ARTS & CULTURE ART P44 ART P50 IN PRINT P54 CINEMA P58 STAGE that’smags www.thebeijinger.com Septemberwww. 200 thatsbj.com8 / the Beijinger Sept. 200543 Sculptor Xiang Jing's Peacock. See Q&A, p47; photo courtesy of the Tang Contemporary Gallery For venue details, see directories, p45 Send events to [email protected] by Sep 12 Sep 4-Oct 18 Until Sep 19 Yang Shaobin: Blind Spot Daniel Lee: Dream Unlike many Chinese artists, Yang Lee’s paintings of animals with rt Shaobin resists the temptation of human faces externalize the wild- mass-producing cynical realistic ness of human unconsciousness. images. Instead he opens a path Pata Gallery (6433 5120) A between the figurative and the Until Sep 21 abstract, which liberates his images from any form of narrative. Long Andy Warhol: Portraits – Sport, Stars ART March (6438 7107) and Society The Olympics may be over, but you Sep 5-25 still have time to see some athletes Zhang Jian: Snowscapes and Scenery – albeit through the perspective An exhibition of the latest paint- of Andy Warhol. See Review, p47. ings of the Beijing-born artist, Faurschou Gallery Beijing (8459 which focus on Beijing and the 9316/14) area surrounding it. China Blue Until Sep 23 Gallery (8774 6332/6339) Jonathan Borofsky Sep 6-9 The 1942-born American artist Art Beijing is famous for his series The This annual art fair brings works of Hammering Man – gigantic art from over 100 galleries, from 20 kinetic public sculptures of human different countries, to Beijing. The figures holding hammers. The theme for this year’s fair is “public monumental sculptures have been art” – an interesting topic, we installed in various cities including just hope it helps to inspire better Basel, Frankfurt, Seattle and curatorial ability in the capital. Seoul. The largest sculpture is National Agricultural Exhibition 72ft tall. This summer, as well as Center, www.artbeijing.net displaying his works in the Olympic Park, Borofsky shows some of his Sep 6-Oct 2 new creations at this exhibition. Xiang Jing: Quanluo PYO Gallery (5202 3814) This sculptor makes Ron Mueck- Until Sep 26 Until Sep 30: Red, Smooth and Luminescent esque fiberglass human figures. See Q&A, p47. Tang Contemporary Group Exhibition New art plays with nostalgia for social realism. See listing, p45. Gallery (6436 3518/3658) United by the theme of image dy- namics are the works of Matthew Sep 6-Oct 26 Barney, Thomas Rose, Joel Feld- he big Games are over, and this month, the art world can now Chen Fei: Visual Desire and Violence man, Allan Walker, Raz Barfield, The color-saturated, manga-esque Wang Chuan and Liu Jin. 798 Photo color outside the lines and veer away from putting on Olym- works of this Guangdong-born art- Gallery (6438 1784, 6437 5284) pics-related shows. Art Beijing, Shanghai Contemporary, ist comment on, and amplify, social Until Sep 28 T tension. Beijing Tokyo Art Projects Shanghai Biennale and Guangzhou Triennial (the last curated by (8457 3245) 2D/3D Negotiating Visual Languages Paying tribute to the creative an academically-inclined team that includes research professor Sarat Robert Rauschenberg: no-man’s land between the physi- Maharaj) are all getting into gear in early September. Some insiders may The Lotus Series cal presence of sculptures and the Rauschenberg’s 1985 Beijing two-dimensional plane of paint- worry that Art Beijing, which runs from September 6-9 (see listings, exhibition was hugely influential ings and drawings, 2D/3D features this page), will suffer from the lack of international audiences. on the local art scene, just as Kaii the work of 12 Chinese contem- Higashiyama’s ‘70s exhibits had a porary artists (including painters People are still unsure if the collector Uli Sigg, who probably huge impact on Chinese oil land- Hong Gei and Li Song Song and scape painting. This show features owns the largest contemporary Chinese art collection in the world, will experimenter Lauren Tans) that Rauschenberg’s “The Lotus Series,” incorporate new and old mediums actually be donating a big portion of his collection to build a museum the American artist’s last works to find ways to transform the space before he passed away in May this in Shenzhen around the viewer. Michelangelo’s . If this plan is realized, there is a high possibility that year. The lotus is an important icon Sistine Chapel is cited as an inspira- the city will develop its own art zone, just as Qingdao plans to turn in China, in both a religious and an tion, but the pieces themselves ideological sense. By placing this will take on the shape of videos, an old factory area in the oceanside city into an art district following “very Chinese” symbol into scenes new-media installations, and more. of everyday Chinese life, Rauschen- PKM Gallery (8456 7429) the example of Beijing’s 798 and Shanghai’s M50 zones. If the berg portrays his last Oriental plan doesn’t work out, some are expecting the Swiss collector/former cultural landscape. Rauschenberg’s Until Sep 29 pop-ness is described by Chinese Patty Chang: Touch Would ambassador to auction off the works in his possession, just as the art critic Li Xianting as “democra- Chang, a finalist in the 2008 Hugo creator of the Estella Collection did. tized, vulgarized, popularized, al- Boss Prize, presents an exhibition ways current, but at the same time that revolves around the topic of In other news, Super Ganbei (the brasserie run by Ullens Center also always above the trends of the translation and mistranslation, for Contemporary Art) opened on August 12, and offers an exten- time.” See photo, p45. Dafeng Art based on two cultural incidents: Gallery (6433 7317) The meeting between cultural sive menu – from Beijing kaoya and dim sum to sushi, with room to Until Sep 2 critic Walter Benjamin and Chinese accommodate more than a hundred people, a DJ booth, and tableware actress Anna May Wong, and a Cai Guoqiang: I Want to Believe knife throwing sequence from designed by artists like Yue Minjun and Yan Lei. Super Ganbei is The Quanzhou artist who curvets one of Anna May Wong’s early with gunpowder, now brings his silent films. The incidents are expected to stimulate nightlife in 798 by offering upscale dining with retrospective to the capital from reinterpreted then function as a a touch of artsy spice. The restaurant offers dishes from RMB 30- the Guggenheim in New York. Na- tool that explores the concepts of tional Art Museum of China (6401 the public sphere and the private 500 (set dinner) and is hoped to generate income for the nonprofit 2252/7076) space. Arrow Factory art center. That brings to mind The Art Newspaper’s article, “What’s Until Sep 14 Until Sep 30 going on at the Ullens Center in Beijing?”, which mentions the Poorism Digital Passage: Journey Beyond In an era where everybody is Reality’s Threshold goal of Guy Ullens, the Belgian foodstuffs baron, to move up the desperate for xiaokang lifestyle The show features works from UCCA’s break-even point from 2013 to 2010, a feat that will require (comfortable middle-class life), artists Yam Lau from Canada, Ma making “poorist” art puts you at Yongfeng from China and Michael making EUR 6 million a year. risk of being another Don Quixote. Yuen from Australia. Their respec- A recession of sales of Chinese contemporary art has been Yet through this group show that tive works of new-media art push embodies famous artists including viewers towards the boundary predicted since a downturn of auction pieces earlier this year. This is Liu Xiaodong (who sold a painting between the virtual world and the for more than RMB 50 million believed to be the reason why Zhang Xiaoming, the first specialist real world. But, wait: when the last April), the gallery explores world now is covered by hyper- of contemporary Chinese art of Sotheby’s in New York, is expected the internal social interactions reality, like a huge map covering between the two banks of income a land, is it still meaningful to to leave the auction house. Venus Lau disparity in China. Boers-Li Gallery believe that there is a difference (6432 2620) between dreams and reality? that’smags 44Stheept. 2005Beijinger www. / thatsbj.comSeptember 200 8 www.thebeijinger.com Yuanfen New Media Art Space progress of globalization, and most (5978 9896) importantly, Chinese icons, like red Red, Smooth and Luminescent stars, that can somehow be linked The title consists of three adjec- to price tags in the art market. Yet tives used to form an expected Zhao’s usage of various visual tex- texture for socialist realism art tures is fun. Chinese Contemporary during the “cultural revolution.” (5978 9671) After the historical incident, the Until Oct 30 historical context changed and the Chen Jiagang: The Great Third Front signifiers become empty – conven- Using large format cameras, Chen ient for contemporary artists to records the existence of ghost clash with new backgrounds and cities – industrial zones that were contexts. This show may not be abandoned after their operation in the best among the hundreds of the ‘60s and ‘70s as a result of the ART exhibitions in town, yet it provides changes being made to China’s a typical case study for the scene. socio-political structure. Paris See photo, p44. Xin Dong Cheng Beijing Photo Gallery (8459 9263) Space for Contemporary Art (6433 4579) Until Oct 31 Until Oct 4 Ancient Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy Until Oct 7: Zhang Dali – Wind/Horse/Flag Microscopic Narration The Forbidden City parades its “Social images” by Zhang Xiaotao treasures in the Wu Yong Dian Migrant workers on parade.