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Guy and Myriam Ullens at the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing

All Tomorrow's Parties: Beijing's Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art flashes back to look ahead
By Stacey Duff

The doors to the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art finally opened this week with a bang. It's the most lavish Beijing opening in recent memory. Almost 250 VIPs (many of them internationals flown in for the occasion) attended the fanfare, including a string of high profile banquets, press conferences and a preview on the Saturday night prior to the Centre's official opening to the public on Monday morning.

The opening exhibition - entitled '85 New Wave -amounted to a finely tuned exercise in protocol and sensitivity. The non-profit centre - called UCCA for short - must appeal to two disparate audiences. One is international. The other is national. That's a fine tightrope to walk and in the days leading up to the opening, the Ullens team - including Guy and Myriam Ullens, artistic director Fei Dawei, and deputy director Colin Chinnery - made polished appearances with local and international media.

Fei Dawei, UCCA artistic director, poses on preview night in the documents room at '85 New Wave

A positive reception by the international art world is virtually in the bag. Baron Ullens, who began collecting Chinese contemporary art in the 1980s, is the paradigm of foresight and passion. For UCCA's debut exhibit, a host of international art institutions and collectors contribute both essential documentary materials and breathtaking original works. In addition to the Ullens' collection, other contributions spill in from a range of sources, from the Pompidou Centre to the Hong Kong Museum of Art to Baron Ullens' European counterpart, that other major collector of Chinese contemporary art, Uli Sigg. Many of the pieces are on loan from the artists.

The rockier story here is how the Chinese art world and the Chinese public perceive the Ullens Centre. Does the opening signal a fresh start as Chinese and international contemporary artists are equally revered on an aesthetic playground where hegemony gives way to synthesis? Or does it serve as another embarrassing reminder that international taste continues to place unnatural demands on local artists. Bear in mind that, in terms of market, it was forward-thinking collectors like Baron Ullens and Mr Sigg who anticipated Western interest in Chinese contemporary art. That foreign collectors initially fueled the Chinese contemporary art market is still a tender topic for the local art world.

For this first exhibition, the Centre could not have made a more exquisite choice: 1985. It's such a blurry moment, mixed with a glaze of nostalgia and the rebellious optimism of a new order. Ask Beijingers about the 1980s and most will tell you that it was an episode of purity, so unlike the hysterics of the Cultural Revolution that preceded the 1980s and equally unlike the get-rich obsessions of the 1990s and the current decade.

Universities and art schools had reopened in the late 1970s. By the mid-1980s, art school graduates at home - like Wang Guangyi and Zhang Peili - were presenting their first groundbreaking works. In subsequent years, foreign artists - Robert Rauschenberg and Gilbert and George - were visiting the city. Local critics and curators like Gao Minglu and Li Xianting were scribbling and scrambling at the vanguard of a new perception that posed itself in direct opposition to years of Soviet-style Socialist Realism.

In a conversation with Fei Dawei at his apartment in Beijing, the UCCA artistic director was quick to play down the nostalgia associated with '85 New Wave as the most important element in the show. 'In the art circle the '85 New Wave has become a buzzword,' he said, 'but audiences outside that circle and even many younger artists are not clear on what the movement was about.' Mr Fei also suggested that the show is not meant to sing the era's praises but to accurately assess its importance.

A ROOM WITH A SCROLL

Assessing rather than stressing the importance of the '85 New Wave has resulted in a academic show. There's not a lot of glitz here, but major pieces get enough breathing room to do them justice. Xu Bing's installation 'Book from the Sky' (1987-91) gets a room of its own and is the first work visitors see when they enter the Centre proper. Three parallel calligraphic scrolls over 15meters long and hung from two opposite points on the ceiling drape down to form a fluid inverted arch. Directly beneath the hanging scrolls, dozens of volumes of Xu Bing's self-styled nonsense calligraphy rests on a flat platform over nine metres in length.

Xu Bing's 'Book from the Sky' (1988-91) hovers above viewers on preview night. The remaining segments of the work, comprising of a ground-level platform holding volumes of the artist's calligraphy, were installed for the official public opening on Monday, November 5.

The installation works as both a joke utilizing nonsense characters and also seems to poke fun at one man's obsession - and by extension his culture's - with language. Besides that - and even though no one except for the artist is going to be able to decipher the characters - the installation works on a basic level where language is unnecessary. It's pretty to look at. At first glance, you might even think it contained some ancient wisdom. The piece attempts to transcend language even as it undercuts it. Lights filter through the scrolls and down onto the books before reflecting warmly into the rectangular space.

Placing Xu Bing's 'Book from the Sky' just inside the entrance works on several levels. Setting it apart from the other 136 works in the show both allows it to breath and assert its importance. Despite its ironic impulse, Book from the Sky immediately conveys a sense of intellectual sincerity as opposed to the cynicism of the Chinese contemporary art in the 1990s. Most importantly, this is the one piece in the entire show that does not betray a Western influence. The medium itself is native. While most every other work in the exhibition reflects an infatuation, or at least a dialogue, with Western modes, 'Book from the Sky' comes off as feeling innately Chinese. Whatever the undercurrents, the primary signal is clear: a native Chinese form is not at odds with what it means to be avant-garde.

MAKING A WAVE

Most of the works are housed in a the Centre's largest of three exhibition spaces. Here, works that stand out include Geng Jianyi's iconic 4-part oil painting, entitled 'The Second State' (1987). Each of the four pieces in the series is executed as a grisaille - a painting with sculptural qualities - depicting a gray face on a black background caught between a scream and a forced laugh. The bald-headed subject in the photo seems to anticipate later Chinese contemporary art movements, notably the Post-Tiananmen Cynical Realists, Fang Lijun and Yue Minjun.

Guests at the preview take in one of the most iconic images from the '85 New Wave, Geng Jianyi's 'The Second State' (1987).

But 'Second State' alone, whether interpreted as rebellious or angst-ridden, doesn't fully capture the mood of an era. '85 is a wave not a movement. Local experimentation during the mid to late '80s was not a unified aesthetic mantra but a surge of divergent ideas. Disagreements, movements and schools abounded. One element of the exhibition focuses on work from art groups, including documentary video footage of the Xiamen Dada's 'Burning Event 2'. Other groups featured in the show include the Northern Group. Several early works from more prominent members of the group, including Wang Guangyi Wang's blend of Cultural Revolution propaganda art and American Pop Art would influence later generations of China's Socialist Pop in the 1990s.

'Scene of the Burning Event' (1986), video, by the Xiamen Dada
Courtesy of the artists and the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art

Elsewhere, Zhang Xiaogang's early works include his religiously infused Last Supper (1989). Labeled by critics as an example of Chinese magical realism, Last Supper stands in stark contrast to the Bloodline Series that the artist would later produce in the 1990s. Meanwhile, one of China's earliest exponents of abstract expressionism is captured in Ding Yi's acrylic on canvas, 'Appearance of Crosses' (1989). Early forms of installation also make a generous appearance here with Huang Yongping - already scheduled to have a solo retrospective at UCCA in March 2008 - and his installation, 'Reptile' (1989). Gu Dexin - one of the first Chinese artists to receive international prominence at the Magiciens de la Terre exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in May 1989 - presents an untitled installation of synthesized materials. The installation feels a little discarded in one corner of the main space but once inside viewers immediately respond - either repulsed or infatuated - to a material wonderland born of a quirky imagination.

'Appearance of Crosses' (1989), acrylic on canvas, by Ding Yi
Courtesy of the artist and the Ullens Center for Contemporary Arts

'85 New Wave: The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art succeeds in presenting the pluralism of an artistic era. But some major works are absent. You can't have it all but we would have loved to see Zhang Qun and Meng Luding's seminal oil-on-canvas, 'In the New World: The Enlightenment of Adam and Eve' (1985). Some foreign visitors to the opening questioned the quality of some of the pieces, but that's the risk that an academic exhibit takes. Many of these pieces still quicken the pulse, even when their messages remain unfocused.

Parts of the exhibition experiences a failure of moment. Some pieces, particularly those that initially involved a live element, fall short of producing either the gravity or the excitement of the original. We don't hear the Wave's crash - historically, it was there. February 1989 saw the climax and sudden abruption of the New Wave with the China Avant-garde exhibition, held at the National Gallery (now the National Art Museum of China). China Avant-garde was closed down and reopened repeatedly after artist Xiao Lu fired gunshots into her own installation and the Gallery received a few rather unwelcome bomb threats.

Xiao Lu's controversial installation, 'Dialogue', is on show here - a mirrored telephone booth with bullet holes intact. The emphasis at the opening show is on the intellectual ferment while the social finale is truncated and relegated to the shadows of innuendo. Diplomatic by necessity but watered down nonetheless, June 4, 1989 is abbreviated here in a timelines and documents room to a night of 'martial law.' Death is not mentioned. Any damage that the Tiananmen tragedy had on the artists of the New Wave becomes a ritualistic episode in silence.

FACE VALUES

A few days before the opening, Guy and Myriam Ullens along with Colin Chinnery appeared in a Chinese-language interview with Tom.com, China's most visible on-line cultural magazine. Mrs Ullens dressed exquisitely, even down to the lime green scarf she wore on set that matched the color of the Tom.com logo - a playful green asterisk. Baron Ullens fielded a series of questions, ranging from his relationship with the artists to the painful selling of his Turner collection earlier this year to supplement the UCCA's financial demands. Meanwhile, Mr Chinnery emphasized that the opening exhibition wasn't meant to be nostalgic but to foster a 'new sense of direction.'

There is an underlying sense - among local artists, critics and galleries alike - that overheated international and domestic market demands have obscured the initial naïve passion of the artists. An additional issue here is that China has yet to produce a non-profit art sector that can nurture a new generation of artists. Ullens is expected to fulfill that remit. The Centre is also expected to contribute to the frequency and the quality of international exhibitions coming to Beijing, thus feeding the minds of a local audience with international standards and new influences.

People here are watching. On preview night, Fei Dawei donned a navy blue Mao suit and a patriotically dashing red scarf. Mr Fei, who has spent most of his time in Paris since the late 1980s, was clearly at the helm in a nod to local scrutiny. Even so, there was minor grumbling among Chinese artists and observers that some of the speeches in the opening ceremonies were not accompanied by a Chinese translation and that a majority of the banquet guests were foreigners. Some of these objections have already aired, rather politely, in the form of Mandarin-language blog entries, as in critic Jia Fangzhou's on www.artron.com, one of China's largest art sites. Mr Jia's blog, entitled 'Chinese Territory: A Paradise for Foreigners', alludes to the heavy international turnout as well a lack of translation into Mandarin as a sign of disrespect to the host country. Respondents to the post either agreed - 'This exhibition is a corpse,' quipped one observer - while others felt that the show was more than they could ever expect from the Ministry of Culture.

A young man studies Chairman Mao on a timeline available in the Documents room. One of the goals for the Ullens Centre is to educate a new generation of Chinese viewers.

Despite these initial misgivings, Ullens has clearly raised the standards and filled a void. But can it provoke a new sense of solidarity among the jaded? The National Art Museum of China, though it has made strides in previous years under the leadership of director Fan Di'an, has failed to produce that spark. More areas of the Beijing art community outside of the Dashanzi Art District, like Jiuchang and Caochangdi, have become home to a new wave of cutting edge galleries, but have as yet failed to reach a wider audience. The non-profit Ullens Centre, located between upstart art districts in the rural periphery and major museums in the city centre, may provide the perfect balance between domestic and international visions.

The two-level, 8000sq metre space has no parallel in the city. Designed by architect Jean-Michelle Wilmotte in collaboration with Shanghai architect, Ma Qingyun, the new Centre at once maintains its original 1950s Bauhaus flavor while revealing a generous, contemporary white out space evocative of the Tate Modern. The Centre's design concept also manages to reflect Beijing's traditional courtyard homes. But even the architectural design, rare for its balance of international and local styles, may seem like a minor accomplishment compared to the divergent worlds that UCCA hopes to synthesize. A new sense of direction really would be a cause for celebration. But in this town, it may take a lot more parties to pull that one off.

Stacey Duff

'85 New Wave: The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art shows until February 2008. Visit www.ullens-center.org for updates.