Organized by Hou Hanru

9th September, 2010 — Shanghai Exhibition Centre, Shanghai

Contemporary art museums from around the world shall participate in a conference on the issues surrounding institutional collections of Asian contemporary art this September at ShContemporary 2010. Titled Collecting Asian Contemporary Art: What, When and How? the conference is being organized by Hou Hanru, the Chinese born curator and critic currently based inSan Francisco and Paris. Hou is Director of Exhibitions and Public Program, and Chair of Exhibition and Museum Studies at the San Francisco Art Institute. His latest curated projects include the 10th Biennale de Lyon and the 10th Istanbul Biennial.

Hou speaks to us on the ideas behind this conference and the important questions to be discussed:

“For the last two decades, contemporary art has become not only a global activity but has also significantly changed the cultural landscape and ways of living around the world. The contemporary art scene inAsia, thanks to its exceptionally rapid development and energetic creativity, has been largely considered as a new centre of the global art scene. Numerous cities across the region are holding major art events such as biennials and art fairs while hundreds of new museums, galleries and art foundations are being founded or are under construction. Along with its booming economy, the art market inAsiais a new Eldorado for the global art economy while some of its star artists are setting records for their high prices. Over the last ten years, we have seen the arrival of a newgeneration of private collectorsfocusing on Asian art in the various countries both inside and outside the Asian continent.

Ironically however, so far very few public museums have been able to build their Asian contemporary art collections in a systematic manner. Most of the museums are still in their earlier stages and lack both financial means and expertise to compete with the private sector although they have been making considerable efforts in organising punctual or regular events to make contemporary creations visible. In the meantime, the existing private collections are intermingled with highly uneven elements in terms of quality and professionalism. Indeed, collecting activities involve a large portion of speculation. The rationale, motivation and function of art collecting are becoming increasingly ambiguous, ambivalent and confusing. This has caused some major debates on the actual significance of contemporary art itself in both social and cultural contexts.

Obviously, the urgent question now is what and how to collect Asian contemporary art. This is a serious challenge that the whole art world faces and requires an answer for. This is particularly crucial for public institutions – including museums and art foundations.

For the last two years, economic crisis has affected the art market but interestingly, has not simply killed the market. Instead, it has brought some correcting effects on the speculative growth and installed a kind of warning device. In a way, this helps to build up a platform for reasonable and rational discussions and debates on the notions of the value of art, cultural memory, heritage and social change.

In this light, we are organizing a conference on the issue of collecting Asian contemporary artat the upcoming ShContemporary fair inShanghai– a seemingly contradictory but effective context for this kind of debate. Somehow, the pragmatic coexistence and interaction between the intellectual and commercial worlds can produce unexpectedly productive and interesting solutions.

With museum professionals and curatorial experts from both the East and the West, we will bring up provocative thoughts and proposals to deal with a wide range of questions, including the following:

What is a public institution today, in the age of commoditisation of art?

What is the special way to define the public and private in the context of the globalisingAsia?

How to collect, conserve and present contemporary art when it’s becoming increasingly diversified in terms of media, languages and materiality?

How do specific visions and strategies for collecting affect the missions of different museums, especially in the context of Asian contemporary art?

How can collecting contemporary art affect public policy when increasing attention is paid to the production of culture and art by public authorities?

What is the best economic model for collection of Asian contemporary art?

Why collect Asian contemporary art, in the end? And what would be an ideal museum for it?”

Established in 2007, ShContemporaryhas become an essential art fair in Asia. Its leading position inChina, focus on experimental ideas, and commitment to developing new collectors in the region, has made it an art fair with a clear vision for the future of the Asian market. The fourth edition will be held from 9th to 12th Septemberat the Shanghai Exhibition Centre. Preview and Vernissage on September 8th. For more information please visit: www.shcontemporary.info.

By Michelle McCoy for the Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, December 2007

Yang Fudong, Honey, 2003, video

Introduction

Located in the hills of La Jolla, a seaside resort community near San Diego, California, the residence of Chris and Eloisa Haudenschild is home to a major U.S. collection of contemporary Chinese video art and photography. It includes the work of roughly twenty-eight Chinese artists, including, significantly, Song Tao’s Life is Wonderful (2003), a large floor-top photo installation; Honey 2 (2003), a video by Hugo Boss Prize-nominated Yang Fudong; and Xu Zhen’s 1999 photomontage Sewer. In addition, the Haudenschild collection includes roughly one hundred and twenty holdings by ninety artists from the Americas, Europe, and other parts of Asia. Notable pieces include a triptych from Francis Alÿs’s series of paintings titled The Liar (ca. 1995), a photograph of Kristof Wodiczko’s Tijuana Projection (2002), and a painting from Komar & Melamid’s Most Wanted series dated at 2000 by the collector.(1)

The Haudenschilds began collecting contemporary Chinese video and photography in the late 1990s, when these mediums were beginning to become as widely used and important as they are today, and just before the beginning of the market’s current boom. Since then, prices for paintings by a few Chinese artists have topped two million dollars,(2) and domestic collectors have entered the market in a significant way.(3) In November 2006, for instance, a Chinese collector purchased a Liu Xiaodong painting at a Beijing auction for $2.7 million, the highest price paid at auction for a painting by a Chinese artist who began working after 1979. (4)

The current overall global art market also finds that contemporary art has, for the first time, “truly begun to rival the historically dominant Impressionism and Modern categories” at auction.(5) Evidence to the overall market’s growth, The Financial Times has recently been publishing how-to articles about art collecting in general and at least one art hedge fund has been established. Situated within this historic global market growth, expansion into China and other regions is seen as having contributed significantly overall. In addition to the work having dramatically appreciated, China has a new class of art collectors, with new levels of wealth among them. In fact, expansion into China and other “new” regions is often used in the case against the market’s potential crash.

Xu Zhen, Sewer, 1998, photograph

Within this, the private collector maintains a unique position. On the one hand, as Britta Erickson writes, “Private collections are well suited to capturing the life of a vibrant art movement, driven as they are by passion, unencumbered by institutional impedimenta.”(6) Not necessarily affixed to any institution or gallery, today’s private collector has the flexibility to build a historically complete collection, so long as he or she has the means and access to do so. On the other hand, private collectors are not under any obligation to remain loyal to any particular mission. As Lu Jie, founder and director of the Long March Project, said, “ . . . we’ve observed that many [collectors] started out building a big collection and ended up selling the artwork in auctions . . . . It really takes time to get to know what the real agenda is that a collector has.” (7) However, there are standards and traditions by which collectors are judged, which the late Jonathan Napack, former Asia adviser to Art Basel describes: to be considered a “collector,” one must have a certain amount of commitment and knowledge.(8)

Chris and Eloisa Haudenschild’s level of commitment and knowledge is evidenced by the way they support contemporary art beyond collecting. The Haudenschild Foundation supports exhibitions and sponsors artists’ and scholars’ projects and programs such as symposia and residencies at the haudenschildGarage. Perhaps their most ambitious project yet was an exhibition entitled Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection, which took place from 2003 to 2005 and traveled to venues in San Diego, Shanghai, Tijuana, Singapore, and Beijing.

Cao Fei’s and Pi Li’s presentation at the Political Equator Garage Talk at the haudenschildGarage, June 2006

In her catalogue essay for this exhibition, Erickson addresses the collection’s strengths: “Representing a personal vision, it has not been expected to present a complete or historic view of the field. Nevertheless, it has captured a major slice of Chinese photography and video, representative of a signal moment”(9) in the field’s entrance onto the global stage. Scholar Martina Köppel-Yang recognized it as the first collection of its kind, (10) and Tina Yapelli, Director of the University Gallery at San Diego State University and the exhibition’s organizer, lauded it as “the most important collection of contemporary Chinese video and photography in the world.” (11) Lorenz Helbling, the Haudenschilds’ longstanding dealer, writes, “The collection is a very ‘open’ collection . . .. It doesn’t aim to fix images people should have of China, or to transmit stereotypes of China. It’s not about ‘signature works’ or ‘trophy pieces’—it’s more about a spirit, about involvement.” The Haudenschilds, he writes, are “great collectors.”(12)

The Collection

To date, in addition to work by Yang Fudong, Song Tao, and Xu Zhen, the Haudenschild collection consists of works by Cao Fei, Chen Shaoxiong, Feng Mengbo, Geng Jianyi, Gu Dexin, Hai Bo, Hong Hao, Hu Jieming, Kan Xuan, Liu Wei, Lu Chunsheng, Shi Yong, Tang Maohong, Wang Jin, Wang Youshen, Weng Fen, Xiang Liqing, Yang Yong, Yang Zhenzhong, Yu Youhan, Zhao Bandi, Zhao Nengzhi, Zheng Guogu, Zhou Tiehai, and Zhu Jia. All of the works in the collection are photography, video/animation or computer graphics, or photo-based installations, except for two oil paintings and one print. The photographs are from editions of one hundred or smaller, with the majority of them from editions of ten or fewer. All of the videos are from editions of fewer than ten. (13)

Yang Zhenzhong, 922 Rice Corns, 2000, video

Of these seventy individual works produced by twenty-eight artists, two of the works were produced by women artists: Cao Fei and Kan Xuan. Three of the artists are thirty years old or younger, while ten are between thirty-one and forty, fourteen are between forty-one and fifty, and one artist is over sixty. Most of them are based in Shanghai, with a few based in Beijing, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Yangjiang, Guangzhou, and Haikou, Hainan. Only Kan Xuan maintains a residence both in Beijing and abroad, in Amsterdam.

Eloisa Haudenschild said she is primarily interested in collecting as a way to assist and connect with emerging artists. She explained that when artists have been recognized and supported by other collectors, she maintains relationships with them, but her interest shifts from collecting their work to assisting them in other ways, such as funding projects. With charismatic ebullience, Haudenschild said she has never sold a work, nor has she bought work by an artist she has not met. She has never attempted to acquire work from an artist directly and has always used an agent or dealer. She said she has never asked the price of an artwork. The works have been acquired through studio visits and meetings with artists, stories she recounts with pleasure. Haudenschild refers to the first trips in which she began to acquire Chinese artwork as “my love affair.” (14)

Background

Eloisa Haudenschild, née Rodriguez-Carbornell, was born into an affluent family in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who were involved in real estate and politics. When asked, she said she probably could be considered a third- or fourth-generation collector, and keeps some of her family’s paintings and antiques in the La Jolla estate. She met Chris Haudenschild, an astrophysicst-entrepreneur and native of Los Angeles, skiing in Portillo in 1973. Chris Haudenschild, who has roots in Iowa and Indiana, is a first generation collector. Together they have two daughters, Rita and Anna, whose artwork is also listed in the collection’s catalogue.

Eloisa Haudenschild, Laura Zhou, and Ma Shulin (Deputy Director, National Art Museum of China) at the opening of Zooming into Focus, November 2005, National Art Museum of China, Beijing

Eloisa Haudenschild’s educational background is in psychology. She was involved in dance and choreography before pursuing her interest in contemporary art. She cut her art-collecting teeth in the early 1990s with contemporary work from Latin America. At that time, she was president of the bi-national board of inSite, a network of contemporary art programs and commissioned projects that map the liminal border area of San Diego and Tijuana.

Haudenschild said, “I traveled with the board and the directors to Mexico City every two months or so, visiting artists and studios, traveling with them and having fun. That afforded me the opportunity of meeting some extraordinary artists like Francis Alÿs, a good friend, who together with other good friends have since become international figures in the art world. There, I really got a firsthand experience of the situation. I saw firsthand their need of support.”

When Chris Haudenschild, founder and president of CliniComp, a healthcare information management system, began expanding his business into China, the couple began making regular trips to Shanghai. As she had done in Latin America, Eloisa Haudenschild sought to investigate the local art scene in Shanghai.

Approach

Participants in the symposium “Distance—A Discussion on Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video” at the China Art Academy, Hangzhou, March 2004. Left to right: Pi Li, Eloisa Haudenschild, Waling Boers, Martina Koppel-Yang, Laura Zhou, Evelyne Jouanno, Hou Hanru, Jonathan Napak, Rudolf Stoert, Anna Haudenschild, Chris Haudenschild, Rita Haudenschild, Gridthiya Gaweewong, Wang Gongxin, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Wang Du, Zhang Peili, and Zheng Shengtian

Haudenschild recounts the late 1990s as an environment very different from the art world in the large urban centers of today’s China. “I spent a lot of time looking around,” she said of her first trips. “My husband and I went to the Shanghai Art Museum and saw a show of work by the Corsinos, a brother and sister who live in France. I was so moved by the work, and was bummed about not being able to share it with anyone. It was so nice to see something besides calligraphy and ink washes. I thought, ‘Somebody did this, some curator—someone has this sensibility,’ but I didn’t know who it was. So, I saw this guy walking around [the Shanghai Art Museum] who looked a little like Salvador Dali. I thought, ‘I’m going to ask this guy.’ And of course, it was Dadou.”

Dadou, or Davide Quadrio, founded BizArt, a self-supported non-profit gallery, in Shanghai in 1998. Along with ShanghART, it shares billing as one of the oldest contemporary art institutions in the city.

“I said [to Dadou], I’ve been coming here for three years, where is the artwork?’ He said, ‘Go to ShanghART and see Lorenz.’ So, my husband and I immediately caught a cab and went to [the gallery in] Fuxing Park. As you may know, getting around in those days wasn’t as easy as it is now.”

“I walked into [ShanghART]. Then, I met Laura Zhou,” Mr. Helbling’s partner at ShanghART. “It was genius from that moment on with Laura. . . . We are very close. She calls me ‘mommy.’”

Previously, Mr. Helbling had been showing work at the Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel, a massive hotel, convention centre and residence in Shanghai. “He used to carry paintings around on the back of his motorcycle trying to sell them, because at that time he didn’t have a space,” recounts Haudenschild. Since then, ShanghART has moved from its Fuxing Park location and expanded into three different spaces within Shanghai. A fourth space opened this year in Beijing.

“I loved the continual excitement. The best part was going to studios and apartments to look at the work,” Haudenschild says. Effusive with praise for Mr. Helbling, she said, “[Lorenz] is so good. If I wanted something and he wasn’t working with that artist, he’d get it for me. For instance Cao Fei. He facilitated that…You know, Lorenz wouldn’t sell to just anybody. He’s not as concerned with making a profit. We work together; he really wants to support the artists.”

She said he has never given her explicit advice, saying, “You know how it is with Lorenz, you never know [what he’s really thinking]. He’ll listen, smoking, with his coffee. And then he’ll say, ‘Eloisa, I think it’s time to think.’” Helbling and Zhou did, however, encourage her to look at certain artists.

After that initial trip, Haudenschild says she did a fair amount of research, contacting and meeting with scholars and curators in the field. She went to Paris and met with Hou Hanru, and exchanged emails with Britta Erickson. Perhaps in testament to the perceived need for a studied, serious, aesthetics-based treatment of contemporary Chinese art, Haudenschild said her queries to these noted curators and scholars—“from me, this little collector”—were enthusiastically received. Meantime, she continued collecting on her regular trips to China.

Yang Fudong, City Light, 2000, video

Collecting Video And Photography

In general, photography and video, like other edition-based media, have traditionally sold for less than paintings. Despite their lower value within the market, however, these media, as previously mentioned, are important to contemporary Chinese art and often become vehicles for highly conceptual projects. Critic and scholar Lu Leiping describes photography and video as the “most experimental and pioneering media today,” and “the media that more strongly maintain the Chinese characteristics.” (15) Indeed, many artists represented in the Haudenschild collection work solely in photography and video, and several are now highly sought after in large international exhibitions and biennials.

Haudenschild describes the process of arriving at the collection’s focus on video and photography as a product of following her own instincts. “You have to trust your eye,” she said. “I just get what I like, and the video and photography were what I liked . . .. There’s no one telling me what to do.” “I did not initially intend to collect video and photography,” she said, asserting that certain works she selected, such as Yang Fudong’s The First Intellectual photographs, did not initially appear collectible. When asked why more people don’t collect video, her response was, “I don’t know. Maybe they just haven’t warmed up to it yet.”

Art: The “Alternative Asset Class”

Mainstream media outlets have described the recent growth in art investment in the overall market. “Art has emerged as a serious alternative asset class in the past few years, in spite of the disdain of art lovers and the skepticism of many dealers and collectors,” wrote Deborah Brewster in an article about art collecting that appeared in the July 13, 2007 issue of The Financial Times.(16) She continues:

“Randall Willette, who advises collectors, says: ‘There are increasingly two types of buyer in the market. The idea that you should buy purely because of your passion is becoming less common. More buyers are coming from a financial background and people want to support their buying decisions with financial information. Increasingly, art is part of the balance sheet of private clients.’” (17)

Indeed, much of the current dialogue surrounding contemporary Chinese art, and contemporary art as a whole, is in the language of finance.

Texas-based venture capitalist and wildcatter oil tycoon Robert Chaney speaks in such financial terms about his extensive contemporary Chinese art holdings. On the eve of the current exhibition of his collection at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Red Hot: Asian Art Now, Chaney described his strategy for “acquiring masterpieces,” using a method that is, in his words, a studied adaptation of the Warren Buffet model for investing. In the meantime, Chaney invited art dealers to sit on a panel in conjunction with the exhibition and encouraged Houston galleries to hold concurrent exhibitions of Asian art. Chaney seems determined to establish himself as an important, involved collector who also vocalizes his financial interest in the art world. (18)

Haudenschild, on the other hand, downplays herself as an investor. “I think I am not a good collector,” she joked, pausing in front of I Usually Wait Under the Arch Roof for Sunshine, a 2001 photograph by Hong Hao, who is well known for his photographs of densely accumulated objects. “For instance, the smart collector would’ve gotten [the accumulated object photos]. But me, I liked this one.”

Mrs. Haudenschild stands apart from the object-focused connoisseur as well, giving importance instead to her relationships with artists and members of the community. “For me, the collecting is just a token, a way to support these young guys . . . . The reward is that I have the opportunity to be part of their path.” She affectionately describes the relationships among the artists represented in her collection, noting that they have maintained their integrity and loyalty to one another as friends in spite of experiencing unequal degrees of recognition. “You know, there are many collectors who are buying pieces and then putting them away until they become valuable—they don’t even show the work. And that is such a waste—these people need exposure,” she said.

Eloisa Haudenschild with Chen Shaoxiong, Yang Zhenzhong, Xu Zhen, Shi Yong, Yang Fudong, and Song Tao, February 2003

Future Of The Market

Speculations on a crash or correction in the global and Chinese contemporary art markets circulate. Commenting on the market in general, Los Angeles-based billionaire collector Eli Broad was quoted in The New York Times in August 2007 as saying, “We’ve seen an unprecedented 68 appreciation of contemporary art in the thirty-five years that I’ve been collecting . . . . We’re bound to have a correction. I don’t know if it will happen at the November auctions, or it will happen next May.” (19) Other recent articles have described the Chinese market as “bubbly,” (20) and the overall market as “overblown,” (21) and “showing signs of a bubble.” (22)

Jonathan Napack wrote of a grim future, with a specific focus on China: “The current ‘boom’ in the Chinese economy is all about positioning and manipulating perceptions to help attain certain short-term goals. This infects the art world as much as anybody else.” He wrote, “It will one day crash, when the speculators who are now blindly following their ‘advisors’ realize prices have started to fall and dump their collections on the market.” (23)

Echoing Broad’s sentiments about the overall market, Eloisa Haudenschild commented on the contemporary Chinese art market’s future, saying, “I’m worried about the market. Will there be a crash or a correction? Hopefully it will be a correction. But [regardless, as a collector,] you either have integrity or you don’t.”

Li Xu (Curator), Zhang Peili (Artist and Director, New Media Department of China Art Academy), Eloisa Haudenschild, Li Xiangyang (then Executive Director, Shanghai Art Museum), and Lorenz Helbling (Director, ShanghART), Shanghai Art Museum Press Conference and Opening for Zooming into Focus, February 2004.

Questions Remain

Art collected by individuals from a different country than the origin of the artist is now a common practice. Today, there are numerous galleries dealing exclusively in contemporary Chinese art in cities around the Western hemisphere. The question of what influence the foreign collector of contemporary Chinese art has on the globalized art world is a complex one.

Lu Jie put foreign collectors in a positive light, saying, “[the artists] feel more confident to have their works sent abroad. They respect the international collectors more and believe they are the real collectors. The local collectors very often use the building of a collection as an introduction or entry into the market. The artists feel safer with their work in foreign collections.” (24) There is also the idea that foreign collectors have helped contemporary Chinese art to be seen as valuable within China. Haudenschild said that the most important works in her collection have been shown at the Shanghai Art Museum and the National Museum of China in Beijing because she knows “how important it was for these young artists to get there.”

“Foreign collectors held out [the] olive branch,” according to critic Lu Leiping, in influencing the establishment of serious interest in contemporary Chinese new media art such as that in the Haudenschild Collection. (25) Jonathan Napack wrote: “That is not to say that there is no real basis for the current foreign interest in Chinese art. This huge country, for so long off the map, is producing artists who can draw on a wellspring of images, concepts, and issues that are totally unique to China and produce works that have that elusive ‘local flavour’ increasingly rare in a globalized world.” (26) However, an often-discussed problem is that the possibility for this “local flavour” is diminished once the artwork is brought to market.

A less-discussed question, whose answer remains to be seen, is, as they become part of the global art market, how are China and other “new markets” for contemporary art changing it? Will contemporary Chinese art be subsumed by the same practice seen in the Euro-American art market of limitation and marginalization of different groups, such as women and minority artists? Consistent with Western art, works by male Chinese artists generally sell for more at auction than those of women. Living Han male artists have appeared much more prominently in the exhibitions of important collections. This also fits with the Western art historical tradition of marginalizing, ignoring, and dismissing women artists within Chinese art history. (27) Just as Chinese art, which has not reached the heights that Euro-American art does at auction, is marginalized by art world regionalism, female Chinese artists may be marginalized even more.

Here again, private collections occupy a unique space. Private collections, “driven as they are by passion, unencumbered by institutional impedimenta” (as Erickson was quoted as saying in the introduction to this essay), are truly private in nature, and do not fall under the type of public scrutiny that attempts to address and confront the gender- and ethnicity-based biases about an artwork’s value that is at work in public collections. In addition, through the funding of exhibitions, the establishment of art centers, and the lending of artworks, private collections may indirectly promote the marginalizing practices of the institutional and historical art worlds. On the other hand, private collections also present the possibility of freely challenging and questioning such biases, which, as attested to by Lorenz Helbling, is perhaps what Eloisa Haudenschild has attempted to do.

The impact an individual collector can have on the market is another question. One of the indicators by which to measure the success of an artist is his or her inclusion in important and well-known collections. It follows that the larger and more important the collection, the more influence on the market the collector has. As Napack wrote of the recent inflation, “It prices younger or novice collectors out of the market, leaving many artists vulnerable to the whims of a few deep-pocketed collectors.” (28)

Finally, it remains to be seen how the market’s inflation will affect the artworks themselves. Napack wrote, “The current infusion of cash into the market brings [first-rate galleries] some short-term profits, but it is also destructive in the long run. It inflates the expectations of artists and makes them even more exploitative of their galleries.” (29) Marc Spiegler of New York magazine wrote, “Historically bad markets tend to produce better art—there’s less pressure on artists to produce and fewer temptations to sell out, and they’re dealing only with collectors and galleries willing to ride out the hard times.” (30)

Haudenschild stressed that ultimately what remains important to her is having the ability to support emerging artists and connect people in dialogue. She said, “The inflation of the market is problematic. When I was starting to collect, it was like these guys could really benefit from my collecting their work . . .. A lot of bad work has come to auction recently.”

She said, “You know, Chinese art has become this kind of cliché.” Gesturing around the garage that houses many of the collection’s significant photographs, including Yang Fudong’s The First Intellectual series of photos (2000), Song Tao’s In Loud Crowds I Dream of Hanging Myself (2002), and Lu Chunsheng’s Water photos (2002), she said, “I’m thankful I was able to get these pieces, but I know it’s become a little bit like a fashion show.” Expressing an increased interest in funding projects, she said, “I’m not even sure I want to be a collector anymore. But I have to make a choice that I can live with.”

——
Notes

1 Plates of much of the Chinese collection can be found in the exhibition catalogue, Zooming Into Focus: Contemporary Photography and Video Art from the Haudenschild Collection, Shi Yong and Laura Zhou, eds. (Shanghai: ShanghART, 2005). Images of the Haudenschild’s other holdings may be found at www.haudenschildgarage.com.

2 David Barboza, “In China’s New Revolution, Art Greets Capitalism,” New York Times, January 4, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/arts/design/04arti.html

3 “Chinese art is now beginning to be aggressively collected by the Chinese themselves,” said Boriana Song, manager of the Chinese-owned Beijing Art Now Gallery. ”But now Chinese buyers are hungry for culture, and they see contemporary art as fashionable. The market is maturing, tastes are changing, and more than 60% of our clients are local Chinese.” Pallavi Aiyar, “Modern art scene grabbing investors,” Asia Times Online, April 11, 2006, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/HD11Cb05.html .

4 Barboza, “In China’s New Revolution, Art Greets Capitalism.”

5 Marc Spiegler, “Five Theories On Why the Art Market Can’t Crash (and Why It Will Anyway),” New York, April 3, 2006,
http://nymag.com/arts/art/features/16542/ .

6 Britta Erickson, “Zooming Into Focus, Sliding Into History,” in Zooming Into Focus, 14–15.

7 Lu Jie, “Contemporary Art in Greater China: Under Pressure, A Discussion at the 52nd Venice Biennale,” Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (September 2007), 8–24.

8 Jonathan Napack, “An Art Market With Chinese Characteristics,” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (March 2006), 16–17.

9 Erickson, “Zooming Into Focus, Sliding Into History,” in Zooming Into Focus, 14–15.

10 Martina Koppel-Yang, “Compelling Images of a Distant Life, Video as Expansion of Reality,” in Zooming Into Focus, 71–72.

11 Erickson, “Zooming Into Focus, Sliding Into History,” in Zooming Into Focus, 14–15.

12 Ibid.

13 Information about the collection provided by the haudenschildGarage.

14 Statements by and biographical information about Mrs. Haudenschild based on a conversation at the haudenschildGarage on September 5, 2007, a telephone conversation on September 12, 2007, and e-mail exchange.

15 Lu Leiping, “When Experiment Encounters Classics,” in Zooming Into Focus, 19–21.

16 Deborh Brewster, “Investing in the art market,” Financial Times, July 13, 2007, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/a531d0d2-3153-11dc-891f-0000779fd2ac.html .

17 Ibid.

18 Kelly Klaasmeyer, “RED HOT: Asian Art From the Chaney Family Collection,” Houston Press, September 13, 2007, http://www.houstonpress.com/2007-09-13/culture/red-hot-business/ .

19 Robin Pogrebin, “Volatile Markets? Art World Takes Stock,” New York Times, August 29, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/29/arts/design/29mark.html, accessed 08/24/07 .

20 Barboza, “In China’s New Revolution, Art Greets Capitalism.”

21 Spiegler, “Five Theories On Why the Art Market Can’t Crash (and Why It Will Anyway).”

22 Sharon Reier, “Contemporary Art: Follow the Money—The Latest Status Investment is Showing Signs of a Bubble,” International Herald Tribune, January 27, 2007, http://w4.stern.nyu.edu/news/news.cfm?doc_id=6894 .

23 Napack, “An Art Market With Chinese Characteristics,” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (March 2006), 16–17.

24 Lu Jie, “Contemporary Art in Greater China: Under Pressure, A Discussion at the 52nd Venice Biennale,” Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, September/Fall 2007, 8–24.

25 Lu Leiping, “When Experiment Encounters Classics,” in Zooming Into Focus, 19–21.

26 Napack, “An Art Market With Chinese Characteristics,” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (March 2006), 16–17.

27 Marsha Weidner, preface to Flowering in the Shadows, Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting, ed. Marsha Weidner (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990), xi–xiv.

28 Napack, “An Art Market With Chinese Characteristics,” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (March 2006), 16–17.

29 Ibid.

30 Spiegler, “Five Theories on Why the Art Market Can’t Crash (and Why It Will Anyway).”

On June 30, 2007 the haudenschildGarage collaborated with the Orange County Museum of Art to present a talk with Cao Fei at the museum. The moderators were Hou Hanru (Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs and Chair of the Exhibitions and Museum Studies Program, SFAI) and Aimee Chang (Director of Academic & Residency Programs, The Hammer Museum).

For Whose Utopia?, Cao Fei spent six months at the OSRAM China Lighting Ltd. factory in the Pearl River Delta in China. Located in Guangdong Province, the Pearl River Delta has led the massive boom in China’s economy since the late 1970s. From 1980 to 2001 the region’s gross domestic product grew from eight billion USD to just over one hundred billion USD. A major manufacturing base for everyday products for Chinese and foreign markets, the region has drawn workers from throughout China in search of economic opportunities and a better life.

According to Cao, “most of the workers left their hometowns in pursuit of their ideal and dream in the Pearl River Delta area.” In the piece she focuses “on the innermost feelings of every individual in this globalized production chain, this giant and complex system of business, placing them at the center of attention, so as to let them rediscover their personal value which is often neglected during the process of creating huge business value.”

The installation at OCMA (6/30 – 9/2/07) is anchored by the video Whose Utopia?, an eerily beautiful portrait of the factory and of the workers’ daily lives, fantasies, and aspirations. Scenes from a typical workday are interspersed with performances by a peacock dancer, a ballerina dressed as an angel, an electric guitar player, and a break dancer. The final segment of the video—My Future is Not a Dream—is named after the rock band that formed as part of the project. A statement that can be read as both a positive statement of the fairytale possibilities of the future or as a hard dose of reality, the sentiment captures the dual nature of China’s current economic boom.

About the Participants

Cao Fei

Cao Fei was born in Guangzhou, China in 1978. She earned a BFA from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in Guangzhou, China (2001). Cao Fei’s work reflects the fluidity of a world in which cultures have mixed and diverged in rapid evolution. Her video installations and new media works explore perception and reality in places as diverse as a Chinese factory and the virtual world of Second Life. Applying strategies of sampling, role play, and documentary filmmaking to capture individuals’ longings and the ways in which they imagine themselves—as hip-hop musicians, costumed characters, or digitized alter egos—Cao Fei reveals the discrepancy between reality and dream, and the discontent and disillusionment of China’s younger generation. Depictions of Chinese architecture and landscape abound in scenes of hyper-capitalistic Pearl River Delta development, in images that echo traditional Chinese painting, and in the design of her own virtual utopia, RMB City. Fascinated by the world of Second Life, Cao Fei has created several works in which she is both participant and observer through her Second Life avatar, China Tracy, who acts as a guide, philosopher, and tourist. Cao Fei’s work has appeared in solo exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery, London (2008); Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California (2007); Museum Het Domein, Sittard, Netherlands (2006); and Para Site Art Space, Hong Kong (2006). She has participated in the New Museum Triennial (2009); Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2008); Prospect.1 New Orleans (2008); Yokohama Triennial (2008); and Istanbul, Lyon, and Venice Biennials (2007). Her work has appeared at the New Museum, New York (2008); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2007); P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2006); and Asia Society, New York (2006). Cao Fei lives and works in Beijing.

Click here to visit Cao Fei’s website.

Whose Utopia?

Whose Utopia? was produced as part of the Siemen’s Art Program, ‘What are they doing here?’, in which artists were invited to make work as part of a residency in a factory. Cao Fei chose the Osram lighting factory located in Foshan, near her home in southern China. Whose Utopia? documents the conditions faced by an increasing number of workers, as factories like Osram move their production to China, further integrating the country into the global economy. The repetitive work is contrasted with dreamlike episodes in which the workers act out their private dreams. The work is lyrical in its portrayal of subjective dreams within a working context, and of individual subjectivity in a rapidly mechanized world, in which individuality has traditionally been subordinate to class or other abstract and generic groupings.

Hou Hanru

Hou Hanru is Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs and Chair of the Exhibitions and Museum Studies program at SFAI. He was also the moderator for the 2004 symposium in Hangzhou, China Envisioning the Future of Contemporary Art From Different Glocal Positions organized in collaboration with the exhibition Zooming into Focus: Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection. A prolific writer and curator, Hou received both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Central Institute of Fine Arts in Beijing, where he was trained in art history, with additional work in painting, performance, installation, and architectural research. He is a consultant for several cultural institutions internationally including the Global Advisory Committee of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Contemporary Art Museum in Kumamoto, Japan. Described as a significant international voice on cultural difference, Hou is the French correspondent for Flash Art International and a regular contributor to several other journals on contemporary art including Frieze, Art Monthly, Third Text, Art and Asia Pacific, Domus, Atlantica, Texte Zur Kunst, and Tema Celeste. Most recently, Hou was appointed Curator of the 10th International Istanbul Biennial, which will take place from September to November 2007. Other recent curatorial projects include the second Guangzhou Triennale where he co-curated Beyond: An Extraordinary Space of Experimentation for Modernization; Go Inside, the 3rd Tirana Biennale (Tirana, Albania, 2005); Out of Sight, organized by the De Appel Foundation (Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2005); Nuit Blanche 2004 (Paris, 2004); and A L’Ouest Du Sud De L’Est / A L’Est Du Sud De L’Ouest (Villa Arson, Nice, 2004). Hou is one of the first curators and thinkers to examine postmodern issues of nomadic identity, hybridity, globalized mobility, what he calls “in-betweeness,” and artists living in the diaspora.

Aimee Chang

Aimee Chang is currently the Director of Academic & Residency Programs at The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. She was formerly a curator at the OCMA.

In 2007 the haudenschildGarage collaborated with art critic Matthew Schum who traveled to the Istanbul Biennial to interview artists and curators including Burak Delier, Sergio de la Torre, and Hou Hanru.

My research explores the experience of contemporary art in urban exhibitions and installations. After hearing a talk by the co-curator about his 9th Istanbul Biennial, Vasif Kortun, who teamed with English curator Charles Esche in 2005, it seemed essential to go to the city. There I found not only the surprises that contemporary Turkish art has to offer, but the city itself. No place is like it, and in many respects no art scene deals with contemporary issues like Istanbul artists do. In short, the political complexion of Turkey adds dynamism to the social engagement defining art in the cultural capital.

In the following blog entries I have attempted to highlight what was unique about how artists and curators dealt with the intersection of art and social content in the 10th Istanbul Biennial.

Assuming the biennial to be symptomatic of contemporary art, my original research on the 9th Biennial Istanbul focused on the creative role of curating and a noticeable attention to the creative process from this perspective within the collaborative model of a biennial resides in the following entries.

Support from the haudenschildGarage provided a platform from which to consider these developments firsthand and allowed a way to pose and answer this question: How did the 10th Biennial function as a strategy of encounter, within the more collective curatorial realm and the more focused projects of individual artists? My hope is that the blog functions as a document of this.
–Matthew Schum

About Matthew Schum

Matthew Schum is a graduate student at the University of California San Diego in the program for history, theory, and criticism of Art, department of Visual Arts. He studied in Vancouver at Simon Fraser University prior to moving to California, via New York. As a researcher he has worked for the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, and most recently the Walker Art Center. Schum was born in Minneapolis in 1978.

“This exhibition explains the importance of re-acknowledging and re-evaluating this hot spot of contemporary art. From the very beginning, contemporary Chinese photography has been closely related to the daily lives of Chinese people. The quickly growing and changing social environment has focused on the created objects of the artists. From these vivid and graphical works, we can witness the exciting poles of this age, experience the active interaction between art and society, and understand the new and unique exploration of these pioneers. Shanghai has always been the essential window to contemporary Western cultural patterns.

From oil painting to photography, from industrial design to video art, Shanghai plays a critical role during this process of communication and incorporation. Therefore, the opening of Zooming into Focus, a preliminary review of Chinese contemporary photography and video, is not only an occasion of chance but a necessary consequence of history. The importance of the exhibition is in no doubt: it showed some truth of Chinese contemporary art to the public and to the cultural circle, and it prodded the Chinese art museum circle to start collecting contemporary video and photography works.” -Li Xu, Curator, Shanghai Art Museum

“Different from traditional art, such as painting and sculpture, photography includes video, together with film and animation. Focusing on photography, this exhibition introduces the history of recent contemporary Chinese art….Furthermore, this collection can be regarded as an objective review on the current situation of Chinese photography. The Shanghai Art Museum is dedicated to the promotion and development of contemporary Chinese art. This exhibition is the first time contemporary photography and Chinese artists are introduced to the public.” -Li Xiangyang, Executive Director, Shanghai Art Museum

Exhibition

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February 18 – March 30, 2004, Shanghai Art Museum

Organized by Li Xu, Laura Zhou, and Eloisa Haudenschild.

Roof Top Performance by Song Tao
February 18, 2004, Shanghai Art Museum

Following the opening of the exhibition Song Tao with other contemporary Chinese artists, presented a multimedia sound and video performance on the roof of the Shanghai Art Museum.

Symposium
Envisioning the Future of Contemporary Art From Different Glocal Positions

March 25 & 26, 2004 – China Art Academy, Hangzhou
Organized by Zhang Peili (Artist and Director of New Media dept., China Art Academy, Hangzhou), Laura Zhou (Director of ShanghART, Shanghai, China) and Eloisa Haudenschild. All participants toured Zooming into Focus at the Shanghai Art Museum and were then transported via bus to Hangzhou.

Moderated by Hou Hanru (Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs, SFAI and Independent Curator) and Pi Li (Independent Curator and Founder, Universal Studio, Beijing) with works shown by Bill Voila (courtesy of Britta Erickson; presented by Eloisa Haudenschild), Wang Gongxin, Qiu Zhijie, Zhang Peili, and Yang Fudong.

Presenters included:
- Fan Di’an (Director, National Art Museum of China) Meeting and Traffic
- Hans Ulrich Obrist (Curator, Paris) The Museum of the Future – Art, Architecture, Science and Technology
- Mami Kataoka (Senior Curator, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo & International Associate Curator, Hayward Gallery, London) New Media as New Experience
- Li Xu (Curator, China) The Relationships Between New Media Art and Museum Systems in China
- Huang Du (Ph.D., China) New Events and Culture Space
- Zhang Zhiyang (Professor, China) Where is the Space for Art in the Era of Technological Globalization?
- Rudolf Stoert (Curator, Germany) Switch Media Project in Thailand
- Gridthiya Gaweewong (Curator, Thailand) Regional Strategies and Global Impacts: A Southeast Asian Perspective
- Hu Fang (Writer, China) Pseudo-Machine of Writing
- Evelyn Jouanno (Curator, France) Under the Earth, There is the Sky
- Martina Koppel-Yang (Art Critic, Germany) The Pingpang Policy of Chinese Contemporary Art
- Zheng Shengtain (Curator & Managing Editor, Yishu Journal, Canada) Non-Local and Non-Mainstream
- Karen Smith (Art Historian, UK) The Future: In Whose Hands?
- Waling Boers (Curator and Founding Director of Buro Friedrich-Berlin and Universal Studios-Beijing) Art Between the State and the Market, A Challenge?

Envisioning the Future of Contemporary Art From Different Glocal Positions

March 25 & 26, 2004 – China Art Academy, Hangzhou

Organized by Zhang Peili (Artist and Director of New Media dept., China Art Academy, Hangzhou), Lorenz Helbling (Founder of ShanghART, Shanghai, China), Laura Zhou (Director of ShanghART, Shanghai, China) and Eloisa Haudenschild. All participants toured Zooming into Focus at the Shanghai Art Museum and were then transported via bus to Hangzhou.

Moderated by Hou Hanru (Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs, SFAI and Independent Curator) and Pi Li (Independent Curator and Founder, Universal Studio, Beijing) with works shown by Bill Voila (courtesy of Britta Erickson; presented by Eloisa Haudenschild), Wang Gongxin, Qiu Zhijie, Zhang Peili, and Yang Fudong.

Presenters included:
- Fan Di’an (Director, National Art Museum of China) Meeting and Traffic
- Hans Ulrich Obrist (Curator, Paris) The Museum of the Future – Art, Architecture, Science and Technology
- Mami Kataoka (Senior Curator, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo & International Associate Curator, Hayward Gallery, London) New Media as New Experience
- Li Xu (Curator, China) The Relationships Between New Media Art and Museum Systems in China
- Huang Du (Ph.D., China) New Events and Culture Space

- Zhang Zhiyang (Professor, China) Where is the Space for Art in the Era of Technological Globalization?
- Rudolf Stoert (Curator, Germany) Switch Media Project in Thailand
- Gridthiya Gaweewong (Curator, Thailand) Regional Strategies and Global Impacts: A Southeast Asian Perspective
- Hu Fang (Writer, China) Pseudo-Machine of Writing
- Evelyn Jouanno (Curator, France) Under the Earth, There is the Sky
- Martina Koppel-Yang (Art Critic, Germany) The Pingpang Policy of Chinese Contemporary Art
- Zheng Shengtain (Curator & Managing Editor, Yishu Journal, Canada) Non-Local and Non-Mainstream
- Karen Smith (Art Historian, UK) The Future: In Whose Hands?
- Waling Boers (Curator and Founding Director of Buro Friedrich-Berlin and Universal Studios-Beijing) Art Between the State and the Market, A Challenge?

The exhibition’s lead title, Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photograph and Video from the Haudenschild Collection (2003 – 2005), refers to three major concepts quintessential to the exhibition and the symposium: Chinese artists’ use of photographic and video camera to examine the quick transition in their culture, the incredible pace of growth in China’s urban centers, and the current attention being paid to China by the rest of the industrialized world, especially the West. Most of the artists represented in Zooming into Focus live and work in China’s swiftly expanding southern megalopolises and frequently address those issues that directly affect young urbanites – the social impact of burgeoning consumerism, the meteoric rise of youth culture, the threatening loss of identity amidst the city swirl, the persistent sense of time speeding by. Exploring contemporary Chinese art in light of these concerns, the symposium will provoke a fresh perspective on China’s role in the international milieu.

About the Organizers & Moderators

Hou Hanru

Hou Hanru is Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs and Chair of the Exhibitions and Museum Studies program at SFAI. He was also the moderator for the 2004 symposium in Hangzhou, China Envisioning the Future of Contemporary Art From Different Glocal Positions organized in collaboration with the exhibition Zooming into Focus: Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection. A prolific writer and curator, Hou received both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Central Institute of Fine Arts in Beijing, where he was trained in art history, with additional work in painting, performance, installation, and architectural research. He is a consultant for several cultural institutions internationally including the Global Advisory Committee of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Contemporary Art Museum in Kumamoto, Japan. Described as a significant international voice on cultural difference, Hou is the French correspondent for Flash Art International and a regular contributor to several other journals on contemporary art including Frieze, Art Monthly, Third Text, Art and Asia Pacific, Domus, Atlantica, Texte Zur Kunst, and Tema Celeste. Most recently, Hou was appointed Curator of the 10th International Istanbul Biennial, which will take place from September to November 2007. Other recent curatorial projects include the second Guangzhou Triennale where he co-curated Beyond: An Extraordinary Space of Experimentation for Modernization; Go Inside, the 3rd Tirana Biennale (Tirana, Albania, 2005); Out of Sight, organized by the De Appel Foundation (Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2005); Nuit Blanche 2004 (Paris, 2004); and A L’Ouest Du Sud De L’Est / A L’Est Du Sud De L’Ouest (Villa Arson, Nice, 2004). Hou is one of the first curators and thinkers to examine postmodern issues of nomadic identity, hybridity, globalized mobility, what he calls “in-betweeness,” and artists living in the diaspora.

Laura Zhou

Laura Zhou is co-director and co-founder of ShanghART in Shanghai, China. The gallery was initiated in 1996 and it has since grown to become one of China’s most influential contemporary art institutions. ShanghART has established itself as a leading gallery representing established figures whilst continuing to support the work of innovative younger artists. As a gallery, producer, supporter, and point of reference ShanghART contributes as a vital resource to the development of contemporary Chinese art. Being recognized for its importance ShanghART became the initial gallery from China participating in major international art fairs like Art Basel and Fiac, Paris. Since its inauguration the gallery has established more than 70 exhibitions, and it enjoys the great respect of being among the 75 international galleries selected in Thames & Hudson publication international Art Galleries that features 75 of the most acclaimed galleries from post-war to post-millennium (2005). ShanghART represents over 40 of China most talented artists working with different media ranging from painting and sculpture to video art and performance. Since its founding, ShanghART has supported multiple, international programs and projects.

Pi Li

Pi Li, born in 1974, has constantly changed his career direction in recent years. He was once the Art Director for the Chinese Contemporary Art Award sponsored by Uli Sigg. He also showed up in the Cannes International Film Festival as the producer of the Chinese movie Shanghai Dream. After over one year of operation, the U Studio (now named Boers-Li Gallery), founded in 2005 with curator Waling Boers, has also changed its direction. Now Pi Li decides to develop whole-heartedly the studio into a commercial gallery, and he has opened up a 100-square-meter affiliated exhibition area beside the main hall to promote the experimental solo exhibitions. The once mixed-orientated U Studio finally begins to transform into a professional gallery. The gallery represents a selective group of internationally operating artists. The gallery program is not media-specific, and includes installation, sculpture, painting, works on paper, audio work, photography, video, film, performance, and digital art. Each year, approximately six major solo exhibitions are organized, along with an irregular number of smaller solo and group exhibitions. Boers-Li emphasizes its support for the production of new and experimental work, utilizing its unique position both at home and abroad to open new pathways for artistic development. The program focuses on new developments in international art, as well as on the changing contemporary positions of established or older-generation artists. In addition, Boers-Li participates in a selection of both Chinese and international art fairs. The program also includes the publication of catalogs, both to accompany major solo exhibitions and to offer retrospectives on our artists. Click here to visit Boers-Li Gallery’s website.

Zhang Peili

Zhang Peili (b. 1957, China) lives and works in Hangzhou. In 1984 he obtained his BA in oil painting from the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. Today he remains one of China’s foremost video artist and his been shown in galleries throughout the world. He has shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the Venice Biennale. For a Chinese-born artist who still lives in his hometown, Zhang Peili has been represented in a remarkable number of international exhibitions. In just over two years, his work has been seen in several high-profile Asian-themed group shows–including “Cities on the Move” and “Inside Out: New Chinese Art”–as well as at the Basel art fair and the most recent Sydney and Venice biennials. He also bears the distinction of being the first Chinese artist to have an installation piece collected by MOMA (where he had a project show last summer).

On November 8, 2003 Chinese artist Shi Yong held the premiere performance of Super Angel at San Diego State University. He invited people to be part of the development of his website and performance by participating in a conversation with him through his interactive website. Click here to visit his Super Angel website. Super Angel was produced in collaboration with Tina Yapelli of the University Art Gallery and the students of San Diego State University.

Hou Hanru gave his keynote lecture, Chinese Artists (Digitally) Facing the Globalizing World, prior to the performance.

Shi Yong was an Artist-In-Residence from October 22 – November 12, 2003  at the haudenschildGarage and was invited as part of the exhibition Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography & Video from the Haudenschild Collection. He was responsible for designing the Zooming into Focus catalog and the installation design of Zooming into Focus at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing.

About Shi Yong

Shi Yong’s work embraces modernization and the ideology of consumerism as the basis for self-imagination and creation. He has produced a series of photo-based works around the concept of the ideal Shanghai citizen. It is an ongoing multifaceted project that explores images of consumption, commodity and the development of the culture industry. One series, entitled “Made in China – Welcome to China” (1999), consists of hand-painted plaster models of a young businessman in a Mao suit, sunglasses, briefcase and waving. The image of the ideal citizen used for the statue was the outcome of an Internet project through which Shi Yong asked volunteers to vote for the ideal way of looking. The individual now transforms the identity of his or her self by following the logic of commodity market surveys. It is a composite image that Shi Yong has repeatedly used in other pieces such as “Longing For” (2000) and “You Cannot Clone It, But You Can Buy It” (2001). The iconic figure is morphed through the agency of the marketplace.

Recently, Shi Yong has focused his attention on large-scale installations and architectural models imbued with an absurd twist of humor. Most notably, his mixed media installation “Flying Q” is of a UFO built with the purpose of opening up the sky. The flying object comes with no additional explanation, but might be recognized as just another signature vision of and interventions into the imaginary world of Shi Yong. His subversive approach pokes fun at architecture based on rules and pre-established schemas. Shi Yong fabricates a colorful and ironic architectural structure that is at once a parody of serious design and its synthesis. In short, his work is an amalgam of Shanghai’s eclectic ‘anything goes’ attitude towards the built environment.

Shi Yong was born in Shanghai in 1963. He graduated from Light Industrial School, Fine Art Department. He resides and works in Shanghai. Shi Yong has exhibited widely since the early 1990’s. Recent shows include Follow Me!, Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2005), Second Guangzhou Triennale, Guangsong Museum of Art (2005), Zooming into Focus, China National Art Museum (Beijing, 2005), Felicidad Indecible, Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art (Mexico, 2005), The Heaven, The World, ShanghART & H-Space (Shanghai, 2004), Shanghai Biennale (2002), Bienal de Sao Paulo (2002) and Bienal de Maia (1999). (ShanghART; Shanghai, China)

“Recently, nearly in one year, the idea of my work has been mainly concerned with the “public image” which exists in the medium of space. Exactly, opposite to the western medium, the “Public Image” is ironical. It reflects another cultural reality in the dialogue and interchange between the western and the non-western: the so-called multiculturalism defined by the western culture seemingly tells you that the line between the ethnocentric culture and the marginal culture is being eliminated. At the same time, the name of “discrepancy” a new taxonomy of cultures is placing you cleverly in a special symbolic window display for the purpose of distinguishing. Then, you are forced to come back to the marginal position one more time. The difference is only that the previous line with the air of the colonialism is now replaced by that of the post colonialism. Therefore, in the cultural reality controlled factually by the western power, the so-called non-western character who is redifferentiated and redifined has to take the “Public Image” in line with the defined standard as an effective and safe extrance. In that case, you can keep a “legitimate” position in the stage of so-called ethnocentric culture. This is the reason why I take the “Public Image” as the subject of my works.” – Shi Yong

Hou Hanru

Hou Hanru is Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs and Chair of the Exhibitions and Museum Studies program at SFAI. He was also the moderator for the 2004 symposium in Hangzhou, China Envisioning the Future of Contemporary Art From Different Glocal Positions organized in collaboration with the exhibition Zooming into Focus: Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection. A prolific writer and curator, Hou received both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Central Institute of Fine Arts in Beijing, where he was trained in art history, with additional work in painting, performance, installation, and architectural research. He is a consultant for several cultural institutions internationally including the Global Advisory Committee of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Contemporary Art Museum in Kumamoto, Japan. Described as a significant international voice on cultural difference, Hou is the French correspondent for Flash Art International and a regular contributor to several other journals on contemporary art including Frieze, Art Monthly, Third Text, Art and Asia Pacific, Domus, Atlantica, Texte Zur Kunst, and Tema Celeste. Most recently, Hou was appointed Curator of the 10th International Istanbul Biennial, which will take place from September to November 2007. Other recent curatorial projects include the second Guangzhou Triennale where he co-curated Beyond: An Extraordinary Space of Experimentation for Modernization; Go Inside, the 3rd Tirana Biennale (Tirana, Albania, 2005); Out of Sight, organized by the De Appel Foundation (Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2005); Nuit Blanche 2004 (Paris, 2004); and A L’Ouest Du Sud De L’Est / A L’Est Du Sud De L’Ouest (Villa Arson, Nice, 2004). Hou is one of the first curators and thinkers to examine postmodern issues of nomadic identity, hybridity, globalized mobility, what he calls “in-betweeness,” and artists living in the diaspora.

“The exhibition presented an invaluable opportunity to bring to southern California work that would not otherwise be shown in the region. The project was groundbreaking, as it was the first exhibition to feature the current generation of Chinese photographers and videographers.

The artists’ residencies were extremely significant for the University, as they provided students the incredible experience of working with two of the artists, Yang Zhenzhong and Shi Yong. In the case of Yang, students were involved in the creation of a new work commissioned by the haudenschildGarage, which premiered at the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego.

The project was also important because it created a network of collaborations with institutions in San Diego, Tijuana, Shanghai, Beijing and Singapore.” – Tina Yapelli Director of the University Art Gallery

Exhibition
October 25, 2003 – April 21, 2004, University Art Gallery, San Diego State University

Organized by Tina Yapelli and Eloisa Haudenschild.

Symposium
An International Discourse on New Chinese Video and Photography

January 31, 2004 – San Diego Museum of Art
Organized by Eloisa Haudenschild and Tina Yapelli (Director, UAG, SDSU)

Moderated by Britta Erickson (Independent Scholar and Curator, Palo Alto)

Presenters included:
-Betti-Sue Hertz (Director, YBCA) Performance, Masculinity and Photographic Approaches in East Asian Contemporary Art
-Barbara London (Curator, MOMA) China Now
-Christopher Phillips (Curator, ICP, New York) New Photography in China: Between Past and Culture
-Xu Bing (Artist) Space Between: The Art of Xu Bing

Video Screening
Chinese Video and Film NOW!
January 31, 2004, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego

Introduction by Christopher Phillips; Yang Fudong present in cooperation with the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The works screened included Song Dong’s My Motherland Made the Scene for Me, 1999; Wang Gognxin’s Fly, 2000; Yang Zhenzhong’s I Will Die, 2003; Cao Fei’s Rabid Dogs, 2002; and Yang Fudong’s Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest (Part I), 2003.

Video Installation Premiere
“Let’s Pray” by Yang Zhenzhong
January 31, 2004, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego

Let’s Pray was commissioned by the haudenschildGarage and filmed during his residency with the support of Tina Yapelli.

Artists-In-Residence
October and November 2003

Shanghai artists Shi Yong (November 3 – 10, 2003) and Yang Zhenzhong (October 22 – November 12, 2003) were in-residence at the haudenschildGarage; they were commissioned to produce new work.

Yong’s residency concluded with his performance of the interactive piece Super Angel at San Diego State University. Zhenzhong’s residency culminated in the premiere of the commissioned work Let’s Pray at the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego.  The haudenschildGarage supported Zhenzhong in filming the English and Spanish segments of his piece I Will Die (English, Spanish, and Chinese) while in San Diego and Tijuana.  I Will Die was later selected for the 2007 Venice Biennale.

Premiere Performance
“Super Angel” by Shi Yong
November 8, 2003, San Diego State University

Super Angel was commissioned by the haudenschildGarage; he worked with San Diego State University students.

Keynote Lectures
November 8 – 9, 2003 San Diego State University & the Chinese Historical Museum

Hou Hanru, Paris-based writer and curator of Zone of Urgency at the 2003 Venice Biennale, was the keynote lecturer at San Diego State University where he presented Chinese Artists (Digitally) Facing the Globalizing World as well as at the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum.

Video Dialogue: Shanghai/Tijuana
November 1, 2003, Centro Cultural, Tijuana, Mexico

This event was moderated by Norma Iglesias and included presentations by Yang Zhenzhong and Tijuana artists Itzel Martinez (Yonkart), Giancarlo Ruiz, and Salvador Vazquez Ricalde.

Marking many important milestones, Zooming into Focus: Chinese Contemporary Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection (2003 – 2005) was the first exhibition of its kind in San Diego and Singapore and the first contemporary Chinese photography exhibition at the Centro Cultural Tijuana, Mexico. It was the first time the Shanghai Art Museum exhibited works on contemporary Chinese video and photography from a private collection and most importantly, it was the first retrospective exhibition of Chinese photography and video ever held at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing.

Zooming into Focus investigated the effects of accelerated change in China through the work of the country’s most talented emerging artists. The swift transformation of Chinese culture is reflected in the work of each of these represented artists who comment on contemporary Chinese urban life with intelligence, wit, foreboding and nostalgia.

The works of Cao Fei, Chen Shaoxiong, Feng Mengbo, Geng Jianyi, Hong Hao, Hu Jieming, Kan Xuan, Lui Wei, Lu Chunsheng, Shi Yong, Song Tao, Tang Maohong, Wang Youshen, Weng Fen, Xiang Liqing, Xu Zhen, Yang Fudong, Yang Yong, Yang Zhenzhong, Zhao Bandi, Zheng Gougu and Zhu Jia were included in this exhibitions. Other artists in the collection include Gu Dexin, Hai Bo, Wang Jin, Zhou Tiehai, Yu Youhan, and Zhao Nengzhi.

Lorenz Helbling and Laura Zhou supported all exhibitions and organized the Hangzhou symposium at the China Art Academy. Shi Yong was responsible for designing the Zooming into Focus catalog and the installation design of Zooming into Focus at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing.

In addition to the traveling exhibitions, two symposia were held: An International Discourse on New Chinese Video and Photography at the San Diego Museum of Art and Envisioning the Future of Contemporary Art from Different Glocal Positions at the China National Academy of Art in Hangzhou, China. Participants included Xu Bing, Waling Boers, Fan Di’an, Huang Du, Britta Erickson, Hu Fang, Yang Fudong, Gridthiya Gaweewong, Wang Gogxin, Hou Hanru, Betti-Sue Hertz, Xu Jiang, Evelyne Jouanno, Mami Kataoka, Martina Koppel-Yang, Pi Li, Barbara London, Zhang Peili, Christopher Phillips, Zheng Shengtain, Karen Smith, Rudolf Stoert, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Li Xianyang, Li Xu, Mo Zhelan, and Qiu Zhijie.

The haudenschildGarage launched their residency program in 2003 which invited Chinese artists and curators for the first time to the United States. Shi Yong and Yang Zhenzhong were the first artists in residence and Hou Hanru, Cao Fei, Yong Fudong, Laura Zhou, Lorenz Helbling, Evelyn Jouanno, and Victoria Lu were also invited to the Garage. Both Shi Yong and Yang Zhenzhong produced new works commissioned by the haudenschildGarage while in residence.

Born in Buenos Aires and currently residing in San Diego, California, Eloisa Haudenschild, has one of the largest collections for contemporary Chinese photography and video art. “Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Photography and video from the Haudenschild Collection” exhibitions in US, China and Mexico included a schedule of Symposia, artist residency programs, commissioned works and a series of lectures, performance, video dialogues and screenings in US, China and Mexico. A passionate collector and art patron, Eloisa Haudenschild was interviewed after her appearance in Hong Kong in July 2004 for her talk on collecting at Bloomberg’s Hong Kong corporate headquarters. The following interview was conducted via emails.

[EH= Eloisa Haudenschild / PW= Phoebe Wong]

PW:    When and why did you start collecting contemporary Chinese video and photography?

EH:    My husband Chris and I started travelling to China on business five years ago. My experience as a collector of Latin American Art fueled my interest and appreciation for upcoming artists in different parts of the world. I tried to find connections with the art world and young artists. After a couple of years of searching we found in Shanghai the first group of artists that are today part of our collection. It was not my initial goal to have a collection of solely photography and video, but soon I realized that they were the media in which the artists were doing the most interesting work in my opinion.

PW:    What was your first piece in the collection? In what way, if any, does it help or determine your future direction?

EH:    There was not a first piece in the collection; there were a few artists I had collected initially. They included Yang Fudong, Shi Yong, Yang Zhenzhong, Xu Zhen, Xiang Liqing, and Zheng Guogu and I met them personally in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

After my first encounter, I came back home and started doing some more research. That is how I met Hou Hanru, Huang Yongping, Wang Du, Yang Jiechang (he is part of the collection) and Martina Koeppel-Yang in Paris. Later, generous curators and artists, who are dear friends today, supported our first symposium in San Diego, California. They were Christopher Phillips, Barbara London,  Britta Erickson, Xu Bing, and Prof. Wu Hung, who wrote one of the essays for the exhibition catalogue of Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection. More fascinating people participated in our symposium in Hangzhou.

Subsequent trips brought artists Cao Fei, Chen Shaoxiong, Feng Mengbo, Hong Hao, Weng Fen, Yang Yong, Zhao Bandi, and Song Tao into the collection, all artists from Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Haikuo.

PW:    Did you gradually develop a theme in your collection, such as, urbanism?

EH:    Youth and urbanism seem to be very strong issues for these artists in the above-mentioned exhibition. It is expressed in different ways, often with images filled with fantasy and longing.

PW:    Indeed, the collection can be seen through the thread of “constructed visual fictions” as Wu Hung has commented. Also, you mainly collect works from artists who live and work in Shanghai and Guangzhou – two highly commercialised cities and in rapid transition.

EH:    Yes, I enjoy the unique and thoughtful way the artists from the south, they are individuals who operate independently.

PW:    To offer a better understanding of the context of the works (collection), what are the readings you suggest concerning what has given rise to these works?

EH:    Chinese Art at the Crossroads by Prof. Wu Hung and On the Mid-Ground by Hou Hanru are two very important books. Also there are a variety of articles by scholars and curators like Britta Erickson, Martina Koeppel-Yang, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Li Xu, Zheng Shengtian, and others that shed light into this new and exciting moment in contemporary Chinese art.

PW:    Are you among those collectors who also commission new work and offer residencies?

EH:    My interest in collecting extends beyond the acquisition of art works. Collecting allows me to share in the artist’s journey, to participate in the process at a point when I can make a difference in the career of these young artists. My interest extends to the creation of educational programs, residencies (Yang Zhenzhong and Shi Yong at present) and the commissioning of new pieces.

PW:    Using the work of Shi Yong as an example, how did the residency unfold?

EH:    I believe the launching of “Super Angel I” and “Super Angel II” on the internet, Shi Yong’s project in collaboration with the students at San Diego State University, was very interesting and complex. Once the data was gathered for a few months, Shi Yong came to San Diego, interacted with artists on both sides of the US/Mexico border and students. The final phase of the project was an interactive performance.

PW:    Being described as “one of the most important collections of contemporary Chinese art in the world”, indeed, how large is the Haudenschild Collection, to date? And, what is your future direction in collecting?

EH:    The exhibition Zooming into Focus is only one part of the collection. Artists like Yang Jiechang, Gu Dexin, Wang Jin, Wang Youshen, Zhou Tiehai, Hai Bo, Yu Youhan, Zhao Nengzhi are included in the collection as well. The collection, now numbering over 60 pieces, will continue growing; we are constantly in the process of buying new works from new artists and are continuing to buy more works from artists already part of the collection – there is always a long wish list.

My commitment to the artists is to continue exposing their work, having the collection travel, supporting the development of the artists, and opening opportunities to them. Most importantly is my relationship with the artists – I think of them as friends. I only collect works from artists I know personally, I live surrounded by their work, I have never sold a piece of any of our collections, and do not purchase works that I feel exploit the exotic or the oriental. I have supported the participation of many Chinese artists in exhibitions such as the Venice Bienale, “Past and Reverse” at the San Deigo Museum of Art, and as well at Berkeley University in San Francisco.

The collaboration with international institutions was key to our project as was the organisation of lectures, symposia, video screenings, and video premieres – activities that took place in the US, China and Mexico.

PW:    Your being an avid collector, I am able to the feel emotional investment in your collection and in your endeavour to bring educational programmes to it. In hindsight, do you think your collection reflects your sensibility, or, offers you a new understanding of yourself? As for the works shown in the exhibition as well as in your talk, they are edgy works – some rather provocative.

EH:    I imagine the collection reflects my interest in the discovery of new and untapped works and artists. I enjoy participating in the artist’s process and development as much as I can.

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Having studied in design and cultural anthropology, Phoebe Wong is a Hong Kong-based culture worker specialising in art, design and visual media. She is currently a researcher of the Asia Art Archive.