New Chinese Art Shocks New York:
Where Heaven and Earth Meet

New Chinese new art has become quite popular since the 1990s and is about to gain more attention in the global art community. World-renowned overseas Chinese artists like Xu Bing, Cai Guoqiang, Huang Yonglu, Xue Zhen and Gu Wenda, and domestic artists like Wang Jin, Fang Lijun, Feng Mengbo and Gu Dexin, have all obtained many opportunities to present their talents outside of China. Based on the Western operational system, however, most of their exhibitions were produced by Western curators and for the Western audience. Their works were shown only as a footnote to the Western rhetoric of, say, cultural pluralism, or as the side chapel of the western center, or according to the projected psychologicalimage of the Western audience. There were no exhibitions of new Chinese art designed by. Chinese curators from new perspectives with new identifications. Let alone those challenging the supremacy of western civilization and its art Institution. On the highly institutionalized and politicized modern art stage, where art curators are playing an increasingly important role, the passive position of new Chinese art is not compatible with the country's significant power status nor it is good for its own healthy development. With questions about how to judge the modern Western art system on today's international art stage from a Chinese aesthetic point of view and how to encourage the excellent Chinese artists to challenge western civilization supremacy, I went to the Center for Curatorial Studies of Bard College in New York to discuss these issues with curators from all over the world.

After two years of observation and study in New York, I found that New York became the center of modern western arts not only because of the numerous galleries, art museums and collectors, but more importantly, because there it developed a set of rigorous and complete art operational systems, and systems of socialized art production and transmission which were based on the museums and galleries and centered on the curators. Supported by strong funding, its art is promoted to the whole world. Take the ambitious Guggenheim Museum, whose branches have been built in Germany, Italy and Spain. The Museum is also in contact with interested parties in Korea, Japan and China to build new branches.

The Dia Center of the Arts holds exhibitions of European and American artists all year round but refused to accept artists from other parts of the world. This may be called the obstinate stronghold of European-American Centralism in the art circle. The exhibitions managed and administrated by the center include the New York Earth Room of Walter De Maria created in 1977. It is in a 300 sq.meter gallery in Soho, Manhattan. The 2-feet deep pit of earth weighs 127 tons and has been shown there for more than 20 years, becoming a place of pilgrimage for artists and art-lovers. Backed by abundant funding, legends of art have been created both now and then by New York art curators and museums have been transmitted to other parts of the world, making New York the Mega of the arts.

Being a Chinese curator with strong cultural identity, whilst also a beneficiary of American training, I am always troubled and torn between these. On the one hand, I admire the developed American art institution and the public's enthusiasim for the arts there. On the other hand, I dislike the Americans' overwhelming cultural supremacy and self-centralism. I am constantly excited by the openings of new Chinese art exhibitions in New York, but always disappointed with the western pandering of these Chinese artists and even of the exhibitions of Chinese antiques. Here, new Chinese new arts are only appendages, foils, or followers .

Therefore, I started my exhibition design from the point of the Chinese cultural spirit, to stretch my boundaries and to build a new Chinese identity in the modern art society. I wanted the artists to present their artistic metamorphosis from East to West in their works, to challenge Western art supremacy and its system, and to conduct an equal dialogue with Western arts. Based on this premise, I chose to curate an exhibition of works of Xu Bing and Cai Guoqiang, the most influential artists in the international art circle, and to name the exhibition 'Between Heaven and Earth'
I had been interested in Xu Bing's art development ever since he exhibited his landmark work 'The Book from Sky' at the China Art Gallery in 1988. He created 'The Culture Animal', 'The New Introduction of English Calligraphy' and 'The Series of Silkworm' after his arrival in the United States, by which he interrogated and made clear allusion to the language-centered Western cultural supremacy by the means of decomposition and subversion. In the exhibition I curated, Xu was to finish his latest work from the Silkworm Series,entitled Flowers, which was the logical extension of his silkworm series started in 1994. This piece of work was a new challenge for Xu, for he had not experimented in an exhibition before. In one sense, this was a biological experiment being conducted in the art gallery.

What follows is the evolution of the Silkworm Series - Flowers: One hour before the opening ceremony, an exhibition platform covered with white silk was put at the entry hall of the gallery. A Chinese cyan vase made in China containing mulberry branches was placed on the platform. About 30 minutes before the exhibition started, 400 matured silkworms which had been starved for a whole night, were put on the branches. Thus when the audience walked into the exhibition hall,
they saw hundreds of silkworms eating like horses. The white silkworms were scattered among the green leaves like flowers, which the audience feasted their eyes upon. As time passed, leaves were disappearing while broken laminae and worm feces fell onto the white cloth underneath. Three hours later, all the leaves had been eaten up and only the bald branches with the silkworms on them were left. Many silkworms then began spinning. During the last two weeks of the exhibition, silkworms span on the branches day after day. In the end, all of the branches were wrapped in golden and white silk and pods, with all of silkworms in the pods. That was the finished work
Cai GuoQiang's work "The New York Earthworm Room" was a dialogue with Walter De Maria's "The New York Earth Room". Cai produced a "New York Earth Room" which was quite similar to the original. Just before the exhibition was open, he put about a thousand earthworms into the earth room, which made it a New York Earthworm Room. With the earthworms wriggling in it, the earth, which had been hardened for 20 years, was revived. A video camera recorded the lively view of the worms living in the earth through the glass and projected it onto a huge screen in the next exhibition hall. Filtered with the modern technology, the little earthworms became great dragons awakening from hibernation. Cai oppugned the western art system of propping up and fortifying its masters by the means of decomposition. This work can be regarded as an example of the dramatic behavior of Chinese artists who intervene inthe international art and as a reflection of Cai's own thoughts on the inter-mingling of various cultures after the years of his overseas art career as well.

In traditional Chinese culture, the silkworm is called " the worm of heaven" while the earthworm is"the worm of the earth". That is also where the name of the exhibition comes from. Between heaven and earth, with clouds and water, it is unpredictable and pure and full of the mysterious oriental color. I am longing for this kind of a new cultural pattern, interweaving the east and the west. I admire the alluring sight over the horizon…

This exhibition brought forward the new angle of modern Chinese artists in observing to the world. Professor Ellen Johnston Liang, an expert of Chinese arts who used to work in the University of Michigan, took a special trip from Washington to New York to see the exhibition. The e-mail she sent me read, "I've been thinking about your exhibition for days. I think it's a brand new thing derived from the traditional Chinese wisdom."

The New York Times art critic Micheal Benson told me sincerely at my commencement, " I felt the challenge from this exhibition, in one sense. But I really like the easy and humorous way you approach it."In this time of information when Eastern and Western cultures affect and inter-penetrate with one another, the issue of Chinese art seems to be an enormous magnetic field set against the social background of the reorganization of various cultures. During the process of clashes and compromises, Chinese wisdom and creativeness hold profound potential. And the more important thing is that we should release the energy and stand at the forefront of the international cultural stage. World history is moving towards a new summit and China has regained a historic opportunity after a century of efforts. All this has made it possible to present the Chinese maestros on the world stage.

Modern Western arts have evolved to be an intellectual game under a rigorous system. People scrupulously abide by the game's rules of operation and theory. Between artists, artists and curators, artists and critics, they set difficult tasks for each other, challenge each other and devise new tricks. In such an environment (and ever since the time of Duchamp), the question "What is art?" itself is not important. The more important thing is whether the art works can make people re-define art. Actually, there is no hidebound definition of art. Art is only "Art", a written word from the perspective of semeiology. Art is only energy under the name of art, liberated by the wisdom, creativity and tensility of the artist in a certain social environment. The important thing is not how and what the artists do, but the direct presentation of the artists' creative wisdom and personality.

In some sense, the three tailors in Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes" are the most excellent artists, who become the prototypes formany new stories in the western art circle. And the only difference is that there is no one assuming like the child's voice and declaring "the Emperor has nothing on!"