Out of the sun: alternate art spaces in Beijing

tête-à-tête
Issue Eight: Sept 2010
Persistently temporal: August Open Studio
Kate Abon
Out of the sun: alternate art spaces in Beijing
Erin Coates
A Day in Pompeii
Karys McEwen
Foodchain’s In Transit Screen Spaces
Katie Lenanton
Please put your 3D glasses on now
Carol Wells in conversation with Penny Coss
Guest Editor: Tom Freeman
Design & Layout: Jessica Darlow
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Front Image: Yan Bing (detail), from ‘Yes and No / One is Like the Other’
curated by Anna Hofbauer, photo by Justin Spiers
Centre Image: Exhibition shot, from ‘Yes and No / One is Like the Other’,
photo by Justin Spiers
Centre Image: Zhang Xin Jun (detail), from ‘Yes and No / One is Like the
Other’ curated by Anna Hofbauer, photo by Justin Spiers
Back Image: Steven Morgana, Nonlinear Loop 2010, courtesy of Steven
Morgana, www.stevenmorgana.com /[email protected]
tête-à-tête is a bimonthly visual arts newsletter covering activities,
exhibitions, artists and ideas within or related to Perth, West Australia. If it
were a person they’d be quiet and modest but, once you got to know them,
they’d portray a stoic confidence in their intentions and direction in life.
tête-à-tête has a purpose, if only to attempt to approach a fearsome void
long apparent in the west coast visual arts community. It certainly can’t be
all that’s needed to provide critical and theoretical responses and thought
to what goes on for WA artists but it does at least offer an avenue for arts
writers to get their ideas to a wider audience. It also offers, if only for a few
each month, the chance for artists to share their processes and products
outside of their usual scene and feel just for a moment that what they do has
some purpose and place in the now and what will be.
Tom Freeman
Starting with the initial show in June, every month Regl invites an artistcurator to “visually discuss” an idea of his or her choosing through a group
show.
Out of the sun:
alternate art spaces in Beijing
I recently returned from a 6-month arts residency in Beijing, and during
my time there I made numerous visits to the renowned 798 Dashanzi Art
District. On repeated visits, I observed that it is impossible to go more than
20 meters without seeing a bride and groom. They are literally everywhere;
posed against the large outdoor sculptures, framed by the doorways of
galleries, or poking out from behind renovated industrial relics for the
‘peak-a-boo’ wedding shot. I have encountered the elaborate modern ritual
of Chinese wedding photography before and considering the growing fame
and visual appeal of 798, which occupies the Bauhaus architecture of a
redeveloped post-war industrial district, it is an obvious location for the
Beijing bridal shoot.
Much has been written in recent years about China’s booming contemporary
art market and the art-epicentre that is 798. So the throngs of bridal
parties that frequent 798 certainly did signal to me the advanced stage
of gentrification that this officially designated ‘art zone’ has reached – in
addition to the quantity of luxury cars parked in front of galleries, the
opportunistic bridal shops and the amount of corporate events and fashion
shows held here. 798 is the Disneyland of the art world. Amongst the dozens
(yes, it is huge) of commercial galleries that supply tourists with mini-Mao
sculptures and Communist chic paintings, there is still a number of galleries
showing quality work – Pace Beijing, Galleria Continua, Beijing Commune,
Gallerie Faurschou and the excellent Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art,
are the leading examples. Yet there is a strong sentiment amongst artists
in Beijing that with the commercial annexation of 798, the focus of this
district has irreversibly shifted from one of artist production to cultural
consumption. Driven out by the crowds and prohibitive rent increases,
artists have sought new locations for studio spaces and are forming studioconglomerates in cheaper, hutong neighbourhoods out past the 4th ring
road. There is one such space that emerged while I was living in Beijing that
I would like to discuss as an interesting alternative to the art spectacle offered
at 798.
Blackbridge Offspace was launched as an artist project space in June this
year with the exhibition Yes and No / One is Like the Other, featuring the work
of nine Chinese and European artists and drawing on linkages between their
work. Essentially, the space is the studio of Austrian artist Bianca Regl and is
located amongst a cluster of other studios inhabited by mostly Chinese artists
in the labyrinthine neighbourhood of Heiqiao. Regl initiated Blackbridge
Offspace as site for generating more dialogue amongst her creative peers,
away from the commercially focused centres of art in Beijing and the
market-driven rubric that invariably structures such sites.
Yes and No / One is Like the Other was curated by Anna Hofbauer and featured
the work of Liu Wentao, Ma Jia, Wang Guangle, Martin Wehmer, Eddie
Weki, Yan Bing, Yang Xin Guang, Zhang Xin Jun and Hofbauer’s own
work. Comprising paintings, sculptural and conceptual work the exhibition
drew on intersections between these artists’ practices in terms of their use
of abstract forms. Hofbauer’s preoccupation with linguistics shaped her
approach here, and rather than relying on culturally embedded readings of
the work she has looked at the individual visual elements – or the singular
units within the syntax – of the work, and a kind of non-hierarchical pattern
that forms between them. In Hofbauer’s words “it’s about the act of cutting
down the wholeness of an artwork… each visual element that builds up the
work is by itself meaningless and equal to the others”.
Strong inclusions in the show were a series of sculptural works by Zhang
Xin Jun’s in which the artist bound fine thread around and through the
holes in old wooden furnishing, in a delicate and intensely coloured skein,
and a mesmerising painting by Liu Wentao that softly reiterated the shape
the canvas in a series of receding, muted green-grey rectangles. Seen in
proximity with one another, the works in Yes and No / One is Like the Other
emphasized the process of repetition used to produce each artwork, and
the tendency toward the works referencing their own making in some way.
This was even true of Eddie Weki’s text-based piece, which consisted of an
email to Hofbauer explaining the artist’s ongoing efforts to understand the
semantic absurdity of the words ‘sunrise’ and ‘sunset’ and their failure to
recognise that the sun never moves.
A key aspect of the show was Hofbauer’s decision to produce a tri-lingual
interview with the artists, rather than an interpretive text. Each artist was
asked the same five questions – about their working practices and ideas on
certain concepts – and their responses were then translated into Mandarin,
English and German and printed onto large photocopied pages. What
interested me about this was not just the how the interviews articulated
differing perspectives on art making and the distinct cultural histories of
abstraction, but that the questions revealed much about Hofbauer’s own
thinking in curating this show. In one of her questions she asks about the
artists’ relationship to narrative and decoration in their work, and here it
seems clear she is drawing on the modernist rejection of decorative forms
(Adolf Loos’ Ornament and Crime comes instantly to mind), and at the same
time trying to understand how notions of ‘decoration’ are conceived of and
navigated in contemporary Chinese art.
Hofbaurer’s willingness to allow different interpretations of her questions
shows a genuine intent to probe contemporary practice in Beijing, rather
than just present it, and this sets her exhibition apart from much of what I
saw at 798. There is also the obvious obscurity of Blackbridge Offspace’s
location (don’t expect it to take any less than three taxi drivers to figure out
how to get there) and the fact that most of the people at the opening events
are artists – no brides or grooms here.
Blackbridge Offspace is a refreshing change from the hyper-art experience
of 798, and while the space is unfunded and relies on the community of
artists that work there for its continuation, there is a sense energy and serious
engagement in creative praxis that made this space in the shadows one of the
exhibition highlights of my trip.
The current show at Blackbridge Offspace is curated by Wang Sishun and
shows the work of only two artists, Liu Xiaohui and Wen Ling. Further
information can be found at www.blackspaceoff.com www.blackbridgeoff.com
Erin Coates
[email protected]