Vernissage TV: ArtBasel Hong Kong 2016
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
China, Special reports | Guggenheim ramps up its Chinese art collecting with new commissions
China, Special reports
Guggenheim ramps up its Chinese art collecting with new commissions
Seven artists and collectives on tight deadline for New York show in November
| 22 March 2016
The Guggenheim’s commissions are supported by the foundation created by Hong Kong-born Robert H. N. Ho, here with the artist Wang Jianwei, who created new works for the New York museum in 2014 to help launch its Asian art initiative
New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is building up its collection of Chinese contemporary art. Richard Armstrong, the director of the Guggenheim, is due to announce in Hong Kong this week that the institution will commission new works by seven artists and collectives from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan as the latest part of the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative. The artists have less than a year to create the new works, which will become part of the museum’s collection and are due to go on show in New York from 4 November.
The artists chosen by the Guggenheim do not shy away from politics or history. Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s controversial installation Old Persons Home (2007), which was shown at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2009, presented 13 life-sized sculptures of aging world leaders in electric wheelchairs. Kan Xuan’s video installation Millet Mounds (2012) surveyed more than 100 imperial tombs across mainland China. The other artists sel ected are Chia-En Jao, Sun Xun, Tsang Kin-Wah, the Yangjiang Group and Zhou Tao. The commissions are expected to span a variety of media, from installation to video.
"These artists are at an interesting moment in their careers—not quite established, but not very emerging or very young,” says the curator Xiaoyu Weng, who is organising the exhibition with Hou Hanru. Both are in Hong Kong this week, along with Alexandra Munroe, the museum’s senior curator of Asian art, who is one of the speakers in Art Central’s talks programme.
We understand that the Guggenheim is also in the early stages of planning a major exhibition of Chinese experimental art from the 1980s and 1990s. The show, which is being organised by Munroe, is expected to be the largest exhibition of art from the period ever presented in a US museum. A spokeswoman for the Guggenheim said that details were not yet available.
Wang Jianwei’s Time Temple was the first work made possible by the foundation created by the Hong Kong-born philanthropist Robert H. N. Ho. The Guggenheim commissioned the piece and presented it in New York fr om October 2014 to February 2015. The Beijing-based artist also created a performance piece entitled Spiral Ramp Library, which took place in the museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright-designed rotunda.
The artists chosen by the Guggenheim do not shy away from politics or history. Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s controversial installation Old Persons Home (2007), which was shown at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2009, presented 13 life-sized sculptures of aging world leaders in electric wheelchairs. Kan Xuan’s video installation Millet Mounds (2012) surveyed more than 100 imperial tombs across mainland China. The other artists sel ected are Chia-En Jao, Sun Xun, Tsang Kin-Wah, the Yangjiang Group and Zhou Tao. The commissions are expected to span a variety of media, from installation to video.
"These artists are at an interesting moment in their careers—not quite established, but not very emerging or very young,” says the curator Xiaoyu Weng, who is organising the exhibition with Hou Hanru. Both are in Hong Kong this week, along with Alexandra Munroe, the museum’s senior curator of Asian art, who is one of the speakers in Art Central’s talks programme.
We understand that the Guggenheim is also in the early stages of planning a major exhibition of Chinese experimental art from the 1980s and 1990s. The show, which is being organised by Munroe, is expected to be the largest exhibition of art from the period ever presented in a US museum. A spokeswoman for the Guggenheim said that details were not yet available.
Wang Jianwei’s Time Temple was the first work made possible by the foundation created by the Hong Kong-born philanthropist Robert H. N. Ho. The Guggenheim commissioned the piece and presented it in New York fr om October 2014 to February 2015. The Beijing-based artist also created a performance piece entitled Spiral Ramp Library, which took place in the museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright-designed rotunda.
Why China's tradition of copying is becoming a creative force
Benin, Art Basel in Hong Kong 2016
“Art insiders and outsiders all oppose fake or pirated art. People universally believe that art should be authentic,” Xiang says. “Most Chinese believe that art should be something that will be passed on for ages, and should not be taken as casually as transient commercial goods like fashion and technological products.” She divides shanzhai into universally loathed cheap knock-offs, painstaking reproductions (such as the imitation European towns dotting Chinese suburbs) and innovative, affectionate reinterpretations. The creative potential of the third category “is why I advocate a more neutral view of shanzhai”, Xiang says.
Luisa Mengoni, who is leading the creation of the V&A Gallery in the planned Shekou Design Museum in Shenzhen, says: “The term shanzhai has traditionally been used in quite a derogatory way to refer to counterfeit goods and cheap imitations of established brands.” The term was first adopted in Hong Kong a few decades ago to refer to cheap household wares or reproductions, but re-emerged in Shenzhen in 2000, she says. Although the association with fakes endures, it “cannot be considered the only meaning of the word. ‘Shanzhai’ also refers to a wider system of production in which small and often unknown companies have been able to develop, produce and distribute customised products responding to specific market requirements that are not covered by leading brands,” Mengoni says. Shanzhai is credited with making smartphones accessible to the Chinese and global poor, for example.
Mengoni says that initiatives such as David Li’s Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab suggest a “‘new shanzhai’, an open ecosystem of manufacturing in which innovation has already taken place in unexpected forms and that is now becoming an attractor for individuals, companies, makers and start-ups that are developing new ideas and projects”.
Qi Yongfeng, a professor of cultural structures at China Communications University in Beijing, rejects the idea that China’s copycat culture is unique. “Only China has the term, but lots of countries had the same conditions of copying when developing,” Qi says. “China is special because it is so big, so it’s harder to control. But it’s not traditional to Chinese culture; it’s a phenomenon.”
Qi adds that Chinese people’s understanding of the law is unclear, which results in much of the copying—and Chinese law can be equally befuddling for international artists showing in China.
Why China's tradition of copying is becoming a creative force
There's more to so-called "shanzhai" than slavish imitation
| 23 March 2016
Painters compete in a facsimile match in Dafen Village, Shenzhen City, in south China's Guangdong province. Photo: AP Photo/Xinhua, Feng Ming
China’s copycat culture is equal parts famous and infamous. Blatant imitation was an integral part of the international trade that launched China’s emergence on the world stage three decades ago, and, despite improvements, it remains a problem for the Chinese government, international and local companies—and artists. Yet out of south China’s rapid development and massive-scale manufacturing, a strange space between copying, appropriation, hacking and original creation has emerged, known as shanzhai.
Although it is most visible in design and technology, shanzhai has seeped into art, music and other areas of cultural production in China. Explicit copying persists, fr om the Van Goghs and Yue Minjuns churned out by painters in Dafen and other imitation painting centres to unauthorised versions of Random International’s Rain Room, including a fake that opened in Chengdu earlier this month.
Shanzhai starts with slight tweaks, such as those seen in Karamay’s Anish Kapoor Cloud Gate derivative, which the local government defended as being different thanks to the addition of lasers and smaller rocks; Bund Stars Garden, which offered a musical light-show rendition of Rain Room in a Shanghai basement; and a re-creation of Yayoi Kusama’s Sticker Room with pastel Post-It notes. Elsewh ere on the spectrum, Chinese contemporary artists, like their peers across the world, often appropriate images and other works of art.
Directly translated, shanzhai means “a remote mountain village”, implying “a group of people living in the mountain and taking it as theirs without governmental rules, who are really independent and fight for themselves”, says Sophia Lin, the founder of Make+, a Shanghai-based organisation that focuses on the intersection between hacking and art. “Shanzhai used to be a bad word… but I feel as though it is quite different now. People ‘shanzhai’ to appropriate trends or new technology, but they add new elements to the original or deconstruct it with new methods, making it more accessible to the public,” she says. “In hacker culture, shanzhai is the stepping stone to an original product: one learns from the old, takes it apart and makes a new one. But really, the same goes for everything: we study from the master, make it our own and produce a work of our own.”
“In China, imitating a master was considered part of the learning process, but also an expression of respect; only later could one develop a personal style,” says Xiang Liping, the head of exhibitions at Shanghai’s Power Station of Art, who organised Copyleft, a show about appropriation and shanzhai in Chinese art, last year.
Although it is most visible in design and technology, shanzhai has seeped into art, music and other areas of cultural production in China. Explicit copying persists, fr om the Van Goghs and Yue Minjuns churned out by painters in Dafen and other imitation painting centres to unauthorised versions of Random International’s Rain Room, including a fake that opened in Chengdu earlier this month.
Shanzhai starts with slight tweaks, such as those seen in Karamay’s Anish Kapoor Cloud Gate derivative, which the local government defended as being different thanks to the addition of lasers and smaller rocks; Bund Stars Garden, which offered a musical light-show rendition of Rain Room in a Shanghai basement; and a re-creation of Yayoi Kusama’s Sticker Room with pastel Post-It notes. Elsewh ere on the spectrum, Chinese contemporary artists, like their peers across the world, often appropriate images and other works of art.
Directly translated, shanzhai means “a remote mountain village”, implying “a group of people living in the mountain and taking it as theirs without governmental rules, who are really independent and fight for themselves”, says Sophia Lin, the founder of Make+, a Shanghai-based organisation that focuses on the intersection between hacking and art. “Shanzhai used to be a bad word… but I feel as though it is quite different now. People ‘shanzhai’ to appropriate trends or new technology, but they add new elements to the original or deconstruct it with new methods, making it more accessible to the public,” she says. “In hacker culture, shanzhai is the stepping stone to an original product: one learns from the old, takes it apart and makes a new one. But really, the same goes for everything: we study from the master, make it our own and produce a work of our own.”
“In China, imitating a master was considered part of the learning process, but also an expression of respect; only later could one develop a personal style,” says Xiang Liping, the head of exhibitions at Shanghai’s Power Station of Art, who organised Copyleft, a show about appropriation and shanzhai in Chinese art, last year.
Li Qing; Finding Differences‧Clothing Store (There are 8 differences in the two paintings) ; 2010; Oil on canvas; A diptych; each panel 200 ×150 cm; Courtesy of LEO XU PROJECTS; Shanghai; Copyright the artist
“Art insiders and outsiders all oppose fake or pirated art. People universally believe that art should be authentic,” Xiang says. “Most Chinese believe that art should be something that will be passed on for ages, and should not be taken as casually as transient commercial goods like fashion and technological products.” She divides shanzhai into universally loathed cheap knock-offs, painstaking reproductions (such as the imitation European towns dotting Chinese suburbs) and innovative, affectionate reinterpretations. The creative potential of the third category “is why I advocate a more neutral view of shanzhai”, Xiang says.
Luisa Mengoni, who is leading the creation of the V&A Gallery in the planned Shekou Design Museum in Shenzhen, says: “The term shanzhai has traditionally been used in quite a derogatory way to refer to counterfeit goods and cheap imitations of established brands.” The term was first adopted in Hong Kong a few decades ago to refer to cheap household wares or reproductions, but re-emerged in Shenzhen in 2000, she says. Although the association with fakes endures, it “cannot be considered the only meaning of the word. ‘Shanzhai’ also refers to a wider system of production in which small and often unknown companies have been able to develop, produce and distribute customised products responding to specific market requirements that are not covered by leading brands,” Mengoni says. Shanzhai is credited with making smartphones accessible to the Chinese and global poor, for example.
Mengoni says that initiatives such as David Li’s Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab suggest a “‘new shanzhai’, an open ecosystem of manufacturing in which innovation has already taken place in unexpected forms and that is now becoming an attractor for individuals, companies, makers and start-ups that are developing new ideas and projects”.
Qi Yongfeng, a professor of cultural structures at China Communications University in Beijing, rejects the idea that China’s copycat culture is unique. “Only China has the term, but lots of countries had the same conditions of copying when developing,” Qi says. “China is special because it is so big, so it’s harder to control. But it’s not traditional to Chinese culture; it’s a phenomenon.”
Qi adds that Chinese people’s understanding of the law is unclear, which results in much of the copying—and Chinese law can be equally befuddling for international artists showing in China.
When Wagstaff met Mapplethorpe
When Wagstaff met Mapplethorpe
A new book describes the late collector's nine-year spending spree on images by famous and obscure photographers
| 22 March 2016
Sam Wagstaff, photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Once the US curator and collector Sam Wagstaff had decided that photography was an undervalued art form, his appetite became voracious—an enthusiasm shared and supported by his protégé and boyfriend, the artist Robert Mapplethorpe.
In a new book, The Thrill of the Chase, Paul Martineau, the associate curator in the department of photography at Los Angeles’s J. Paul Getty Museum, describes Wagstaff’s nine-year spending spree on images by famous and obscure photographers. He even sold a late work by Jackson Pollock to buy more photographs.
A Getty show of the same name features key images from the hundreds that the institution bought from the collector for $4.5m in 1984; the Getty was dismayed to find that none was by Mapplethorpe. Due to open on 15 March (until 31 July), the show complements the surveys of Mapplethorpe’s work at the Getty and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
In a new book, The Thrill of the Chase, Paul Martineau, the associate curator in the department of photography at Los Angeles’s J. Paul Getty Museum, describes Wagstaff’s nine-year spending spree on images by famous and obscure photographers. He even sold a late work by Jackson Pollock to buy more photographs.
A Getty show of the same name features key images from the hundreds that the institution bought from the collector for $4.5m in 1984; the Getty was dismayed to find that none was by Mapplethorpe. Due to open on 15 March (until 31 July), the show complements the surveys of Mapplethorpe’s work at the Getty and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Six key works from the M+ founding collection
Six key works from the M+ founding collection
Pi Li, the museum's Sigg senior curator, tells us the story behind some of the pieces now on show in Hong Kong
| 23 March 2016
Liu Wei’s It Looks Like a Landscape (2004). Courtesy of the artist and West Kowloon Cultural District Authority
The exhibition M+ Sigg Collection: Four Decades of Chinese Contemporary Art, held at Artis Tree (until 5 April), provides visitors with an introduction to the founding collection of Hong Kong’s museum of visual culture. Pi Li, the Sigg senior curator of M+, who has organised the exhibition, chooses six key works fr om the 80 now on show. These are drawn fr om the 1,463 works that Uli Sigg donated and another 47 that he sold in 2012, after more than 20 years of collecting and researching China’s contemporary art.
Liu Wei, It Looks Like a Landscape (2004)
After the 2004 Shanghai Biennale panel rejected several of his proposals, Liu Wei submitted this photograph featuring buttocks and body hair, which—to his surprise—was accepted. He went outside his usual preferred media of installation, painting and video to create this seemingly classical landscape, which mocks arbitrary institutional standards. Its monumental size is in contrast to the traditional handscroll, wh ere viewing is an intimate and personal act. His artistic practice is primarily concerned with the changing cityscape and contemporary issues stemming from globalisation.
Zhang Xiaogang Bloodline Series— Big Family No. 17-1998 (1998)
In 1993, Zhang Xiaogang began the Bloodline series, which comprises some of the most recognisable images in Chinese contemporary art. His discovery of family photographs—thought to have been lost because many albums were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution—inspired these paintings. In the series, he makes little distinction between male and female facial features, suggesting an indifference to individuality. Zhang established a clear identity as an artist by shedding Western aesthetics to focus on personal narrative and collective memory.
Zhang Peili X? Series: No. 4 (1987)
This monochrome painting of medical latex gloves is from Zhang Peili’s X? series, for which he aimed to produce dozens of nearly identical paintings by reducing technical and compositional changes to a minimum, to make the works seem like prints. In the end, he created around ten, but he also wrote a manual with rules for reproducing the series. The mechanical approach and clinical subject challenge Modernist ideas of art as self-expression. In 1986, Zhang and Geng Jianyi co-founded the artist group Pond Society, in Hangzhou. The collective’s goal was to deliver art from an academic context into public space through happenings, installations and collaborative works.
Zheng Guogu Me and My Teacher (1993)
In this photograph, Zheng Guogu and a dishevelled, homeless young man are shown laughing while squatting on the street. It is part of a project in which the artist befriended the mentally unstable man in his hometown, Yangjiang. After following him for a period of time, the artist came to regard the marginalised man as a teacher. Geng Jianyi The Second Situation 1987 In these portraits, which resemble a series of photographic images taken in slow motion, Geng Jianyi analyses human expression by breaking down the act of laughing into four stages. His technical approach reflects a rational re-examination of the passions of the 85 New Wave. Geng co-founded the Pond Society in 1986, and co-organised the 85 New Space exhibition with Zhang Peili.
Geng Jianyi
The Second Situation 1987
In these portraits, which resemble a series of photographic images taken in slow motion, Geng Jianyi analyses human expression by breaking down the act of laughing into four stages. His technical approach reflects a rational re-examination of the passions of the 85 New Wave. Geng co-founded the Pond Society in 1986, and co-organised the 85 New Space exhibition with Zhang Peili.
Zhang Wei Fusuijing Building (1975)
This small landscape documents the scene outside the window of Zhang Wei’s apartment in central Beijing, wh ere the pioneering No Name Group’s first exhibition took place in 1979. The perspective suggests that the artist was looking from a dark interior on to an open street outside, alluding to the underground status of the collective during that period. Zhang’s early works from the 1970s reflect the lack of artistic freedom during the Cultural Revolution, when art was mainly made for propaganda and political purposes.
Liu Wei, It Looks Like a Landscape (2004)
After the 2004 Shanghai Biennale panel rejected several of his proposals, Liu Wei submitted this photograph featuring buttocks and body hair, which—to his surprise—was accepted. He went outside his usual preferred media of installation, painting and video to create this seemingly classical landscape, which mocks arbitrary institutional standards. Its monumental size is in contrast to the traditional handscroll, wh ere viewing is an intimate and personal act. His artistic practice is primarily concerned with the changing cityscape and contemporary issues stemming from globalisation.
Zhang Xiaogang; Bloodline Series-Big Family No.17-1998; 1998
Zhang Xiaogang Bloodline Series— Big Family No. 17-1998 (1998)
In 1993, Zhang Xiaogang began the Bloodline series, which comprises some of the most recognisable images in Chinese contemporary art. His discovery of family photographs—thought to have been lost because many albums were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution—inspired these paintings. In the series, he makes little distinction between male and female facial features, suggesting an indifference to individuality. Zhang established a clear identity as an artist by shedding Western aesthetics to focus on personal narrative and collective memory.
Zhang Peili; X? Series No.4; 1987; oil on canvas; 180 x 198cm; M+ Sigg Collection; Hong Kong; Courtesy of the artist and West Kowloon Cultural District Authority
Zhang Peili X? Series: No. 4 (1987)
This monochrome painting of medical latex gloves is from Zhang Peili’s X? series, for which he aimed to produce dozens of nearly identical paintings by reducing technical and compositional changes to a minimum, to make the works seem like prints. In the end, he created around ten, but he also wrote a manual with rules for reproducing the series. The mechanical approach and clinical subject challenge Modernist ideas of art as self-expression. In 1986, Zhang and Geng Jianyi co-founded the artist group Pond Society, in Hangzhou. The collective’s goal was to deliver art from an academic context into public space through happenings, installations and collaborative works.
Zheng Guogu; Me and My Teacher; 1993
Zheng Guogu Me and My Teacher (1993)
In this photograph, Zheng Guogu and a dishevelled, homeless young man are shown laughing while squatting on the street. It is part of a project in which the artist befriended the mentally unstable man in his hometown, Yangjiang. After following him for a period of time, the artist came to regard the marginalised man as a teacher. Geng Jianyi The Second Situation 1987 In these portraits, which resemble a series of photographic images taken in slow motion, Geng Jianyi analyses human expression by breaking down the act of laughing into four stages. His technical approach reflects a rational re-examination of the passions of the 85 New Wave. Geng co-founded the Pond Society in 1986, and co-organised the 85 New Space exhibition with Zhang Peili.
Geng Jianyi
The Second Situation 1987
In these portraits, which resemble a series of photographic images taken in slow motion, Geng Jianyi analyses human expression by breaking down the act of laughing into four stages. His technical approach reflects a rational re-examination of the passions of the 85 New Wave. Geng co-founded the Pond Society in 1986, and co-organised the 85 New Space exhibition with Zhang Peili.
Zhang Wei; Fusuijing Building; 1975; oil on paper; 26 x 19cm; M+ Sigg Collection; Hong Kong; Courtesy of the artist and West Kowloon Cultural District Authority
Zhang Wei Fusuijing Building (1975)
This small landscape documents the scene outside the window of Zhang Wei’s apartment in central Beijing, wh ere the pioneering No Name Group’s first exhibition took place in 1979. The perspective suggests that the artist was looking from a dark interior on to an open street outside, alluding to the underground status of the collective during that period. Zhang’s early works from the 1970s reflect the lack of artistic freedom during the Cultural Revolution, when art was mainly made for propaganda and political purposes.
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