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.

“According to Lacoste, the above green polo and several other items in the collection take ‘inspiration from optical art, recalling the work of Victor Vaserely or Daniel Buren with the coriander green ultra slim-fit polo with white striped concentric boxes radiating out around the crocodile logo or the navy blue crew-neck sweater with zig-zag white stripes. It’s New Wave, mathematical and very optical.’”

Daniel Buren as “optical art”? Genius. And they misspelt Vasarely.

Cover

Inside pages

Insert

Camila Sposati’s website

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。 #

Tempting, and in theory kind of a dream job, perhaps. But you know it’ll be hell on earth in that suit in Shanghai in the Summer.

(and just in case the post is snapped up before you get to it, here’s a link to the job description)

Module systems do not occur in China alone; comparable phenomena exist in other cultures. However, the Chinese started working with module systems early in their history and developed them to a remarkably advanced level. They used modules in their language, literature, philosophy, and social organizations, as well as in their arts. Indeed, the devising of module systems seems to conform to a distinctly Chinese pattern of thought.1

While I was in the UK I took the opportunity to pick up some new books, one of which is
Ten Thousand Things, by Lothar Ledderose. I hope to gain some insight into the art from this part of the world from this book, but the statement above troubles me. This setting up of “the Chinese” immediately enforces the relation of “otherness” between the author and the subject. Any utterance is liable to create this relationship, between author and subject, between knowledge and practice, between “now” and “then,” but it seems to me that in this case this relation is not a helpful one.

This book covers a spans thousands of years, a span which is itself intimately linked to Western history:

In roughly chronological sequence, the chapters cover a wide time span. The first case study deals with ritual bronze vessels of antiquity, particularly of the twelfth century B.C. Chapters 6 and 8, respectively, concern and encycolopedia of over one hundred million characters printed with movable type, and a series of bamboo paintings, both dating to the eighteenth century A.D.2

So who are these “Chinese” that the author sets up (or co-opts), that have maintained unique characteristics, deserving of a single name, over thousands of years? That’s many dynasties’ worth of people, with many groups coming and going in the history of the country, a country which has itself been geographically fluid.

Much of this relationship perhaps can be put down to the writer’s understanding of what is pragmatic in the face of his position: he reveals with these positioning statements that he writes for a Western audience.

I don’t deny that this categorisation can be useful and helpful, but what can we do when it becomes problematic? Is it a matter of explicitly positioning all our statements within their context (a potentially infinite task)? There can no absolute form to follow for this, no answer.

I’m perhaps making a small, pedantic point here, about a feature of the text that I have unnecessarily latched onto right at the start of reading this book. I know I will learn much about the objects it describes, I am just wary of how it will present the “whos” and the “whats” involved.

1. Ledderose, Lothar (2000). Introduction. In: Ten Thousand Things: module and mass production in Chinese art (The A.W. Mellon lectures in the fine arts, 1998). Princeton: Princeton University Press. p.2.
2. ibid., p.1.

This is the local area map that greets you should you exit the light-rail Batong line at its terminus, Tuqiao. This is the kind of impenetrable visual information that would have completely thrown me when I first came to China, something I would have generously ascribed to “cultural difference.” Now I know that it’s just a really bad map.

Last night in the aircraft hanger-like space of The Orange in Sanlitun, the NOTCH Festival of Nordic + Chinese culture held their Halloween Sleeping Concert. Described as having “hypnotic audio-visuals and specially designed air bed by Swedish architecture group Testbed,” it’s not often an event would promote dosing off as part of its raison d’etre. Fortunately falling asleep was impossible as the Orange has loose partitions at the end that provide little to no heat retention, and last night Beijing experienced the first snows of winter, so the cloakroom was probably deserted as people generally kept their coats on throughout the event.

The sleeping premise of the concert was already somehow self-defeating, and in the event the cold prevented the complete absorption into the mood of the evening. Nevertheless it had its moments, when a particularly focused set of sounds and visuals attracted your attention, holding you for a moment. A good night.

If we consider the works of Alois Riegl and of Heinrich Wölfflin … we see that, despite differences in detail, they are both informed by a polemical concern for the autonomy of art history, by a desire to break it free from the history of civilization and thus to break with the tradition associate with the name of Jacob Burckhardt. I will try briefly to summarize the forces behind this struggle and their consequences for the methodology of the subject.

…

3. The antithesis of form and matter thus finds its logical counterpart in the theory of an autonomous development of art, which views the entire process exclusively in terms of form, assuming the latter to be the constant factor at every stage of history, irrespective of differences both of technical production and of expression. This has both positive and negative consequences: it involves treating the various genres of art as parallel with each other—for, as far as the development of form is concerned, no one genre should be any less important than another; it also involves levelling out the differences between them—for no one genre can tell us anything that is not already contained in the others. In this way we attain, not a history of art, which traces the origin and fate of monuments as bearers of siginificant form, but, as in Riegl, a history of the autonomous formal impulse (Kunstwollen), which isolates the element of form from that of meaning, but nevertheless presents change in form in terms of a dialectical development in time—an exact counterpart of Wölfflin’s history of vision (Of course, this conceptual scheme is quite different from Wölfflin’s. There is no simple division of form and content, but a complex relationship of dynamic interaction between a conscious and autonomous ‘formal impulse’ and the ‘coefficients of friction’ of function, raw material, and technique.…)*

• Wind, Edgar (1930). ‘Warburg’s Concept of Kunstwissenschaft and its Meaning for Aesthetics’ from The Eloquence of Symbols: Studies in Hamisi Art (1983). Oxford: OUP.

It was a good night overall, I had a great time (even though I had to keep reminding myself that I was there to look after the space, and not to enjoy myself). Many people came and seemed to respond well to the performers. As you can see from the video above and the photographs there were some very good sounds and visuals. My thanks go to Jon for organising so much at such short notice, with the help of Matt and Lu, and all their friends who pitched in to help out. I think this shows that an exciting idea can get people energised, even on such a cold night.

Looking ahead, I hope there will more variety in the material in future events, last night was very focused on DJs and VJs. Films and short talks were promised, which would have given more of a conceptual structure to the proceedings and will help prevent it becoming just another club night.

I hope, too, that more women will present their work. Last night the performers were without exception all men – it seemed to be the cliché of boys with their toys (I don’t know maybe this is perhaps a feature of the scene rather than a bug, as they say to excuse some oddity in software). I can’t believe there are no women making material and this would make a valuable contribution to the event.

But this was the first version of the event, and was very much about investigating a format for the future, so I want to see how it develops. The original spec for the night I thought was very exciting and something which had the potential for development into something very strong – and this was one of the reasons why I agreed to go with it. I hope that more of what was originally announced becomes incorporated into future events, as they have the possibility to a) bring together some of the creative communities here in Beijing and China in general which hover round each other but which don’t really get to cross-fertilise so often, and b) make links out from the local to the international creative scenes which all have their representatives here in BJ.