With a degree in Fine Art the world’s my oyster!!
[English text below]
李蔼德
作为文章的前言，我想说明一下，虽然我在中国当代艺术界积累了一些经验，但为这次展览做的前期准备是我第一次与中国学院系统进行的持续接触。这篇文章则是我对这一体验的初步回应。
今年新视觉展的参展作品选自中国八大美院绘画系的学士、硕士生毕业展。毋庸置疑，我对这些作品充满期待，毕竟它们的作者理论上将构成中国艺术界的未来。可惜的是，满足这一期待的作品虽未匿迹（其中一些将出现在新视觉展上），却也寥寥无几。宏观看来，各大毕业展中的作品在艺术实践上都稍显保守，我猜测这种保守主义与推进学生艺术创作的美术院校不无关系。其中，具有批判性的艺术实践是最为关键的缺失，在我看来这却正是艺术院校应当展示出的成果。
Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China
13 September – 8 December, 2013
Art’s relationship with branding sees a new incarnation with the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award, produced in collaboration with the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai and in this first instance addressing itself to artists from what is termed the “Greater China” region.
The Hugo Boss Asia Art Award creates a new geographical focus for the fashion brand, running in parallel with the original “Hugo Boss Prize” which began in 1996. The seven short-listed artists for this award have already developed strong bodies of work, and one of the strengths of this show is that many of the artists’ presentations are retrospective in nature. Hsu Chia Wei from Taipei, Kwan Sheung Chi from Hong Kong, Li Liao from Shenzhen, and Hu Xiangqian and Li Wei from Beijing all present a selection of work from across their careers. On the other hand, rather than presenting older extant examples of their work in this context, Lee Kit from Hong Kong and BIRDHEAD from Shanghai, have created large-scale installations that build on previous works.
Under the all-embracing title of A Potent Force, curator Karen Smith presented the work of the Chinese artists Duan Jianyu and Hu Xiaoyuan at Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum. Each artist was accorded two floors in which they were represented by a broad selection of works produced mainly since 2008. The umbrella title led one to perhaps expect some explicit connections between the two artists, but, for me, it was their differing backgrounds, styles, and sensibilities that came to be highlighted by their close proximity.
Taking the title as an indicator of her vision, Smith suggested that the phrase “A Potent Force” was designed “to intone the lyrical, introspective, and sentient intellectual process that characterizes these two subtle plays with painting (Duan Jianyu) and conceptual video and installation (Hu Xiaoyuan).”1 Smith proposed that this “force” “references the nature of both artists’ analysis of the world as they experience it.”2 The title, then, acted to express a general quality that resonated between the two artists’ work rather than a specific stylistic, formal, or conceptual attribute.
Smith describes A Potent Force as expressing “the force of socio-cultural shift in the margin of age that separates these two artists, which is underscored by the atmosphere in which they passed their formative years.”3 The “margin” she refers to here is the cusp between the differing experiences that mark the two artists’ generations – Duan Jianyu having been born in 1970 and Hu Xiaoyuan in 1977. As with many aspects of society in China’s recent history, such an apparently short period of time can represent the advent of massive social changes.
In the catalogue for the exhibition, Smith introduces Duan Jianyu and Hu Xiaoyuan’s background and practices before approaching the artists individually, and she acknowledges their differences by characterizing them as “two strongly individual artists”4 and (regarding their productions) as displaying “unrelated approaches to expression: two distinct languages.”5 Smith characterizes Hu Xiaoyuan as “belonging to a generation that is past cynicism, and no longer cares so earnestly,”6 pitting these characteristics against those of Duan Jianyu’s – that Duan Jianyu’s generation remains cynical and (yet) still cares “earnestly.”
Smith seems to be arguing that the connection between Duan Jianyu and Hu Xiaoyuan is related to the concurrence of the periods in which they grew up and developed their practices. The respective eras in which the two artists were born, Smith proposes, mark two sides of a dividing line between one generation and the next. It appears that Smith aims to cast this generational “margin” as a focus of the exhibition, located in between these two artists’ productions.
[To read the full article, please pick up a copy of the Journal or visit the Yishu website]
Guangdong Times Museum, Times Rose Garden, Huang Bian Bei Lu, Bai Yun Da Dao, Guangzhou, China
29 July – 11 August, 2013
As the various flavours of institutional critique have now become “institutionalised” as part of the practice of contemporary artists, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back curated by Biljana Ciric at the Guangdong Times Museum in Guangzhou aims to reassess the origins, methodologies and effects of this practice.
It can be said that One Step Forward… builds on the work of the curatorial team within the Times Museum (and those of its invited curators) since its formal opening in 2009. They have approached their practice with a self-awareness that has consistently led to exhibitions, symposia, and publications that have productively investigated the ideas and roles of the institution as a structural body within the art system – in a way performing their own institutional critique through their daily work.
This exhibition deliberately moves the focus away from a canon of western artists associated with the development of institutional critique, onto artists and groups from other parts of the world who develop out of it and/or trace parallel trajectories to it.
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