798

This past weekend, I went to the 798 Galleries in Beijing, which is a huge hub for sales of contemporary art. In the past 10 years, Chinese contemporary art has experienced nothing short of a sonic boom in international interest. Prices have skyrocketed, and thousands of Chinese artists are vying for attention. As a result, in a place where there were once 10 galleries, now there are hundreds. I was somewhat overwhelmed by just how many things there were to see, but I did notice that there was a lot of tongue and cheek, and mostly in reference to communist iconography.

For instance: An inverted iron fist, corroded and decrepit, that marks the entrance to an ultra trendy Lower East Side like gallery.

Below, some charming, uniform wearing, gun toting babes en pointe. Behind the sculpture, you can just make out a pastelly, waterlily type painting. Appropriate, in the sense that the communist babes owe a clear tribute to. . .

. . . Degas's dancer series. Both sculptures acknowledge that beauty often contains something that is essentially repugnant. Obviously, Degas is the clear winner here in terms of form and psychological depth, but I think the reference is cool.

There were also a number of shiny porcelain Maos, cast from moulds. Anyone who has any knowledge of Warhol might think these are total rip offs, but I wouldn't mind owning one or ten because I think they are funny. I think they are also interesting in their contemplation of what it means to be a nation with history.

Tourists to China might not know anything about who heads the government, but they can buy one of these red Maos, and they can also visit the number one tourist destination in China, the terracotta warriors of Xian (view last August's post for more on that). These warriors were also cast from moulds (you can buy nearly identical ones today as well). To the average visitor, the terracotta warriors carry with them all the allure of an imagined, Ancient, historical China. They are part of a mysterious past that we can access today--but how much of it is truly accessible? And what part of history do they represent? It seems to me that many Chinese artists are deeply engaged in historicizing the present.

I really don't have much familiarity with the Chinese contemporary art scene, but my favorite Chinese artist thus far is Xu Bing (whose work is very difficult to come by nowadays), who created the fabulous installation piece below, "Book from the Sky." In this piece, Xu invents thousands of individualized, nonsensical characters and prints them on books and sheaves of paper. In his hanging of the paper, Xu imparts a very literal symbolism to his work, in that ancient Chinese historical texts have always maintained that their writing descended from the heavens in the form of light rays, and then manifested itself in tracks of bird's feet, cracks on tortoise shells, patterns in the sand, etc. The burden of history once again!

-->These are imagined Chinese characters! -->