Robert Boyd, 'Xanadu', 2006
The most talked-about exhibition of the winter season is still on show until 20 February at PKM Gallery, outside the city's Dashanzi Art District, in the Caochandi area. Seventeen New York-based artists exhibit in 'New York, Interrupted', a titular reference to the tragic events of 9/11. One highlight is a grueling four-channel video by Robert Boyd. Entitled 'Xanadu', it explores the historical relationship between leaders - religious, cult, political, terrorist and otherwise - to their naïve and impassioned followers. Images of mass destruction, raving fundamentalists, suicidal punch-drinkers and terrorists all boogie to a soundtrack remix from Madonna's 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina' and Olivia Newton-John's 'Xanadu'. The feel good 70s have been replaced, the artist says, with the feel-bad spirit of the 2000s. Curator Dan Cameron says that many works make only an oblique reference to 9/11. He and the artists still feel that the whole show is 'weighty with a sense of loss while boiling over with rage, and the two never manage to cancel each other out.'
'Xanadu' (2006) by Robert Boyd
4-channel video. Courtesy of PKM Gallery and the artist.
'Sunday' (2006) by Tang Maohong
5-channel video. Courtesy of Arario Beijing and the artist.
PKM Gallery is not the only Korea-based gallery to make strides in the capital city. In another up-and-coming art district, known as The Brewery, Arario Beijing exhibits artists from around Asia in 'Asia Art Now'. With its stated ambitions to become Asia's art hub - a recent show included a huge sampling of work from India - 'Asia Art Now' is broad in scope to be sure, but more diluted than last month's focused exhibition of artists from Leipzig. China's own Tang Maohong is still strong here with 'Sunday', a perverse 5-channel video-wonderland of body parts, strange micro-organisms - not to mention snails, slugs and decapitated angels - as well as young Asian girls making sloppy noises whilst sucking their thumbs: Beatrix Potter on speed meets Beavis and Butthead on Viagra. You might just want to leave the tots at home for this one.
An inordinate amount of Bush-whacking is also on display - not that we'd expect otherwise from artists, foreign or domestic, as with Lee Myoungboks' 'Wanted' (2005), a glaring acrylic-on-canvas that accuses the 'Toxic Texan' of 'CRIMES AGAINST THE PLANET' and an 'attempted assassination of the Kyoto Treaty.' Elsewhere, the vituperative political posturing is put on hold as in Jeong Pyunghan's tender but sharply executed acrylic on old blackboard. 'Mrs Lee's Abacus,' depicts the abacus of the title along with its kind-faced schoolteacher-owner, the one-and-only Mrs Lee. Arario remains one of the most vibrant and dynamic foreign galleries since its recent arrival in Beijing, a position it will likely maintain even as it prepares to open a third gallery in New York later this year.
'Departure from Songzhuang' (detail) by Chang Zongxian. Courtesy Xindong Gallery and the artist.
Old China hands and art collectors from the old school will be interested in simultaneous exhibitions at Xindong Space 1 and 3, both located in the city's main art district, Dashanzi. 'Departure from Songzhuang' - representing the solo efforts of Chang Zongxian - is named after the rural area to the east of Beijing where hundreds of artists still live cheap and escape the parasitic nosiness of Beijing neighbours. While Space 3 exhibits portraits of the individual artists from Songzhuang, Space 1 features a huge 7-panel group portrait of all the artists donning camouflage military uniforms as they gather around one of the most essential figures in Chinese contemporary art history, Li Xianting. Li Xianting's black trench coat and red scarf is a clear reference to an earlier (and idealized) portrait of a dashingly young Mao Zedong.
Li Xianting, who also resides in Songzhuang, still enjoys a warm reputation among Chinese artists and he is surrounded here on his immediate right and left by two of China's most well-known painters, a flower-bearing Fang Lijun and Yang Shaobin. Taken together, the three very well might form a holy trinity. It is also worth noting here that many Chinese, both within the arts and the general population, are currently looking back to the past with nostalgia, particularly to the 1980s, when the country was opening up but not yet obsessed with getting rich - and just before the tragic summer of 1989. 'Departure from Songzhuang' may be read as a simple group portrait of the artist's friends and colleagues, as well as a respectful albeit playful nod to Li Xianting, but it is equally a romanticized feel-good piece about the early days before success tainted artistic eyes with temptations of the cash. Most everyone is smiling in the piece, as friends do at reunions, but there's enough success going around to stretch those smiles out just a little more.
'Beyond the Frame' (2006) by Lin Jiunting
Interactive media, touch screen. Courtesy of Dimensions Art Centre and the artist.
The Taipei-based Dimensions Art Centre continues to forge its unofficial role as the most active programmer in Beijing of New Media and computerized art with a solo showing from Taiwanese artist, Lin Jiunting. Housed in three separate rooms, the interactive works tend to be mostly therapeutic. In 'Psyche Zone', virtual butterflies chase visitors, pleasantly, around a small pond of light. But the most significant aspect of this show is Lin Jiunting's attempt to use technology to renew classical ink-and-wash traditions. In 'Beyond the Frame', a two-panel interactive video, fallen blossoms tremble on the water wherever visitors skim their fingers across the surface of the virtual pond. On the upper video screen, a delicate branch grows each time the lower screen is touched. Although one or two of the works feel gimmicky, Lin demonstrates that we can relate to a classical past with ultra-modern technology, reinventing previous conventions with new (electronic) tools.
'Meteor Shower' (2006) by Liu Yuan
Oil on canvas (200cm x 180cm). Courtesy of China Art Seasons and the artist.
A modest buzz is surrounding a solo exhibition by Guangzhou painter, Liu Yuan at China Art Seasons in Dashanzi - even if the show was given a rather unfortunate title in English: 'Frontal Attack and Backbite'. But Liu Yuan's occasionally clumsy technique lends itself well to his topic - violent crime in Guangzhou, a city renowned in China for its stratospheric crime rate. Women and men both are victimized in this work - bloody, tied down and forced into all sorts of impossible positions - although the work stops short of suggesting that we participate in some kind of perverse thrill. In paintings like 'Hanging No. 1' (2006), the victim's posture even suggests that of Christ on the cross, a rare non-ironic reference to Christianity in a country where most artistic references to Western religions are done with an innocent smirk. Sensitive viewers might be disturbed by some of the paintings portraying victims who have been stripped, tied up and shot at close range.
'Cars' (2006) by Qin Fengling
Acrylic on canvas (90 x 120 x2cm). Courtesy the artist and White Space.
'Cavalry' (2006) by Qin Fengling
Acrylic on canvas (120 x 90 x2cm). Courtesy the artist and White Space.
Visitors to Beijing who find the Liu Yuan show too violent for their tastes might want to visit White Space, also in Dashanzi, where local painter Qin Fengling takes lighthearted jabs at that most stereotypical of Chinese traits - social conformity. The artist piles on rich globs of acrylic paint to create battalions of tiny characters, most of them identical to each other. Part of the fun stems from the simplicity and directness of the works' titles, as in 'Police, Prisoners' (2005), featuring an army of cops and bad guys squaring it off. Qin's work resembles a highly decorated and attractive birthday cake where the baker had a little too much booze to chuggle and a little too much icing to play with.
Speaking of celebrations, Chinese New Year falls on 18 February, so those planning on seeing art in Beijing during the last half of the month should call galleries before setting out. Opening times return to normal in early March when galleries thaw out their spring programming and prepare for the upcoming Dashanzi International Arts Festival in late April and early May.
Stacey Duff
Stacey Duff has an MFA in Creative Writing from Brown University (US) and has lived in Beijing since 2003, where he is a regular contributor to ArtZineChina. He is also a poet, having previously published in magazines like Conjunctions, Skanky Possum and Octopus, and forthcoming work will appear soon in the new San Francisco magazine, Canteen. Since 2005, he has reported extensively on Chinese contemporary art as the art editor for TimeOut Beijing.
GALLERY ADDRESSES:
PKM Gallery - Beijing
#46-C Cao Chang Di, Chaoyang Qu
100015 Beijing
T: +86 10 8456 7429
www.pkmgallery.com
China Art Seasons
2 Jiuxianqiao lu
Chaoyang district
Beijing
T: 86 (10) 6431 1900
www.artseasons.com.sg
Gallery contact - Adele Zeng: beijing@artseasons.com.cn
Dimensions Art Centre
4 Jiuxianqiao lu
Chaoyang district
Beijing
T: 86 (10) 6435 9665
www.dimensions-art.com
Gallery contact - Ms Wu: bubu5455@gmail.com
Xindong Cheng
4 Jiuxianqiao lu
Chaoyang district
Beijing
T: 86 (10) 6433 4579
www.chengxindong.com
Gallery contact: admin@chengxindong.com
Arario Beijing
Jiuchang Art Complex
Beihuqu Road
Anwaibeiyuan Street
Chaoyang District
Beijing, 100012
T: +86 10 5202 3800
www.arariobeijing.com/en
Gallery contact: info@arariobeijing.com
White Space Beijing
No. 2 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Chaoyang District,
Beijing 100015, PR China
100015
T: +86 10 8456 2054
www.alexanderochs-galleries.de
Gallery contact - Zhang Di:info@whitespace-beijing.com
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