China's contemporary art goes
global By Daniel Allen
BEIJING - China's current
artistic renaissance has been likened to the emergence
of Western Modernism more than 100 years ago. While this
may be a questionable comparison, there is no
doubt that something dynamic and vibrant is
happening in the world of Chinese art.
The
constraints set out for post-Cultural Revolution
social realism have gradually fallen away,
allowing increasing numbers of Chinese artists to
produce work that is pushing the boundaries of
content and format like never
before.
Only a decade ago there were no
contemporary art spaces of note in China.
Foreigners could not legally run galleries or,
technically speaking, trade in art. Unofficial
exhibitions were organized secretively, with no
publicity, and usually lasted a few hours until
being forcibly closed. Today, Chinese venues for
contemporary art are multiplying exponentially,
both in the real world and, increasingly, online.
Official attitudes toward art have
relaxed dramatically, with the government often
lending moral and financial support to exhibitions.
This new laissez-faire environment has been a major
driver in the internationalization of Chinese
contemporary art. In the last few years, Chinese
artists have begun to exhibit regularly in
overseas shows, leaving behind the underground
scene that significantly impeded their creative
development, and establishing China as the new
darling of the global art community.
As
China's economy continues to boom, and interest in
the country's nascent art scene builds momentum,
so a growing number of international profit and
non-profit organizations are looking for ways to
establish a presence in the Chinese art market.
Overseas collectors are eyeing China hungrily, and
increasing numbers of knowledgeable Chinese art
lovers are looking to augment their collections
with pieces from beyond the mainland.
Helping to facilitate the flow of
international and Chinese art will be the new
Shanghai Art Fair (SAF), also called
"ShContemporary 2007". The SAF is being organized
by the Geneva gallerist and collector, Pierre
Huber, together with Lorenzo Rudolf, former
director of Art Basel, and Bolognafiere, an
Italian fair organizer which already has offices
in Shanghai. It will involve about 120
international galleries from around the world.
Assisting with organization of
ShContemporary 2007 is Zhou Tie Hai, one of
China's leading contemporary artists. Zhou
graduated from the Fine Arts College of Shanghai
University, and won the Contemporary Chinese Art
Award in 1998. He explains, "Contemporary art and
its market in Asia have developed very fast
recently. However, Asia still doesn't have a
quality international art fair. One unique aspect
of the SAF is that we are focusing on
works
instead of galleries. Pierre Huber has traveled
widely in Asia to discover artists - we will bring
them all to the fair so that the Asian art scene
is truly represented."
Zhou Tie
Hai is no stranger to the international art
scene. His work has featured in a range
of overseas exhibitions, and one of his pieces will
be appearing at the famous Basel Art Fair in June.
Commenting on the increasing domestic and foreign
exposure that China's artists are now receiving,
Zhou says, "We are seeing growing numbers of
galleries and private museums in China.
"As Chinese contemporary art has emerged
from its underground status, good platforms for
presentation are slowly being established, and
some artists are showcasing their work abroad.
However, what we still lack is publicity and
funding. I mean the funding for those platforms to
organize more shows and exhibitions to present
Chinese art."
China's international art
scene will receive a further boost when the new
Shanghai Pompidou Center opens later this year.
Carried out under the auspices of the legendary
Paris art institution, the project will involve
renovating a 98-year-old villa and the
construction of an entirely new building, which
will be finished by 2009. The whole complex, which
will eventually cover 10,000 square meters, will
feature French and Chinese artwork from the start
of the 20th century to date.
As well as
attracting international investment, China is also
leveraging its burgeoning artistic reputation
overseas, with a recent proliferation of
contemporary Chinese art exhibitions. In addition
to the Basel Art Fair, Zhou Tie Hai's pictures are
also currently featuring in a Chinese exhibition
at the Tate Gallery in Liverpool, entitled "The
Real Thing". The majority of pieces at The Real
Thing are either being shown for the first time
outside of China, or were specially commissioned
for the exhibition.
Yan Lei, like Zhou Tie
Hai, is another Chinese contemporary artist who
cut his teeth during Chinese art's underground
period. Together with Ai Weiwei, the "grandfather"
of Chinese art and all things creative, Yan Lei
will be traveling to the five-yearly Kassel
Documenta in Germany this June to show some of his
paintings. Started in 1955, the Kassel Documenta
is one of the world's most important contemporary
art exhibitions. Ai Weiwei himself was ranked 71st
in ArtReview magazine's annual list of the 100
most powerful people in the contemporary art world
last year.
Although he sees the
internationalization of Chinese art as a good
thing, Yan comments, "The showing of Chinese art
abroad has been increasingly affected by the art
market. Young Chinese artists need to be careful
to preserve their identity and not to be
influenced too much by this market. These artists
now have many opportunities to exhibit, but it
seems that the quality and originality of their
works is sometimes not really taken into account."
The de facto legalization of foreign
investment in China's art business has led to the
blooming of an active commercial gallery scene,
with an obvious focus on Beijing and Shanghai.
There are now an estimated 200 contemporary art
galleries in these two cities. This has given
Chinese artists more options for displaying their
work, and has also changed the dynamics for
overseas galleries looking to get involved.
Co-owned by Belgian businessman Frank
Uyterhagen and Ai Weiwei, China Art Archives &
Warehouse (CAAW) was founded in 1993, and focuses
on cutting edge artists, with a spectacular
hangar-like space in the Beijing suburbs. In 2003
the CAAW formed a partnership with the
Lucerne-based Galerie Urs Meile, and is now
dedicated to promoting high quality Chinese
contemporary art under Ai Weiwei's expert artistic
direction.
Another joint venture in
China's flourishing contemporary art world is the
Chinese Contemporary Gallery. Established in
London ten years ago, the Chinese Contemporary
collective currently has a gallery in Beijing's
well-known Factory 798 art district, and also
opened a new space in January this year in New
York's Chelsea district. Both galleries are
dedicated to displaying the work of Chinese
artists from the avant garde post-1989 period, and
have participated in leading art fairs such as
FIAC, Art Cologne, Scope London and Miami.
As in other countries, developments in
technology are affecting Chinese contemporary art
in a big way. London's renowned Saatchi Gallery
announced in May that it is launching a new,
non-profit website in Chinese to allow artists in
China the opportunity to present their work to a
global audience. "Your Gallery in Mandarin" will
be part of the overall Saatchi Gallery site, which
is the largest interactive art gallery site in the
world. In addition to free postings and
translations, the Chinese site will host an
interactive blog, forum and chatroom.
The
decision to create the Your Gallery in Mandarin
website was made after it became apparent that
Chinese students were already putting their
profiles on the general Saatchi Gallery site,
despite the fact that they spoke little or no
English. "We began noticing that Chinese artists
were posting their work and seemed really keen to
show their art and communicate with other students
and artists - the language barrier was obviously a
problem though," says Kieran McCann, head of
creative development for the site.
"Our
goal is to break down language and cultural
barriers," says Neeraj Rattu, who is leading the
site's technology team. Having compiled a
considerable amount of data, the team estimates
that 20 to 30 art schools operate in China; that
about 10,000 students will graduate from such
schools in 2007; and that some 14,000 artists in
China are represented by galleries. "That leaves
roughly 10,000 unrepresented artists," says
McCann.
Charles Saatchi, owner of the
Saatchi Gallery, is well known for spotting talent
and transforming his discoveries into celebrities,
as he did with the likes of Damien Hirst and
Rachel Whiteread. These days he is fixated with
Chinese artists. "There are so many artists in
China who want their work to be seen," he said in
a recent interview at his London home. "These
students, like all the others, also want to know
what's going on around the world."
Your
Gallery in Mandarin is designed to be as
user-friendly as possible, so that posting work
will be "as easy as opening an e-mail account". So
far 23 Chinese students have posted work on the
site. Kang Can, a serious-looking young man in
sunglasses, writes that he was born in 1982 in
Chongqing, graduated from the Sichuan Fine Art
Institute, and that he has already shown his work
at Art Basel Miami. Among the 15 images he has
posted are a series of paintings in which a
sleeping infant is variously
depicted in a
chewing-gum wrapper, on top of a gun, on the rim
of a Kentucky Fried Chicken plastic cup and in
other poses.
Another newly created website
targeting Chinese artists and their work is the
Shanghai-based Neocha.com, started by two Chinese
and two Americans. Jon Lombardo, one of the site's
co-founders, comments, "Neocha was born out of the
need to connect the growing communities of Chinese
"creatives" - artists, musicians, designers, etc -
who lack a centralized online platform. Neocha is
trying to solve this need by offering an online
community, complete with tools that empower
creatives to meet, create and hopefully make
money."
Lombardo continues: "The Chinese
art scene is growing rapidly, but it is still
relatively small. I think that now is a great time
to be a well-known Chinese artist given the
unprecedented global interest in Chinese art, but
it is not as easy for young, undiscovered artists
to book venues and sell works. They clearly stand
to benefit the most from using the Web to promote
their work. Artists have been slower to migrate
online than musicians because they tend to think
that their work loses some of its appeal over the
Web. That said, I think that we will increasingly
see younger artists emerge by leveraging the Web
as a virtual gallery."
Daniel
Allen is a freelance writer and photographer
from London who has lived in China for the past
three years.
(Copyright 2007 Asia
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works
instead of galleries. Pierre Huber has traveled
widely in Asia to discover artists - we will bring
them all to the fair so that the Asian art scene
is truly represented." 
depicted in a
chewing-gum wrapper, on top of a gun, on the rim
of a Kentucky Fried Chicken plastic cup and in
other poses. 
