian. Instead of something that is grandiose or formulaic, he turned the subject matter into something very, very immediate and raw. Also, in his cool manner, he reduced something that is formulaic into something that he calls “truth.” He’s interested in the truth. Just as he “stripped” Olympia from being a nude in the classical sense—thus challenging the history of nude paintings that were previously considered part of mythology and of religious paintings—into being just a pure and simple picture of a naked woman, a kind of contemporary pornography superimposed upon Titian’s Venus. So there is something very truthful and immediate about his paintings. I’m interested in the way the Gao Brothers developed further Manet’s interpretation of History Painting, and instead of making a painting, they made a sculptural version of Maximilian. As such, their composition is ﬂuid and the audience is able to access the work from many points of view. They have also made Mao proportionally larger than Christ, as if following the foreshortening technique found in painting. Obviously, the Gao Brothers are very knowledgeable and are interested in how contemporary Chinese art is perceived in a Western critical framework. They are also touching on the history of sculpture in China, which I’m sure

50 Vol. 11 No. 6 our colleagues here will tell us about. The history of sculpture in China is that it was not about art, it’s always been utilitarian—up until recently, sculpture was used for tomb and civic figures rather than works of art. So the fact that they made this piece into a sculpture is also significant and, in my view, contributes to the development of a critical framework in which we can discuss any piece of fine art, regardless of nationalities. You asked me earlier if I’m interested in Chinese or Western art; I’m interested to see if it is possible to discuss art with some sort of common and expanded framework and also to understand where each artist is coming from. So in terms of this sculpture, is it about sculpture versus painting or about sculpture in terms of Chinese art history?

Carrie Scott: You’ve raised a very interesting point about the experience of the work, because it’s not a painting. As you engage with it and move around it as a sculpture, it becomes highly aggressive. You’re forced to actually deal with the corporeal aspect of those men with guns pointing at you, so there’s a threatening component.

Voon Pow Bartlett: In terms of Manet, he also composed his figures in a very predetermined way, and he knew exactly the meaning he was aiming for—his intention was to have almost complete control through his configuration of the final painting. But in the case of the Gao Brothers, the audience appears to have been given a little more control. You can walk around the sculpture, and it looks different from the back to the front; you can see Mao’s face, whereas with the soldiers in Manet’s painting, you can’t see the faces of the executioners.

Le Guo: To start with, what I wanted to say is that obviously the Gao Brothers’s works are always approached in a particular way that is engaged with social and political elements in China, but this particular piece is not about just that. My understanding is that it is not against religion; we know Mao is not about secularity and religion being against each other, it’s more about class struggle. I feel a sense of unease and a disturbing element in this piece. This kind of element is easy to ﬁnd in contemporary Western art; for instance, the Chapman Brothers, or the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan who made a piece of work in English called the Ninth Hour, in which the Pope was struck down by a meteorite. This kind of element is the same as in this piece; it’s metaphorical not literal. The Gao Brothers’s work is always strongly engaged with political elements. All artists have different approaches. Some say contemporary artists cannot avoid being politically engaged, directly or indirectly. So this piece is just a particular approach. So I ﬁnd this is an interesting scenario—it reminds me of an important book by Susan Sontag called Regarding the Pain of Others,1 which altered my way of thinking not only about the uses and meanings of images, but about the nature of thinking and our consciousness. Following this book, she wrote an article published on the New York Times called “Regarding the Torture of Others,” which concerns American soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners. Her writing deploys her considerable skill of cultural criticism to engage crucial questions that matter to everyone disposed to think, feel, and respond to

Vol. 11 No. 6 51 this—how our consciousness relates to those images and visual materials— and it suggests a relationship between the viewer and the image.

This also reminds me of Guy Debord’s theory in The Society of the Spectacle. Back to the Gao Brothers’s work, I am very interested in what the viewers at the show are seeing, their mentality, imagination and what they want to construct in narration and interpretation. So the relationship created between the piece and the viewer is much more interesting for me. It’s like what we were chatting about before this discussion, how the viewer who passes by this gallery might have some very interesting comments. How they think, feel, and respond could create a new meaning for this piece of work.

Carrie Scott: When we were installing the work, the reaction of the installers was, for me, one of the most profound things that happened and mostly because it was completely subconscious. When they were handling the big Mao figures, they were quite ambivalent about them—obviously they used white gloves and great care—but they would just place the figures and make sure they were secure and walk away. With the Jesus sculpture, it was completely different. They handled him in a different way. There was a light touch, and this was literally while it was being unwrapped. And while none of them really stopped to consider the meaning of the work, their interaction with it was, for me, profound. For me, they were handling the work from their own experience and interpretation of those figures. In addition, what we found, because we had the door open so that one could see directly into the gallery and the sculpture, was that the reaction of some people was so strong that they wouldn’t even come in because they found it too shocking—it was too much. Others came in and just said “Wow,” but they wouldn’t walk around it; they got stuck, they just stopped at the door and then left. And I think like you, having seen it in photographs for two years, the actual interaction with it has been by far the most exciting aspect.

Le Guo: Yes, this is the relationship that is created with the Gao Brothers’s work, and also with Cattelan and the Chapman Brothers. They all create a kind of open-ended space of interpretation between viewer and the piece work.

Haili Sun: Regarding your comment about the Western world, I think the most important point is that it is difficult for them to comprehend the Eastern world because of differences in culture. The reason is that the Western viewer doesn’t know what happened in Chinese history, or about Mao’s background, and these two figures lived in different centuries—Jesus lived two thousand years ago and Mao died only in 1976. How can the viewer put the two together? I would like to follow Sheng Qi’s question about Mao’s feeling—he was always concerned about who were his enemies and who were his friends. In my knowledge of art history, Jesus’ image in art history never showed his expression or gestures—the first time that Jesus has shown his innocence is in the Gao Brothers’s work. Why is that? Jesus’ image in history always shows his love, sacrifice, and power, but never innocence. And Mao, consisting of eight figures in this sculpture, is in some way not one person, but for the Chinese people he symbolizes the power of a group. Also I believe this work has some other elements involved in it, for instance, irony.

52 Vol. 11 No. 6 Le Guo: Sorry to jump in, but what I find interesting is what Haili raised— about why it’s eight figures and not just one. Maybe it has something to do with our collective oppression, because, as human beings, we all exist with violence in our hearts, we are not perfect. So that’s why in artists’ work we can raise some of the questions that we think about. And an interpretation of the piece as eight figures and not one figure is that it refers to our collective desire towards society and our relationship with other people.

Haili Sun: Maybe Westerners are not quite sure why the Gao Brothers created eight ﬁgures of Mao, but my guess is that Mao is not singular; his power in China represented leadership by a group.

Carrie Scott: Do you mean that he didn’t operate alone? He had many people to help him?

Haili Sun: Yes, it’s a leadership of communism.

Gao Brothers, The Execution Carrie Scott: The other thing, to go back to your point about Jesus being of Christ (detail), 2009, bronze, steel. Courtesy of the artists. innocent, the thing I also ﬁnd interesting is that he’s post-death. He’s got the stigmata in his hands, so he has already been cruciﬁed, so you can’t kill him. There’s no point to it; they can shoot him all they want, but you can’t kill a dead man, and, indeed, if he wasn’t dead, according to Christian beliefs he would rise again from the dead anyway. So I’ve been wondering if there is a hopeful part about him insofar as he cannot be killed. Are the Gao Brothers trying to make some distinction that no matter what, all will be okay, that there’s an optimistic message in it? I don’t think there is, but I wonder if that is possibly another aspect to it.

Haili Sun: When I saw this piece for the ﬁrst time, the physical gesture of Jesus in reaction to Mao seems to suggest Jesus is wanting to say, “Why is that?” or “What’s the business with you?” He’s trying to say something with that gesture. But Mao naturally just uses his riﬂe to kill someone.

Vol. 11 No. 6 53 Gao Brothers, The Execution of Christ (detail), 2009, bronze, steel. Courtesy of the artists.

And I noticed this afternoon that Gao Brothers, The Execution of Christ (detail), 2009, bronze, the sculpture is not only made of steel. Courtesy of the artists. bronze, the knife itself is made of steel. Why did the artists make the knife appear so real?

Voon Pow Bartlett: I want to pick up on what Haili said just now— an interesting word you used, irony. I do believe there is irony in using Mao; Mao was a great propagandist in that he knew how to use spectacle which was what Le Guo was referring to earlier. He used the idea of spectacle and the Gao Brothers, The Execution of Christ (detail), 2009, bronze, masses to rule the people, and now steel. Courtesy of the artists. the Gao Brothers have turned it on its back and used him as a spectacle to actually criticize him. The idea of the society of the spectacle according to Guy Debord is also quite interesting, as a lot of art criticism regarding contemporary Chinese art is that it’s all about spectacle and spectacularization— the Olympics and all that—which undermines the real issues. Of course if you use the image of Mao, then it’s very difﬁcult to get away from the political element. But they’ve made other work, like The Utopia of Hugging for Twenty Minutes and High Places, which are about humanity, sensitivity, human freedom. So I think the fact that the work is a spectacle is perhaps detracting from the kind of important work they have been making, which includes all ranges of human emotions and personal freedom.

54 Vol. 11 No. 6 Gao Brothers, The Utopia Carrie Scott: Yes, and the human condition. of Hugging for Twenty Minutes No. 1, 2000, colour photograph, 110 x 150 cm. Courtesy of the artists. Voon Pow Bartlett: Which I think is very touching and moving. Of course the political aspect is quite big in China, so you can’t help that.

Le Guo: Yes, regarding what Voon Pow said, I remember reading an interview with the Gao Brothers, and one of them said he regards art as being less important than life. The interview also emphasized the importance of their work is not just political; they are also very keen on aesthetics and interested in work related to humanity, such as they are very touching pieces; the strangers are required by the artists to hug each other for twenty minutes. I am not sure how these pieces compare to their body of work as a whole but it certainly creates a spectacle.

Voon Pow Bartlett: At the same time, I am also thinking there’s a connection with the Argentinian artist Santiago Sierra, who makes all these kinds of relational works. I think the spectacle of Sierra’s work is about the relationship between people but, also, it is like guanxi, which describes the age old relationship-based society of China—so artists like Sierra make work that Nicolas Bourriaud would describe as relational aesthetics, but I think Chinese people have always had relational aesthetics in their history, whether in art or in life, in the form of guanxi.

Sheng Qi: I ﬁnd it very interesting that this piece also echoes the title of a painting by the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya—The Third of May, 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid (1814)—it’s not the same, but “execution” is a very strong word; it makes you think that in art history the Spanish are very revolutionary, like China. Revolution is geming in Chinese

Vol. 11 No. 6 55 and its literal translation is to “cut life”; that is, to “kill,” to “execute.” So when you think of Mao and the Cultural Revolution, there’s “execution,” there’s “kill”—you always think about these words, so that’s why this piece is very strong.

Haili Sun: Probably the word “revolution” has different connotations in Western culture. Revolution in China, as Sheng Qi said, is killing someone—you have to ﬁght until death, using physical force in order to achieve cultural change. That’s what I believe is different between China and the West—the word “revolution” in the West may not have such a direct physical interpretation.

Le Guo: Mao was a utopian communist; when he was young, his ambition was to rebuild a new world, that’s what he always stressed, but later on, some things didn’t go as he had anticipated. There are a lot of historians who discuss this matter. We say Mao was secular, but I read in his biography that he was quite a believer in certain aspects of Buddhism. This is interesting as he believed in something else, not just communism. In my view, Christ as a religious symbol, is opposed to the secular ideal of a revolutionary, so this work mixing both elements, creates a disruption and uneasy situation for the audience. What will they see in this? I’m really interested to see what they will try to interpret from this piece of work.

Haili Sun: After Mao became the leader of the People's Republic of China in 1949, his goal was to destroy our history of more than ﬁve thousand years. That’s why his regime was called the “Cultural Revolution.” And after that our generation was totally lost in that time (1966–76), what we could see was the violence of the revolution. That’s why, in the sculpture, Mao is shown using a riﬂe to represent the power of the leadership.

Carrie Scott: When we talked earlier, you pointed out that the gun was a Soviet gun—to be precise, it’s a Soviet communist gun—which I think is interesting, as the Gao Brothers went right to that minute detail, to reference communism so directly, as well as the power of communism. Obviously the gun is one of the most powerful weapons that can take life away. The communist guns make the piece that much more about communism.

Haili Sun: Yes, we call that type of gun an AK–47. This is a symbol of an inheritance from the Soviet Union.

Carrie Scott: I think that is probably a good segue to talk about the censorship of a work like this. Because to Western audience, and to me personally, censorship in China is so complicated, or to an outsider’s eye it seems complicated. You can write things or create works that really throw themselves in the face of the government and speak critically of someone as important as Mao, but then you can’t write the words “today” and “tomorrow” on the Internet—I was reading an interview with Ai Weiwei who was saying that you can’t do that because every time you type it in, it

56 Vol. 11 No. 6 gets deleted. You can’t write “tomorrow” because you could get together a group of people to meet tomorrow in a certain place, or you can’t write “today” because you could say, “I want to meet today to stage some sort of revolution.” With those nuances, I am interested to hear what you think: if this piece goes back to China, what would happen to it? The Gao Brothers said it would most likely get conﬁscated, but then would they experience some really serious consequences for making the work? If you look at someone like Ai Weiwei, he’s able to design the stadium for the Olympics, and, then, two years later, he’s being incarcerated. So, again, it’s those nuances I’d be interested to hear about. I would like all of you to unravel how complicated it really is.

Sheng Qi: Well, basically you cannot draw Mao’s image or Chairman Hu’s image. Otherwise, you’ll get in trouble. The authorities exert strict control over artists production and they can enter your studio within ten seconds! Policemen are everywhere. Once when I went back to my studio, the landlord saw me and said, “Hi, I haven’t seen you in a while, how’s everything?” and I said, “Alright”; two minutes later, the police knocked on the door. So, obviously the landlord phoned the police and told them I was back. So you have got no place to hide. It’s a pressure. When you start painting a subject matter or doing anything that they consider to be politically sensitive, this can lead to trouble.

Carrie Scott: You did a very physical thing—cutting off your little ﬁnger on your left hand—in 1989 Sheng Qi cut off his little ﬁnger in solidarity with the purported three thousand protesters who were massacred in Tian’anmen Square by the Chinese government. Did you get in trouble for that? Was that seen as something really controversial?

Sheng Qi: Every time I have a solo show in Beijing, I always have a visit from the local police station. They come to look around, they take a photograph; they don’t know which work should be taken down from the gallery. They have to go back to the police station and report to their superiors. They sometimes get confused, not knowing what work to remove. They have no consistent standards about which work can be removed and which can remain. One thing is for sure: if it has Mao’s image, it will be taken down. Some of my paintings with the policeman holding Chinese currency have Mao’s image on the currency, and they said this deﬁnitely could not be put on the wall. So one doesn’t know what the standards are.

Le Guo: You can have very critical, politically strong work in the studio, but you can’t exhibit it in the gallery.

Sheng Qi: Yes deﬁnitely, and it is also difﬁcult to transport my works abroad. The authorities have very strong regulations.

Carrie Scott: Yes, so I don’t understand how The Execution of Christ could have left China.

Vol. 11 No. 6 57 Sheng Qi: They probably went through South China or Vietnam ﬁrst, but deﬁnitely not Beijing or Tianjin.

Haili Sun: Once when I met Sheng Qi again, about two years ago, after he came back to the UK from China, I believe the ﬁrst question I asked him was, “How did your paintings get such a huge market in China?” I know his studio is located in Beijing, and he’s painted some good paintings, but the subject is quite politically sensitive. I just wondered how he managed to carry on painting such subjects under the current government. He said, “Well, you have to be careful.” And that’s his experience, which we don’t have here.

Sheng Qi: It was very hard. You felt on the outside all the time. When I talked to the reporters—the moment the reporter arrived—the police locked the doors. And you could not continue with your work. So it meant they were watching you very closely. Now, however, it’s much better. They don’t take you to the station immediately; they let you go. But they still give you that kind of pressure. Before, if they found you making politically sensitive work, they would take you to the station immediately.

Le Guo: I can talk a bit about the experience in the 1980s, that time I was at university in China and engaged in some of the art movements. Was there censorship in China? When I was in university, the work I was trying to do was not meant to be critical, but some of it was sensitive regarding political matters. I was immediately told by my teacher that I couldn’t do it. Even in an educational institution you couldn’t carry out what you wanted to do, you couldn’t complete your project, because you were told it wasn’t suitable. If you continued on with that work, you wouldn’t graduate; you wouldn’t receive your B.A. degree! That is censorship. Also in 1985, avant-garde artists tried to create some politically sensitive work that was very difﬁcult to show in public spaces. But now, from what I hear from artist friends or from reading on the Internet, it’s still quite strict in some areas but generally it’s improved for artists.

Haili Sun: The funny thing about censorship in China is that the government never announces how they’re going to make judgments; you never understand where the bottom line is.

Le Guo: As Haili Sun mentioned, the government doesn’t say you can’t do this or that; everyone has freedom within Chinese law, but the censorship is complicated, sometimes even very bureaucratic. If you want to show in a public space, you have to pass through a lot of people for approval.

Sheng Qi: I believe the Gao Brothers have had trouble with their passports for many years and they cannot travel. But this is not the worst thing. The worst was for performance artists in the early nineties, like Ma Liuming and Zhu Yu, who were arrested because they were doing a performance. I know a few who have been arrested because they did a performance in a public space. It’s still quite dangerous, especially doing performance.

58 Vol. 11 No. 6 Voon Pow Bartlett: I think a lot has changed; there are more artists doing more things now, for example, a Belgian artist who was tattooing pigs in the countryside, then brings them into the city to be exhibited. He even had a few public exhibitions in the centre of Beijing, around 2007, and his experience with the authorities was deﬁnitely unpredictable. You’re right, there do not appear to be any guidelines with, say, written criteria, of when authorities would close a show. On good days, you can be exhibiting the pigs and having an opening reception; other days, they have to take the pigs back to the farm, so it’s quite erratic.

Carrie Scott: There’s another aspect we didn’t talk about in regards to The Execution of Christ, which is that there is a very personal underlying element to the work—that their father was captured and went missing, and they believe he was executed. So when we were discussing the word “execution,” I wonder if that’s another reason they chose the word, the subject, to actually talk about their father.

Sheng Qi: China still has the largest number of people or criminals who are executed or punished every year. It is still number one. Well, China has a huge population, and many criminals as well.

Le Guo: Regarding Carrie’s question, I read interviews about the Gao Brothers. When they were boys, their father went missing and afterwards the authorities said it was suicide, but the Gao brothers believed that he was probably executed. So with this piece, I think it is very personal, especially regarding that difﬁcult time, where many families have so many stories, so many sad, touching stories from the Cultural Revolution period.

Sheng Qi: The Gao Brothers once told me they found out who killed their father and, many years later, they went to his home and knocked on his door and said, “We know who you are and what you’ve done; we’re the sons of Mr. Gao.” So then I asked them if they punched or beat this man, and they said they didn’t do anything except to tell him they know who he is and where he lives. It’s very touching.

Haili Sun: Actually, it wasn’t that person who killed their father; it was his assistant, so that’s why they did nothing. I’m not excusing him, but the Gao Brothers understand that what happened in the past is not the fault of that particular person.

Le Guo: That’s the suffering of many, many Chinese families in the Cultural Revolution. After twelve years, eventually justice was done; the authorities said his father unlawfully died, and the family got about £200 compensation. That’s very sad, and when I saw the story I thought, “So sad, two boys lost their father and a mother lost her husband, and after twelve years they only get £200 compensation for a life!”

Sheng Qi: The Gao brothers kept fighting for years to try to find a truth and kept fighting through their sculpture, painting, and photography. We

Vol. 11 No. 6 59 are very close friends. In the Chinese art scene, about eighty percent of artists are engaged in what I call decorative art and the other twenty percent produce something meaningful that is about social issues. The only thing I feel the Gao Brothers are chasing is the truth. They are very good artists.

Carrie Scott: That probably brings us to my ﬁnal question, which is really about the market, and I mean no disrespect to the other issues. I’m not trying to be controversial for the sake of it, but there have been some people who have come in and said, “They make this work to be just controversial,” because there’s a huge market for controversial work, especially for controversial Chinese work.

Voon Pow Bartlett: I think it’s not so much the content of the work, but I’m interested in the way the ecology of the art market and art institutions are evolving and the fact that galleries like yours can hold an exhibition that is united thematically rather than nationally. I think that’s a very healthy sign because just seeing the ghettoization of Chinese art and discussing Chinese art only from the Chinese viewpoint is not doing it justice. I think we’re moving away from that with the biennials and all that, so Chinese artists can participate in exhibitions around themes and meanings. Also, as you said, there are an increasing number of galleries opening up in Hong Kong, which is currently a more international city than Beijing, which is more interested in the nationalization of Chinese artists. So it’s a good thing that we are discussing Chinese work more and more on an international platform, because lots of Chinese artists are known by name now, rather than it just being the curators and critics, and I’m very pleased to see the show here. It’s a very good situation.

Le Guo: I’m thinking since China’s open door policy started less than thirty-four years ago—in 1978—it’s changed dramatically, and you can’t ﬁnd any other country so dense in population and so dramatically evolving. And these aspects make the rest of the world interested in what China is doing. Even though I’m Chinese, sometimes I get lost because everything is happening so quickly. That’s one reason many Chinese artworks are engaged in traumatic events, like the performance artists or some artists engaged in political issues. This is an interesting area for galleries to focus on when exhibiting contemporary Chinese art.

Notes 1 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Macmillan, 2004).

60 Vol. 11 No. 6 Yang Wang Leaving Chang’an: Establishing Contemporary Art Spaces in the Ancient Capital

ecause of the sustained legacy of its glorious past, Xi’an is a city that respects art, but modern art remains the pursuit of professionals Bin the form of large-scale public art commissions that decorate new buildings and parks. In a city best and almost exclusively known for its ancient historical and artistic achievements, the concept of “contemporary art” maintains a cool distance from most people, even those in the art world. To be sure, a history of private participation in the arts continues to the present day, but it remains limited to traditional formats. Despite the lack of popular interest in experimental forms of contemporary art, professionals and hobbyists sustain a vibrant ink painting community. With the public facade of the traditional art scene anchored in Shuyuanmen, Xi’an’s “calligraphy street,” ink painting maintains vibrancy while sharing a lively physical space with souvenir vendors and tourists. Nearby on the opposite side of the city wall’s south gate, a number of established galleries specializing in ink painting line the quiet street of Xiangzimiao. To locate experimental art in Xi’an, one needs ﬁrst to understand the old city’s role as the cultural heart but then travel beyond the physical and symbolic spaces demarcated by its walled boundaries.

Depending on one’s perspective, the problem of artistic innovation in modern-day Xi’an can be attributed as much to its geographical as its historical position. Situated to the south of the Loess Plateau and surrounded by mountains, Xi’an’s protected geography suited Chinese emperors but it also fostered a conservative social climate that privileged stability of the empire over novelty. Moving into the modern era, the relatively slow adoption of contemporary art in Xi’an further owes to a phenomenon of the mid-twentieth century—the Chang’an School of ink painting. Shortly after the establishment of the People’s Republic, the central government designated Xi’an the art centre of northwest China. In the 1950s and early 1960s, a group of ink painters employed by the Xi’an branch of the Chinese Artists Association captured the attention of national audiences with its unorthodox compositions featuring the landscapes and peasants of the northwestern provinces. The group came to be known as the Chang’an School in reference to the city’s ancient name. While the school’s activities effectively ceased by the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the reform era of the 1980s saw the restoration of the once-persecuted artists, in particular, Shi Lu and Zhao Wangyun. As the reputations of these artists lived on, the styles they created became synonymous with Xi’an painting in general, and coupled with subsequent success in the art market, the Chang’an School style attracted followers and imitators. The innovative energy with which

Vol. 11 No. 6 61 the Chang’an School placed Xi’an A group of hobbyist ink painters holding a private on the modern art map solidiﬁed critique at the Chang’an School Research Institute. into an authoritative style that has Photo: Yang Wang. shaped art-making in the ancient capital ever since. With pride, many successful artists in Xi’an today trace their artistic lineage to the Professor Zhang Xiaoqin Chang’an School; moreover, the conducting a critique for second-year ink painting Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts (XAFA), students at the Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts. Photo: Yang the leading tertiary art institution Wang. of the northwest, established under the same historical context as the Chinese Artists Association, trains artists and educators based on curriculum that has received little revision since the 1950s.

Despite its delayed arrival, activities propelling contemporary art in Xi’an are taking place both in the old neighbourhoods within the city walls and, in far-ﬂung yet rapidly developing districts that extend past the city’s Second and Third Ring roads. Given the strong tie that has existed between art and institutions in Xi’an, ofﬁcial sources often play a part in initiating new activities in the arts. A panoply of recent undertakings in Xi’an represent not only the spectrum of views that comprise the Xi’an art world but also the role of city planning and commercial real estate developers, a trend also evident in other larger Chinese urban centres.

On the conservative end of the Yang Kaidan in her gallery Dan Qing Xuan, located in the spectrum, traditional and semi- Min Le Yuan Cultural District. experimental ink painting and Photo: Yang Wang. calligraphy are beginning to share an address with a luxury Western hotel in an old neighborhood. Next to the brand new Hilton in the old city’s modest northeastern quadrant, a pedestrian walkway lined with ink painting galleries seems to have emerged overnight. Named the Min Le Yuan Cultural District, many of the galleries formerly occupied the Tang Dynasty West Market, a sprawling commercial complex with historical significance but located in the less accessible western part of the city. With backing from the Xincheng district government and the Wanda corporation, Min Le Yuan aims to overshadow Shuyuanmen as the old city’s preeminent art district. As Yang Kaidan put the final touches on her brand- new gallery, Danqingxuan, the young, first-time gallery owner expressed optimism for the future of her contemporary-focused ink painting gallery.

62 Vol. 11 No. 6 Top: Min Le Yuan Cultural Bridging the gap between state and District. Photo: Yang Wang. Right: Xi’an Art Museum. private ownership, the two-year old Photo: Yang Wang. Xi’an Art Museum occupies one of a series of stylistically congruous buildings on the southern avenue radiating from the Big Goose Pagoda, which in recent years has been transformed from a lone stone tower to a sprawling network of parks, plazas and shopping malls anchored by not only the pagoda but also the Tang Paradise theme park and a large manmade lake. Soon, all the sites in the Big Goose Pagoda and Qujiang Lake districts will be served by an elevated light rail transit system intended to bring more visitors. As the museum’s deputy director Bai Xi, one of the few visible female leaders in the Xi’an art world explains, the Xi’an Art Museum benefits from its partnership with the municipal government. While the city owns the museum building, the museum is operated independently. Aided by a background in hospitality management, Bai Xi spoke of the museum’s strategy of exhibiting artists of national and international recognition as much as possible during its first two years. During this time, audiences saw works by Fang Lijun, the Guo Brothers (Guo Wei and Guo Jin), and, for the first time in Xi’an, contemporary works from the British Council Collection. In an effort to equally engage the established traditional art circles, the museum regularly rotated exhibitions of modern and contemporary ink painting, as well as academic-style oil painting. As the museum enters its third year of operation, its plans to give more focus to contemporary art and local practices are

Vol. 11 No. 6 63 already underway. With a title that references Xi’an’s area code, the summer 2012 exhibition ART029 featured the works of ﬁfteen young Xi’an artists, demonstrating a wide range of styles and mediums, with the artists revealing a desire to combine personal and regional narratives. Wang Qingqing’s installation, Victory of Potato Farmers (2012), consisting of unwashed, sprouting potatoes—a major cash crop of Shaanxi province—violates the pristine “cultural” space of the museum through its agricultural references.

While private commercial galleries that specialize in contemporary art have Wang Qingqing, The Victory of Potato Farmers, 2012, mixed been in existence in Beijing and Shanghai since the 1990s, they are still a media installation. ART 029 at the Xi’an Art Museum, July rarity in Xi’an. The one-year-old LKJ Gallery, located seven kilometers due 2012. Photo: Yang Wang. south of city centre, represents Xi’an’s foray into this category. Occupying a petite, box-like building within the expansive Xi’an Exhibition Centre, a multi-use events venue, the gallery is further dwarfed by its ﬂashy neighbor, the gleaming Shaanxi TV tower, which marks the southern boundary of city proper. Modest and intimate in its scale and presentation, LKJ offers thematically curated exhibitions. The gallery’s in-house curator, Lin Min, presents her themes concisely and logically, even if they are not always challenging. “This is a nice alternative to shopping,” remarked opening attendee Li Haibo as he walked through the single-room gallery featuring the works of four local painters on a recent Sunday afternoon. In a city with a more established gallery culture, Li Haibo’s comment would be a backhanded compliment at best. Here in Xi’an, however, the comment is to be taken at face value. In a fast-growing second-tier city like Xi’an, one of the emerging megalopolises of China, direct participation in cultural activities is still rare. For the majority of the city’s young population, leisure

64 Vol. 11 No. 6 Exterior, LKJ Gallery. Photo: Yang Wang.

Interior, LKJ Gallery. Photo: Yang Wang.

Curator Lin Min of LKJ Gallery. Photo: Yang Wang.

time equates to participation in China’s robust commercial economy, and few alternatives to this pattern of consumption exist for the time being. By presenting works of unknown local artists at modest prices, LKJ introduces to Xi’an the concept of art collecting that is guided by one’s aesthetic preference and personal taste rather than investment value. Regardless of its eventual success, or failure, LKJ provides the critical function of education through establishing a gallery presence.

Vol. 11 No. 6 65 Stubbornly intact on the eastern edge of Xi’an, the Textile Town Art District Banpo International Art Zone, formerly known as the Textile occupies the site of the now-defunct printing and dyeing factory. To travel Town Art District. Photo: Yang Wang. here from the Bell Tower, an eight-kilometer route unfamiliar to most cab drivers, one leaves the ﬂatness of the city center for gentle hills. Lined with mature white-washed sycamore trees and meandering diagonally off the grid that deﬁnes the rest of the city, the streets that comprise Textile Town are unexpectedly scenic. Built in the 1950s after Soviet factory models, the ambitious urban planning endeavour combined factory, living, and recreational spaces. Until its bankruptcy in the 1990s, Textile Town was not only a fully realized socialist utopia, but also northwest China’s largest textile-manufacturing centre. In other parts of the world, one would expect exclusive gated communities to be built in scenic places like Textile Town, but, for the time being, however, two types of people live here—former factory workers and artists.

In the mid-1990s, as the last of the factories laid off its employees and closed its doors, Textile Town and its surrounding neighbourhoods clung to survival in a state of stagnation as the rest of the city underwent economic development. A decade later, as in so many other cities, both in China and abroad, artists recognized the abandoned factories could serve as ideal studios.

Across town at XAFA, located in the city’s rapidly growing southern suburb, student enrollment and faculty roster ballooned. The art university could no longer meet the needs of its faculty for large, quiet studio spaces. Compounded with mounting real estate prices, young faculty members and recent graduates looked to the city’s remote suburbs. Attracted by its affordability and spaciousness, the ﬁrst artists moved into Textile Town in 2007 with little fanfare. Recognizing that support for the arts provided good publicity, city ofﬁcials soon after made appearances at the art district and pledged their support during media events. The district grew organically and steadily—attracting more than 100 artists during the height of its occupancy. Unlike its forerunners 798 and Moganshan, Textile Town remained an affordable option for artists. With the exception of a single restaurant and a few low-key galleries, Xi’an’s art zone has resisted trappings

66 Vol. 11 No. 6 of commercialization. The artists, for the most part, are content to live and work without the interference of outside distractions.

Advertisement for Banpo For better or worse, Textile Town’s International Art Zone. Photo: Yang Wang. understated proﬁle is about to change. Recently, a private developer rumored to have ties to provincial ofﬁcials acquired the rights to renovate the art district. In alignment with the city’s habit of alluding to its famed history, the self-named Textile Town Art District has been renamed the Banpo International Art Zone in reference to the nearby Banpo neolithic excavation. Portions of the factory complex that housed studios have already been demolished to make way for an ink painting museum, retail shops and restaurants as a part of the developer’s plans to create a “cultural district.”

Banpo International Art Zone, residue at the former Textile Town Art District and buildings slated to be demolished. Photo: Yang Wang.

At a recent opening for third-year animation students from XAFA, held in Textile Town, the student organizers intended for their exhibition title, Adolescence, to serve as a metaphor for not only their youth and inchoate artistic skills, but also the state of contemporary art in Xi’an. The students’ buzzing optimism, while nurtured by their professor Wu Xiaochuan, was not entirely shared by him. As one of the earliest artists to move into Textile Town, Wu Xiaochuan has witnessed the uncertainty that accompanies the initial excitement of moving into the art district. He has seen fellow artists come and leave, his rent prices rise without warning, the recent demolitions and the possibility that he may be soon be forced out. Hai Yin, the owner of the 18 Degree Gray Art Gallery, the space in which the exhibition took place, scoffed at ofﬁcial nods to contemporary art in Xi’an. “All urban trash,” Hai

Vol. 11 No. 6 67 Wang Xiaochuan (far left) and Hai Yin (far right) during the opening of Adolescence, 18 Degree Gray Art Gallery, June 2012. Photo: Andrew Stokols.

Installation view of Adolescence, 18 Degree Gray Art Gallery, June 2012. Photo: Yang Wang.

Yin said in contempt when speaking about the city’s publicly commissioned sculptures. As Hai Yin continues to make available his space for a minimal fee, subsidized by his art dealing business, the future of his operations is unclear. For the time being, however, Textile Town continues to serve the creative community even as it faces tightening governmental control. As

68 Vol. 11 No. 6 the artist residents continue to gather over tea in each other’s studios, the annual Zhang Guan Li Dai Music Festival once again brings together local and national acts on the independent music circuit in Textile Town. And in a year’s time, the art district will no longer be protected by its remoteness, as a new subway line will soon connect Textile Town to the rest of the city.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from the Min Le Yuan Cultural Centre, OCAT Xi’an is poised to be the most visible venue and catalyzing agent for contemporary art in the city to date. Still in its planning stages, the Xi’an branch of the Shenzhen-based OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT) will be the first full-scale offspring generated from the OCT’s four-city expansion into China’s interior. Hoping to replicate its success in igniting the contemporary art scene in Shenzhen, the Overseas Chinese Town (OCT), a state-owned development in the city’s outskirts, is taking its part-cultural tourism, part-real estate model to Xi’an, Wuhan, Beijing and Shanghai. Slated to open in spring 2013, the Xi’an branch will occupy a newly built, three-floor, 2,000-square-meter building in the Qujiang district in the city’s densely populated southern suburb. Although far from the old city centre, the Qujiang district has quickly become a much sought-after residential zone for its access to parks and spacious roads. With acknowledgement to Xi’an’s long-standing history in calligraphy and epigraphy, the inaugural exhibition will feature Xu Bing, Wang Dongling and Qiu Zhenzhong, who are currently on exhibit at OCAT Shenzhen. Given the reputations of both OCAT and Beijing-based curator Karen Smith, who has been named the Xi’an branch’s managing director, OCAT is already generating buzz in the Xi’an art world. Citing factors such as the city’s cosmopolitan history and support from the XAFA faculty, Smith sees untapped potential for contemporary art in Xi’an. Come next year, Smith will aim to sustain the initial buzz through local participation in its academically driven exhibitions and site-specific projects. With ambitions to impact not only the visual arts but the arts community at large, Smith hopes that OCAT Xi’an will be a platform for dialogue for artists, writers, musicians and intellectuals alike. A proponent of adding practice-based curatorial training in China to supplement its classroom-based curriculum, Smith also plans for the art centre to hold curatorial workshops that will provide hands-on experience for participants.

Should they succeed, the efforts of OCAT harkens unexpectedly back to an era not so long ago when the Chinese Artists Association also leveraged experimental art of its day to engage Xi’an and the greater northwest region through exhibition and education. This time, however, there exists a diversity of initiatives in Xi’an, representing district, municipal, provincial and private interests—all of which recognize the intellectual and economic beneﬁts for developing contemporary art in Xi’an.

Vol. 11 No. 6 69 Julian Scarff The Institution of Forgetting? Contemporary Chinese Art, Critique and the Academy

Xiao Lu, Dialogue, 1989, installation/performance at the China/Avant-Garde exhibition, Beijing. Courtesy of the artist.

Lost Memories and Unwell Histories The 1979 Stars and 1989 China/Avant-Garde exhibitions may be remembered for the wrong reasons. The closure by the Beijing police of the ﬁrst Stars exhibition, which was mounted on the park fence adjacent to the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), led to a street demonstration and impassioned speeches at the Democracy Wall that called for artistic freedom. Even so, weeks later, the Stars were granted ofﬁcial permission to exhibit in Beijing’s Beihai Park and, in 1980, within the NAMOC itself.

Likewise, the China/Avant-Garde exhibition will always be inextricably linked to the gunshots that artist Xiao Lu delivered to her Dialogue installation, causing the closure of the exhibition. It re-opened only to be closed again, this time permanently, due to a bomb threat. In other words, the 1979 Stars and 1989 China/Avant-garde exhibitions were not of themselves manifestly political events. However, to remove these events from an ofﬁcial account of contemporary art in China, profoundly politicizes them, and churns history into histrionics.

The extent of a lapse of memory in the exhibition A New Horizon: Contemporary Chinese Art, curated by NAMOC and presented in Canberra’s National Museum of Australia (NMA) for four months beginning in September 2011, was as shocking and banal as the crudest propaganda.1 Claiming to present sixty years of contemporary Chinese art, from 1949 to 2009, the exhibition catalogue essay, “A New Era of Art,” by NAMOC researcher, Yi E, excluded any reference to either the Stars’ or the

70 Vol. 11 No. 6 China/Avant-Garde exhibitions. Instead, it referred to Western art styles entering China after 1978, but not their effects; like an Alzheimer’s sufferer who can ﬁnd their car keys, but can’t remember what they’re for.

The last art style or movement to be discussed in any detail in A New Horizon is Scar Art from the late 1970s and early 80s. The exhibition essay describes Cheng Conglin’s 1979 depiction in A Snowy Day in 1968 (1979) of the aftermath of a street ﬁght between Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution as “underscoring the cruelty and stupidity of the event (to show) his criticism of that period in history.”2 The young educated woman in He Duoling’s 1984 work Youth is said to be “confused about the current situation and what her future holds” and is representative of “that generation of educated young people who were sent to the countryside.”3

He Duoling, Youth, 1984, oil on Nor does the New Horizon catalogue essay make reference to the Rustic canvas, 150 x 186 cm, Courtesy of the National Museum of Realists, Luo Zhongli’s masterpiece, Father, or any of the other groups Australia. active in the late 1970s and 80s. There is no mention of the ’85 New Wave Movement which saw more than two thousand Chinese artists take part in almost one-hundred-and-ﬁfty exhibitions in over twenty locations across China.4 There is nothing said of the major international exhibitions that included contemporary Chinese artists over the last two decades, or the international awards and record auction prices some have received. The exhibition catalogue essay does, however, note the gold medals awarded to ink brush artists Zhou Changgu and Huang Zhou, respectively, at the 1955 and 1957 World Youth Festivals, suggesting an alternative aesthetic and deﬁnition of contemporary Chinese art, but not one overly eager to engage with this audience’s previous experience of contemporary Chinese art.5

Vol. 11 No. 6 71 If this ofﬁcial government exhibition is so insistent on forgetting the key events and developments in contemporary Chinese art over the last thirty years, what does this say about the extent to which contemporary Chinese art has been genuinely accommodated within the Chinese Academy and its ofﬁcial institutions?

Only eight of the sixty-seven artists included in A New Horizon and active after 1978 were involved in the 1989 China/Avant-Garde exhibition or have since become associated internationally with contemporary Chinese art. They are Xu Bing, Liu Xiaodong, Yu Hong, Zhan Wang, Su Xinping, Tan Ping, Ding Yi, and Zeng Fanzhi.

Su Xinping, Cheers No. 23, 2005, oil on canvas, 260 x 200 cm. Courtesy of Red Gate Gallery, Beijing.

However, even the career details and works produced by some of these artists are also subject to lapses of memory in A New Horizon. For example, Xu Bing’s 1987 –1991 Book from the Sky, likely one of the most critically discussed works by any contemporary Chinese artist, is not referred to in the exhibition catalogue or even in his biographical notes. In fact, none of Xu Bing’s activities from the 1980s or 90s are noted. Instead, he is represented by a 2005 work and included in the 2000–2009 section of the exhibition. Zeng Fanzhi also appeared out of place in the 2000–2009 section with a landscape painting from 2006. As with Xu Bing, nothing is said of the work Zeng Fanzhi is best known for internationally, his iconic masked men from the 1990s,

72 Vol. 11 No. 6 Xu Bing, Book from the Sky, one of which sold in 2008 for 9.7 million 1987–91, installation view in Cocido y Crudo, Reina USD. The works included in A New Soﬁa National Museum of Art, Madrid. Photo: Javier Horizon were predominantly drawn from Campano. Courtesy of Xu Bing Studio. a 2009 NAMOC exhibition, 60 Years of Chinese Painting; however, the NMA has acknowledged that it was able to persuade NAMOC to include two works in A New Horizon from the NAMOC collection that were not selected for the 2009 NAMOC show.6 If the NMA had pursued this opportunity further, other works may have been found in the NAMOC collection that were more genuinely representative of the work created by contemporary artists in China since 1978.

Zeng Fanzhi, Untitled, 2006, oil on canvas, 150 x 220 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

But is it too late for contemporary Chinese artists to renegotiate the terms of their entry into the Academy and its ofﬁcial institutions? Are they already too compromised? Like the majority of the other artists included in A New Horizon and active after 1978, all of the contemporary Chinese artists in the exhibition are either academics or otherwise members of China’s state- owned art institutions. Xu Bing, Tan Ping, and Su Xinping currently all hold leadership roles in the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), where Liu Xiaodong, and Yu Hong are also professors. Ding Yi has tenure at the Shanghai Institute of Fudan University, and both Zeng Fanzhi and Xu Bing are founding members of the ofﬁcial Chinese Institute of Contemporary Art (CIAC).7

No Critique among the Academicians? Zhou Yan, who was a member of the curatorial committee of the 1989 China/Avant-Garde exhibition, clearly believes that the institutionalization of contemporary Chinese art and its artists thoroughly undermines its critical practice and potential. In his 2012 article “Art Institutions: Critique and Its Institution,” Zhou Yan is highly critical of contemporary Chinese artists, curators, and critics from the 1980s who have since taken up positions in China’s state-owned art institutions.8 He is particularly scathing in his criticism of those who “fought against the institutionalization of art in the 1980s yet now carry the title of ‘academician’ of the (CIAC).”9 Although Zhou Yan does not refer to these academicians by name, his

Vol. 11 No. 6 73 charge of hypocrisy might not only apply to Zeng Fanzhi and Xu Bing, but also to Cai Guo-Qiang, Zhang Xiaogang, Fang Lijun, and Yue Minjun.10

Zhou Yan further implies that those who have taken up positions in these arts institutions have thereby compromised their ability to engage in genuine critique. Zhou Yan insists that individuals must “stay outside of, and opposed to the institution so they can be free in their critique.”11 Assuming that critique within those institutions is impossible, he asks, “[how] can people in institutions detach themselves from the institution, understand its nature, strength, and problems, and, further, critique it?”12

Critique in Institutions—In and Beyond the Reform Era Yet, a form of critique has been practiced in China’s state-owned art academies since the late 1970s. Intended only to provide training in ofﬁcially sanctioned artistic styles from that period, China’s state-owned art academies have permitted their students to pervert this mandate and experiment in a broad range of unofﬁcial art practices.

As Martina Köppel-Yang notes:

The art of the Chinese avant-garde of the late 1970s and 1980s is, like the literature of that period, not an underground art. It developed within the ofﬁcial institutional structure and, in part, with the support of ofﬁcial institutions.13

Köppel-Yang sets out three conditions that she believes created discrepancies in the administration of China’s state-owned arts institutions, which, over time, established themselves as “niches” of relative freedom. These niches, she maintains, nurtured “alternative ideological and artistic positions” and eventually contemporary art practices within these institutions.

The niche-generating conditions that Köppel-Yang identiﬁed include the following:

1. The breakdown of discipline and coordination between the ideological Chinese Artist Association and administrative Ministry of Culture (MoC), which govern China’s state- owned arts institutions, in part because of MoC ofﬁcials seeking alternative policy outcomes following the Cultural Revolution.

2. The missing or incomplete state of China state-owned institutions in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, leading local ofﬁcials to improvise their own self-styled policies.

3. The re-appointment of previously purged teachers and administrators within China’s state-owned arts institutions and arts bureaucracy, which encourages an environment of tolerance and experimentation.14

74 Vol. 11 No. 6 The conditions Köppel-Yang describes appear speciﬁc to the circumstances experienced in China’s state-owned art institutions immediately following the Cultural Revolution. Indeed, Zhou Yan believes that whatever opportunities for critique existed in the “historical scenario of the 1980s,” they were no longer available after that time.15

X. L. Ding, in his 1994 article "Institutional Amphibiousness and the Transition from Communism: The Case of China," provides examples of critique in China in the 1970s and 80s in a broad range of state-owned institutions outside of the visual arts. 16 X. L. Ding furthermore cites critique in state-owned institutions outside of China, such as the Soviet bloc countries during the 1980s, and even suggests that the institutional forms that permit critique may be an essential feature of East Asian societies.

X. L. Ding sees critique within institutions in China in the 1970s and 80s as permitted by four conditions. Similar to Köppel-Yang’s observations, these focus on the weakening of the party-state’s control over state-owned institutions and the increase in autonomy of these institutions more generally.

The conditions that Ding identiﬁes include the following:

1. The seeking of alternative policy outcomes by professionals and intellectuals in ofﬁcial roles following the Cultural Revolution.

2. The breakdown of coordination and discipline within the party-state, brought about by reforms: decentralizing decision making; differentiating the functions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the civil government; and the rehabilitation of previously purged personnel that was less likely to support future waves of political persecution.

3. The relaxing of previous personnel recruitment policies that had enabled supervising bodies to place informers within their subordinate units in order to closely monitor their internal activities.

4. The decentralization of economic management permitting more ﬁnancial, and so greater operational, autonomy to market-oriented state-owned institutions.17

Seeing critique within China’s state-owned media organizations, government think tanks, and other institutions during the 1980s, X. L. Ding offers the speciﬁc example of a national publishing house in Beijing, the People’s Publishing House, that was directly under the supervision of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the CCP. In his account, this publishing house used its nationally circulated compendium, the New China Digest, to reprint articles on banned subjects, including humanism and alienation under socialism, by claiming only to be compiling representative content from local journals. Using this excuse, the publishing house was able to deliberately select articles from more loosely regulated local journals that a national publisher would never have received permission to publish.

Vol. 11 No. 6 75 Extending his observations beyond China in the 1970s and 80s, X. L. Ding proposes that the phenomenon of internal critique can be generalized into a theory broadly applying to late communist societies. Central to this theory is X.L. Ding’s concept of “institutional amphibiousness.” He developed this term from the dictionary definition of “amphibious,” meaning the “leading of a double life” or the “occupying of two positions.” X.L. Ding sees institutions in late communist societies as subject to a state of “amphibiousness,” whereby they lack clear, separate boundaries, leading to an overlap of activities and powers among institutions. The amphibious nature of these institutions also enables them to be used for purposes contrary to those they are supposed to fulfill, and even allows the same institution to be used simultaneously to serve conflicting purposes.

Such amphibious institutions do not exist in societies subject to the rule of law. Under the rule of law, the activities and powers of government institutions are clearly deﬁned in legislation or under a constitution. In late communist societies, X.L. Ding argues, the ruling party deliberately maintains civil government institutions in an amphibious state in order to ensure that it can intervene in their activities and decision-making processes at will.

X. L. Ding proposes, however, that being left open to party intervention in this way, also makes these institutions vulnerable to the capture and manipulation by critical forces. This has been especially the case with the weakening of party-state control in the Reform Era and the growing autonomy of these institutions and their leadership. Nevertheless, while the amphibious state of these government institutions allowed critical forces to capture and use them against the interests of the party-state, X.L. Ding notes that these forces are careful to do this covertly so as to maintain the protective facade of a party-state institution.

X. L. Ding argues that the rapid collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s can be largely attributed to critical forces working in this way to covertly capture and subvert vulnerable amphibious government institutions. He notes that prior to these popular revolutions, independent opposition organizations, such as Poland’s Solidarity movement, were a very rare exception. Instead, much more commonplace was the presence of state-owned institutions, such as the literary journal associations in the Soviet Union, that clearly had been captured by critical forces who were using them to lead local protest movements.

Beyond late communist societies, X. L. Ding proposes that the government institutions in East Asia generally might also be seen as inherently amphibious. He suggests that, as can be seen in pre-communist China, semi-authoritarian Taiwan, and even democratic Japan, the East Asian state is amphibious in the sense of being organizationally pervasive, lacking clean-cut boundaries and blurring the line between the ofﬁcial and the non-ofﬁcial, government and market, and law and custom. Consequently, writing in 1994, as China was just emerging from the Tian’anmen crackdown, X.L. Ding could still see good reason to expect that even the institutions of a post-communist China were likely to be amphibious, and

76 Vol. 11 No. 6 so open to covert capture and manipulation by critical forces seeking to counter an authoritarian government.

In the absence of a rights-protected, full-ﬂedged civil society in China, this ability to manipulate and seek protection in state-owned institutions is essential. Whereas Köppel-Yang and X. L. Ding have shown how critique was possible in the 1970s and 80s despite institutional inclusion, the circumstances of the Chongqing alternative art space, Organhaus, demonstrates how, in contemporary China, critique can be made possible because of its inclusion “within” an institution.

Wang Jun, installation view of Material, Lies, Diver, 2009, Organhaus Art Space, Chongqing. Courtesy of Organhaus Art Space.

The July 2012 edition of the Chinese language version of ARTINFO recognized Organhaus and four other alternative art spaces across Greater China for operating outside mainstream art institutions and the regular presentation of critically engaged exhibitions and events. Organhaus, with its artists’ studios, exhibition spaces, ﬁlm festivals, and facilities for international residency programs was, in particular, referred to by ARTINFO as an “independent organization.”18

According to Organhaus’s curator, Ni Kun, Organhaus receives no funding from the Chinese government, nor is it under the formal direction of any ofﬁcial government body or state-owned institution. Ni Kun notes, however, that because his co-founder, artist Yang Shu, is also a professor at the nearby Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts (SIFA), there is the perception that Organhaus is in some way under the SIFA’s supervision. Ni Kun says that regardless of the fact that it is an open secret that no formal connection between Organhaus and the SIFA exists, this illusory link nevertheless protects Organhaus’s continuing operation: “We want to engage in critique,” Ni Kun says, “but ﬁrst we have to survive.”19

Factoring in Critique James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen further develop X. L. Ding’s theory of institutional amphibiousness in their 2010 study of institutional change.

Vol. 11 No. 6 77 Not conﬁned to any speciﬁc historical or political context, Mahoney and Thelen propose a theory of institutional change that is pared back to a consideration of just two factors: the extent of “discretion” that potential agents of change have in applying their host institution’s rules, and the effectiveness of the “veto powers” available to those seeking to counter this discretion and defend the status quo.20

An application of Mahoney and Thelen’s analytical framework would focus on evidence of individual teachers or students (would-be “change agents”) in China’s state-owned art academies in the late 1970s and early 1980s being permitted sufficient freedom (“discretion”) under the institution’s rules, for example, to deviate from the traditional curricula to teach or study non-social realist models and techniques. At the time, this approach would look to the effectiveness of opposing individuals or groups, for example, conservative officials within the academies or the administrating bureaucracy (“the defenders of the status quo”), who may attempt to block these deviant activities by using existing rules or by other means (their “veto powers”). Mahoney and Thelen’s theory can be readily applied to Köppel- Yang’s account of critique in China’s state-owned art institutions in the late 1970s and early 80s. Her first two niche-generating conditions listed above—the breakdown of discipline among CAA and MoC bureaucrats and coordination between the CAA and the MoC and fragmented state of China’s post-Cultural Revolution state-owned art institutions—can be used to assess the degree of regulatory discretion likely to have been available to would-be agents of change in these institutions.

Köppel-Yang’s third condition—the re-appointment of purged teachers and administrators within China’s state-owned art institutions—also suggests the effectiveness of the veto powers available to those attempting to defend the status quo within these institutions. Describing the liberating inﬂuence of these re-appointments, Köppel-Yang particularly notes the importance of the selection of Jiang Feng as chairman of the CAA and president of CAFA. As she notes, Jiang not only supported students and professional artists in the organization of semi-ofﬁcial exhibitions and painting societies, but also advocated pluralism in content and styles and granted permission for the Stars to hold their 1980 exhibition at NAMOC.

Nevertheless, the extent of Jiang Feng’s ability and preparedness to protect unofﬁcial art practitioners from the veto powers of more conservative cadres seems to have been summed up in his warning to artists: “You can paint whatever you like, but that does not mean we will support you.”21

Mahoney and Thelen’s analytical framework is useful to the extent that it can gauge the likelihood of change within an institution by comparing the degree of regulatory discretion that an institution’s would-be agents of change have, against the effectiveness of veto powers held by the defenders of the status quo.

The above application of Mahoney and Thelen’s framework to the circumstances described by Köppel-Yang’s in China’s state-owned art academies in the late 1970s and early 1980s, models how such a comparison could be made. However, a full application of this framework of institutional

78 Vol. 11 No. 6 change would require in-depth analysis looking at, for example, the actual terms of the legal and administrative rules applying to China’s state-owned art institutions in the period subject to analysis (the veto powers), and the degree to which these rules were respectively implemented and complied with in each institution covered by the study (the discretion).

This degree of detail may be required in each case, as the possibility for change could be affected by factors at either the national and local levels. As was also seen in Köppel-Yang’s example of Jiang Feng, this could also be inﬂuenced by the personalities involved in its administration at the sector level, for example, Jiang Feng’s role within the China Academy of Art (CAA), or within its own executive, such as the position of president at CAFA.

The Potential for Critique in Contemporary Chinese Art Institutions Being context-neutral, Mahoney and Thelen’s theory should also be able to be employed to assess the current possibilities for institutional change in China’s state-owned art institutions. But further research will ﬁrst be required.

For example, what has been the effect of the transfer of the administration of CAFA and the China Academy of Art (CCA) in Hangzhou in 2000 from the MoC to the Ministry of Education (MoE)? How has this affected the regulatory discretion and veto powers available to would-be agents of change and defenders of the status quo in these institutions? Likewise, what has been the effect of the appointment of artists, curators, and critics from the 1980s to inﬂuential positions within these institutions, for example, Xu Bing as a CAFA vice-president, Fan Di’an as director of the NAMOC, and Luo Zhongli as president of the SIFA? Have they been able to increase the level of regulatory discretion granted to would-be agents of change in their institutions? Have they been able to protect an environment that encourages experimentation, as Jiang Feng did, from the veto powers of more conservative ofﬁcials?

For instance, in 2006 CAFA was able to establish an undergraduate major in contemporary art or “experimental art” without seeking permission from the MoE or any other government body.22 Does this suggest a greater discretion in the application of rules within China’s state-run art academies? Certainly, the veto powers of the CCP over the administration of China’s state-owned art academies have increased since the 1970s and 80s. In 1990, the CCP issued a directive requiring that all tertiary institution presidents, including those responsible for China’s state-owned art academies, be placed under the direct supervision of the CCP Central Committee. This arrangement became law in 1998.23 It has also become common practice for senior cadres retiring from the government to be appointed to the leadership of tertiary institutions, often as a vice-president, to strengthen the link between the state and the institution.

Beyond Critique to Engagement—and Its Dangers Yu Jianxing and Wang Shizong, in their 2011 article “The Applicability of Governance Theory in China,” note the continuing impact of the economic reforms on the Chinese government’s ability to command and control state- owned institutions. Like the opportunities for critique identiﬁed by Köppel-

Vol. 11 No. 6 79 Yang and X. L. Ding, Yu Jianxing and Wang Shizong note that the ongoing process of economic reform had opened up spaces in China’s “fragmented authoritarianism” wherein individuals could practice “a certain degree of free choice in lifestyles or cultures.”24 However, Yu Jianxing and Wang Shizong explain that rather than being used for oppositional and unofﬁcial activities, these spaces are now being deployed to directly engage with the Chinese government on policy formulation. Nevertheless, it is important to note that these spaces remain provisional and are not positioned in the rights-protected public domain of a full-ﬂedged civil society:

Fragmentation within the uniﬁed political-administrative system provides public space for citizen participation in (the) “public domain” in which the state and citizens interact, negotiate, and cooperate to inﬂuence the distribution of public goods that affect (the) livelihoods and interests of citizens.25

When asked in May 2012 how his appointment within CAFA does not contradict his earlier involvement in the China/Avant-Garde and other signiﬁcant international exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art in the 1990s, Su Xinping cautioned against being caught up in “Cold War thinking.” Using a Chinese idiom with the general meaning of “cooperation is not collaboration” (tong liu he wu), Su Xinping argued that it was his duty in a more pluralistic society “to work with the government to try to persuade it to take the right path.”26

Yu Jianxing and Wang Shizong note this change in strategy—from opposition to engagement—is also apparent in case studies of Chinese social organizations—non-government, not-for-proﬁt, registered associations that Chinese citizens voluntarily join to achieve to a common objective, whether cultural, sporting or related to social welfare.27

Yu Jianxing and Wang Shizong note that case studies from the 1990s describe how the leaders of these social organizations often believe that the best way for them to increase their inﬂuence over issues affecting their members is to move closer to, and even interconnect with, state and party organizations, regardless of the loss of autonomy that this involves.28

The greater risk to the integrity of these organizations, as seen by Yu Jianxing and Wang Shizong, was not any incremental loss of autonomy, but, rather, being too good at what they do. Often delegated quasi-public roles, especially in social welfare, that the Chinese government no longer chose to fund or directly resource, these social organizations have inadvertently had the effect of enhancing the governing capability and legitimacy of the party- state, as it retreats from its former responsibilities.

The CIAC, joined by many of the most successful contemporary Chinese artists in 2009, is not a registered Chinese social organization. As Zhou Yan notes in his criticism of those who have taken up CIAC membership, it is instead the equivalent of a government-afﬁliated research organization, like the Chinese academies of sciences and social sciences.29 However, like the over-achieving citizens’ social organizations described by Yu Jianxing

80 Vol. 11 No. 6 and Wang Shizong, the contemporary Chinese artists who have joined the CIAC risk “authoritarian integration” by appearing considerate rather than critical, as they assist the party-state to manage the nation’s social risks and conﬂicts and represent the false front of a tolerant and harmonious society.

Mahoney and Thelen also acknowledge the danger of associations and having the best intentions. They refer to the agents of change in an organization subject to conversion as “opportunists” that play by the rules but look to manipulate and exploit “whatever possibilities exist within the prevailing system to achieve their ends.”30 Yet they also warn that the “wait- and-see approach” of opportunists, which defers the riskier strategy of actively mobilizing for change, in the meantime, inadvertently perpetuates and legitimates the status quo.

Measuring Critique by Its Outcomes The question to be asked in light of these risks and opportunities, then, is not whether it is possible for groups or individuals to detach themselves from China’s state-owned art institutions to affect critique, but, rather, what the chances are of successful critique within these institutions and on what grounds this “success” is to be measured.

For example, three years on from the decision by some of China’s most successful contemporary artists to enter into the CIAC, what have been the tangible gains of joining the CIAC, compared to the semblance of tolerance that this act has bestowed on the party-state? This may be a difﬁcult question to answer, as the beneﬁts of the CIAC may be quite diffuse.

Perhaps a better preliminary inquiry would be into what the critical outcomes have been of the A New Horizon exhibition. In exchange for its revisionism, was the mere inclusion of work by internationally recognized contemporary Chinese artists a worthwhile outcome? Has this inclusion made it more likely that next time contemporary Chinese art will be better represented in ofﬁcial international exhibitions? Alternatively, has this had any worthwhile pay-offs for the support of contemporary Chinese art domestically within China?

It may also be possible to apply Mahoney and Thelen’s conversion theory to the exhibition and ask what degree of discretion Fan Di’an and his curatorial team had in the A New Horizon exhibition, in terms both of the selection of works and the historical framework in which these could be discussed in the exhibition essay. Likewise, how effective were the veto powers that conservative forces held over this process? If these powers were overwhelming, could Fan Di’an and his team have known of this before the project began? If so, were they ill advised to have included contemporary Chinese art works at all?

Questions also need to asked of the NMA in Australia. Should a national institution for the preservation of history and culture have hosted an exhibition that passes silently over key events in the history it claims to represent? Australian and overseas visitors who saw the A New Horizon exhibition of course have access to histories of contemporary Chinese art without the omissions noted above. However, as a capitulation to a

Vol. 11 No. 6 81 demonstration of Chinese soft power, the New Horizon exhibition is quite galling. Not only does it provide a platform for a whitewashed view of the history of contemporary Chinese art, but it also is likely to encourage the Chinese government to do the same again, either with the history of contemporary Chinese art or some other collection of events on the historical record that it would prefer to be read another way.

Notes 1 The A New Horizon exhibition catalogue essay and artists’ biographies are available with images of all the exhibition works at the National Museum of Australia Web site: http://www.nma.gov.au/ exhibitions/a_new_horizon/home/. 2 Yi E, “A New Era of Art,” A New Horizon (Canberra: National Museum of Art, 2011), 12. 3 Ibid., 12. 4 Gao Minglu, Total Modernity and the Avant-Garde in Twentieth Century Chinese Art (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2011), 103, citing (Gao Minglu), 1985–1986 (The History of Contemporary Chinese Art, 1985–1986), 623. 5 Yi, “A New Era of Art,” 11. 6 NMA Director, Andrew Sayers explained that the NAMOC agreed to include the works of naturalized Australian Chinese artists, Shen Jiawei and Wang Lan, Red Star over China (1987), and Girl Leading a Horse (1999), respectively, in A New Horizon, even though neither had been included in the 2009 NAMOC exhibition, 60 Years in Chinese Painting. Andrew Sayer, e-mail message to Julian Scarff, September 14, 2012. 7 “1113,” (“The Chinese National Academy of Arts establishes the Chinese Institute of Contemporary Art on November 13 in Beijing) The Chinese National Academy of Arts is quoted at http://www.zgysyjy.org.cn/newart/yishuchuangzuo9.jsp], and http://art.china.cn/zixun/2009-11/13/content_3242725.htm/. 8 Zhou Yan, “Art Institutions: Critique and Its Institution,” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 11, no. 2 (2012), 64–73. 9 Zhou, “Art Institutions: Critique and Its Institution,” 67. 10 “1113,” (“The Chinese National Academy of Arts establishes the Chinese Institute of Contemporary Art on November 13 in Beijing).” 11 Zhou, “Art Institutions: Critique and Its Institution,” 72. 12 Ibid., 72. 13 Martina Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare: The Chinese Avant-Garde, 1979–1989—A Semiotic Analysis (Hong Kong: Timezone 8, 2003), 40. 14 Ibid., 41–44. 15 Zhou, “Art Institutions: Critique and Its Institution,” 72. 16 X. L. Ding, “Institutional Amphibiousness and the Transition from Communism: The Case of China,” British Journal of Political Science 24, no. 3 (1994), 293–318, 311. 17 X. L. Ding, “Institutional Amphibiousness and the Transition from Communism: The Case of China,” 311. 18 “5,” (“Art’s other powers: 5 alternative spaces”), ARTINFO, July 8, 2012, http://cn.artinfo.com/news/story/814400/Another-Art-Powers-5-Alternative-Art-Space/. 19 Julian Scarff, interview with Ni Kun, Melbourne, Australia, July 29, 2012. 20 James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen, Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency and Power (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 18–19. 21 Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare, 44, citing Joan Lebold Cohen, The New Chinese Painting: 1949–1986 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987), 53. 22 Julian Scarff, interview with Tan Ping, May 20, 2012, Beijing, China. 23 Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCCCP) notice on reinforcement of party construction in higher education institutions (Beijing: CCCCP, 1990) and Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, Higher Education Law (gao deng jiao yu fa), (1998), cited in Li Wang, “Higher education governance and university autonomy in China,” Globalisation, Societies and Education 8, no. 4 (November 2010), 477–95, 479–80. 24 Yu Jianxing and Wang Shizong, “The Applicability of Governance Theory in China,” in Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences 4, no. 1 (March 2011), 22–36, 31. 25 Yu and Wang, “The Applicability of Governance Theory in China,” 33. 26 Julian Scarff, interview with Su Xinping, May 20, 2012, Beijing, China. 27 Regulations for Registration and Management of Social Organisations [China], People's Republic of China State Council Order No. 250, September 25, 1998, Articles 2–3, available at: http://www.unhcr. org/refworld/docid/48a9818f2.html/. 28 Yu and Wang, “The Applicability of Governance Theory in China,” 28, citing Gordon White, “Prospects for Civil Society in China: A Case Study of Xiaoshan City,” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 29, no. 1 (1993), 63–87. 29 Zhou, “Art Institutions: Critique and Its Institution,” 67. 30 Mahoney and Thelen, Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency and Power, 26.

82 Vol. 11 No. 6 Edward Sanderson Nutrition Spaces: Vitamin, Guangzhou and Beijing

n expanded appreciation of the gallery environment and its players, with a particular emphasis on the nature and expression of the A physical and perceptual spaces that make up that environment, plays a signiﬁcant role in the thinking and activities of Vitamin, a Guangzhou- and Beijing-based art organization. In its activities, Vitamin recognizes and utilizes these spaces through interaction with implied psychological and spiritual attributes that create an invisible energy, and that act as productive elements in the relationships among artist, artwork, and audience.

Zhang Wei. Photo: Hu Fang. Zhang Wei and artistic director Courtesy of Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou. Hu Fang established Vitamin and opened Vitamin Creative Space, in 2002, in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. Over the ten years of its existence, Vitamin has become relatively well established in the Chinese art scene as well as Hu Fang. Photo: Michael Eddy. Courtesy of Vitamin Creative internationally by its presence at Space, Guangzhou. art fairs and through its projects and publications carried out with practitioners from both inside and outside its home territory. Its broad range of activities, exhibitions, events, and publications, and the often idiosyncratic nature of many of them, allow Vitamin to retain a feeling of informality, experimentation, and playfulness within a formalized gallery system.

In China, Vitamin occupies an important but somewhat paradoxical role within what is still a nascent “alternative” arts scene—paradoxical in that Vitamin adopts the basic role of a typical private gallery, and in perhaps its most straightforward state, it holds exhibitions in which objects are presented for sale. But as a continual presence in the commercial aspects of the presentations, various other activities support the exhibitions or exist parallel to them, preventing the art activity or object from being simply understood in terms of its exchange value. This allows for the non-commercial or the experimental to exist in conjunction with the commercial, an attempt to avoid a privileging of one over the other.

Vol. 11 No. 6 83 Zhang Wei and Hu Fang’s hometown of Guangzhou has played an important part in the development of contemporary art in China, playing host to important artist groups such as Big Tail Elephant Group and Yangjiang Group, the members of which Zhang Wei and Hu Fung characterize as having a practice that extends outside of the gallery. Many of these artists became intimately involved with Vitamin’s development and may be said to have fed into Zhang Wei and Hu Fung’s own sensibility about the idea of space.

Since opening their initial location in Guangzhou, Zhang Wei and Hu Fung have attempted to focus on the role of space as being important not only in the work of the artists associated with them but also to the production of the experience of the artwork within the gallery itself. In the following commentary by Zhang Wei and Hu Fung, culled from a series of conversations among us over the past few months,1 they speak of working closely with their artists and with their spaces in such a way that the space formed by the works and forming around them through their activities, creates an “energy-developing” situation. This energy seems to represent a possibility for creativity with which to bridge the gap between the varied participants in the everyday life of the gallery and the art object itself.

The negotiation with this “everyday life” means that any activity or event in Pak Sheung Chuen: Days(Days)Nights(Nights), the space has to manage a naturally existing overlap between the artwork 2009, installation view at Vitamin Creative Space. and the audience, which is often suppressed in the traditional “white cube” Courtesy of Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou. context. Within Vitamin’s spaces there is no enforced demarcation between an area for the art and an area for the appreciation of the art. Such a relationship with the work would clearly be impractical for a gallery where the value of the work is given precedence over an engagement with the audience, requiring a distance to be kept between them. This is not to say that the works Vitamin show do not possess monetary value—as art objects, there is still a negotiation with the ghost of privileged value via the idea of the artist’s handiwork—but that within the context of Vitamin, where an interaction between artwork and audience is encouraged, their value is of a different order.

This balance seems to be precisely where the everyday takes place for Vitamin. In its presentations, locations, and activities, Vitamin has come to eschew standard spectacular forms of display or publicity that a gallery

84 Vol. 11 No. 6 might see as essential for its presence in the (art)world. Indeed, for the last year or so, in its current location in Beijing, named The Pavilion, Vitamin has enacted a working method that can be seen to be holding its audience at bay. Zhang Wei and Hu Fung paradoxically justify this as a way to improve the active relationship between the artwork and the world by enhanced attention to, and integration with, the everyday life that the artworks function within and which their audience embodies. They describe this as a “working/living experience” with the works of art, as a means to open themselves up to “the universal.” The audiences’ quotidian and “unspectacularized” encounter with these artworks becomes the medium to create awareness of this universal—to create and shape that situation in conjunction with the audience. As Zhang Wei states, the gallery provides “a platform, a transformation space, rather than a space we need to ﬁll.”

This deliberate placing, or providential adoption, of obstacles in the way of easy accessibility can be pointed to as a consistent factor in Vitamin’s choice, presentation, and relationship with its spaces. I have elsewhere2 referred to Vitamin’s relationship with accessibility as “quixotic,” in that the obstacles seem antithetical to the normal functioning of a space that exists

to connect art with the public. This may also be connected with the concept of “posthastism,” a movement initiated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Joseph Grima, and Shumon Basar that promotes a creative slowing down of life. Vitamin has been directly connected with posthastism through co-curating with Obrist a day-long posthastism event at its Beijing space. In what might be seen as a shared mission statement between posthastism and Vitamin, Obrist (quoting Joseph Grima) has said: “Delays are revolutions.”

Specific, physical examples of this quixotic approach begin at the Guangzhou space where Vitamin began and that it has retained to this day. This space, serving as its offices and a gallery/workshop area, is situated in a hard-to-find office building on a back street that is accessible only by walking away from a main road through the covered and cramped lanes of a wet market, the large outdoor meat and produce market that you have to pass through to get to Vitamin.

Vol. 11 No. 6 85 Their next space, simply named “e-flux” PAWNSHOP, 2009, at the shop, Beijing. Courtesy “the shop,” was launched in Beijing of Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou. in November 2008. This space was initially located in an open, lower-ground floor area of the less frequented section of an office and retail development in Beijing’s Central Business District (CBD). In 2009 the shop moved to the northeast of Beijing, in the art village of Caochangdi, just beyond the better-known 798 Art District. Here, Vitamin occupied a space in one of the Ai Weiwei-designed Red Battery City: A Post-Olympic Beijing Mini Marathon, Buildings (which house many other 2008–09, at the shop, Beijing. Courtesy of Vitamin Creative galleries and studios). Closed as Space, Guangzhou. a physical space in 2010, the shop moved online to re-open on Taobao, a Chinese online shopping portal. While this could be seen as a move to wider accessibility, the products they sell there are often somewhat idiosyncractic, or as Zhang Wei describes them, “a little bit strange.” Besides their own publications and a set of custom-made speakers by musician and sound artist Yan Jun, Vitamin also sells various knitted coverings for electronic products made by “Shuzhen Mama,” flour from Qingdao, and honey collected by “Uncle Sangufu” from the Changbai Mountains in China’s northeast.

Following the physical closure of the shop, Vitamin launched its new space, The Pavilion, in a double-height space on the twenty-fifth floor of an office development just a couple of blocks east of the original site of the shop. This development is in a self-styled “cultural district” hinging on the Today Art Museum located at one corner of the development.

Although occupying one of the standard ofﬁce spaces, the top-ﬂoor location of The Pavilion feels somewhat like an aerie, at the very end of a thin corridor and looking out over the surrounding area. As with the other Vitamin spaces, it does not make its discovery a simple procedure in that there is no signage on the route up. The space is arranged to create various single and double-height spaces in which artworks are arranged or events take place. This variety of spaces leads to a variety of uses including talks, concerts, demonstrations, and residencies. Being present at events with an audience makes one aware of the various movements within and uses of the space by its audiences. In terms of the artwork, at the time of this writing, the space was punctuated by four light and mirror pieces by Olafur Eliasson (with whom Vitamin has worked on a publication), a set of wooden, perforated box-like structures designed by Hu Fang that houses part of Vitamin’s library (including a collection of books on Eliasson), and an open-access Sound Archive.

86 Vol. 11 No. 6 Olafur Eliasson, A Quasi Room (of waiting for A Fiercely Affectionate Sculpture), 2012, at The Pavilion, Beijing. Courtesy of Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou.

Referencing pavilions as a traditional landscape structure in Chinese gardens and artworks, with their relationship to the progressive experience of space and the view, The Pavilion moves the example initiated by the shop into a kind of poetry. Zhang Wei explains: “[U]nlike the shop, which dealt with the daily life issue, The Pavilion deals more with the issue of awareness and energy, which can give another layer or shape to daily being.” Such a subtle but signiﬁcant progressive stepping back of a focus of attention locates The Pavilion as a space that encourages one aspect of contemplation to develop over and above other activities that might be taking place.

Hu Fang’s input seems particularly strong in the shaping of this idea of contemplation. Hu Fung is also a writer, producing works of a symbolic and what might be called a magical realist style. The drawing upon traditional and modern elements in his writing can be seen to have a physical counterpart in The Pavilion’s spaces and its functions, ones that are positioned in relationship to metaphorical readings in their reference to the structures found in traditional Chinese landscape design. By doing this, The Pavilion seems designed to transcend the gallery space, taking the participants with it and adding a touch of the fictional to the space’s activities while embedding the gallery’s daily functions as an immutable part of that very fiction. In the process, the space seems an attempt to transcend the prosaic and poetic readings by playing the fictional off the commercial that now work together in the space.

Commentary by Zhang Wei and Hu Fang Zhang Wei: Before graduating I was living in Beijing and began to work with the Dutch art consultant Hans van Dijk.3 Hans had a special and unique approach. His exploration into art was based on his personal understanding of how individuals are in negotiation with reality (involving aspects of the spiritual) and how to shape ourselves as human beings in relation to nature. His passion and inspiration toward art meant that Hans would work with multiple methods in order to survive and to support his idealism. His knowledge of art allowed him to be a consultant on many art projects. If collectors acquired the works he recommended, he would take a commission; he also curated shows based on his research. Whatever he made went into more research and to the art he believed in. Developing an art system like this, which has been generated through passion and curiosity, interested me a lot.

Vol. 11 No. 6 87 After I had worked with him for three years I felt it was time to experience other ﬁelds. I met Hu Fang, who was living in Guangzhou, through Hans. I moved down there, too. I wanted to work on something different, to open up more possibilities because at a certain level I felt that art had created its own circle to circulate within but somehow was disconnected from the world itself; we thought this was very limited.

So I worked in publishing for a while, but I always felt like something was missing. I wanted to go back to working with art and was thinking about whether I should go back with Hans. But it was just at that time, in 2002, that Hans passed away. At that moment Hu Fang and I, in discussion with the artist Zheng Guogu and his friends in Yangjiang, decided we should open a space. In a way Hans was my mentor, and I felt there were a lot of possibilities to develop further his approach—I wanted to continue his spirit of working. With this space I carried on Hans’s model for survival, including the commercial side, to support us.

Guangzhou: Vitamin Creative Space Zhang Wei: The wet market around us is very important for the space. It provides the daily context, which gives us a sense of our daily nutrition and the energy that we need. The market is also a space of exchange; it is a place to exchange the value of our physical, bodily needs. It has given us a lot of inspiration to push further with our understanding of what our own space could be. The space is a place to work with art, and the artworks provide us with the invisible energy that helps to generate and understand our life.

In fact, we did not originate this way of thinking; it had already come from the artists’ practice. When we looked at the practice of artists like Zheng Guogu, Pak Sheung Chuen, Lee Kit, Cao Fei, Chu Yun, and Duan Jianyu, we realized that their art language is about the mind—or we call it a spirit that generates life. Basically, it is about life more than about an art object, and the objects they create are more like media to open or sense the world we live in. Through understanding their art, we also understand our life and shape the possibilities of our life. These artists’ practices pushed us to think, if we work with the artworks in this direction, how then should the space itself be?

Hu Fang: At that time in Guangzhou there was quite an interesting energy, not necessarily deﬁned as a criticism of consumption nor purely a celebration of consumption. It was a celebration of the new possibilities within consumption after the many years of China’s isolation. At the same time, there was a kind of confusion, a feeling about how should one proceed. This seemed to arise from the clash of various speeds of life that were coinciding in that city. For instance, in contrast to the typical artistic interests in Beijing [focusing on the gallery spaces and the art systems], in Guangzhou artists like the Big Tail Elephant group were working more within the urban space and responding to non-conventional exhibition spaces. Zheng Guogu was working with Yangjiang Group’s friends and opened a bar that became a space for them to have daily engagement with the community and to develop spatial work— installation and performance—all at the same time. So it’s interesting how this kind of liberation of space, together with an acceptance of consumerism, fed a confusion that drove these artistic practices and opened up possibilities.

88 Vol. 11 No. 6 Zhang Wei: We started as an “alternative” space, or, as people say, a “non- proﬁt” space. But then we found this was really strange. First of all this category of space means you always have to exist within a certain structure and have access to societies that provide your funding. But in China there is nothing! So we found it very strange to consider ourselves non-proﬁt.

The more we worked with the artists, the more we tried to depart from the art system’s deﬁnition of what an art space or an art gallery should be. In fact, the art space, as we see it, is generated by the artists’ practice and their artworks. Then the issue became what kind of relationship can be based on the curiosity we were having with art, a curiosity that can be expressed both mentally and physically. If we agree with the practice of the artists we work with, then what form of space will be shaped by these practices and artwork? From their practices we realized that the space is not only the physical space; it is also a space that could be called a nutrition space, which provides context or encourages this aspect of curiosity. If the art objects are the medium to open up our connection with and understanding of the universe, then the space is a place where exchange takes place (and hence of exchange value)—how we can communicate these values with the public in our contemporary cultural environment? We are always addressing these questions and wanted the questions arising from the place of daily exchange and activity that is the shop to act as a starting point. We wanted to take this apparently familiar form to make exchange values become a platform to create awareness of other values. So exchange for us became about creating different values. And that’s partly the reason why we opened the shop.

Beijing: the shop (Jianwai SOHO & Caochangdi) Zhang Wei: We imagined the shop as creating a kind of transformational medium toward the ownership of something, to create a kind of awareness and sensibility I have already talked about through the objects we showed there. If you can get over (in the sense of communicate and surmount) the transformation of information through these objects, the delay in itself gives you another situation, another value.

For example, we organized a music project with sound artist Yan Jun, someone we have worked with on many occasions. We asked him to become “manager” of the shop for a while, and he worked with various people to create site-speciﬁc sound pieces and events for the space. In many cases you have to listen to them in the shop, so one feels it is not so easy an object to buy, or one asks oneself, what do you actually own if you buy them? So we say you “own the experience,” and the experience will change your perception and sensibility. In that sense there is an exchange between the artist, the space, and the buyer. The buying activity in itself opens up something different.

The same is true of artist Lee Kit’s hand-painted tablecloths. This is an on-going series of works that incorporate the circumstances and residue of their use (as tablecloths) into their material as an artwork. Under normal circumstances we might want to buy something new to replace what is dirty or old, but in Lee Kit’s work we ﬁnd the traces of living with the object become part of the painting.

Vol. 11 No. 6 89 Hu Fang: An issue for us has always Xiao He and Yan Jun Sound Theatre, xu, dolphin, 2010, at been how art communicates with the shop, Beijing. Courtesy of Vitamin Creative Space, the audience, going beyond its Guangzhou. artiﬁcial forms to where the artwork somehow develops its own life that allows an exploration of its natural state of existence. At certain moments, that builds up a new environment for the people, where the artwork (which is not necessarily physical) can become a functional object within the viewers’ life, and blurs the boundary between subject or object. the shop was a certain experiment with space—but one not programmed as an exhibition space or as an environment—to see how that could affect people, to stimulate communication. Staging dialogues with the artists also produced a certain space according to a certain necessity of the physical format of the space. This also connected to an understanding of how the space generates and feeds the artists’ activities. The space retained a more abstract function, in the sense that it is kept at a distance from the economic imperatives of running a gallery but is also abstract as an idea of space and its potential.

Beijing: The Pavilion Zhang Wei: The Pavilion encourages us to ask: How do we understand the energy that can allow us to sense or connect with the system of the universe through our daily situations? It is because the daily situations possess their own forms of time and space that are closer to how the universe, rather than artiﬁcial forms, works.

If we take the Chinese system of yi jing as a way to understand the universe, it gives a very different dimension of time and space. This time and space is based more on the elemental relationships in the universe, but, more importantly, it is always moving and changing. So each space is also relative to its temporary and moving positions. In the yi jing way of thinking, objects always have two sides: one is called qi, which means the life energy of objects, and the other is called dao, which means the “laws” or “ways” of the object. The way is very important: even though invisible, it is an energy that means the object has its own life, and makes it a whole.

This space of The Pavilion is working with that part of the transformational energy. On the one hand, we show the works that carry this kind of energy. At the same time, we also share this kind of energy via the daily situation. The daily situation is the context, acting as another layer of space to communicate with the artists’ practice.

For instance, there is a kitchen in the space; food is one medium we use to explore this direction. The medium is for us to understand the plants we eat, and the relationship between our bodies and the plants. The cooking process also becomes a social landscape. We hope this daily access to the space can open up some awareness and perceptions. On the unconscious level it might offer something like a taste (literally, or as an appreciation) for the public to sense the artworks, which also connects to our idea of

90 Vol. 11 No. 6 it being a “space of nutrition.” But it also becomes the medium for us to communicate with artists for their on-going practice. In The Pavilion there are no exhibition openings; we change the space or artwork based on our conversation with artists or other creative people. It is not only a “showing space”; it is also a “constant discussion/research space.”

Olafur Eliasson, A Quasi Room In April of this year, we displayed (of waiting for A Fiercely Affectionate Sculpture), Olafur Eliasson’s works. But they 2012, at The Pavilion, Beijing. Courtesy of Vitamin Creative are not just a lamp, or a mirror; Space, Guangzhou. they also bring you to understand the universe. This is what we think about those four objects; we can live with them, but their “outer space” opens up a lot of situations and moments. When the viewers really communicate with the work, the beauty of the work is not only the beauty of these objects. The elegance of these works gives you a journey of connection and an experience of the perception of the universe.

Lee Kit, House M, 2012, at The After that, in June, we added Pavilion, Beijing. Courtesy of Vitamin Creative Space, another layer to Olafur’s display by Guangzhou. working with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Shumon Basar, and Joseph Grima on their posthastism event, a series of talks that we hosted in The Pavilion. This event opened us up Lee Kit, House M, 2012, at The Pavilion, Beijing. Courtesy to another dimension of dimension, of Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou. that of posthastism. In August, we offered The Pavilion to artist Lee Kit as a starting point for his shaping of the space. As of this writing, we do not know what his works and the space will be, but we are constantly in conversation, and surprises that arise from the conversation will gradually shape the space. We are looking forward to when that moment arrives, and would love to share that moment with others too, when it comes . . .

Hu Fang: This space is a process of research that we have to constantly practice by ourselves in order to keep refreshing the space. As an individual you carry around your own space, with which you test your relationship with the world. Basically, I believe my body does not belong only to me; the relationship between individual space and public space can become like an open container.

Notes 1 This commentary is based on interviews and conversations with Zhang Wei and Hu Fang, director and artistic director of Vitamin Creative Space, respectively, that took place in April and July 2012. 2 Edward Sanderson, "Eliasson’s Essentials," published on artslant.com, May 28, 2012, http://www. artslant.com/cn/articles/show/30918/. 3 Hans van Dijk (1946–2002) was a pivotal ﬁgure in the recording and understanding of the Chinese contemporary art scene. A native of Holland, van Dijk came to Beijing in 1986 and was active as an arts consultant, among other things documenting and archiving the works of contemporary Chinese artists. In 1999 he founded China Art Archives & Warehouse (CAAW) with collector Frank Uytterhaegen and artist Ai Weiwei.

Vol. 11 No. 6 91 Joni Low Possibilities for the Page: 88BOOKS and Artists’ Books in China

arlier this year, when overcast Vancouver days still threatened rain, 88BOOKS editions, 2012. Courtesy of 88BOOKS, I was given a small stack of artists’ books. Tidily cut and hand- Vancouver. Eassembled, with colour and black-and-white images on matte, slightly weighted paper, these modestly sized booklets evinced a do-it- yourself spirit common to independent press and zine cultures, but with particular care towards aesthetic quality. They were ephemeral enough to carry around the city, but not so precious as to be ﬁne art objects. Spread out on my coffee table, the startlingly fresh cover images enticed me to leaf through them as the desire arose—during breakfast, on the weekends, or settling in after a long day.

These books feature the work of emerging photo-based artists from China and were created in collaboration with Ho Tam, an artist and founder of the independent small press 88BOOKS, in Vancouver. Launched in 2012, 88BOOKS specializes in creating and distributing limited edition artists’ books—a relatively new practice in China—with a commitment to providing autonomy and freedom of expression to a younger generation of artists.1 For its inaugural series, ten books by ten artists have been released, each of which allows the artist to explore the book as an artistic

92 Vol. 11 No. 6 medium in its own right, in all its narrative, conceptual, and formal possibilities. Overall, the series provides a sense of the diverse streams of current photographic practices in China, some of them functioning beneath the radar of the mainstream. These books give visibility to those beyond the handful of “big name” Chinese artists who are dominant in the international art world today, and who are often recognized for their reputations as political dissidents or the soaring prices of their work. Ho Tam is clearly working within an alternative, non-proﬁt ethos, one that attends to the artists’ ideas ﬁrst and foremost, and seeks to connect with like-minded networks and audiences through personal interest.

Ho Tam, The Yellow Pages, Ho Tam has been creating artists’ 1993, artist's book. Courtesy of the artist. books and magazine projects for almost twenty years, yet his interest in communications media dates back to his Hong Kong childhood when he would make one-of-a- kind books and collages, imitating the forms of smaller publications. As he recalls, “the contents were Ho Tam, page from The Yellow Pages, 1993, artist's book. not so important—it was more Courtesy of the artist. about the possibility of creating something of my own and for my imagined readers.”2 His ﬁrst artist’s book, The Yellow Pages (1993), is an A to Z reading primer of cultural stereotypes and clichés found in mass media; the medium of the book lent itself well to such ideas, which he was questioning at the time.3 In looking for ways to distribute the work, Tam came across Art Metropole (Toronto) and Printed Matter (New York City), two key outlets in a network of artists’ book creation and dissemination, where thousands of such books and other multiples can be sifted through and purchased. As Ho Tam has recounted, a visit to these spaces always leaves him refreshed, energized, and inspired.

Artists’ books are not catalogues or monographs, but rather works of art in their own right, where the artist has creative say over all or many aspects of production. Often these books are independently published, allowing artists the freedom to approach the form in a self-reﬂexive way, experimenting with the book’s conventional parameters to create a different perceptual experience for the reader. Before returning to 88BOOKS and the emergence of artists’ books in China, I’d like to brieﬂy discuss the historical trajectory of artists’ books in North America and Europe, two regions that have been well-documented by scholars. My hope is that this will initiate a conversation about the potential for this form in China, the directions this has taken, and the implications that a surge in independent publishing might have for the freedom of individual expression in a country that continues to develop at lightning speed.

Artists have taken the book form in a multitude of directions, from sculptural works to disposable, zine-like formats, where the page can be a space for

Vol. 11 No. 6 93 performance, documentation of artistic process, an interrogation of language and typography, or an extension of an exhibition concept. Interestingly, artists’ books can function simultaneously as an exhibition space and an archival document, capturing both the process and the historicization of these activities. Joanna Drucker, an art historian and artist book creator who has written extensively on the topic, cites as an early precedent the eighteenth- century books of William Blake, whose engraving method of “illuminated printing” integrated image, text, and form in innovative ways.4 However, the proliferation of artists’ books as a self-conscious medium is largely a twentieth-century phenomenon, developing within major movements in art and literature and in relation to political, avant-garde, and other experimental activities—from Russian Constructivism, Dada, and Surrealism, to Fluxus, communications art, and conceptual art practices.

Early examples of artists’ books in Europe include those by Russian Constructivists El Lissitsky and Kasimir Malevich, who utilized the printed form to make revolutionary and avant-garde principles accessible to a mass audience.5 Kurt Schwitters’s Die Cathedral (1920) and his serial journal, Merz, reveal his experimentations with typography and Dadaist collage in book format, while Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Green Box) (1934) pushed the boundaries of the book’s conventional codex, not to mention the possibilities of what could be considered as art. The Green Box is a hand-assembled, limited edition box of loose notes, drawings, and photographs that detail the thought process and constellations of meaning surrounding his artwork of the same name; a work of art in itself, this unconventional “book” invites an alternate way of reading based on free association rather than conventional linearity.6

After WWII, the development of artists’ books intensiﬁed in different geographic regions. Groups from the CoBrA artists to the Concrete poets working in Brazil, Germany, and France, began to focus on the book as their primary medium.7 Dieter Roth is well known for having pushed the limits of its structural and conceptual form, notably in Daily Mirror (1961), a miniscule, thumb-sized book made from pages of a British tabloid, and Literaturewurst (1961), for which found text was processed with spices and stuffed into sausage casing, subverting the authority of the printed word with a wry commentary on the consumption of information. With the dematerialization of the art object in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the book emerged as a perfect medium to represent the activities of what Fluxus artist Dick Higgins termed “intermedia”: the cross-pollination of new forms, from experimental music and performance to communications art, photography, and other duplicative technologies.8

As art became more about the idea than material form, books became the ideal democratic multiple, an expedient and economical way to communicate directly with a wider audience, unmediated by art institutions or cultural authorities. In the 1960s, increased access to affordable printing technologies made this much easier for the individual cultural producer. Ed Ruscha’s limited edition books are often cited as landmark works, with their inexpensive serial format and literal, if banal, depictions of everyday aspects of Los Angeles that bring a self-reﬂexivity to their own construction. (It should be noted that Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip [1966],

94 Vol. 11 No. 6 inexpensive at the time of its creation, now sells for upward of $7,500 USD.) In the 1970s, artists such as Michael Snow and Iain Baxter made books that similarly drew attention to photography, cinematic sequence, and the experience of narrative. A number of conceptual artists, including Marcel Broodthaers, Hannah Darboven, On Kawara, and Lawrence Weiner, all made artists’ books as a component of their practice. Publishing endeavours supported by commercial galleries, such as Seth Sieglaub’s and Marian Goodman’s Multiples, Inc., also supported the creation of artists’ books.

In the 1970s, major centres for the production of artists’ books were established across North America, many of which were subsidized through government funding and grants that allowed these activities to expand. While public funding cuts during the politically conservative 1980s certainly affected these initiatives, the production of artists’ books continued to increase, aided by rapid advances in computer and desktop publishing technologies.9 Today, many artists continue to make artists’ books a part of their practice, whether self-published, through galleries, or through publishers that specialize in these books, such as Nieves (Switzerland), Café Royal (United Kingdom), or PictureBox (Brooklyn), all of whom have online stores.10 The Internet continues to expand the possibilities for artists’ books and their distribution, while annual book fairs around the world remain a vital way of connecting with a community of independent publishers. The extensive list of artists, publishers, and book fairs on many artists’ book Web sites illustrates the sprawling nature of this activity in contemporary art practices.

Left: Lin Zhipeng, a.k.a. No. 88BOOKS is conversant with all of these networks and emerges from 223, Wild Oats, 2012, artist's book, 20 x 13 cm, colour, 28 within this context, providing artists from China with an alternative way pp. Published by 88BOOKS, Vancouver. to reach international audiences. The books’ ephemeral aesthetic is closer Right: Lin Zhipeng, a.k.a. No. to that of artists’ zines and invites art into everyday life in an intimate, 223, Wild Oats, 2012, artist's book, 20 x 13 cm, colour, 28 spontaneous, and momentary way, like a poem or a short conversation. pp. Published by 88BOOKS, Vancouver. These are not glossy catalogues or tomes conspicuously declaring their historical importance through high production values; at $8 USD per book or $72 for the set, the price point is accessible. Most of the artists in the ﬁrst series published by 88BOOKS have taken a straightforward approach to the form of the book, expressing their experience of daily life in China—one that often resides outside mainstream representations—through a sequence of photographs linked by loose narrative structures. For instance, Lin Zhipeng’s book Wild Oats (2012) depicts a youth subculture of sex, drugs, boredom, and rock and roll; his vibrant, provocative images blur the artistry of his fashion photography with a gritty realism evocative of Larry Clark’s

Vol. 11 No. 6 95 1971 photo book Tulsa, yet not to the same degree of shock and intimacy. Fragmentary shots of half-naked bodies, a young woman’s chest scattered with bright red kiss marks, and an out-of-focus centrefold image— ostensibly of drug-use—are suggestive, but not explicit. Reputed as the “bad boy” of the contemporary photo scene in China, Lin Zhipeng is also an active self-publisher of his own photography and zines and maintains a blog that has millions of readers.

Sun Yanchu’s book Obsessed (2012) traverses a similarly disjointed sequence Left: Sun Yanchu, Obsessed, 2012, artist's book, 20 x 13 of snapshot photography, yet his black-and-white photographs convey a cm, black-and-white, 24 pp. Published by 88BOOKS, much darker view of human and animal forms and their various replicas Vancouver. in mass culture. The book begins with a rear-view of a longhaired woman Right: Sun Yanchu, Obsessed, 2012, artist's book, 20 x 13 walking through what appears to be an old hutong; it seems she then leads cm, black-and-white, 24 pp. Published by 88BOOKS, us to images of bodies, lying next to construction sites or immersed in Vancouver. water, presumably devoid of life. One double-page spread of a scarred leg and another of two nipples tied together with string evoke particularly visceral responses. Sun Yanchu’s inclusion of cultural iconography may have deeper meanings: a picture of a bust of Mao alongside a statue of the god of good fortune, for instance, may hold certain ironies concerning idolatry for an audience possessing this cultural capital.

Luo Changwei’s Da Qin Island (2012) takes a more documentary, journalistic approach exposing the history of a hospital founded in the South China Sea in 1924 to treat more than 1,200 leprosy patients. Leper colonies have been a common, though inhumane, means of treating this disease since at least the Middle Ages, effectively segregating those with physical disﬁgurements from the rest of “normal” society. The stigma and fear attached to leprosy still persists in China, despite the availability of treatments. Prior to the facility’s closure in 2011, Luo Changwei spent several months documenting the forty-four remaining patients, who, as he describes in an introductory text, had fought for twenty years to return to mainland China.11 These photographs and their accompanying autobiographical details recognize, and make visible, those who had been excluded from the rest of society. Each portrait is uniform—an individual against the backdrop of the water’s edge—followed by similar compositions of solitary objects—a crutch, a clock immersed in water—before closing with an image of a cemetery. While the latter images feel contrived, Luo Changwei’s sensitivity as a photographer is apparent in the portraits, which bring out both the sadness and the dignity of these individuals. I wonder whether they chose to be photographed in this way and why Luo

96 Vol. 11 No. 6 Left: Luo Changwei, Da Qin Island (Wu Qiaorong, born in 1937, hospitalized since 1952), 2012, artist's book, 20 x 13 cm, black-and-white, 28 pp. Published by 88BOOKS, Vancouver. Right: Luo Changwei, Da Qin Island (Mai Yuexi, born in 1950, hospitalized since 1959), 2012, artist's book, 20 x 13 cm, black-and-white, 28 pp. Published by 88BOOKS, Vancouver.

Changwei selected these particular images over others: his Flickr Web page contains photographs of everyday activities that reveal much more about the community and lives of these individuals.12 However, if the book shares these histories with a wider audience and motivates them to inquire deeper, as it has for me, I believe it has realized its intention.

Li Jun, Impermanent Instant, Of the few books in the series 2012, artist's book, 20 x 13 cm, colour, 24 pp. Published by that experiment with conceptual 88BOOKS, Vancouver. possibilities in a self-reflexive way, Li Jun’s Impermanent Instant (2012) is the most effective. Li Jun has included staged images of a bare apartment’s dusty surfaces where the absence of dust reveals a possible object—now itself absent—that is left to be imagined by the reader. Humans are also absent from these photographs. A handwritten sentence accompanying each image moves from literal (“a knife on a bed”) to more evocative (“a song to god”). Without the presence of the text, the reader could more openly interpret these absences, some of which seem to glow in their contrast to the surrounding grey surfaces. The book begins with the phrase “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” and ends with “impermanent instant,” statements on the ephemerality of human existence that tug at metaphysical questions of being. As Roland Barthes has pointed out, the photograph embodies an absented presence, its signification of reality also signifying the death of that moment following that instant.13 Yet in today’s image-saturated environments, knowing well that photographs can be digitally manipulated with the click of a mouse, photography is no longer the truth-telling medium it was once believed to be. Here, Li Jun emphasizes its ambiguous and fictive nature; the detachment of the photograph from its referent creates a space for readers to fill with their subjective interpretations.

Vol. 11 No. 6 97 Li Jun, Impermanent Instant, 2012, artist's book, 20 x 13 cm, colour, 24 pp. Published by 88BOOKS, Vancouver.

While the books in this inaugural series don’t quite challenge the boundaries of the form or possess the conceptual depth and rigour of the historical examples mentioned previously, it is important to remember that they emerge from a particular set of social, political, and economic circumstances. Tam believes the possibilities for the photographic medium still need to be explored further in China, beyond the prescribed codes of portraiture, landscape, and documentary.14 There is enormous potential for this medium, to encourage artists to experiment and create works that are critical of their own participation and circulation in the vast ﬁelds of representation and visual culture. Yet the historical signiﬁcance of these books has already been noted: the International Center of Photography, New York, and Three Shadows Photography, Beijing, have collected the entire set, while individuals from China, Japan, Australia, Poland, France, Germany, and North America have purchased copies online. Tam will continue to do outreach on the 88BOOKS blog and at this fall’s New York Art Book Fair.

Artists’ books are a recent phenomenon do it (Chinese edition), co-edited by Hu Fang and in China, and while more research Hans Ulrich Obrist, 2008, 19.5 x 14 cm, 64 pp. Published could be done on these and the related by Vitamin Creative Space, developments of artist-initiated Guangzhou. publications, there are streams of activity that should be mentioned here. Hu Fang, founder (along with Zhang Wei) of Vitamin Creative Space in Guangzhou, has been creating innovative publications and artists’ books since 2002, collaborating with artists such as Cao Fei, Chen Shaoxiong, Heman Chong, Duan Jianyu, Xu Tan, and Koki Tanaka while editing books such as the Chinese version of do it, with Hans Ulrich Obrist.15 The physical forms of these books depend on the concept of the project, ranging from boxed works and accordion books to artists’ paper multiples tucked into cloth sacks. Some are extensions of exhibitions: Xu

98 Vol. 11 No. 6 Xu Tan, Dictionary of Keywords, 2008,14.5 x 13.5 cm, 287 pp. Published by Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou.

Cao Fei, Nu, 2007, 15 x 25 cm, 100 pp. Published by Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou.

Tan’s Dictionary of Keywords (2008) emerged from Keyword School, an interactive multimedia installation that brought the classroom into the gallery to explore what language reveals about social consciousness in China. Resembling an instructional textbook, with scientiﬁc diagrams indicating the mouth’s movement and examples of each keyword’s usage in everyday life, the book combines the performative and research elements of the project.16 While the information is presented in a neutral format, there seems to be an implicit questioning of these pedagogical structures.

Vol. 11 No. 6 99 Other books chart the artistic process: Cao Fei’s Nu (2007) traces her Pak Sheung Chuen, Page 22 (Half Folded Library), 2008, journey to Yunnan to work on a feature film whose production reached 21 x 13.5 cm, 4 pp. Published by Vitamin Creative Space, an impasse when various obstacles arose throughout the process. The Guangzhou. book contains the film’s script as well as images from this expedition of four youth meandering through the province’s deep mountain gorges. Koki Tanaka’s On a Day to Day Basis (2011) juxtaposes everyday objects in relational ways to consider their meanings and possibilities beyond their rational, intended use. There are also conceptual works that function as evidence of a performance. Pak Sheung Chuen’s Page 22 (Half Folded Library) (2008) is a modest, folded brochure documenting a site-specific installation where he folded the twenty-second page of half the books in a New York public library over a period of three months. There are reproductions of book pages within this book, but this documentation is more about expressing the idea behind the performance. As Pak Sheung Chuen maintains, “the media of this art piece is a library. If audiences want to see the artwork, they need to go inside the library.”17

The rise in independent, artist-run publishing activities in China certainly indicates the desire for individual expression and a climate of increased openness; however, the limits of tolerance would of course depend on the content of the work and the prevailing political circumstances. It is worthwhile to brieﬂy consider the history of independent, art-related publishing in China. Zheng Shengtian points out that from 1949 to 1979, the Communist Party prohibited all independent publications, with the exception of the tabloids and propaganda posters produced by Red Guard and revolutionary art groups in 1966.18 After the end of the Cultural Revolution, artists and poets were involved in producing underground

100 Vol. 11 No. 6 political publications. Huang Rui, a key member of The Stars Group, was involved in the creation of Today literary magazine; the ﬁrst mimeographed issues were stapled together during the Stars’s initial meetings and then distributed at the Democracy Wall along Xidan street, in Beijing, where many others posted their political statements and ideas about individual freedom.

Art publications, while not artists’ books per se, played a key role in the debates leading up to the ’85 New Wave Movement and the 1989 China/ Avant-Garde exhibition. Gao Minglu’s comprehensive chronology of this period documents at least half a dozen new periodicals that emerged from 1978 to 1984, many of which were published by art institutions and edited by artists and critics active in the avant-garde.19 During these years, the government’s attitude towards artistic expression oscillated between relaxation and subsequent censorship, and after the Tiana’nmen Square protests and the tightening of government policies, many of these journals ceased publication or were shut down by the authorities. In the 1990s, these energies became subterranean, ﬁnding refuge in alternative spaces such as books, magazines, or exhibitions in apartments; other energies were channeled abroad, as many avant-garde artists left China to explore their artistic concerns in an international context.20

Over the last few years, the creation of artists’ books in China has steadily gained momentum. When Ho Tam made several visits to Beijing to publish Frontline, a book of Chinese-language interviews with photographers based in Canada, he was struck by the rise of independent publishing and bookmaking activities. Artists in China began to ask if he would do a reciprocal form of cultural exchange, and thus the idea of 88BOOKS was born. Meanwhile, Bananaﬁsh Books, founded by Qing Zhou and Wei Guan, has been offering a wide selection of artist books and zines online since August 2010. In December 2011, in Dalian, they opened their brick- and-mortar storefront, one of the ﬁrst independent bookstores of its kind. While many of the publications are run through their own publishing arms, [a perfect book] and Pausebread Press, they also distribute books from Nieves, SSE Project (Seoul), Salt (Xiamen), Mogu (Taiwan), and Innen (Hungary), among others.21 These are networks of small-scale operations that emphasize process over product and a preference for the personal, handmade, and tactile over the slick surfaces of computer screens, smart phones, and e-book readers. Perhaps the growing popularity of these types of publications worldwide has to do with a backlash against technology, a desire for materiality, and the human impulse to collect as a way of mediating time and space. Perhaps the fondness for printed matter has to do with nostalgia and a desire to slow the acceleration of time.

Given the long history of print culture in Chinese civilization—the inventions of wood block printing and moveable type date back as early as the ninth and eleventh centuries, respectively—and its use in successive dynasties to disseminate ideas and values to a mass population, the book is a signiﬁer dense with meaning in Chinese history.22 Now that the means of print production are accessible to a wider population in China, a greater number of voices are being expressed. What are the possibilities for the book as an artistic medium in China? Who will these books reach? The

Vol. 11 No. 6 101 rise in artists’ book creation is part of a larger sphere of independent and self-publishing activities, at the core of which exists the spirit of democracy, the desire for self-expression, and the belief in creating a multitude of communication networks to express ideas alternative to the mainstream. With 88BOOKS in particular, the message and the medium may be modest; this can be read as an aesthetic stance in contrast to the more polished surfaces of “official” culture, as well as a true and honest reflection of the economic circumstances of production. We are always constrained by parameters—financial means, the standardization of print formats, lack of public space, physical endurance, and of course, time. Making a virtue of necessity and responding creatively to limitations opens the possibility of moving beyond them in astonishing ways.

Notes 1 Summarized from the 88Books Web site: http://www.88books.ca/. 2 E-mail conversation with Ho Tam on August 18, 2012. 3 The first edition was hand-bound and photocopied, the second offset; afterward, he translated this concept into a video installation. See the artist’s Web site, http://www.ho-tam.com/writings/index.html/. 4 Joanna Drucker, The Century of Artists’ Books (New York: Granary Books, 1994, 2004), 20–44. 5 Ibid., 50. 6 See curator Tim Guest’s analysis in Tim Guest and Germano Celant, eds., Books By Artists (Toronto: Art Metropole, 1984), 16. This is a catalogue for an exhibition that travelled to cities in Canada, then to Australia and Japan, in 1983. 7 For a more comprehensive summary of this period, see Drucker, The Century of Artists’ Books, 69–91. 8 In 1963, Dick Higgins also founded Something Else Press, which published many important texts by Marshall McLuhan, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Claes Oldenburg, and others. 9 See Tony White, “From Democratic Multiple to Artist Publishing: The (R)evolutionary Artist’s Book,” Art Documentation 31, no. 1 (Spring 2012), 45–56. 10 For a further discussion of contemporary examples, see Susan E. Thomas, “Value and Validity of Art Zines as an Art Form,” Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 28, no. 2 (Fall 2009), 27–36. 11 Andrew Reilly, “Luo Changwei’s ‘Da Qin Island’ Reflects On Leprosy,” Huffington Post, March 12, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/12/da-qin-island_n_1339177.html?ref=arts#s773497. 12 Additional photographs not included in the book are viewable on Luo’s Flickr account: http://www. flickr.com/photos/luo-chwei/. 13 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981). 14 “Undiscovered Chinese photographers profiled in 88books’ hand-bound zines,” Art Radar Asia, May 9, 2012, http://artradarjournal.com/2012/05/09/undiscovered-chinese-photographers-profiled-in- 88books-hand-bound-zines-resource-alert/. 15 For more information and previews of each artists’ book, see Vitamin Creative Space’s Web site: http://www.vitamincreativespace.com/en/publication/listPublication.do. Do It contains conceptual proposals and instructions by over two hundred international artists and twenty-six Chinese artists and is available in English and Chinese. 16 Angie Baecker, “Xu Tan,” review of the exhibition Keywords School, Frieze 120 (January 2009), accessed online at: http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/xu_tan/. 17 See Vitamin Creative Space’s Web site: http://www.vitamincreativespace.com/en/publication/ listPublication.do. 18 Zheng Shengtian, e-mail conversation with the author, August 29, 2012. 19 The Journal of Art Translation (Meishu Yicong) and World Art (Shijie Meishu) were established in 1978; Art Trends (Meishu Sichao), Fine Arts in China (Zhongguo Meishu Bao), and Painters (Huajia) emerged in 1984. See Gao Minglu ed., Inside Out: New Chinese Art (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 197–202. 20 Ibid., 201. 21 See the Web site for Bananafish books: http://a-perfect-book-for-bananafish.com/. Bananafish books are listed on the Web site http://artzines.de, a blog about artzines and art books maintained by a co-founder of the small press Gloria Glitzer (Berlin, Germany). 22 In the West, the printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany in the fifteenth century; eventually it replaced woodblock and moveable type technologies in China, in the nineteenth century.

102 Vol. 11 No. 6 Orianna Cacchione Cai Guo-Qiang: Sky Ladder The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles April 8–July 30, 2012

Top left: Cai Guo-Qiang, Mystery Circle: Explosion Event for The Museum of Contemporary Art, 2012, gunpowder fuse, 40,000 mini rickets, 100 girandolas, 62 tourbillon mines. Photo: Carlos Gonzales. Courtesy of the artists and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Top middle: Cai Guo-Qiang, installation of Mystery Circle: Explosion Event for The Museum of Contemporary Art, 2012, gunpowder fuse, 40,000 mini rickets, 100 girandolas, 62 tourbillon mines. Photo: Carlos Gonzales. Courtesy of the artist and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Anglese. Top right: Cai Guo-Qiang, ai Guo-Qiang’s first west coast solo exhibition, Cai Guo-Qiang: Mystery Circle: Explosion Event for The Museum of Sky Ladder, opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Contemporary Art, 2012, gunpowder fuse, 40,000 Angeles in typical fashion—with a bang. For Mystery Circle (2012), mini rickets, 100 girandolas, C one of the central works in this exhibition, Cai Guo-Qiang affixed 40,000 62 tourbillon mines. Photo: Carlos Gonzales. Courtesy of bottle rockets in the shape of crop circles to the side of MoCA’s Geffen the artists and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Contemporary. When lit, the rockets were projected directly at the audience, Angeles. Bottom: Cai Guo-Qiang, and the approaching wall of fire and sparklers simultaneously seemed to installation of Mystery Circle: Explosion Event for The produce fear and awe in the silent observers. As the smoke dissipated, the Museum of Contemporary Art, 2012, gunpowder fuse, 40,000 pattern of crop circles left dark ashen traces on the building’s exterior wall, mini rickets, 100 girandolas, 62 tourbillon mines. Photo: the index of not only the firework’s explosion but also of communication of Carlos Gonzales. Courtesy of an “extraterrestrial kind.” In the gallery, the crop circle pattern reappeared, the artist and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los only this time it appeared above the heads of the viewers. Crop Circles Angeles. (2012), a carpet of reeds suspended at an angle from the ceiling, occupied the largest portion of the gallery and acted as the central focus of the exhibition. The reeds were branded with patterns of circles mimicking those found on the ash-streaked exterior wall.

Cai Guo-Qiang, Crop Circles (detail), 2012, reeds, plywood board, approximately 800 x 3600 cm. Photo: Joshua White/ JWPictures.com. Courtesy of the artist and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Vol. 11 No. 6 103 Crop Circles and Mystery Circle reference two earlier works by Cai Guo- Cai Guo-Qiang, Crop Circles, 2012, reeds, plywood, Qiang, I Am an Extraterrestrial: Project for Meeting with Tenjin (Heavenly approximately 800 x 3600 cm. Photo: Joshua White/ Gods): Project for Extraterrestrials, No. 4 (1990) and An Arbitrary History: JWPictures.com. Courtesy of the artist and The Museum Roller Coaster (2001). First, the works at MoCA visually and thematically of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. expand upon Project for Meeting with Tenjin (Heavenly Gods), realized for the Museum City Tenjin, in Japan, and composed of two separate works, a gunpowder drawing and an explosion. The large-scale gunpowder drawing depicted ﬁve circles intersected by a straight line, an appropriation of the pattern of the crop circles that appeared in Alton Barnes, Wiltshire, in southern England during the summer of 1990. The explosion for Project for Meeting with Tenjin was realized in Nagahama Port, Fukuoka, Japan, where Cai Guo-Qiang carved the same circular pattern into the ground and ignited the resulting shape.1 In both works, Cai Guo-Qiang attempted to communicate with “celestial beings” through the use of the “common language” of the crop circle. Project for Meeting with Tianjin was the fourth work in Cai Guo-Qiang’s series Project for Extraterrestrials, started in 1989. As part of this series, these works continue his attempt to create an artistic language that is able to communicate beyond national boundaries. Fei Dawei described Project for Extraterrestrials as “a program for a succession of large- scale explosions with the goal of transmitting signals to the universe and establishing a dialogue between Earth and the other planets.”2 In Project for Extraterrestrials, which uses the language of the crop circle as lingua franca, the explosions were directed upwards toward the sky; however, at MoCA, Cai Guo-Qiang inverted the intended perspective of the works so that both were positioned in such a way as to emphasize the viewer’s relationship to it— during the explosion, the viewer looks straight ahead of themselves, whereas in the gallery, the viewer has to look up.

104 Vol. 11 No. 6 Cai Guo-Qiang, I Am an In thinking about this inversion Extraterrestrial, Project for Meeting with Tenjin of the viewer’s position, the (Heavenly Gods): Project for Extraterrestrials No. 4, 1990, requirement to look up, corresponds 10 kg gunpowder, 200 metre fuse, vinyl. Photo: Wataru Kai. to works created for the exhibition Courtesy of the artist. An Arbitrary History, at the Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, France, in 2001. In both An Cai Guo-Qiang, I Am an Arbitrary History: River (2001) and Extraterrestrial, Project for Meeting with Tenjin An Arbitrary History: Roller Coaster (Heavenly Gods): Project for Extraterrestrials No. 4, 1990, (2001), viewers are transported gunpowder and ink on paper, mounted on canvas, 227.4 beneath images representing x 182 cm. Photo: Imamura Kaoru. Courtesy of the artist different histories. In the former, and Fukuoka Asian Art Museum. viewers sitting in a riverboat ﬂoat down a constructed waterway in the museum and pass beneath hanging sculptures. One of the suspended sculptures, looking like an ancient ﬂying machine, appears as a motif in the later gunpowder drawings, Desire for Zero Gravity (2012) and Childhood Spaceship (2012), exhibited at MoCA. In the latter, a roller coaster was installed within the museum’s galleries with the ceiling covered in a vibrant fabric printed with Cai Guo-Qiang’s “own knowledge of French contemporary art history.”3 In Cai Guo-Qiang’s reimagining of French art history, he revealed the mechanisms of selection used to produce dominant Western histories as the works provided did not necessarily correlate to the standard canon of French art history, but, instead, to the artist’s own understanding of this history.

I reference An Arbitrary History not only because of the viewer’s act of looking up that is paralleled in Crop Circles, but also because of the fact that Cai Guo-Qiang: Sky Ladder was on view at the same time as MoCA’s exhibition Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974, curated by Miwon Kwon. Cai Guo-Qiang’s practice is positioned as both within the history of Land Art and distinct from it. We must then ask: Does Cai Guo-Qiang’s use of the “trace” function differently from that put into play in Land Art? The urgency of this question is brought out precisely because Sky Ladder was exhibited in such close proximity to Ends of the Earth, in the adjacent gallery.

Writing in New York in the 1970s, Rosalind Krauss deﬁned the trace or, rather, the index, as distinct from symbols: “indexes establish their meaning along the axis of a physical relationship to their referents.”4 Acknowledging the “pluralism” of contemporary art, she argued that innovative uses of index can be used to characterize art practices more broadly, in particular the documentation of earth works (Land Art). Citing the work of Marcel Duchamp as an early example of the move away from iconic representation to the indexical in art practice, Krauss emphasized “the connection between the index (as a type of sign) and the photograph.”5 This aspect was essential to early earth works, which used photography to not only document works created in remote sites but also as an integral aspect of the works

Vol. 11 No. 6 105 Cai Guo-Qiang, Desire for Zero Gravity, 2012, gunpowder on canvas, 340.36 x 1066.8 cm. Photo: Joshua White/JWPictures.com. Courtesy of the artist and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

106 Vol. 11 No. 6 Vol. 11 No. 6 107 Cai Guo-Qiang, Desire for Zero Gravity, 2012, gunpowder on canvas, 340.36 x 1066.8 cm. Photo: Joshua White/ JWPictures.com. Courtesy of the artist and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Cai Guo-Qiang, An Arbitrary History: River, 2001, installation. Photo: Blaise Adilon. Courtesy of the artist and Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon.

Cai Guo-Qiang, An Arbitrary History: Roller Coaster, 2001, installation. Photo: Blaise Adilon. Courtesy of the artist and Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon.

108 Vol. 11 No. 6 Left: Cai Guo-Qiang, Childhood Spaceship, 2012, gunpowder on paper, 400 x 3300 cm. Photo: Joshua White/ JWPictures.com. Courtesy of the artist and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Right: Cai Guo-Qiang, Childhood Spaceship, 2012, gunpowder on paper, 400 x 3300 cm. Photo: Joshua White/ JWPictures.com. Courtesy of the artist and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. themselves. The index thus occupies a dual role in Cai Guo-Qiang’s practice. First, in the documentation of his explosions, and, second, in his use of traces from those explosions.

Birgit Hopfener has argued that in contemporary Chinese art the indexical has a meaning and purpose different from that of Western art history. Hopfener asserts that in China, the index “means bodily mediation of world structures and rhythms in order to make sense of the world in terms of bodily anticipation.”6 For Hopfener, qi provides the “central aesthetic category of life and the animate” and as such must resonate through an image (that is, an artwork) in order for the work to be considered good. Establishing a sense of qi is paramount in Cai Guo-Qiang’s artwork. Kuiyi Shen has argued that in Cai Guo-Qiang’s practice, qi acts as momentum or movement that is “gathered” according to the principals of fengshui in order to allow it move in the proper directions.7 Because fengshui is “ultimately about the relationship between people and their environment, between individuals and the universe,” the audience, through engaging with the work, “reaffirm their own existence.”8 The intention of the work to reaffirm existence corresponds to Cai Guo-Qiang’s earliest gunpowder projects, including Project for Extraterrestrials. Fei Dawei has stated that Cai Guo- Qiang’s attempts to communicate with extraterrestrial bodies “allows one to escape constrictive logic and to find the veritable space of the human being through the ties thus interwoven between the cosmos and the self.”9 The concept of communicating beyond earthly dialogue is a way to move past working within a confined relationship to Western art history. In Cai Guo- Qiang’s practice, the index does not merely function in the relationship between the signified and signifier, but also between the viewer and reality. As such, the inversion of the position of the viewer necessarily entails a different type of viewing and thus a different type of index.

Notes 1 Rebecca Morse, “Mystery Circle,” quoted from press kit. 2 Fei Dawei, “Amateur Recklessness,” Cai Guo Qiang (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000), 9. 3 Cai Guo-Qiang: An Arbitrary History (Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2001), 156. 4 Rosiland Krauss, “Notes on the Index: Seventies Art in America,” October 3, (Spring 1977), 70. 5 Ibid., 71. 6 Birgit Hopfener, “Negotiating Indexicality in Chinese Moving-Image Installations,” paper presented at the 2012 College Art Association Conference, New York. 7 Kuiyi Shen, “Fengshui, Qi, and the Art of Cai Guo-Qiang,” in Cai Guo-Qiang: Sky Ladder, (New York: Prestel, 2012), 58. 8 Ibid., 59. 9 Fei Dawei, “Amateur Recklessness,” in Cai Guo-Qiang (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000), 9.

Vol. 11 No. 6 109 Chinese Name Index

110 Vol. 11 No. 6 Vol. 11 No. 6 111 WANG G UANGYI (b. 1957) is a central ﬁgure of Yishu the Political Pop movement and recognized as a leader of the New Art Movement in China established in the 1980s. He is most recognized for Edition the socio-political paintings and prints from his Great Criticism series begun in 1998. Through his use of No. 5 the Chinese political icons and symbols of Western commercialism, his images respond to the deeply engrained legacy of propaganda experienced in To purchase a Yishu edition China during the Cultural Revolution. Originally print please send your request painted in 2005, in this work the artist uses his own to [email protected] or call 1.604.649.8187 (Canada), name as a substitute for luxury brand names common or contact Zhang Chaoxuan to his Great Criticism series. By calling attention to 134.6655.9126 (China). the consumer legacy of his own commercial success, Wang provides cheeky commentary on the experience Each edition is commissioned of China’s changing society. by and produced exclusively for Yishu; and is measured the same A RTW ORK DESCRI PTI ON size as the Journal. ARTIST ------Wang Guangyi TITLE ------Great Criticism — Wang Guangyi (2009) MEDIA ------Serigraph DIMENSION ------210 x 295 mm EDITION SIZE ------200 PRICE ------US $400 plus shipping

Signed by the artist; produced by A Space Art, Beijing. http://yishu-online.com Archive Web Site