Passage to History: 20 Years of La Biennale di Venezia and Chinese Contemporary Art
55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
Collateral Events
Passage to History: Twenty Years of La Biennale di Venezia and Chinese Contemporary Art
The year 2013 marks the twentieth anniversary of the participation of Chinese contemporary artists in the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia; it also marks twenty years of economic, cultural and artistic exchange between China and the West. Through this time period there is a recorded change in accepted attitudes toward Chinese culture and its international identity in the Western world, as well as toward China's contribution to contemporary art, particularly in painting. The theme of exhibition, passage to history, derives from this? Actually, we can clearly see that it was the combined efforts of Chinese contemporary artists and critics at home and abroad, as well as those Western curators with a passion for art that made this precious period of Chinese contemporary art history possible.
Nappa 89, Arsenale Nord
June 1st – November 24th
10 am – 6 pm, closed on Mondays (except June 3rd and Nov. 18th)
Organization: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chengdu
www.chengdumoca.org
Italian art criticand curator Achille Bonito Oliva, together with Chinese art historian LüPengare invited to co-curate “Passage to History: 20 Years of La Biennale di Venezia and Chinese Contemporary Art”.They will offertheir historical perspectives on this exhibition and its cultural subjects.Thanks to the former's participation, we may gain a clearer understanding ofand affinity for the Chinese contemporary art exhibitionat La Biennale di Venezia, its background andhistorical significance. As for the participation of the latter, he has fortwenty years been in the position of clarifying contemporary art in China for international audiences.
2013 marks thetwentieth anniversary of the participation of Chinese contemporary artists in La Biennale di Venezia;it also marks twenty years ofeconomic, cultural and artistic exchange between Chinaand the West. Since 1993, when Chinese contemporary artists participated in theexhibition “Passage to Orient” as individual artists to the launch of nationalpavilion, there has been sporadic participation from Chinese contemporaryartists in La Biennale di Venezia;as wereexamine this chapter in the Biennale's history, we can see how Chinesecontemporary artists, each in their own way, have been engaged in the processof negotiating an international identity through cultural exchange with theWest.At the same time, as we finely comb through the documents of thisexhibition, the rise of China's economy and the increase in its internationalinfluence can be seen, mapped out over 20 years. Through this time period thereis a recorded change in accepted attitudes toward Chinese culture and itsinternational identity in the Western world, as well as toward China's contribution to contemporary art, particularly inpainting.
Two majorcomponents make up this event: the first, a showing of easel painted works; thesecond will be an archive presentation. Each part of the exhibition serves toillustrate the other, and each is a confirmation of the other one. By means oftheir individual voices, artists have communicated elements of Chinese andWestern cultures in translation through the medium of painting. Meanwhile, bycombing history with the detailed historical documents in the second part ofthe exhibition, there is an exploration of and reflection upon Chinese andWestern cultural exchanges.
The Artists
Chen Xi
Born in Xinjiang in 1968, Chen Xi graduatedfrom the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts Middle School in 1987, and from StudioFour at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) Oil Painting Department in1991. She currently serves as an associate professor at CAFA.
As a painter, Chen is particularlysensitive towards urban life. Her urban scenes come from everyday urban life,with her subjects including street-side hair salons, restaurants, shops andpedestrians. She does not seek out poeticism; her work can even be said to belacking any emotional leanings whatsoever. The banality of everyday life, thenon-theatric nature of her compositions and the randomness of her brushstrokesgive her works an aimless, leisurely quality. These everyday scenes findexpression through her detached, natural state of mind.
The Televisionseries is an important part of Chen Xi’s oeuvre. The dated characteristics ofthese works become props used to construct the artist’s visual interpretationof the 1980s, a definition that cannot be expressed in words.
Cui Xiuwen
Cui Xiuwen was born in Harbin in 1970. She graduated from theNorthwestern Normal University Fine Arts Department in 1990, and graduated fromthe Eighth CAFA Oil Painting Graduate Class in 1996. She currently lives andworks in Beijing.
Her interest is primarily in people. Sheenjoys pondering the psychology of men, women, and the relationships betweenthem, and her art in turn revolves around this theme, employing differentmediums and different perspectives to explore this common yet perplexing topic.
From her early depictions of sex and lovefrom a feminine perspective to her later hidden camera recordings of high endnightclub girls in the bathroom, and on to the girls with their short bangs inthe Angel series, the artist hasalways grasped the different viewing mentalities of men and women while hidingher own eyes behind her artworks.
Fang Lijun
Fang Lijun was born in December 1963 in Handan, Hebei Province. He graduated fromCAFA in 1989, and currently lives in Beijing.
Fang Lijun is an important representativeof the new art wave that emerged in China after 1989. Together withother members of this wave, he created the unique discourse method known as“cynical realism”. The “bald-headed rascal” image that has often appeared inhis works since 1988 has become a classic icon of contemporary art, anexpression of the disenchantment and picaresque humor that were common facetsof Chinese life in the late eighties and early nineties.
Fang’s representative work Howl once graced the cover of the New York Times magazine, demonstratinghis status as a representative of Chinese contemporary art. He has beenfeatured at the Veniceand Sao Paolo biennial exhibitions multiple times, and has taken part in manyother international art exhibitions. His works have been collected by manynational art museums and important international collectors.
Li Qing
Li Qing was born in 1981 in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province. He obtainedhis MFA from the China Academy of Art Oil Painting Department in 2007.
Hecurrently lives in Hangzhou.
As a representative of a new generation ofChinese artists, Li Qing has been heavily influenced by the various Western arttrends since modernism. Li Qing uses an intellectual approach that examines thelogical threads of art history while using conceptual expressions andskepticism towards language to affirm the potential for the sustained visualand formal expansion of painting.
After his early painting series Spot the Difference, Li transplanted hispainting concepts into the fields of installation and video art. Truth andillusion, language and reality, play and meditation all emerge within thefusion of motion, while the similarities and differences between images areindispensable sides to the same coin. Li Qing has carefully selected andaccumulated concepts and ideas from Western art to create a unique discourse ofinstallation art that he uses to carry, examine and manipulate the topics ofindividual memory and the contemporary Chinese experience.
Liu Wei
Born in 1965 in Beijing,Liu Wei graduated from the CAFA Printmaking Department in 1989. He currentlylives and works in Beijing.
Liu Wei was an important early figure incynical realist painting, and took to the international stage quite early. In1997, he began to recede from the exhibition spotlight in order to furtherexplore painting. He is considered one of the most talented painters in Chinatoday.
In painting, Liu Wei maintains a healthyrespect for his own mental perceptions, using his own methods and techniques todecode the scenes in front of him. His works often leave unusual impressions ontheir viewers by discarding all standards and conventions. He has developed aunique style of brushwork that uses fragmented, abnormal brushstrokes to depictugly forms, mockingly distorting the human form. He uses painting to make jokesthat defy spoken expression, playing jokes on life, politics, his parents andeven himself, all the while concealing serious values and aesthetic judgments.His lighthearted paintings leave the impression that he takes a mischievousapproach to the entire painting process. His art uses a unique language todocument the senselessness, absurdity and degeneracy of our era.
Liu Xiaodong
Born in 1963 in Liaoning Province, Liu Xiaodonggraduated from the CAFA Oil Painting Department in 1988. He currently lives in Beijing.
At CAFA, Liu Xiaodong was trained in Sovietrealist modeling techniques. With his solid foundation in painting and his keenawareness of contemporary art, he has become a leading figure in Chinesepainting since the 1990s, and the representative of “neorealism.”
Liu Xiaodong is skilled at depicting thepeople and things in life through the narrative of a “cold observer,” using anindividual perspective to recreate China’s reality. He has distancedhimself from the collective narrative approach of official ideology to restorehis original freshness and uniqueness. His work often focuses on the lives ofpeople on the bottom rung of society, telling “unimportant little stories” tocreate an independent memory space for Chinese reality. Liu Xiaodong’s paintingis the embodiment of this particular trend that is taking place in the overallfield of art. His paintings on the Three Gorges mark the beginning of his large“grand narrative” paintings.
Mao Xuhui
Mao Xuhui was born in Chongqing in 1956, and graduated from theYunnan Academy of Art Fine Arts Department in 1982, having majored in oilpainting. He is currently a member of the Yunnan Council on Oil Painting andthe Deputy Director of the Yunnan Oil Painting Association.
Mao Xuhui is a representative ofneo-figurative painting. He advocates using new concepts to refresh figurativepainting, and opposes total abstraction. His works straddle the line betweenfigurative and abstract to form clean, clear and powerful imagery. He usesexpressive techniques to depict the material world in a figurative manner. Forhim, expressive techniques are the servants of great emotions and ideas, whilepaints, compositions, titles and objects are merely tools that can be used tomove people. The focus of his work is the exploration of new spiritual realmsin painting, as well as new applications for collage, readymades andexpressionist deconstruction.
Mao Xuhui is the most representative figureof the “Southwestern Artists Group”, which advocated deriving perceptions fromreality, drawing from them, and gradually abstracting them into a kind ofclean, clear and powerful imagery. Such imagery, though concrete, retains openspace for meaning and infinite allure. In this imagery, the viewer can perceivethe artist’s original creative intent while also infusing it with his ownmeanings derived from personal experience.
Sui Jianguo
Born in 1956 in Qingdao, Shandong Province, Sui Jianguograduated from the Shandong Academy of Art Fine Arts Department in 1984, andfrom the CAFA Sculpture Department in 1989. He is currently a professor and thedirector of the CAFA Sculpture Department.
Sui Jianguo discovers and employs thelinguistic experiences of different materials in sculpture as well as thecreative techniques that he has developed in his artistic practice. With thesetools, he can easily find the mediums that suit both his ideas and theproduction techniques of the artworks. Though these mediums may have alreadybeen used by others, he can find the best methods for each of these mediums.
Sui Jianguo’s art is the mostrepresentative of the visual transformations and contemporary formalexpressions of contemporary Chinese sculpture. Since 1997, Sui has consciouslyavoided the preservation or emphasis of the use of the sculptor’s body in theprocess of creating a sculpture, while also avoiding the emphasis of theartist’s visual distortion that arises in the formation process. The Legacy series (also known as Mao Jacket), is one of his morerepresentative works. This artwork employs more than just resources from theCultural Revolution to touch on resources that stretch back to the early daysof the Chinese revolution in search of a statement that can encompass his ownpolitical stance.
Wang Guangyi
Wang Guangyi was born in Harbin in 1957, and graduated from theZhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in 1984. He currently lives and works in Beijing.
Wang Guangyi is an important Chinesecontemporary artist and the most important experimenter in Chinese pop art.Wang Guangyi has been a key figure in Chinese contemporary art since theinception of the “Northern Artists Group” in the 1980s. From the rationalpainting of his Frozen North Pole period to his later classical analyses, from“clearing out the humanist passions” to the structuralism of “Great Criticism,”from the research of Chinese and Western political systems and the reshaping ofthe myths of local materialism, he has always worked to construct his ownunique visual political science.
GreatCriticism—Coca-Cola was the first work in WangGuangy’sGreat Criticism series, andwas featured on the cover of the Italian magazine Flash Art in 1992. In the image, Wang Guangyi juxtaposes an imagefrom the Cultural Revolution—that of workers, peasants and soldiers—with theCoca-Cola logo, that familiar marker of popular Western commercial society.While providing viewers with an image of China that was in keeping with thetrends of commercialization, he was mocking and criticizing the commercialeconomy. Great Criticism became aniconic schema in people’s understanding of the Chinese reality.
Wang Jianwei
Wang Jianwei was born in Sichuan in 1958. A video and installationartist, he joined the Chengdu Painting Academyin 1983, and received an MFA from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in 1987. Hecurrently lives in Beijing,where he serves as a professional painter in the Beijing Fine Art Academy.
In terms of medium and form, Wang Jianwei’screations can be separated into two phases: his painting phase and hismultimedia phase. In terms of artistic ideas, his artistic creations can beseparated into three phases: a phase of scar art leanings and heroic realism, aphase of philosophical examination of reality, and a phase of cross-cultural,multimedia creations. Looking across his artistic trajectory, the delineationof two phases according to medium can be fused with the delineation of threephases according to concepts, which provides us with a clearer and morecomprehensive view of Wang Jianwei’s artistic development.
The ambiguity in Wang Jianwei’s art ispresent in the components of his work that can be judged according to pastexperience, but he also uses methods to deny the full, correct understanding ofhis works. Dear Mama has been seen asa work marking the “end of a creative era.” Wang Jianwei’s art matured in astate between skepticism and thought.
Xu Bing
Born in 1955 in Chongqing,Xu Bing tested into the CAFA Printmaking Department in 1977. In 1990, on theinvitation of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he moved to the United Statesas an artist emeritus. He is currently living in New York as an independent artist.
In his artistic creations, Xu Bing firstconsiders the question of creativity: it is best if an artwork is somethingthat no one has done before and is beneficial to society. It does not matter ifit has practical utility, but it must produce an effect on people’s thinking,propose a new perspective on thinking, open up more room for thinking and treatthe painting process as a process of creative thinking. In the productionprocess, the artist’s spirit can gain the kind of improvement and satisfactionassociated with personal cultivation.
In the Bookfrom the Sky series, which the artist began creating in the late 1980s,XuBing personally designed thousands of “new Chinese characters,” using graphicand semantic themes to engaged in a profound exploration of the essence andmodes of thought behind Chinese culture, resulting in a classic of Chinesecontemporary art history.
Ye Yongqing
Ye Yongqingwas born in Kunming, YunnanProvince in 1958. He graduated from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts PaintingDepartment, majoring in oil painting in 1982, and joined the school’s faculty.He currently serves as a professor at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts.
Ye Yongqing’s early works are full ofrustic poeticism. The rustic scenes in these works are derived from a markedlynon-rustic fantasy world that arose from inner turmoil. In many of his worksfrom the 1980s, the painter increasingly depicted the opposition between theinner space of the self and the outer space of civilization. After the foundingof the Southwestern Artists Group, Ye Yongqing continued to paint artworks thatwere in keeping with his earlier spiritual direction. In the 1990s, Ye’ssensitivity to the socially oriented work of art and the related culturaloperations began to grow increasingly apparent. In 1994, he incorporated hisgraffiti expressive forms into installation art, replaying Cultural Revolutionscenarios to call attention to certain historical connections and the absurdityof reality.
Ye Yongqing is viewed as a painter who usesnon-Chinese materials to paint literati paintings, because the freewheelingspirit of his graffiti and other expressive forms is quite similar to Chinesepainting. In his Birds series, thebird replaces the “big posters” of the Chinese visual experience. The bird hasbecome his personal mark.
Yin Zhaoyang
Yin Zhaoyang was born in Nanyang, HenanProvince in 1970, and graduated from the CAFA Printmaking Department in 1996.He currently lives in Beijing.
A representative of “cruel youth painting,”Yin Zhaoyang opened up the exploration of themes of youthful pain among artistsof the “post-70s generation,” and truly shaped the self-image and emotionaltraits of this generation. His paintings always place grand narratives under anintrospective gaze, engaging in a timely and emotional summation of the straitsof today’s youth. In the 1990s, “cruel youth painting,” with Yin Zhaoyang as akey figure, breathed a new spirit of experimentation and depth into painting interms of narrative, visual concepts and aesthetic leanings, forming animportant trend in 1990s avant-garde painting.
Yin Zhaoyang began creating Utopia and Tiananmen in 2001. For him, these historical themes were actually aself-dissection of the herocist sentiments that tore at his inner spirit.
Yue Minjun
Yue Minjun was born in Daqing, HeilongjiangProvince, and began studies at the Hebei Normal University Fine Arts Departmentin 1985. He currently lives in Beijing.
Yue Minjun’s art is an important componentof the contemporary art trends of the 1990s and a core force behindcontemporary painting. In contemporary art history, his art marks the linebetween modern and contemporary art. Since the early 1990s, Yue’s art hasfeatured an exaggerated “self image,” which has expanded from painting into thefields of sculpture and print art. This image appears either with a wide grinor with eyes tightly shut, sometimes appearing alone and sometimes appearing asa group, with the developing and changing space of China’s cultural environmentserving as a backdrop. On the face of this man with the stupid grin, Yue Minjunpresents us with a common global trait: the production of idols. Usingtraditional painting and sculpture techniques, he constantly reproduces his ownimage in order to create a new idol, just as is done today with film andtelevision. This proliferation through reproduction creates a powerful force.
Yue Minjun’s painting Enchanted Spring set one of the highest price records for a singlework of Chinese contemporary art. Since his 1999 invitation to the VeniceBiennale, he has been widely collected by international art museums.
Zeng Fanzhi
Zeng Fanzhi was born in Wuhan, HubeiProvince in 1964. He graduated from the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts Oil PaintingDepartment in 1991, and works as a professional painter.
In terms of style and spiritualorientations, Zeng Fanzhi’s early work was heavily influenced by the Chineseavant-garde art movement that arose in the 1980s. He is an important artist ofthe post-89 wave in Chinese art, establishing his own unique style with the Xieheseries, a synthesis of symbolist andexpressionist language traits.
In this series of works, the maniacalfaces, skin and postures of the figures, as well as their eyes all lockedforward, come together to create a strong sense of repression, forcing theviewer to become a participant, examiner and thinker. The mask is also animportant symbol in Zeng Fanzhi’s works.
Zeng Fanzhi’s concern for man focuses onthe relationships between people. Such relationships emerge in his work in theform of corporeal intimacy. They are all one single organism engaging in deepemotional exchange.
Zhan Wang
Zhan Wang was born in Beijing in 1962. He graduated from theBeijing Academy of Industrial Design (now the Beijing Academy of Art andDesign) in 1983, and from the CAFA Sculpture Department in 1988, taking aposition at the CAFA Sculpture Department Research Institute. He currentlylives in Beijing.
Zhan Wang was the first to incorporate thestones of Chinese landscape gardens into contemporary art as a creativeelement. In terms of sculpture, Zhan Wang’s focus is on how to use artistictechniques to express his concepts. Conceptual art, installation, performanceand video have all contributed in one way or another to the maturation of histhinking on “conceptual sculpture”.
Zhan Wang began the Artificial Scholar’s Rocks series in 1995, using stainless steel tocraft artificial, modernized “scholar’s rocks” in a reinterpretation of Chinesetraditional culture and an expression of modern urbanization. The simple,repetitive use of the cold steel embodies, the overall environment of themodern metropolis reflect the artist’s consistent approach to materials. Theaesthetics of the Chinese landscape garden emphasize the natural from theartificial, while Zhan Wang’s scholar’s rocks attempt to break this nature.
Zhang Peili
Zhang Peili was born in Hangzhou in November 1957. He entered theZhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now the China Academy of Art) in 1980, and beganworking at his alma mater in 2002 as director of the New Media Department.
Zhang Peili is considered the “father ofChinese video art,” having blazed the trail for this art form in Chinesecontemporary art and providing a classic model for a new generation of artists.He was a leading figure in the 85 Art Movement, participating in the foundingof the 85 New Space exhibition andthe Pond Society, while advocating “rational painting.” In 1988, he created China’sfirst video artwork, 30x30, and begancreating extensively in video, photography and installation art in 1995. Hisvideo works shine a spotlight on the paradoxes of man’s relationship to theworld, engaging in a free and profound exploration of this relationship from aneutral stance, creating a large, comprehensive and powerful constellation ofart.
Zhang Xiaogang
Zhang Xiaogang was born in Kunming, YunnanProvince in 1958, and graduated from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts OilPainting Department in 1982. He currently lives and works in Beijing.
Zhang Xiaogang is a world famous Chinesecontemporary artist, an oil painter who engages in the painting of “innermonologues.” For Zhang, art is not for expressing things from life but forreflecting the inner spiritual world. His most representative work, the Big Family series, used the portraitrendering techniques of early 20th century China to express thecollective memories of that era in history, garnering international attentionand making him a standard bearer for Chinese contemporary art.
Zhang Xiaogang’s art bears visual witnessto China’sreform and opening. From his early Illusionand Notes series to his later Big Family series, his work has alwaysbeen marked by introspective tones.
Zhang was one of the first Chinese artiststo be invited such top international exhibitions as the Venice Biennale and theSao Paulo Biennial. His works have been collected by many national art museumsand collectors around the world.
Zhou Chunya
Zhou Chunya was born in 1955 in Chongqing.He graduated from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1982, and from theUniversity of Kassel Experimental Art Department. He lives in Chengdu where he works as a contemporaryartist. He is the founder of the Five Colors Foundation, a charitableorganization.
Zhou Chunya first became famous in the1980s for his series New Generation ofTibetans, but made his greatest breakthroughs with his Green Dog and Peach Blossoms.In the field of contemporary painting, he was the first modernist to discarddiagrammatic art. His integration of traditional qualities with contemporaryconcepts have made him an important figure in the development of “new painting”.His works are widely collected around the world.
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