STACEY DUFF, Saatchi Online magazine's China correspondent and Time Out Beijing's art editor picks the five most memorable shows in Beijing in 2008.
Huang Yong Ping Retrospective, Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art
David Spalding curates the last leg of this traveling exhibition that debuted at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 2006. In 2008, the exhibition was arguably China's most influential exhibition. It gave the Paris-based artist a whole new audience, and it gave young Chinese artists something to discuss for a very long time to come. We can expect to see Huang's influence - his preference for complexity over Pop Art directness and Social Realist sincerity - exert itself on China's next generation of contemporary artists, thanks in some measure to this exhibition.
Yin Xiuzhen, Beijing Commune
The artist severed a van, separating the front half and the back halves and then connected the two halves with several meters of clothes. Visitors could climb into the van and chill to the sounds of local rock music. Yin's exhibit was the most sensual of 2008. It was also the first exhibit we've seen that seamlessly wove together the carefree American 1970s and the optimism of the Chinese 1980s.
Artus De Lavilleon Solo Show, Elk Gallery
Jocko Weyland curates. The show was held in most unique one-off space of the year: Artus' drawings were stuck against the walls of an indoor 'half-pipe' for skaters in a run-down space a few blocks away from Beijing's World Trade Centre. Opening night proved to be skateboard orgy when some of the drawings were inadvertently damaged from the occasional runaway board.
Li Zhanyang Solo Exhibition, Galerie Urs Meile
The show was held in the lead-up to the Olympics and no better exhibition captured the pre-Economic crisis arrogance of the Chinese contemporary art world. The show included 36 fiberglass sculptures, modeled after China's 1965 public sculptural work that criticized landlords and lamented the plight of commoners under the landlords. In a masterful twist that underscores the chummy cupidity of the Chinese art world, Li Zhanyang replaced the figures in the original scene with figures from the Chinese art world: like Ai Weiwei, Uli Sigg, Li Xianting and a host of others as well as cameos from the likes of the late Great Helmsman and Joseph Beuys.
Cai Guo Qiang, National Art Museum of China
Held during the Olympics, this show was basically an extension of the artist's Guggenheim Retrospective earlier in the year. 'I want to believe' - as the retrospective was named - highlighted (again) how urgently the National Art Museum of China needs to move into a more flexible space other than the cramped and rigid Soviet-style building that it currently occupies. Even so, this was a moment of triumph for the artist who was placed in charge of the fireworks spectacle at the Olympics.
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