New underground art show on the fourth ring road

Encouraged by the increasing international visibility of new Chinese art, young artists, most of them born in the 1970s, have been presenting their works in alternative spaces around Beijing. This winter has witnessed many new art shows that were put on without patronage. One group show called Post - sense Sensibility Alien Bodies and Delusion opened to the public on Sunday, January 9th.

Housed in the labyrinthine basement of a big residential compound on the Northeast Fourth Ring Road, this large joint exhibition featured about 30 installation and video works by 25 artists. Walking down the slope towards the entrance. a strong smell of youtiao (a common Beijing breakfast) stirred up my curiosity.

Wang Wei's work 1/30 Seconds Underwater confronted the viewer at the entrance. It was at triptych of photographs installed in light boxes on the ground. As it was installed in a hallway, it invited the viewer to walk on it while examining the photographs, which document three moments of a submerged young man struggling to survive underwater.

In opposition to Wang's installation, Weng Fen's dark canopylike video installation forced one to look upward to the ceiling. The canopy was a rippled, translucent plastic case inside of which a video work was projected onto the round plastic screen on top. The video was of a girl waving her butterfly wings ceaselessly, while the perspective and background shifted between azure sky, blue ocean, and cityscape. The ripples an the translucency of the plastic screen made the image fuzzy, making the video more dreamlike, idyllic and ethereal. The celestial atmosphere was increased by the accompanying Buddhist music.

Wu Ershan's installation Red Man Green Woman was a group of human bodies made up of raw fruits and vegetables who are making love. Their genders remain unclear, so it is not about homosexuality or heterosexuality, but about sexuality. Within the sculpture of cabbages, potatoes, ginger, garlic, apples, bananas, strawberries and other fruits, pigeons, rabbits and ducks roosted. From the vantage point of contemporary China, Wu's piece was phenomenal because it was rooted in the earthy world of transitional China. The mound of abundant agricultural products symbolized the rejuvenation of traditional agricultural civilization and the nouveau riche's tawdry taste, while the sexual activity demonstrates expanded lust and the changing public attitude towards sex. The title is a Chinese idiom that describes dandyish men and women with intensifying desires.

Shi Qing presented a series of computerized images, entitled 1999. It was a cross-shaped juxtaposition of nine pictures. each showing a fully opened palm. Scrutiny of the palms reveals that each palm is like a person's face featuring the particular records of his or her experience. This presented a spiritually ambiguous but visually fresh vision, which I see as a return to beauty in the midst of technology-oriented China.

Wandering through the rooms. I finally figured out that the suffocating smell was from Zhen Guogu's performance piece. He hired two pretty southern Chinese women to work with him. Disguised as extraterrestrials, they were frying tank-shaped cakes in two oil pans, disseminating an owverwhelming odor that subversively penetrated each corner of the entire basement. The finished fried cakes were lined up on a long platform covered with a white tablecloth. The tanks were burned brown and black and leaked oil onto the tablecloth, presenting a science fictional tableau that reminded one of a nuclear war battlefield. Although the threat of such a catastrophe was been dispersed, other kinds of war over culture, economics and politics are still underway. Zhen is based in Yangjiang, a small city in Guangdong. and has quickly emerged in the Chinese art community.Other interesting installations included Feng Oianyu's photographs documenting a girl's private life, Feng Xiaoyang's video installation In the Experience. which turned a urinal into a goldfish bowl, Qin Ga's World Awakening/Fountain Spraying, presenting an ejaculating horse lying on a bed, Chen Wenpo's painting Testing Series, and Chen Lingyan's installation Bee Honey.

Cutator Wu Meichun told me that she would like to showcase a "post-sensibility"which is attuned to the issues that artists of my generation are concerned about, showing particular attention to the physical body. As Qiu Zhujie writes in the catalog. "Post-sensibility is the doubt of the relationship of you and your parents when you looking at them. Post-sensibility is something that you do not want to admit and cannot name, and something will grow up from your heart without interdict."

dd