I went to Beijing the first time in two years. I was invited to a press briefing (November 1-3) at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), a large-scale museum that opened on November 5 in the Dashanzi district’s "798 Art Factory". The museum run by the Swiss-based Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation is situated in a former factory building, and accommodates mainly the collection of Belgian entrepreneurs Guy & Myriam Ullens that comprises more than 1,500 items. It’s an enormously big space with ceilings 9.6 metres in height, built on an area that measures 8,000 square metres in total. Following a seated dinner with 700 guests on the first day, about 1,500 people were invited to a buffet party on the second. With the UCCA, Beijing (if not East Asia) got a truly outstading new landmark facility.
The opening exhibition is titled "'85 New Wave Movement: The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art" and runs through February 17. 1985 was a major turning point for Chinese contemporary art, as this was the year when the "'85 New Wave" art movement proposed and put in practice a break with traditional art and a plunge into modernism. The movement triggered the emergence of several avantgarde art groups, and a dramatic change of the situation. According to UCCA director Fei Dawei, 1989 was another great divide, with the "China Avant-Garde" exhibition held at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, and the "Magiciens de la terre" exhibition at Centre Pompidou, Paris. The latter featured such artists as Huang Yongping and Gu Dexin, who are also among the 30 artists who present a total of 137 works from the fields of painting, photography, video art and installation at the UCCA opening exhibition.
As you might know, Chinese contemporary art is currently experiencing a boom. At the end of 2006, Zhang Xiaogang’s paintings fetched 2.3 million dollars at Christies' Hong Kong, and roughly 2.1 million at Sotherby’s New York last March. Looking at those works Zhang made 20 years ago is extremely interesting, as they are very different in style yet not without similarities with his latest creations. Not only Zhang, but also such artists that are hot right now as Xu Bing and Wang Guangyi are represented with some early works. Zhang Peili’s "30 x 30" (1988) was in fact the first piece of video art in the history of Chinese art.
The time since the mid-90s was dominated by so-called "Political Pop" and "Cynical Realism". When talking about Chinese art, the first names that usually come to mind are Wang, Yue Minjun, and Fang Lijun, and what they created were exactly the artworks that sparked the boom. In this sense, I consider this time’s exhibition as an excellently educational attempt to hint at missing links. What’s missing is that certain something that reduced the distance between money and motivation in the 1980s and '90s. 1989 is when the Tiananmen Square incident occurred, and we have to keep in mind that, in the following years, Huang and many other artists, as well as critics and art historians such as Fei were forced to leave the country and live in exile.
During this time’s short stay in Beijing, I made two other catches apart from the UCCA show. The first was Qiu Anxiong’s solo show at "Universal Studio", an art space operated by curator/art critic Pi Li. While you might remember Qiu’s contribution to last year’s Shanghai Biennale, or the animated "New Book of Mountains and Seas" that was shown earlier this year at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, this time he presented an installation that approaches Chinese contemporary history head-on. News footage of the Sino-Japanese war, the Long Marches, Mao Tse-tung’s funeral, and others are projected onto the windows of a (real) railroad wagon inside a darkened exhibition hall. It’s a perfectly straighforward effort.
The other thing I caught was a talk event held after the UCCA reception party at fairly late hours. It was hosted by the internationally renowned curator and "ART iT" contributor Hans Ulrich Obrist, and curator/critic Hu Fang, who has been egnaging in various alternative art-related activities in Guangzhou and Beijing. Obrist is currently doing a series of "Interview Marathon" events together with architect Rem Koolhaas at London’s Serpentine Gallery (see also ART iT vol. 13), and this time’s talk show he introduced as a "mini marathon". A little tired after the reception and interviews, I was glad that it was only a mini version of the 24-hour marathon in London…
Participating were a total of 25, mainly young artists. Responding to Obrist’s request, each of them proposed a "keyword for Beijing in 2007": "femininity", "individual/collective experience", "desire and power in the art world", "Stop Curators!"… While some claimed that they didn't want to think about keywords because they are "boring, superficial things that keep one from digging deeper into the cerebration process", almost all participants agreed in the point that "the existing system has to be overcome."
Surprising was that celebrity collector Uli Sigg was among the participants. Some ten-odd years before Guy & Myriam Ullens, he had made a name for himself as a pioneering Chinese contemporary art collector, and his collection is said to be exceeding that of the Ullens Foundation in both quality and quantity. Sigg proposed the (rather long) keyword, "Impact of the neocolonialism’s openings and the Chinese art institutions' reaction". It is significant that he said this on the day of the opening of UCCA, and from his speech I got the impression of a person of character, just as you would expect it from a former ambassador.
Obrist closed with the statement, "There are a variety of opportunities in Beijing right now. What is needed is perhaps a new Black Mountain College." When I asked Hu after the meeting, he explained enthusiastically that a "contemporary '85 New Wave movement" was what he was aiming for. To sum it up, I witnessed a pompous opening with illustrious guests including among others the former French prime minister, and a talk event taking place at an apartment in a small housing complex. The existence of both and the gap between them is probably representative for the present state of Chinese art.
* See also www.art-it.jp for a UCCA report.
Ozaki Tetsuya / Editor in chief / REALTOKYO