Stacey Duff reports on the shows chosen to coincide with the Olympic Games in Beijing, including a retrospective by Cai Guo-Qiang whose spectacular fireworks project for the opening ceremony - 'Footprints in History' - has been exposed as having relied on digital graphics. 
Continue reading "STACEY DUFF'S TOP FIVE SHOWS IN BEIJING" »
Anthony Haden-Guest reports from Beijing on the art exhibitions taking place to coincide with the opening of the Olympic Games. 
Continue reading "ANTHONY HADEN-GUEST ON THE ART CREATED IN BEIJING FOR THE OLYMPIC GAMES" »
A shipment of bronze astronauts has just arrived at Sheng Qi's hangar-like studio. There are ten half-scale and four life-size sculptures. They don't stick out all that much, surrounded by giant paintings of Lhasa, protesters, execution squads, busts of Mao, a drum set (hallmark of artistic coolness), and, at the center of the room, a low table with a miniature Tian'amen Gate surrounded by toy-like tanks, one or two of them overturned. Each bears Sheng's trademark four fingers - he cut off his little finger in 1989 in solidarity with the protesters massacred in Tian'anmen Square. 
Continue reading "AN INTERVIEW WITH SHENG QI BY WILLIAM CORWIN" »
A long wall painted with officially sanctioned graffiti glides by as you approach Beijing's 798 Art District - 'No. 4. IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING' one section crows. In English. The largest of several Art Zones to have budded in the city over the last few years, 798 is gated, and security was hovering in the form of twenty-somethings in short-sleeved white shirts. This is China and now with the Olympics the world's hugest nation is on tippy-toed alert. 
The Spanish title of Carlos Garaicoa's show in Beijing, ¿Revolución or Rizoma?, calls to mind revolutions - both Cuba and China have had their share - as well as the concept of the rhizome as explored in the 1976 text, 'Rhizome', by French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The show, in spite of its complex foundation in economic and political theories, is not oversaturated with abstractions, but takes on a personal feel. Garaicoa uses philosophy to deconstruct and better understand reality. He does this with games such as Chinese checkers and pool, altering them slightly and placing them in a fresh context. The effect is that we've just overheard someone tell a good joke, only to realize afterwards, that there are several punch-lines, not just one, and we were willing participants all along.
Continue reading "STACEY DUFF ON CARLOS GARAICOA AT GALLERIA CONTINUA, BEIJING" »
Zhang Xiaogang no longer has to worry about being pressured into accommodating the market - he has a clause written into his contract with art dealers precluding any discussion of subject matter and style. He is very grounded for an artist who's work sells at auction for seven figures. He chain smokes like most Chinese men, dresses casual chic - sporting a Polo baseball cap. His work is everywhere; it hangs in the entrance hall of the Asia Society in Manhattan and his paintings are the only ones deemed worthy of a protective rope at the National Gallery of Art in Beijing. he talks here about the early influences on his work and what life is like now that he has reached Art Stardom. 
Continue reading "ZHANG XIAOGANG IN CONVERSATION WITH WILL CORWIN" »
"For me, Ming Dynasty furniture is abstract art," Li Gang. Li Gang, who is having a solo exhibition this month at the Red Gate Gallery in Beijing, and will be featured in "P.O.P. Beijing/New York: Works on Paper" at the Pickled Art Centre in May, discusses the difficulties of making abstract art in China. 
Continue reading "LI GANG IN CONVERSATION WITH WILL CORWIN" »
"This young generation in China has the greatest opportunities in the world right now," says Laurens Tan, a digital media artist and sculptor based in Beijing. Tan's appearance and demeanor are deceptively sleek, as is his artwork. Dressed in black, with spiky white hair and Corbusier glasses, he has the look of the classic aesthete. His recent creations - variations on the theme of the three-wheeled vehicle, or Sanlunche, that can be seen on almost any street in China - are for the most part on a toy scale. For Tan, the Sanlunche, whether in the form of a bicycle, motorized rickshaw, or minivan, is emblematic of the clever, scrappy and indigenous solutions to the congested life of Chinese streets, disappearing as quickly as those streets themselves. "The opposite of globalization is nostalgia," he quips. 
Continue reading "AN INTERVIEW WITH LAURENS TAN BY WILL CORWIN" »
Sunday March 15th, a sunny afternoon in Beijing's art district, 798. Excavation for a sewage system is currently underway in the neigborhood's dirt roads, so everywhere is piled high with clods of earth and mounds of dirt. Laborers stand around armed with shovels, chain-smoking and bemusedly eyeing sunglassed art tourists decked out in Prada, Fendi and the ubiquitous Beijing dust coat. Xiao Xiong, the creator of the innocently titled "Bumped Into Installation, 2008", currently on view, is available for an interview in 15 minutes. "You can't even see my piece!" he jokes on the phone. 
Continue reading "XIAO XIONG IN CONVERSATION WITH WILL CORWIN" »
Shows that mix traditional and contemporary elements are about as refreshing as Beijing smog. But there's something different at play in 'New Vista', an exhibition in which fifteen artists reevaluate the place of classical Chinese aesthetics in contemporary China. 
A six-panel jury, and collector Uli Sigg, has announced the winners of the inaugural 2008 Chinese Contemporary Art Awards, or CCAA. Ai Weiwei, just 50, received a Lifetime Contribution award, while Liu Wei, 36, was recognized as the Best Artist of 2008. Both awards came as little surprise to the art world in Beijing, where both Ai Weiwei and Liu Wei are based. The jury also minimized any possible political interpretations of selecting a Taiwanese artist, Tseung Yu-Chin, as Best Young Artist in 2008 (film still below). Juror Hou Hanru called the decision only a 'small heart-attack.' 
Continue reading "STACEY DUFF REPORTS ON THE CHINESE CONTEMPORARY ART AWARDS" »
In the second excerpt from his new book, This Is Civilisation, Matthew Collings (below) visits the Chinese artist Wang Qingsong at his Beijing studio: 'The TV crew and I walked a couple of hundred yards into the space towards bright lights and the sound of shouting. We saw hills, tanks, jeeps, artillery and barbed wire. Real horses arrived and clip clopped up to the hills. Rifles, model bombs and grenades lay around. The mock hills ran for several more hundred yards and were about seventy-five yards deep. There were trenches, craters and abandoned vehicles, plus rickety wooden fences with burned tin cans tied to them with wire.' 
Continue reading "MATTHEW COLLINGS VISITS WANG QINGSONG'S STUDIO IN BEIJING" »
This exhibition of young emerging Chinese artists comes with a word of warning about the hype currently surrounding the contemporary Chinese art market: 'Should we decide to consider contemporary art with a historical determinist attitude, and feel gleeful about it, then we may make mistakes unknowingly, because the development of all things does not necessarily follow our willful expectations. The fierce prosperity of the contemporary Chinese art market seems to have elevated the expectations of those who care about it, especially artists, who have actually benefited from these recent developments.' 
Stacey Duff's selection of the top shows to see in Beijing this month, including solo exhibtions by Yin Xiuzhen, Xia Xing, Cui Guotai, Zhang Zhicheng, Du Jie, and debuts in Beijing for the LA-based Clayton Brothers, Paolo Gioli and Miroslav Tichy. 
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 with almost 250 VIPs flown in for the occasion. Whilst a positive reception by the international art world is virtually in the bag, the rockier story here is how the Chinese art world and the Chinese public perceive the Ullens Centre.
Continue reading "NEWS: STACEY DUFF ON THE ULLENS CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, BEIJING" »
New solo shows for Yue Minjun, one of China's highest selling artists, the Korean painter Park Seo-Bo, Shanghai-based artist Xue Song and an ambitious effort by Zhong Biao including a four-panel acrylic and charcoal on canvas work measuring 380 x 1200cm (detail below). 
Continue reading "STACEY DUFF ON THE SHOWS NOT TO MISS IN BEIJING THIS MONTH" »
The photographs in Zhang O's 'Daddy and I' series depict Western fathers posing in various outdoor locations - mostly public parks but also backyards - with their adopted Chinese daughters. The series here at Pekin Fine Arts' newly inaugurated space in Caochangdi mingles natural affection with shades of latent intimacy. To bring a slice of garden into the gallery, thereby recalling the various outdoor settings where the subjects posed, the artist has also created a small pleasure garden installation in which to display the work. 
Continue reading "STACEY DUFF ON ZHANG O AT PEKIN FINE ARTS, BEIJING" »
Among the most exciting shows currently on in Beijing are Hugo Tillman's mapping of the psyche of the Chinese contemporary art world in "Film Stills of the Mind", YOON Jeong-mee's portraits of Korean children surrounded by their toys (below), Liu Wei's 150 sq metre installation "The Outcast" that captures both the political and physical atmosphere of Beijing, and Song Dong's retrospective which articulates the connections between contemporary and classical Chinese art. 
Continue reading "STACEY DUFF'S ROUND-UP OF SHOWS IN BEIJING" »
'The canvases themselves emit a dim uneven glow that wraps you. The most prominent element in the work is a lanky naked boy who trudges through landscapes either thick or barren, wearing what appears to be a gas mask. In the series 'Serbonian Bog,' the masked boy wades at night through a knee-deep swamp full of water lilies and murky water. The canvases are large enough (on the average around 2.5 by 4 meters) to embrace the viewer...' Stacey Duff is entranced by the first solo show of young Chinese artist, Jia Aili. 
Continue reading "STACEY DUFF ON JIA AILI AT PLATFORM CHINA, BEIJING" »
For his current show, Liu Wei has constructed a series of ox-hide sculptures modeled on the world's landmark buildings. Monuments that are supposed to represent the pinnacle of human achievement are reduced to shriveled-up toy buildings fit for a city of mutts - ox-hide is the same material used to make bones for dogs to play with and chew on; and Liu Wei reportedly wanted to unleash a dog or two among his sculptures and let them gnaw and gnarl and lick to their heart's canine content. 
Continue reading "LIU WEI AT CHINA ART AND ARCHIVES WAREHOUSE, BEIJING" »
Stacey Duff previews this month's upcoming exhibitions in Beijing, including Tang Maohong's '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. 
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