Landgent Center, No.20 East Middle 3rd Ring Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing

17 November – 25 December, 2011

The many forms of site-specificity have a long history and can be the most complex of contexts for art. This idea of a productive connection with a setting, and by implication the users of that setting, is an attractive option for artists trying to boost their degree of “relevance.” However, the public realm outside of galleries is the critical realm par excellence – works existing in it are forced into competition with all sorts of other, “natural” activities in the spaces, and away from the focus afforded by more sympathetic, privileged spaces.

Often one of the stated aims of the work is to engage with the “everyday.” But the prosaic nature of these situations pricks at an artworks’ status, pointing up assumptions that may or may not coalesce with the world into which it is thrust. And, for me, this is when it gets interesting.

The group show Urban Play sees eleven artists and artist groups hosted by the Landgent Center, a large retail and office development south of Beijing’s Central Business District. This project, curated by Tang Zehui, has seen the artists on-site for the last few months developing a series of site-specific works in the public spaces.

Just inside one of the buildings in the Center, a figure in red was struggling to get up from the floor, his bag of presents scattered behind him. In a bizarre premonition of the coming trials of Christmas shopping, a life-like ageing Santa reached out to passers-by for help in his predicament. The piece No Country for Old Men by Xin Yunpeng seemed to be making a statement about our relationship to other people, perhaps reflecting on the issues surrounding “Good Samaritans” which have come to the fore in Chinese society recently.

Outside the entrances to the shopping malls, Wang Yiqiong has placed long boards of absorbent paper, provided for smokers banished from the “smoke-free” interiors. The piece develops as they blow onto the surface, leaving behind the tar smudges from their smoke, which—along with the wide format of the paper—somewhat remind me of traditional Chinese landscapes scrolls. The element of interaction and play, with serious health overtones, and its connection with an existent community works well in this location.

Sound can make the most invasive of works. Its contact with people is less controlled than object-based work, leaving it open to more problems given the multiple environments it impinges upon. Yan Jun’s Floating Clouds was presented over the mall’s PA system, and made up of the cracking sounds of sunflower seeds being eaten (another version of which I reviewed recently on this site < http://www.artslant.com/cn/articles/show/28588>). Here it was presented as a discrete effect on everyday activities – this strange noise in the background of the visitors’ travels through the malls, aiming to put them slightly off balance. This became its undoing, as I believe one of the shops complained that the sound was too upsetting during the opening. So in the end the sound was restricted to just one public area, and when I returned the following day, had apparently been turned off entirely.

The subtlest of interventions, and the most easily missed, were the changes to two seemingly innocuous doors by Giancarlo Norese. The metal doors to two utility rooms had been adjusted by, in one case, the addition of multiple keyholes, and in the other, by the division of the door into two separately hinged parts, the bottom part being maybe 30cm high. These seemed to allow for new relationships with the spaces to be formed – who or what were these changes for? It was as if this was the slight evidence of the presence of another community to whom these elements were addressed.

On the concourse nearby, several new structures had gone up for the show including the architectural intervention, A Floating Organism by the group CAA Core of Architecture & Art Association. This plastic opaque bubble-like form was suspended above an open dining area, visible from the street. The “organism” was lit from within in cycling colours. During the opening it provided a strange aerial presence above the performers Lian Guodong, Lei Yan, Amy Grubb-Han and Liu Zheng who were moving through the public spaces, interpreting their surroundings through dance. Next to the main road, the pyramidal structures of Beijing Obscura by Andrew Toland, created darkened spaces in which the surroundings were projected down through lenses in their apexes onto the outstretched palm of your hand.

In their different ways, all the pieces in the show touched on the sometimes-problematic issues of site-specificity: the ephemeral nature of some of the works, the practical difficulties they came up against, and (in some cases) the requirement of the presence of the artist, resulted in a rather random experience of the show.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing, nor against the meaning of site-specificity. As I said at the beginning, for me these difficulties are where site-specificity becomes interesting. Works which do not play nicely with the environment, that do not stay in place, leaking into surrounding areas, deliberately perform the limits of their work, with failure being as productive as success. In particular Yan Jun’s sound intervention and Wang Yiqiong’s smoker’s paper, were for me the most “successful” for what they revealed about the boundaries and limits of the various physical, institutional and psychological contexts found in these malls.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 28 November, 2011 on ArtSlant.

C5Art, Building F, 5 Xi Wu Street, Sanlitun, Chaoyang District, 100027 Beijing, China

10 September – 9 October, 2011

Artist Chen Xinpeng describes his work as the creation of “small innovations.” The works in Chen’s solo show at C5 Gallery include his early photo and video works through to his latest experiments with blow up structures and game play, giving some clues as to what these innovations might be. But all the while the show displays the artist’s self-deprecating humour and his reticence towards overstating the meaning and significance of these “innovations.”

Chen’s presence is a strong feature of his early works. Ants, Latin Girl, Mexico Cook – Bad English Story (2004) fills the screen with Chen’s as he tells his stories. This piece was made during the period when Chen was learning English and these made-up stories were a means to practice.

Several of these early works include the action of smoking cigarettes, the puffing of which into a scene seems to be used by the artist to make the atmosphere visible and tangible. In Glass House (2007) the artist builds the titular enclosure, in which he sits working his way through packets of cigarettes. Over the period of the video he fills the room, eventually obscuring himself form view and creating a milky-white solid block of smoke. In the photographic series Smoke (2007) he holds objects in front of the camera while appearing in the background blowing the smoke from the cigarette he holds in his other hand around them. Again, this set up partially obscures the forms of the objects. In another piece (not included in this show) Chen creates the form of a lotus flower out of clear, flexible plastic, and then sits in the gallery inflating it with cigarette smoke.

Since giving up smoking six months ago, Chen has developed the concern with inflation of objects in recent works. Taking the smoke out of the equation has removed the connections of smoke, especially cigarette smoke, with health issues, but has allowed the artist to focus on ephemeral effects of his working with the atmosphere as an object and develop this concern into broader areas of life.

This is most notable with the giant, golden-arched tubes of Make Do (2009) that Chen used to house art shows on two occasions in 2009. In a similar way to smoke, the tangible material existence of the material is very slight, but once inflated can create a massive effect. This emphasis on the ephemeral is a by-product of the work with smoke. Make Do is a general-purpose structure that is physically versatile and can prove useful in other circumstances – it is conceptually versatile. The piece can be seen as an art project and as a housing for art, but can exist outside of this realm as a general “useful” structure.

Chen also works as part of an informal artist group called DiaoDui (with Liang Shuo, Zhan Yang, Shao Kang, Zhang Zhaohong, Zhou Yi). They have a rather formalistic approach to art-making, each proposing tasks, choosing the best ones through discussions and undertaking them together, the results often reflecting the playfulness seen in Chen’s other works. In this show the works Temple (2011) and Sleep Temples (2011) are included as products of this process. Sleep Temples is the documentation of the group’s visits to temples in the Beijing area, their task to take a nap in each one. The photographs look down towards their upturned feet while they lie inside small tents made of mosquito netting. In the gallery in front of the photos, the tent sits rather forlornly as a remnant of this activity.

As with the blow-up structures, Sleep Temples inserts the activity temporarily into a situation to create a disturbance with minimal affect on the long-term context. The work Temple demonstrates a form of this intervention into social roles, as a recreation in plastic of a small temple for farmers, as with Make Do, designed to be erected anywhere and easily transported by the user.

It seems to me that akin to classic conceptual work, what is really at stake in Chen Xinpeng’s pieces is the use to which they are put. Within the gallery we are left with the residues or elements of the pieces, but these are half-finished, awaiting or remaining after their moments of life. A good example is the new game created by the artist that involves throwing a leather pouch from the centre of a set of rings, while the two teams work strategically to thwart or allow the throw through. In the gallery this is presented simply as a large wall painting of the pitch markings and rules, and a metal cage filled with the pouches.

Chen expresses his ideas about the innovations very simply: “I have some ideas, and people can use them.” While this may actually seem somewhat unaccommodating (as if the artist simply lays out the ideas and you can take them or leave them), the practical side of these innovations comes through in the works. What this show suggests is that Chen’s relationship with the art system is becoming more and more tenuous as the work progresses. Once the pieces are realised in the gallery, they seem to automatically take on an aspect of humour that verges on the surreal; as if the artist knows well enough that this is a stop-gap solution and the real meaning of the works lies in their realisation elsewhere.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 9 October, 2011 on ArtSlant.

Boers-Li Gallery, 1-706 Hou Jie, 798 Art District, No.2 Yuan, Jiuxianqiao Lu, Beijing 100015, China

11 August – 11 September, 2011

For what is obviously such a large and weighty intervention, the mirrored surfaces of Wang Wei’s Propaganda Pavilion create an almost insubstantial structure as it cuts diagonally across Boers-Li’s upstairs gallery, disrupting the visitors’ procession and views through the spaces. The Pavilion is a reconstruction of a common form of display structure, with suggestions of Socialist architecture in its original forms. In this case the artist has taken an example from Beijing Zoo, where it holds information panels and imagery related to the animals around it. As presented by the artist however, completely cocooned in mirrored glass, it facets and disrupts, diaphanous in its physicality and difficult to pin down.

Behind this Pavilion and visible through the gaps in its four sections, is a single painted panel, a direct copy of those that fill the original structure. This painting includes three images that are divided between the panel and a series of thin fins attached at right-angles to it. This creates a simple animation as the image changes depending on your viewpoint. Standing to the left one sees a roaring tiger against a night sky and, standing to the right, a pair of lemur-like creatures on a branch in a forest – fairly innocuous natural history illustrations. When facing the painting straight on, the characters 小知识 (XiaoZhiShi) appear, meaning “a little knowledge,” “Do you know?”, or even (the artist tells me): “Why?”. This is all presented as it is in the zoo from where they came, but removed from that context, the panel encourages wider interpretations.

Since taking part in the influential Post-Sense Sensibility: Alien Bodies and Delusion show curated by Qiu Zhijie and Wu Meichun in Beijing in 1999, Wang Wei’s work has moved away from an overt performance of the body by the artist, towards an engagement with his audience. He now seems to be working with a body that is missing in relation to the constructed environment, or that the audience supplies, and the constructed environment’s reciprocal affect on this implied presence. He presents this in both physical and social forms, but in a low-key way that belies the often ideologically-charged inspirations for the artworks (such as the bathroom in a house where Mao stayed, for the installation Historical Residence at Space Station in 2009).

As a site of forced display, the zoo seems a particularly appropriate site for such inspiration. It seems that every aspect of the zoo has become a tool to represent ideology and the pavilions become one of its modes of presentation for Wang Wei.

The literal mirroring of this Pavilion reflects a similar effect on the ends to which the artist puts it. While never quite losing the original expectation of the form, as a site for the presentation of knowledge, this transmutation of material (as well as its transposition into the gallery) somehow idealises this particular Pavilion as a type; its act of situated-ness within the gallery or the original site is called into question; its function and meaning hang in balance.

There seem to be two factors at play here in the artist’s works that undertake a similar methodology: a change in situation (which can be a process of change, rather than the change as end in itself) and a change in material. Both act to subvert the existing meanings that have become rooted to their spots as solid architecture. With this connection to the world they become unquestionable in some way, as situated objects that represent a set of assumptions that may be missed in their original settings that act to naturalise them.

It seems to me that one of the risks the Pavilion faces is that it will ultimately efface itself as a holder of any particular meaning, content to rest in an ambiguous position in relation with the world, as it disrupts its presence in the gallery with its mirrored surfaces. A comparison could also be made to the development of ideology itself, an incarnation of the power-structures and influences around us, and the way that it seeks to normalise itself into invisibility. This induced forgetfulness is something Wang Wei’s work attempts to foreground and interrupt in subtle ways.

Propaganda Pavilion makes reference to this aspect of the role of the structure in the Zoo. It casts the pseudo-educational aspect of the pictures, their multi-imaged presentation, their setting encased within the structure, and the structure itself as purveyors of propaganda of one shape or another.

Wang Wei’s works “lift” elements, adjust and relocate them. The audience is brought up against their physical relationship to the works, as well as their own understanding of the elements in their original setting. These sit behind the work like ghosted images, but which the current version usurps – pointing to its new setting as equally formative of a new set of meanings. This action harks back to Duchamps ‘rectified’ readymades where the original is altered to highlight a particular idea latent in the object. This layering of the construction of meaning causes a continual shuffling between the images and their meanings, creating a playful relationship similar to that of a theme-park’s structures – they become fantastical in their relation to the world yet are real interventions with their own effects nonetheless.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 29 August, 2011 on ArtSlant.

CU Space, 706 Beisanjie, 798 Art Zone, Beijing

11 – 24 June, 2011

Rather than at its appearance as part of this show at CU Space, the first encounter I had with Fan Ling’s work was as part of the Focus on Talents Finalists Exhibition at the Today Art Museum in Beijing, where the works FAT and FLAT were transposed to the new venue. Thus the art museum provided the original context for my understanding of his work and that provides a launching off point for my appreciation of it.

Although the work was plainly informed by architecture, it was not until later that I found out that Fan Ling was a professional architect, rather than my immediate assumption of his being a “professional” artist. But many artists work with or as architects, and many architects work with or as artists – we surely are beyond the stage where such divisions are necessary (aside from as an indicator of practical qualifications). Up to a certain point it is impossible to distinguish between the two disciplines. The architect may have their particular focus—they may be more practical and work at a larger scale—but essentially they seem to be doing the same thing as the artist: transferring creative ideas into some form of reality. Vito Acconci is perhaps the most established practitioner straddling the divide between artist and architect, who sees all his works—from his early performances through to the creations of his architecture office—as being about the use of space. But every artist who dreams of space partakes of a certain relation with architecture, so crossing these disciplines is not really an issue.

That said, we still live with the institutions based on those divisions, the art gallery or museum, the architects’ office, and my urge to read the work one way or the other demonstrates the power such names and their associations hold. In the case of Fan Ling’s work, the art museum became the context for the work and affects its perception in some ways.

Art has always played with context to inform the work. Context provides many clues and signals for the reading of a work. In the latter 20th Century the practice of Institutional Critique directly played with the assumptions implicit in our understandings of works of art in institutional settings, but there is also a far wider and older set of literature on the role galleries and museums play in the reception and understanding of cultural objects. For me many of the most interesting works of art are precisely playing with these contextual clues to interrogate our assumptions about our literal and metaphorical surroundings. The appearance of Fan Ling’s work in what I took to be an art exhibition, in an art museum, serves to upset my assumptions on the one hand for the show I was in, and on the other hand of Fan Ling’s works themselves.

Looking at the presentation itself, the three parts of Fan Ling’s exhibition progress in an apparently rational fashion. Starting with what amounts to a close reading of a Chinese scroll painting (FAT), the picking apart and remaking of the scenes and viewpoints depicted within it create (or perhaps reveals, in the sense that it was in full view all along) an understanding of the representation of space through time. Fan Ling’s final result being a tortuously cut and folded version of the scroll laid out on tables in the exhibition that re-presents the original painter’s manipulations in completing the task of representing a landscape adjusted by a changing narrative.

The second part (FLAT) applies the lessons learned from this scroll manipulation to an already extant urban setting: Shanghai’s Century Avenue. In a similar way to that in which the subject creates and is created by the views in the scroll, the Avenue is analysed (and made “FAT”) through a subject’s movements through the space, defined by the pivoting and warping of viewpoints.

As a practical experiment, taking advantage of these analyses of the past and the present, the third part (FLOAT) rips from its physical and conceptual moorings a small, ubiquitous section of the urban fabric, the grassed area, and pulls it apart to renew the subjects understanding of the compromised nature of the land they inhabit.

A purely formal reading of these pieces might make comparison with the styles of Futurism and Cubism, with their fractured realities and abstraction of forms. The folds which Fan Ling puts his landscapes through, and the meanings of those folds as analyses of time and space perception seem to have parallels with the Futurist awareness of and obsession with the dynamics of movement in space. The multiple viewpoints pulled apart and put back together in other forms also bear a comparison to the Cubist faceting of space on the flat canvases of Braque or Picasso.

Other, more recent, formal links can be made with Deconstructivism, an informal movement that knew no disciplinary boundaries. Deconstruction in many cases abstracted influences from the historico-geographical nature of a site, expressing them through a layering and accretion of architectural elements and plans, itself initiating a productive relationship between art and architecture. One can see the oil paintings produced by Zaha Hadid’s office for the Hong Kong Peak proposal as an appeal to the techniques and methods of art to serve in the presentation and understanding of architecture.

Raised against these formal exercises is that they lose any relation or meaning to reality, becoming simply spectacular imagery serving as props for the projects, satisfying a need for excitement in what one suspects may be a less than exciting realisation. Architectural renderings have always aimed to present projects in a positive light, whose link to the reality may be tenuous at best. Art, though, is not necessarily beholden to such requirements of clarity or practicality. Indeed art which upsets clarity, forces new ways of seeing and understanding the world, something which architecture equally taps into.

As a whole, Fan Ling’s development of the analyses of the scroll—through the application of the analyses and development of them in the Century Avenue site; ultimately leading to the original adaptation of Floating Green—serves as a case study in how art, as a way of looking, in a productive relationship with reality, can engender new methods of working with and within the world which can productively map back onto architecture. In art it is no matter perhaps that the dream cannot be built – failure can be built in as a productive tool. The process of solving the problems arising from the interface between fantasy and reality creates new methods. This process works both ways, as can be seen by the starting point to Fan Ling’s project: the scroll as artwork is on one level an aesthetic object informed by architecture and experiences of space and time.

The work itself displays a concern with the creation of the subject, the audience for the work as well as the characters in the work itself. This understanding is of an external agent as viewer and participant in the pieces and the spaces that it represents, with the power of the pieces as having an effect on the construction of the subject through those spaces and through their representation in the particular ways we see in the galleries. The role of the subject is as completer of the works, as addressee for the meaning of the work. The original painter of the scroll and later Fan Ling take this subject as central in the formation of their respective pieces. Speaking to this subject through the pieces, the artists attempt to set up a conversation in both directions, between the didactic effect of the work itself and the subjects’ input through their existence in and interpretation of the work.

This active role of the subject is parallel to the subjects’ contextual understanding of the works. Returning to my initial experience, an important event for the work lies in the audiences’ reception, where every person interprets the works (in part) based on their understanding of their immediate surroundings. The piece being first presented in a gallery expressly dedicated to architecture creates a fairly clear context. Possible confusion about the meaning of the works then comes from within them, as the works themselves move beyond concerns with buildings per se to work with more ethereal concerns of time and space and experience. Once the works were transposed into the Today Art Museum, their context changed but apparently is still clear: it is a given that this is an institution for art.

What happens between these two venues is simply a shift in expectations and of the understanding of the role of the work. In the architecture gallery the work seems more linked to its practical applications; in the art gallery it seems more linked to its flights of fancy. These two perspectives give different understandings of the work, which are not exclusive and work together to inform the process that the work itself takes. This to-ing and fro-ing from reality to fantasy is simply the way of the creative process.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published August, 2011 in 《城市空间设计》Urban Flux magazine.

forget art, Beijing, China

16 May, 2011 – 16 May, 2012

forget art is a loose artist collective, based in Beijing, and initiated in 2009 by Chinese artist Ma Yongfeng. They focus on intervention-based work, often with a touch of the absurd, promoting small-scale, subtle disturbances in the fabric of society, which they describe as their “social micro-practice.”

As they work by and large outside of recognised gallery spaces, the creation and value of social space has become an important material for forget art. This keys into the long history of nomadism, with particular attention to the local experience in China and its mass population of migrant workers, as well as the international development of the itinerant white-collar worker. So in forget art’s “situations” ambivalence towards the fixed location comes through, feeding into their approach to production and presentation, and their feeling that sometimes it is necessary to “forget” in order to proceed. As Ma quips “That’s also why we don’t need any space – because we “forget art,” why do we need any space to do this?!”

forget art made its first appearance at the Dragon Fountain Bathhouse in September of last year, with a group show inserting a collection of minimal works into a temporarily détourned bathhouse in Beijing’s Caochangdi Art Village.

The works appeared as small situations expanding on the idea of an artwork, but always with a standpoint somewhere between the object and the situation. The light touches of the pieces infused the rooms without overly asserting their presence or nature, with male and female areas open to all for a few hours only. At the time Ma explained to me that “An ‘object’ is just this thing [indicating a cup], but if we draw a circle around it, it’s an expanded object, developed, and it becomes a situation. But we don’t want it to become bigger and bigger, we’re just in the middle, in-between.”

This sensibility has laid the groundwork for forget art’s Guerrilla Living Syndrome (created by Ma Yongfeng, Yang Xinguang and Wu Xiaojun) that began last month. Guerrilla Living Syndrome will be a series of projects continuing to attend to these subtle displacements of spatial and social constructions but applying to wider forms of subject matter. As the name suggests, all the sub-projects will build up to a renegotiation of our social relations based on lived space.

A starting point for this new project is the effect of the Hukou system on life in China. A Hukou is a residence permit, which gives you rights in the area it applies to. While not preventing you from moving around, as it did in the past, a Hukou make things like healthcare more convenient in its area, treatment for serious health issues can only be received in your Hukou.

Although certainly not as draconian as it used to be, the Hukou system represents a strong tie to a “home” area. The psychological and practical issues of accommodation outside of your area become an issue, so the first Guerrilla Living Syndrome project Youth Apartment Exchange Project (YAEP) picks up on the issues of nomadism seen in the previous projects while providing practical accommodation possibilities for the participants. As Ma says: “People move many times in their lives, and there are also a lot of temporary spaces in the city – Starbucks, hotels, restaurants. We want all spaces to become temporary.”

On a practical level YAEP takes the form of a social website that allows participants to find others who want to exchange residences, and then to share the experience and stories behind the exchange back on the site. The site is not just for apartment swapping though, anything can be shared through this open barter system forget art have constructed.

One effect of this new system is to bring people together, promoting social interaction through exchange. Ma worries about the contemporary tendency of people to live their lives online, weakening real world social bonds. As Japan has its otaku, China has its zhainan (宅男) and shengnu (剩女), recognised as potential problems for the development of society. YAEP addresses this by providing an arena for real-world socialisation through the exchange format, in what Ma characterises as “from Facebook to face-to-face.”

When I put it to Ma that in practice exchanging apartments would perhaps not be easy for many people, he was pragmatic about the issues involved, and also pointed out the part traditional Confucian family values will play on participation. These emphasise your family as your top priority while those outside of it are seen as less important or trustworthy. This background will make exchange with strangers difficult for many people, so to begin with the project will bring existing friends together to exchange with each other.

These social barriers are the things that this project seeks to address with its interventions, which forget art see as a route to adjusting society as a whole: “Chinese civil society is not like Western civil society. [Chinese society] can be very cold and selfish… We want to make our projects the starting point to let people accept their value as a citizen, to care about strangers, to care about society, about social responsibility. This is not an art project: it’s a social thing.”

Reflecting the nomadic ways of life, YAEP represents alternative living practices, and although Ma recognises this is “a very utopian way of thinking about society in the future,” nevertheless he feels that taking a lesson from art practice can provide new possibilities in the wider field:

“In the art world we talk about alternative strategies, but we can expand this to everyday life. In the traditional Beijing hutongs we have shared toilets in every alley; it’s more sociable (but maybe less convenient). But modern life says that having a toilet in your house is the only acceptable value, but that way of thinking is very much like what Marcuse addresses in ‘One-Dimensional Man.’ We want this society to have many different values of living, not just one.”

Appropriately, this is a long-term project for forget art which they see lasting 10 years (or more), and the results very much depend on circumstances; Ma is happy to leave that aspect of the project open: “China has a very sophisticated society, so the results of this are really unknown.”

Starting from the minimal roots of the Dragon Fountain Bathhouse project, Guerrilla Living Syndrome shows that the approach of forget art will always be subtle but with grand aspirations: “We want to make a very small change – to find that critical point, where we can try and get some more interesting things to appear.”

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 30 May, 2011 on ArtSlant.
• forget art: http://www.forgetart.org/
• Youth Apartment Exchange Project: http://www.yaep.net/

Vitamin Creative Space, 2503-B- Building 2, Northern District, Pingod Community, No.32 Baiziwan Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100022, China

November 20, 2010 — ongoing

The end of November marked the inception of Vitamin Creative Space’s “The Pavilion” – their third space in China, and second in Beijing – and allowed for a revisiting of their presentation methods in their various spaces. So, what is this “Pavilion” and what purpose does it serve? And how does it relate to their previous space, “the shop”? Coming to grips with Vitamin’s selection of spaces reveals a taste for poetic license in their consistently ambiguous commercial spaces.

“the shop” opened in November 2008 and initially occupied a difficult to find commercial slot in the outer, less popular, limits of Jianwai SOHO (part of Beijing’s CBD). Earlier this year it moved to a gated community of galleries in the maze-like art district of Caochangdi in Beijing. In this district not known for it’s user-friendliness, “the shop” itself took up position in what was itself a somewhat hidden space.

And now, situated at the end of an anonymous corridor on the top floor of an office block, “The Pavilion” occupies an aerie displaying a similar aloofness. Visitors do not have an easy time – at least up until a few days ago there was no signage at any stage of the route up, just an open door. I think that one can now assume that making such an issue of access is a deliberate ploy by Vitamin.

The Pavilion’s launch was preceded by an announcement laying some groundwork: “From the experience of the process of the shop … we feel the potential and necessity to explore a new approach to public space, leading to the emergence of ‘The Pavilion’.” Physically this new approach reveals itself as a duplex, arranged to create various single and double-height spaces. The open-plan arrangement on both levels is dotted with artworks and installations. Two informal, semi-dedicated areas are labeled as “Facade Library” (currently a collection of books by and about Olafur Eliasson) and “Sound Archive” (displaying CDs and a laptop to listen to recordings). These two areas make use of the underside of a steep staircase doubling as seating for talks, and which leads to the upper gallery space and then a small office area over the entrance.

Whilst referencing the titular traditional structures and borrowing some broad meanings from them, The Pavilion takes the example initiated by the shop several steps into overt poetry. As Vitamin’s Director Zhang Wei is quoted as saying: “…unlike the shop that deals with the daily life issue, the pavilion deals more with the issue of daily life awareness…” an awareness which lets in a poetic reading of these spaces’ characteristics. This movement can be linked to the magical-realist texts of Hu Fang (Artistic Director of Vitamin), whose series of novels and stories seem to have formed a consistent influence on Vitamin’s activities and spaces. In the case of the shop this movement continually attempts to pull the space back from a gallery-style aloofness, removing itself into an everyday-ness, re-energizing the gallery’s primary function as the space of commercial transactions. This retrograde movement is a somewhat quixotic position against its commercial landscape: in the process of emphasizing the quotidian, the activities reveal their poetic natures.

The Pavilion carries on this movement, but perhaps forms a perfect binary with “the shop”: creating an imaginary reality in which to browse the artworks, whilst the shop presents a commercial reality in which imagination has become unhinged. On the one hand The Pavilion is set up to transcend the gallery space, fictionalizing it’s activities while embedding the gallery’s functions in that very process. On the other it transcends even this poetic reading by playing the fiction off against a commercial process that forms the very structures available for it. The space leaves plenty of room for the kind of aberrant activities we have seen at the shop, and it will be interesting to see how The Pavilion negotiates its relationship with it, and how its role as a Pavilion – but also a workable space – will evolve.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 13 December, 2010 on ArtSlant.

Edward Sanderson: Where did you study originally?

Chen Xinpeng: I graduated from Luxun Academy of Art1 in 1994. Then I moved to the States where I stayed for 10 years, and moved back to China about 5 years ago.

While I was in New York, I was working my ass off and I didn’t have time to do the things I liked to do, so I came back. I think here I have better opportunities.

When I moved back here I saw everything was so temporary. All the building here – they build the buildings, then they tear down the buildings which they just built a few year ago. In the same way, I wanted to do something really temporary, so I made the Tent – you can blow it up and deflate it real quick and as it’s inflatable you can move it around easily – that’s pretty much the idea.

Actually I had made the plan for this a long time ago: I wanted to do a very temporary, easy to move, and very short-term exhibition. And not particularly for fine art, maybe as some other kind of venue. I really like the idea of people re-using my tent to do something else. They see the tent, and they are like “Oh that’s great! I can have a wedding in there!” – or they can do whatever they want, or they can make a tent themselves, or they can come and borrow it from me.

I’m also quite interested in different kinds of audience, not audiences specific to art districts. I’m quite interested in different locations, different people. How they take to different kind of shows. For me it’s a pretty fun approach.

ES: So you’re trying to get out the art district?

CXP: Yes, I pretty much want to get out of that kind of venue.

ES: Was this an issue for you in the States?

CXP: When I was in States, I was pretty much working with the system. But when I was in Beijing, because I had not been in China for a long time, I was not involved in the normal art practices here. I had to do something the way I wanted to do it. I didn’t have strong connections with people here, so I had to do something on my own. I had become kind of disengaged with my friends in China, you know. They had been here for a long time, they had their own way of doing things and I’m not in their system. And also I really don’t like it: I want to do something my way. That’s how I come up with the Tent project.

Because of my background, the first thing I did in the tent was related to art – all I knew was artists. I worked with some friends – not only from China, they were also from Scotland, Switzerland, Mexico, Chile and the US.

When I made the tent, I didn’t know if it was going to work or not because I had never done it before. Turned out it worked fine.

ES: Where did you find the tent?

CXP: I had it made. I found a factory which made tents, actually it was quite cheap. It’s made out of large tubes. It’s like 10 meters high; I think about 400 square meters in area.

Most of the works were sculptures, and some video. I have two smaller tents inside the big one, sort of a video rooms.

I couldn’t hang painting because there’s nothing to hang things on. You know if I include big walls for paintings, it becomes hard to move. The main point is to make it easy to move, so I can tear it down in a few hours; I can move to some other location and put it up in a few hours. That’s the whole idea.

The first time was in 798, by the South gate. And the second place was in a shopping mall called Solana in Chaoyang Park in Beijing. The third time was going to be in the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), but I couldn’t get permission.

ES: I would have thought CAFA would be the easiest place?

CXP: Actually CAFA was the hardest one. Working with business people is much easier than administration. CAFA had all kinds of rules.

The Tent was up for a few days in each case – 4 or 5 days.

Cou Huo2 was the show inside the tent. Cou Huo is like when I moved back to China, everything seems kind of falling apart, you know? You can buy something real cheap, but it’s not fine quality. In Chinese, it is called Cou Huo. You can have everything but at a lower quality!

ES: Who’s involved in setting this up? It’s you who initiated the whole thing, and then Katherine Don [Red Box Studio] is also involved?

CXP: Yes, me and Kat did it together.

ES: What were the reactions of people?

CXP: Actually I was quite surprised. In 798 it was more like a regular art show. But when we moved the tent to the shopping mall people were actually touching everything, and I have to tell them “Don’t touch!” and finally I don’t care anymore – they can touch whatever they want! I can’t control all the kids! There were lots of people there. It was on for only two days in Solana. On the third day there was a huge wind and I had to take it down, otherwise it would have blown away.

ES: Are you doing your own work at the same time, do you have your own practice?

CXP: Yes. Generally my work is somehow related to making some small “innovations”. I have some ideas, and people can use them. I am going to make another temporary building—like a temple—and people can go there to worship, and then I can tear it down and take it someplace else.

ES: A blow-up temple? Like a portable shrine?

CXP: Yes, very portable!

I also made a book. It’s a different kind of thing for me. All the words in the book I found on the street, they are the handwriting on paper in dumpster or on the street, and I collected them. It’s just some stories, some nonsense. I didn’t change anything, it’s like a photocopy, I typed in everything I collected, and that’s only half of it!

Beijing Jieshi by Chen Xinpeng

ES: How long did it take to collect this much?

CXP: A year. The other half I’m still working on. That’s in Korean, English, Spanish – it’s pretty hard! Each entry has a number; this is a reference to the original material – the source. So I can go find the original easier.

ES: You have a whole archive, numbered?

CXP: Yes.

ES: Why do you do this?

CXP: Well, I think a lot of the information people throw away actually is kind of interesting. I try to collect it, and keep a record. People don’t write so much anymore, and really I think these messages are quite valuable. Actually people enjoy reading them, some of the stories are quite interesting.

The title is Beijing Jieshi3 – jieshi is to pick things up off the street.

ES: And you’re going to produce a whole series of these?

CXP: I was going to but I don’t think I can do it, because it takes too long. It’s an intense labour. For a whole year I didn’t do anything but work on this book. I also just print it for a few people. Certain material I don’t think you can get published.

ES: So what else?

CXP: Well, I am working on certain things, which are like games. Like the temples, and fortune telling for artists… I have this kind of Chinese fortune telling system: I can tell you what kind of work you should do to get very successful. Sometimes you’re confused and you can give yourself guidance – you have my book, you can find out for yourself.

ES: A lot of this – the fortune-telling, and the temple, for example – seems to have an interest in faith and belief?

CXP: Well, I really want to do something very basic, like a small-time innovator. ART making gives me a certain kind of freedom; I can do some awkward things. By putting my energy in some other field I may not have the freedom to do it. Actually, ART gave me freedom to do things.

Actually there’s a good reason this happened in Beijing. I stayed in New York for a long time. New York is kind of very orientated and systematic. it has certain rules you have to follow. But in Beijing, you don’t have rules; you can do whatever you want.

ES: Do you mean in terms of art, or generally?

CXP: Well, generally, you have certain rules but they’re not really rules, they can be broken any day, any hour. I think it’s quite interesting. You can’t do that in the States, because people put you in a certain category, very fast. And after that you’re lost…

ES: Why Beijing…?

CXP: Well, you know, China as a whole – we are ideologically very confused now. Nobody believes in Communism, no religion. So I think anything goes. There are certain things that are not that good about this situation, but certain things are definitely good.

ES: What’s good then?

CXP: Well, you can step over the line, in certain ways. Actually, you can get away with certain things. Maybe people are concerned its stupid, but actually it’s quite interesting. I think you can let things just happen here.

ES: So, do you think Beijing is a particular hot spot for this kind of thing?

CXP: I don’t think it’s hot right now but I think it should be. I think in China the businessmen are more aggressive than artists. Artists are kind of falling behind, you know. The way businessmen are doing business, they’ve broken all the rules, they don’t really care about traditional business practices, and I think artists should do that too. But art now is not as aggressive as business.

ES: Do you think they ever were?

CXP: In the past we have certain time periods like Nanbeichao4. The people were more aggressive and they step over the line often. But that’s like a thousand plus years ago! I think artists are supposed to be more aggressive than businessmen, but in China I think business is more aggressive. I think artists should be more aggressive than the rest of society, but now in China artists are kind of slow runners.

The main reason is they want to be more commercial. They want to make more money. And they have lost their creative edge. But businessmen are different. They are willing to try everything to make money, so they can be more aggressive, they break laws, they go to jail. But for the artist, no, that’s different. Artists don’t want to be aggressive. they want to be conservative. I think that’s not a good trend.

ES: Can you think of any artists in China who are being as aggressive as business?

CXP: I think there are some but I don’t think there are enough! I think now some artists are getting involved in other sorts of practice, this is a good trend.

ES: What other sorts of practice?

CXP: Well, they should go out get involved in all kinds of things, like business development, all kinds of stuff. I think that’s quite interesting. As an artist you have more freedom to do certain things. People say, “wow, this is crazy!” but because you are an artist maybe you can still do it. I think that’s good.

It’s different for designers. Designers do that kind of thing all the time, get involved in other kinds of business practice, and they are more open than artists now. I think artist are more conservative. I think artists should do this. We should involve all kinds of stuff.

ES: And what you are doing is your way to try to be free-er and getting involved in other things, the Tent in particular?

CXP: Yeah, all kinds of things. I think there will be more and more alternative spaces and artists using them. I know a few people doing that, not a lot, one or two.

ES: In Beijing?

CXP: Not in Beijing. One in Chongqing – Yang Shu5, he has this little place called Organhaus Art Space6. He’s organising some shows, in a little gallery, it’s all non-profit, but also in all different kinds of venues. It’s quite interesting.

And also I’m part of this group called Diao Dui7. We’re going to have a show on the 18th of September8 at C5 Gallery in Beijing’s Sanlitun area. This group is just me and a few friends who have been doing this for a few years. It’s pretty hard to explain, you have to see it. It’s light hearted, performance, everything. And sometimes we have a public show, sometimes we just do it for ourselves.

On the 18th we are presenting ten works, some unfinished, some are just writings, some are where we are just arguing about the rules and we never get round to doing it because different people have different opinions. We have put these rules on the wall.

There’s a similar group in Hangzhou, called Shuangfei9. We’re kind of similar, but different! They are more nutty, you know, but we’re kind of private. We do certain things which in a certain view are not really acceptable – because we’re not commercial, and our activities are not really well-produced, and also we take the group opinion as rules. We have seven people and we set up a rule, and we have to follow that rule to do things. Sometimes they’re quite dumb! But that’s the rule, we have to follow it. Once in a while it can get quite interesting!

Chen Xinpeng was interviewed by Edward Sanderson at the Cave Café, 798 Art District, Beijing, on 9 September 2010.

1. Luxun Academy of Fine Arts http://www.lumei.edu.cn/ #
2. 凑合 http://art.redboxstudio.cn/en/2009/projects/2009/cou-huo/ #
3. 街拾 #
4. 南北朝 Northern and Southern dynasties (420AD-589AD) #
5. 杨述 http://www.99ys.com/zt/txjs/artist_ys.html #
6. 器空间 http://www.organhaus.org/ #
7. 掉队 #
8. The 5th Falling Behind Show: Chen Xinpeng, Dong Jing, Liang Shuo, Shao Kang, Wang Guangle, Zhang Zhaohong, Zhou Yi: http://www.artlinkart.com/en/exhibition/overview/4d7brtpj #
9. Shuangfei Collective 双飞小组: Li Ming, Sun Maoyuan, Huang Liya, Zhang Lehua, Lin Ke, Li Fuchun, Yang Junlin, Cui Shaohan, Wang Liang. 李明、李富春、杨俊岭、孙茂源、黄利芽、张乐华、林科、崔少瀚、王亮。 #

Last year there was a major effort to clean up Beijing’s image in time for the Olympics. This was very much for the benefit of the visitors coming to experience China and Beijing as host for the Games. But this time, we have what an internal affair, the 60th Anniversary of the founding of the Republic, and the collective effort has in many ways been refined and expanded from last year’s dry run.

Maybe because time is running out to complete building projects, at this point there is a noticeable concentration of effort going into the borders of the building sites, the edges between the sites and the public areas, in an effort to polish the surfaces of China’s ubiquitous piles of rubble. This concentration is at its height at building sites along the main roads and gets progressively diluted according to the hierarchy of streets, becoming less intense as you move from dajie, to xiaojie, to the alleys and hutongs.

The criteria for effort seems to be dependent on what is public and private space, and is consequently redefining what is public and private. “Public” and “private” seems to be defined by visibility – if you can see it from the road, it’s public, and these “public” areas are seen as part of the State’s responsibility for its image, and are taken under the State’s wing as places which are vulnerable to tidying up.

So new walls and surfaces are being built to hide the messy bits, which through the act of redefining of public and private, become private, invisible places, inside the public, visible boundaries.

walks without walls or works

works without walls or walks