ArtSlant: Strength in Numbers?

SEE/SAW: Collective Practice in China Now (curated by Paula Tsai)

UCCA, 798 Art District, No.4 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China 100015

20 November – 30 December, 2012

SEE/SAW is billed as the prelude to the show ON/OFF, which will open at UCCA in January 2013. ON/OFF promises to be a rather exciting group show of young Chinese artists over the whole of UCCA’s spaces. SEE/SAW though occupies just a small part of this institution’s gallery spaces, to address the phenomena of artist groups recently in China. While groupings of artists have always existed, not least in China, this way of working has become a very visible feature of artists’ practice here over the past few years, seeming to gain ground in terms of their sheer number, as well as their increasing appearance in galleries. While some of the groupings might be problematic in terms of their reasons for existing, this has become a valuable and powerful method by which artists assert their solidarity and power within the art world here.

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ArtSlant: Death for Show

Good Luck: Guest solo show

Hemuse Gallery, 3-038, North Area, Pinggod Shequ, 32 Baiziwan Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100022

17 July – 4 August, 2012

In some ways there’s really not a lot to say about this show. The elements of the show are seemingly simple, based around a short video loop showing a woman in a hospital bed speaking the words “Good Luck” and the execution of the show is kept restrained with just some medical notes, a contract and a wall text.

The woman in the bed is in fact dying. For the exhibition the artists paid this woman’s family 2000RMB (US$314) to purchase her announcement of the phrase “Good Luck” (or, more literally, “wish you success”). The handwritten contract is a record of this transaction, the woman’s case history notes in metal hospital clipboards record her own state of health, and the wall text provides the context: “On July 5th, 2012, members of guest paid Sheng Mingfeng, a patient on her deathbed at a hospital in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, to say the phrase ‘Good Luck.’”

As with the best conceptual work, where this show becomes effective is in the ramifications of this act by the artists. The effects of this presentation—while uncomfortable—deserve attention, in that we, the audience should be aware of our own assumptions with the subject matter. Good Luck also deserves attention because this piece threatens to slip into a particular way of thinking by artists in general, an aloofness from the sources and consequences of their work that can be problematic at best, and sociopathic at worst.

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