Biennale features openness

SHANGHAI: The ongoing Shanghai Biennale 2000 is doubtless the most widely followed and hotly debated event in China's contemporary art world these days.

As the country's first major official modern art show since the 1990s, the Biennale, running from November 6 until January 6 at the Shanghai Art Museum, with some satellite shows around the city during the same period, presents almost a total picture of the contemporary Chinese art scene. Above all, it demonstrates the increasing cultural openness of modern China amid the age of globalization.

In this regard, it is a door-opener and "a milestone in Chinese modern art history," as Zhu Qingsheng, an art professor from Peking University, put it. "From now on, there is no need to fuss about the official status of modern art in China."

"The fact that such a show is put on in a State-owned art museum means that it is no longer a question of whether modern art is needed in China or not. Now the problem is how to create better works rather than how to make them legitimate," Zhu noted.

The cultural openness and eclecticism demonstrated in this year's Shanghai Biennale, the third in its history, are more apparent in this show than in the previous two Biennales, which actually did not live up to their billing as high-level international exhibitions of cutting-edge contemporary art.

The first Biennale was actually an oil-painting show and included only three overseas Chinese artists. The second was a little larger but mainly featured Chinese ink paintings, with the work of 15 overseas artists among them.

The current Shanghai Biennale, however, covers more than 300 works by 67 artists from 18 countries and regions, and includes such in vogue avant garde overseas artists as Cai Guoqiang and Mariko Mori. Almost half of the artists are from abroad.

What is more, art genres in this Biennale are no longer confined to traditional paintings and sculptures. Installations, videos, performances, conceptual photography and even architectural works have all made their debuts.

Noticeably, most exhibits in this year's Biennale are concerned seriously with the human condition or act as a medium for social criticism. Such works used to be unwelcome in official exhibitions with their focus on politics more than on individual expression.

A good example is Chinese artist Sui Jianguo's "Study on the Folding of Clothes," an amusing take-off of Michelangelo's sculpture "Bound Slaves." In Sui's works, the famous homoerotic icons have been dressed in old-fashioned suits that were predominant in the 1960s and 1970s in China.

The artist intends to criticize the invasive impact of Western culture on Chinese society through Western figures in Chinese dress and thus puts forward a serious question: While retaining our outward Chinese appearance, have we, in essence, allowed ourselves to be Westernized?

While Sui impresses viewers with his social comment, woman artist Chen Yanyin touches upon a milder but seemingly penetrating topic - the fragility of love - with a woman's sensitivity.

On a table covered with a white sheet Chen has placed 600 red roses, each of which is connected to a medical syringe with thin pipes. The labels on the bottles read "blissful memories."

"It is because of the memories that love remains fresh, but they are doomed to wither," according to Chen.

One of the most spectacular and unusual pieces is a humorous "work" by Cai Guoqiang, a New York-based Chinese artist who has recently become the centre of controversy over whether his award-winning work "Venice's Rent Collecting Courtyard" has infringed upon the copyright of a similar Chinese sculpture produced in the 1960s.

The new "work" involves dozens of traditional information boards placed outside the museum. These boards are covered with examples of the artist's previous works, and can be seen as a celebration of victory of individual creativity. To enter the museum, people have to pass Cai's exhibition. In this way, Cai has jocularly turned the Biennale into his own retrospective.

Many exhibiting artists feel annoyed at Cai's behaviour, but at the same time they have to admit it is a wonderful dig at the seriousness of a grand event like the Biennale.
Inside the museum Cai shows a video compilation of his performances, which involve the elaborate use of fireworks. But many viewers agree the work loses its glory compared with his outside work.

With all these Chinese artists starring in the Biennale, the foreign artists, who may not have contributed their best works (for financial or other reasons), seem more like a supplement.

What is remarkable is a large photograph by Japanese woman artist Mariko Mori entitled "The Beginning of the End," which observes the relations between human beings and nature, and expresses the desire for world peace.

In the picture, the artist herself lies in a glass jar in front of a pyramid, symbolizing the integrity and mother-and-child relationship between mankind and the globe on which they live.

Applauding its progress, many experts nonetheless say it will still take time for the Shanghai Biennale to come up to international standards, and the organizing work waits to be improved.

"Shanghai Spirit" was chosen by the organizers as the theme of the exhibition. Every piece on show was required to somehow represent Shanghai's "multiplicity, hybridity and pioneering spirit," said Hou Hanru, a Paris-based curator who is one of the major curators of the show and regarded as the driving force behind the event.

But few pieces are relevant to this "theme," according to Wang Qingsong, an artist who visited the show. "Few works are newly created especially for the Biennale under that theme. At this point, the exhibits are no more than a mixture of everything randomly put together," Wang complained.

Some experts said that the selection of Chinese artists in the Biennale at the Shanghai Art Museum is still conservative. The many smaller exhibitions which sprang up around the Biennale speak a clearer language and provide a much more lively picture of the contemporary art scene, they hold.

During the Biennale, at least four major satellite shows have taken place in Shanghai, exhibiting painting, multi-media, installations, performances, video, photography and architectural works. Mostly by emerging young artists, they make a "more avant-garde" gesture and their works are proving to be a great challenge to the Biennale.

"We did not choose those very avant-garde ones because the Chinese audiences may not understand them," said Fang Zengxian, head of the Shanghai Art Museum and artistic director of the Biennale.

But Fang's remarks seem to be self-contradictory considering the approval by viewers of the cutting-edge works in the Biennale and the off-Biennale shows.

Compared to world-famous international biennales such as those in Venice and Sao Paulo, the Shanghai event is certainly a baby.

Immature and problematic as it is, the Shanghai Biennale is nevertheless significant and commendable, thus definitely worth a visit.

Date: 11/30/2000
Author: ZHANG QIAN and YANG YINGSHI, China Daily staff
Copyright? by China Daily

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