The Return to the Real:
New Art and New Space at the end of 1990s

Last decay saw an intensive, remarkable, and rapid urbanization in China, such as the expanding cities, the heightening skyscrapers, the elongating highways, and the growing population flow from rural area to the cities. Accompanied by globalization, the accelerating process of modernization has complicated Chinese society. In terms of the development of new art, three characteristics are increasingly visible: the emergence of young generation artist, support from new patron, and the utilization of public spaces as alternative venues. Under these situations, many artists tend to finish their works in public sphere, and curators prefer to stage exhibitions in public spaces, rather than in museum, gallery, and cryptic basement. This endeavor hence has exposed new art to wider audience - in order to stir the social response and to challenge stagnate art establishment - suggesting the dynamic of the social alteration nowadays.

In the earlier 1990s, namely, after the Tananmen Incident, China’s official art museums closed its door toward new art, and the commercial galleries were then not available for experimental art. Young artists had usually to present work in their studio, basement, foreign embassy, and diplomatic apartment, so called “private space” and “underground exhibition,” only accessible to a small circle composed by the insiders, say, artist, critic, collector, and dealer. Some took advantage of the booming of the Avant-garde Chinese art in Western countries, frequently showing their works outside China. The so called “Political Pop” and “Cynicism Realism” were then the main genres, which was viewed by many as the icons of Chinese dissident art. Because its over-abuse of political symbols, which reminds one with social turbulence during the Cultural Revolution, the genres turned out to be nothing to do with the day-by-day transition of China’s reality. To some degree, these kinds of Avant-garde art survived only in a sort of virtual space manipulated by ideological tension and commercial demand.1 It’s absence in China’s social life made a sharp comparison with its international hectic presence.

In the mid-90s, with the development of the economy, the stringent ideological control was occasionally loosened. Some experimental art projects, combined with commercial promotion strategy, were realized. For example, Wang Jin’s Ice·Commercial War in Central China 96’ executed in December 1995, in Zhenzhou, Capital City of Henan province. The work was actually a meticulously conceived inaugural opening of a commercial plaza. An ice-wall with thousands of merchandise frozen inside invites people to freely smash the ice blocks and wall so as to obtain the goods. Appropriated with installation and performance art language, and with the enthusiastic involvement of the audience, this work thoroughly examined the prevalence of commercialism. The successful execution of this project and its sound social feedback demonstrated a new art trend and strategy taking was burgeoning. More and more artists left studio to practice media art, conceptual art, and performance in the public spaces, although some were ban by local police for radical behavior or political incorrectness - from the official angle. New art finally started to find its way to ground, returning to the real life.

Over the last two years, with the accelerating globalization and urbanization, Chinese collective awareness, structure, social norms, ideology, moral standards, family relationship, and city appearance have been undergoing tremendous transitions. Cities are expanding, four mage-cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, have determined to become China’s international metropolitans. Vast urban public and commercial spaces are quickly emerging, such as shopping mall, chain-shop, city park, square, plaza, entertainment center, and bar. This shinning and modern architectural environment calls for new art vision, fresh image, and creative art activities to match with it. Thus provides young artist with a more spacious venue to practice their art publicly. On the other hand, with progress of mass media and escalation of commercial competition, some smart entrepreneurs would like to support new experimental art project, which is viewed partly as a subtle strategy of publicity. In return, artist finds sponsorship. This is a reciprocal deal, because, from the standpoint of new art experiment, these alternative approach and its commercial disguise - not overt pure art exhibition - prevent it from being shut down by the government. The official art museums, controlled by propaganda system, have been adopting a ostrich policy toward the new art practice since the later 1980s, its door to new art remains closed except the seeming breakthrough exhibition, the 2000 Shanghai Biennial, staged in Shanghai Art Museum. This forces, in turn, young artists to adopt a “Fuck-off” attitude towards the stagnant and conservative official institutions, therefore seeking new possibilities of doing art in new public spaces. Another crucial reason for showing the new art at public space is that the young generation viewers are coming out of age. Educated with and influenced by the Western thought over the two decades, they are widely emerging in many fields; some have taken the leading role. They are open, trendy, pro-Western, and adventurous, enjoying a high standard material life and seeking a higher spiritual one. New art experiments are getting more feedback from this e-generation.

Wide social concerns is a prominent characteristic both for new art work and exhibition which pay more attention to daily life and the dramatic socioeconomic transformations, such as pollution, moving, laid off workers, population, environment, drug, sex, children, family, and home. Life fluctuation and hardship the artists and curators suffered enables them to explore the deeper social issues, which associate with the daily life of ordinary people. Many artists and curators diverted their focus from the bygone ideological conflict into the shifting reality, expressing their idea and desire through new art practice in public space. Installation, video, performance, photograph are the major presentation modes, because many artists believe that new media can make a better link between new art and nowadays Chinese life.

More stringent issue is how to bring new art experiment into the public sphere; many artists and curators share the common ground at this point. These concern includes the relationship between new art and its social condition at large, the role of new art in transitional reality and public life, and more specifically, how to realize an art project in a site-specific public venue through negotiations and compromise with private sponsors. Over the last two years, artists and curators have made a big effort to push the idea into practice, as Wu Hung observed:

It is true that some artists still favor “closed shows” as private communication among themselves; but the dominant choice in 1999 and 2000 has been ‘go to public.’ Advocates of this approach hope that by defining new channels to bring experimental art into the public sphere they can undermine the prohibitions imposed by the government upon this art. They further hope that these new channels will eventually constitute a social basis for legitimizing experimental art, so that this art also can contribute to China’s ongoing social transformation.

Luo Zhidan was a Chendu based artist (moved to Beijing one year’s ago). He finished a great deal of performances in Chendu’s street, plaza, and hotel, bar, and shopping mall. His repertoire covers intensive social concerns, even tensions, and periodically exposes in Chendu’s public space, drawing keen attentions from the mass media, which devoted large coverage to follow his performance, thus producing a strong impact upon the local community.

Standing straight in an organic glass box, he wears a white shirt with black tie, and mobile phone at his side, like a statue. A rubber conduit connects his mouth and the oxygen tank, keeping his breathing. This is his performance White Collar Specimen. Executed on the street of Chendu. He mimicries the appearance of a white collar, a special social class with high income usually hired by foreign companies, suggesting their isolation from the public and depression from the capitalist mechanism. Story of Puppies is a two-person performance. Accompanied by a Western woman Luo did this performance on a highways in outskirts of Chendu. Wearing only underwear, he and the white woman were swaggering down the road, each leashing a dog. He seems a burly upstart, impudent and arrogant. Using his passionate performance, Lou attempts to demonstrate the expanding desire of some Chinese new rich class and their shameless vulgarity, which one can easily encounter in China’s city and town. His timely works are more poignant criticism but constructive, rather cynical comment on many negative sides of Chinese society.

Weng Fen lives in Haikou, the capital city of Hainan province in the very south of China. He frequently completes interactive installation and performance at public venues. His works usually concern more about people’s practical wishes and reveal their innermost subtle thought. In February 2000, He executed an interactive installation/performance Wish of Becoming Bachelor. In front of the gate of Hainang University, He designed and installed a photographing scene of a one-child-and-one-couple family, each wearing a college graduate commencement gown with their facial parts remain empty. The artist invites this kind of family to stand behind the scene showing their faces at the scene’s facial parts, then taking photo for each. It is an illusionary satisfaction for each Chinese family’s craving for high education, and so as to get reward from a possible good job and higher position in the growing competitive society.

Taking place in a public park in May 2000, Tale of the Fairy is a contemporary integration and rehearsal of ancient literature story. With the collaboration of a naked female, Weng Fen staged an primeval love affair in the woods, hints the overflowed sexual game and trade of some new-rich people, and their relaxation in the wildness during short vacation, encouraged by government rhetoric “Holiday Economy.”

After more than six -year nocturnal activities, - spraying graffiti on Beijing’s lane, street, and avenue - Zhang Dali finally has acquired public and artistic recognition, stirring a wide debate on the mass media regarding what is art, what is the new art matching with the ongoing urbanization. His personal mark, a highly simplified man’s profile, at first appeared in Beijing’s wall, street, overpass, was termed by himself as Dialogue Series; later, same image emerged on the ruins of demolished old courtyard, which is in sharp comparison with the shining new buildings nearby. He calls these works Demolition Series. His work becomes the links between the disappearance of old and formation of the new, presenting a mutability and hybrid nature of the new city environment and, suggesting a passionate inquiry into the hectic utilitarian urbanization. Millions citizen become his viewer on hundreds public sites.

Zhao Bandi, a Beijing based artist, developed his unique art methodology from his obsession with miscellaneous advertisement billboard and poster. In summer 1999, after negotiations with Beijing Subway Ad. Company and Kodak Company, his computer-based conceptual photographs entitled Zhao Bandi and His Panda Baby, in the face of “Public Welfare” poster, appeared in the Beijing’s subway coaches and stations. This brought his serious art experiment into public sight. Moreover, he has persuaded the CCTV authorities to broadcast his “Public Welfare” TV programs at suppertime. Last summer his works appeared on the streets of Shanghai. This means that Zhao has extended his art into the public and commercial realm by means of utilization of mass media. His work concerns about the social issues, which newly appears with the socioeconomic transition, such as drug, Aids, unemployment, pollution, environment protection, and public health.
Inspired by the remarkable social context, independent curators have staged many exhibitions in public spaces rather than museum or gallery, in order to probe multiple alternatives for penetrating new art into the society. Influential shows include Art for Sale, Food as Art, and Jia? Contemporary Art proposal.

“Big for Sale” was an omnipresent catchphrase appears in advertisement over last five years in China, and one can notice it in many stores and shops. Chinese people are immersing in the opulence of merchandise; in the global market cheap is the most peculiar feat of product made in China. How does Chinese artist consider about this? Art for Sale, the title of a large group show presented in the huge Shanghai Plaza on Huaihai Road, the most popular and prosperous commercial avenue in Shanghai, was opened on April 10, 1999. Co-curated by participating artists Yang Zhenzhong, Xu Zhen, and Fei Pingguo (The Chinese name of Shanghai based Germany artist Alexander Brandt), the show features thirty-nine works by 33 artists, including installation, video, performance, painting, and video installation. At the entrance (also the exit) of exhibition hall, a mini-supermarket was in operation, only selling miniature works produced by the participating artists. Visitors thus were encouraged to shopping there. The inter-displacement of gallery and with shopping center, the mixture of visitor and consumer adds the project an impressive characteristic. The catalogue was designed to looks like a shopping guidebook, thus intentionally blurring difference between exhibition and shopping, art works and merchandise.

Art for Sale is not only a change of presentation fashion, but also more about a veer of orientation. Its result depends on whether the sense of alienation produced by the word “art” can be eliminated.
The show caused a severe criticism from the mass media for some outrageous and appalling works, such as the abuse of hair-razored piglets. Surprisingly, the criticism motivated more zealous viewers to come. Four days later, it was shut down by local authorities. But it is a breakthrough for new art to confront public, and the first successful collaboration between new art and commercial marketing program. The success of the project rested in part on the unprecedented fundraising project. Sponsors include Bertelsmann Book Club, Consulate General of Germany, Parsons Music Limited, and Shanghai Square Shopping Center.

Food as Art is a one-night project at Beijing’s then biggest bar Club Vogue, organized by Zhang Zhaohui. It converged eight artists and present seven works, including five installations, one performance and one dance, which all concern about food, eat and dinner. Since occurred on February 17, 2000, during which is the Spring Festival and millennium celebration season, it turned out to be a big carnival-like party. Good at cooking and strong penchant to eat are important aspects of Chinese character. The worldwide popularity of Chinese cruzine throughout the world over the two decades could, arguably, be considered as China’s contribution to the globalization.

Therefore Chinese food both associates with their daily life and spirit. The choice of the venue - Club Vogue - is also an exploration of art space in an entertainment locus. The venue itself drawn the elite of Beijing’s entertainment and fashion community for its very cool style, therefore the show’s impact upon the society will be spread through the participant’ communication with others.

The transliteration of Chinese word Jia means home, family, household, and apartment, not only refers to a shelter for protecting human body, but also a visceral link between close person, a nest for spirit and feelings. Chinese has long renowned for retaining traditional family value. Happy family life is one of the most common and sincere wishes. Furthermore, traditional ideology sees family as fundamental for the society and cultivation. Nevertheless, recent social transition has brought out of a different story. More and more psychological complex has been involved in Chinese Jia. On April 10, 2000, a large group exhibition entitled Jia? Contemporary Art Proposal was unveiled in Shanghai’s spacious Star-Moon Home Furnishing Center. Co-organized by independent curator Wu Meichun and participant artist Qiu Zhijie, the project assembled more than 60 works by artists from domestic and overseas, occupying a 20,000 square meter vast space. The exhibition featured works concerned with how new home, new family, new furniture, new car, which are the root of rebuilding the collective awareness and personal identity, as well as new relationships between each individual, and family members. By staging an large group show, according curator Wu Meichun, she hope to encourage artists to divert their attention to social concerns and daily experience, and at the same time, to introduce new art experiments into the public sphere.

In short, by turn of the century, Chinese new art is gradually emerging in China’s new horizon, finding its way to reality, and to the New World.