After the resounding success of his first exhibition at Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art in 2006, the foundation is dedicating a second major solo exhibition to the renowned artist and filmmaker Yang Fudong, one of the most important artists yet to emerge in contemporary China. It presents three new works: Fifth Night, 2010; One half of August, 2011; Ye Jiang (The night man cometh), 2011.

Fifth Night, a video-installation composed of seven synchronized projections, is shot supposedly in the streets of Shanghai’s old town at night, revealing some commotion in which carriages, rickshaws and vintage cars are driven. A stage has been built and a tramcar is being frantically repaired. Unrelated characters perform their own activities, some engaged, others bored as if awaiting some event, all lack any interest in or compassion for one another. Yang Fudong uses 35-mm cameras to film the same scenes from different angles, with variations of scale and depth of field. This highlights a character’s simplest action or subtle expression so that what a viewer might perceive as separate instances are actually all part of a single scene. As in most of Yang Fudong’s works, all is left open-ended, with no beginning or end. Without conclusion, the search for spiritual life continues.

One half of August is an eight-screen, black-and-white, HD video installation, for which Yang Fudong projects scenes from earlier works (particularly from Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest) onto architectural elements, props, structures and objects built for the purpose. He also includes artefacts, uses light, and inverts external space. This creates new realities that challenge one’s vision and mind, and expands our understanding of the world. This first derivative of Yang Fudong films, almost an attempt at three-dimensionality, poses the question: Am I watching a film or a film of a film? Issues of the subconscious, reality and dream are also clearly present. The title A half of August refers to the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, which is about rites, tradition, art, poetry, everything that puts human beings to the fore. Usually starting on the 15th of the eighth Chinese lunar month, in 2011 the festival began on 12 September, the launch date of Yang Fudong’s exhibition at Parasol unit. Yang Fudong highlights with his beautiful title a fine collaboration with Parasol unit and his second exhibition there.

The single-screen work, Ye Jiang (The night man cometh) unfolds in a frozen winter landscape. At first one might try to read the film as a linear narrative, but as images succeed one another it becomes clear that Yang Fudong is once more questioning the destiny of man. In it a wounded and forlorn warrior is seen after a battle, apparently now questioning his path in life. In this dramatic and hyper-realist film, three ghost-like characters appear to personify the chaos of feelings and thoughts that surface and clash within the warrior’s heart and mind as he swings from enthusiasm and happiness to disappointment, grief and despair, thus revealing what takes place in a man who is required to demonstrate strength and courage in times of war and crisis.

Born in 1971 in Beijing, Yang Fudong lives and works in Shanghai. Recent exhibitions include Marion Goodman Gallery, Paris, France, (2011) and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney, Australia, (2011). Other one-person exhibitions include National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece, (2010); Hara Museum, Tokyo, Japan, (2009); Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, USA, (2009); MuHKA, Antwerp, Belgium, (2009); Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China (2009).

To read more about this exhibition visit: www.e-flux.com/shows/view/10116 and www.parasol-unit.org

Image: Yang Fudong, “Ye Jiang (The night man cometh),” 2011, 35mm film transferred to HD, 1 screen, Black and white, 19′21”

The works screened included:

After All I Didn’t Force You 1998, 2′30″
“After All I Didn’t Force You” (1998), are implicitly a reaction to the forms of individualism in a developing modern mass society. Yang Fudong strings together takes with different characters so quickly one after the other that they “lose face.”

City Lights 2000, 6′
“City Lights” is a mixture of the detective film and slapstick. A young, well-dressed office clerk moves in unison along the street and around the office. Like pre-programmed robots they fit perfectly into their apparently ideally organized environment. The day is entirely dominated by work, but the evening provides space for dreams and creative thinking, allowing a schizophrenic situation to arise. In their heroic conduct the two gentlemen sometimes develop into two gangsters who engage in a form of shadowboxing.

Backyard – Hey! Sun is Rising 2001,13′
Four men engage in acts simultaneously. They smoke, yawn, massage themselves and practice military exercises in a city and in a park. The seriousness with which they perform these acts contrasts with their pointlessness, which creates the effect of slapstick. Yang Fudong reveals that because of social changes, certain rituals have become totally meaningless.

Look Again 2004, 3′
Two young men wear the uniform of 70’s policemen – sometimes they look like runaway criminals. They want to escape reality which is impossible to cast off. They yearn for the bright sunshine life, expecting the time to be captured, to exchange for a calmness of the heart.

The Half Hitching Post 2005, 7′
A beautiful panoramic landscape sets the scene for the narrative of “The Half Hitching Post”. Here, we see only fragments of two stories taking place simultaneously: Two different couples are being witnesses in their attempt to ascend a mountain on a sloped and steep road. The viewer is left unaware of the couple’s ultimate goal as they compete on reaching their destination. Focusing on the journey up-wards the shifting perspective of the camera depicts the mutual hindrances engaged by the couples to sabotage their opponent’s success on reaching their ？nal destination. Juxtaposing the race towards the top with the tranquility of the surrounding landscape lends the video a poetic vibe all its own.

My Heart Was Touched Last Year 2007, 3′30″
A work made for Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion. It perhaps to disscuss about the vacant of time.

First Spring 2010, 9′30″
Featuring young men gathered in Shanghai, dressed in Prada menswear, the black and white film portrays realm where anything is possible.
Inspired by the Chinese adage that “the whole year’s work depends on a good start in spring”, this bold and beautiful film represents an exciting new direction for Prada’s visual communication at the start of this decade.

The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) is a non profit, comprehensive art center founded in Beijing by collectors Guy and Myriam Ullens in November 2007. Please click here for more information about UCCA.

Yang Fudong, Honey, 2003 Video

Two videos by Yang Fudong (Honey (2003) and City Light (2000) ) from the Haudenschild Collection were loaned to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco for the exhibition Shanghai on view February 12 – September 5, 2010. Click here for more information on the exhibition.

From February 12 through September 5, 2010, the Asian Art Museum presents Shanghai, the first exhibition of its kind to explore the visual culture of one of the world’s most intriguing cities. Spanning the time period from Shanghai’s origins as a modest regional center to the dynamic, cosmopolitan, global powerhouse of today, the exhibition reflects upon the history of the city over the past 160 years using art as its mirror. Drawn mainly from the collections of the Shanghai Museum, the Shanghai History Museum, the Shanghai Art Museum, the Lu Xun Memorial Hall, and the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre, the more than 130 artworks include trade oil paintings, Shanghai deco furniture and rugs, movie clips, revolutionary posters, and video and contemporary art installations. Shanghai is co-organized by the Shanghai Museum and the Asian Art Museum, with assistance from the Shanghai International Culture Association. The exhibition serves as the cornerstone of the Shanghai Celebration, a year-long festival hosted by a collaboration of San Francisco Bay Area cultural institutions to honor the region’s long-standing relationship with Shanghai. The lead curator was Michael Knight, assisted by Dany Chan. Britta Erickson selected the works for the contemporary section.

Yang Fudong, City Light, 2000 Video

The Shanghai exhibition is divided into four broad sections providing an overview of the major cultural and historical developments in Shanghai: “Beginnings” (1850–1911), “High Times” (1912–1949), “Revolution” (1920–1976), and “Shanghai Today” (1980–present). “Beginnings” traces Shanghai’s rise from a modest regional center to a city of international prominence after its designation as a “Treaty Port” by Britain and China in the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing. “China Trade” oil paintings, Shanghai school paintings, and a series of lithographs present the city as the international economic hub that it became in a short time. “High Times” represents a dynamic era in Shanghai’s history, which many people consider a historic commercial and cultural height. Ink and oil paintings, posters, one-piece dresses called qipao, film clips, and Shanghai Deco furniture together capture the launching of a public romance with the city that continues today. “Revolution” highlights a collection of propaganda posters and woodcuts that document the changing landscape of Shanghai during the Communist reaction against the excesses of the “High Times” period. Other artworks in this section include woodblock prints from the 1930s and 1940s— among the earliest works to express the social criticism that would later lead to the revolution — and ink and oil paintings. “Shanghai Today” presents the visual culture that is emerging as the city reclaims its role as a leading center of global trade and finance. Prints, paintings, and video and installation art demonstrate the assurance with which Shanghai artists have reentered the global art scene with the removal of many of the restrictions of the “Revolution” period.

Because of its scope and scale, the museum has reconfigured its gallery spaces to accommodate the exhibition. Visitors will be directed through South Court to the exhibition’s beginning at the entrance to the Hammond Arcade. In the arcade, visitors will encounter the first work of art, Shadow in the Water, a white porcelain sculpture created between 2002 and 2008 by the Shanghai installation artist Liu Jianhua. The sculpture is a repeating row of landmark skyscrapers found in cities across China, suggesting a sameness in the landscape of China’s metropolises. Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl Tower (one of the tallest towers in the world), Jinmao Tower, and Bank of China Tower are among the buildings depicted.

The first historical and cultural subsection of the exhibition – “Beginnings” – is introduced upon entering the Osher Gallery. “Beginnings” introduces Shanghai as it was transformed from a modest regional center to an internationally prominent locale after its designation as a Treaty Port in 1842. In 1854, the Shanghai International Settlement – combining the British and American foreign concessions – was established, with its own system of self-governance that was effectively independent from China. In this special environment, which continued until 1943, Shanghai rapidly became a center for artistic production, with Chinese artists creating works for foreign, as well as domestic, consumption.

“China Trade” paintings are among the artworks on view in this section. This genre of paintings and drawings served the purpose of documenting the environs of Western traders and functioned as visual mementos of their time in Shanghai. These works were created by Chinese artists for the new market of Western patrons. The world portrayed in these paintings is dominated by Western-style buildings and images of Western lifestyles.

The handscroll entitled Illustrations of the Antique Collection of Kezhai by Lu Hui (1851-1920) and Hu Qinhan (act. late 19th century) is an example of the types of artworks created by and for the Chinese elite in Shanghai during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The artwork depicts the famous scholar and collector Wu Dacheng (whose poetic name was Kezhai) surrounded by his collection of ancient Chinese bronzes. Shanghai was home to a large number of wealthy, well-educated Chinese – including many artists – who fled to the city during the internal strife that besieged most of China during this time period. Such works show Shanghai artists struggling to find a balance between looking back to long-standing artistic traditions and embracing new directions influenced by Western styles.

The intermingling of Chinese and Western cultures in the city figures prominently in a set of large drawings that served as models for lithographs. Many of the drawings depict interiors with women in fashionable Chinese garb (and with bound feet) in a variety of pursuits, many influenced by the West, from playing pool to using sewing machines. Outside their windows are power lines, electric and gas lamps, and other signs of the Western-influenced modernization.

Covering the period from around the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912 to the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, “High Times” occupies the remainder of Osher Gallery and continues into Hambrecht Gallery. The boundary between “Beginnings” and “High Times” is marked by a bronze tablet originally erected at the boundary of the American Settlement in Shanghai.

“High Times” begins with a series of paintings and calligraphies in traditional Chinese mediums and formats. “Bird and flower blossoms,” a hanging scroll by Xie Zhiliu (1910-1997) is an example of the bright colors and delicate brushwork that marks works by artists of the Shanghai school of painting. Artists associated with the Shanghai school broke from the traditional mode of landscape painting and created expressive and dramatic works that responded directly to the demands of their patrons.

Shanghai’s complex and often ambiguous social structure at the time is evident in a painting that appears to be a straightforward portrait of two men in a traditional Chinese garden. The painting, “Huang Jinrong and Du Yuesheng” by Yu Ming (1884–1935), depicts two legendary bosses of the infamous Green Gang. The Green Gang controlled the criminal activities in Shanghai in the early twentieth century.

The next part of “High Times” presents the arts that bombarded the residents of Shanghai on a daily basis: fashion, film, posters, and other graphic arts. Faces of beautiful Chinese women appeared often in visual products exhibiting Shanghai modernity in the 1920s and 1930s. Two of the many examples on view in the exhibition are posters entitled Moonlight over Huangpu River and A Prosperous City That Never Sleeps, both by Yuan Xiutang (dates unknown). Each of these posters presents a woman, clothed and coiffed in the latest styles, lounging before a backdrop of the city’s skyline. Such a composition exemplifies a successful marketing strategy that linked 1) Shanghai with 2) modernity with 3) the Chinese woman. This triangular association was so prevalent in the city’s visual culture at this time that it compelled the following claim by writer Cao Juren (1900–1972): “Haipai (Shanghai-style) is like a modern girl.”

Also included in this area are five qipao, a version of traditional Chinese women’s dress that was updated in Shanghai after the 1900s to be slender and form fitting. This style was popularized by Shanghai socialites as well as glamorous courtesans. During the 1920s and 1930s Shanghai had one of the leading and most innovative film industries in the world, and clips of films from that era will be shown on a flat-screen monitor in this part of the exhibition to provide a sense of this genre and a context for the other items on view.

Osher Gallery concludes with a series of oil paintings done in modern Western styles. Very few such works have survived the turmoil of the mid and late twentieth century in Shanghai. The eight examples on view are from a private collection in Shanghai. The Bund by Liu Haisu is an example of a strong work by one of China’s most famous artists influenced by Western artistic sensibilities. This painting is a view of Shanghai’s Garden Bridge and its environs. Its twisting, dynamic forms and vibrant colors reveal the artistic influence of Van Gogh, one of Liu’s favorite artists.

“High Times” continues across North Court in Hambrecht Gallery. An installation of Shanghai Deco furniture and carpets are displayed, as well as photographs of the deco interiors and exteriors of famous Shanghai buildings of the 1920s and 1930s. The pair of armchairs is remarkable in that the original fabric has survived largely intact. The bold swirling fabric in tangerine and fuschia complements the curving lines on the hardwood and burl frames. Other art deco furniture presented include a six-piece bedroom suite, a dining room table with four chairs, and a cabinet, among others.

A change in wall color marks the transition between “High Times” and “Revolution.” Shanghai was a leader in many of the social and political movements that swept China in the middle decades of the twentieth century. The first image that greets the visitor upon entering the new section is a 1968 portrait of Mao Zedong by oil painter Yu Yunjie (1917–1992).

The next grouping of works looks backward to the 1930s and 1940s at early expressions of the reformist socialist impulses that eventually led to the revolution. The woodcut print artists of the time asserted that the medium could best serve “the people” as it was reproducible, affordable, and mobile. They increasingly pursued Socialist agendas in their prints, tackling societal ills. A good example is a 1935 woodcut print entitled Roar, China! by Li Hua (1907–1994). The slogan “Roar, China!” had become an international rallying cry for the emancipation of all oppressed people. The phrase was representative of the anti-Imperialist mood gripping many countries in the 1920s and 1930s, and it highlighted China as the focus of this global mobilizing effort. The exhibition also includes a 1946 cartoon of Sanmao, the longest running comic strip in China, which like the woodcut prints was aimed to align visual art with populist concerns.

In print, perhaps the most ubiquitous product of the government’s visual enterprise were the large-format, colorful propaganda posters. The posters on display in the exhibition depict celebrations in Shanghai of the new Communist regime. Many of the posters on display were published by the Shanghai People’s Fine Art Publishing House, a state-owned enterprise. In these and in the others on view, famous landmarks of the Bund and Nanjing Road appeared often as sites of new revolutions and campaigns against all that the city had once symbolized.

The last area of Hambrecht Gallery is dedicated to Shen Fan’s 2007 installation Landscape-Commemorating Huang Binhong-Scroll, an homage to one of China’s great artists of the twentieth century. This installation piece with computer-operated neon lights and music introduces the contemporary section “Shanghai Today.” Like most of the works in this section, it was created in the past few years, while a number of works in this section were actually created for the exhibition.

After exiting Hambrecht Gallery, the exhibition continues in Lee Gallery, which features contemporary photographs, textiles, ink paintings and calligraphy on paper, acrylic paintings, and oil paintings. For the first time North Court is being given over to art, where two large new works by the leading Shanghai installation artists Zhang Jianjun (b. 1955) and Liu Jianhua (b. 1962) are on view.

Zhang Jianjun’s work Vestiges of a Process: Shanghai Garden is situated closest to Lee Gallery on the east side of North Court. It is an installation composed of two silicone rubber Taihu rocks, manufactured from molds of real Taihu rocks which in traditional garden culture are prized for providing city dwellers with a kind of symbolic access to nature. The rocks are accompanied by a silicone rubber vase. Together they are arrayed atop a pavement of gray antique bricks, acquired from the demolition of Shanghai houses constructed between 1923 and 1926. Visitors can walk between the rocks, reflecting on time and process.

Liu Jianhua’s Can You Tell Me? occupies the west end of North Court in the Vinson Nook. The installation is a series of stainless steel books suspended from a vertical wall. Each book presents two questions about Shanghai’s future, one on each page, that are translated into five languages, Chinese, English, French, German, and Japanese. Always changing, propelled by its role as an economic powerhouse, the city suggests endless possibilities some of which Liu asks visitors to contemplate.

The last section of “Shanghai Today” is presented in what is normally used as the Education Resource Room. This space features contemporary video art, one of the mediums in which Shanghai artists are taking a worldwide lead. Three of the five videos are by Yang Fudong (b. 1971): City Light (2000); Liu Lan (2003); and Honey (2003). A celebrated photographer, videographer, and film maker, Yang frequently explores the feelings of longing and displacement. His works often focus on the lives of young urbanites who despite possessing admirable qualities such as education or beauty, may not be well-adjusted to the environment in which they live.

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

Fueled by passion and confidence, she says, they acquired twenty works with their first purchase of Chinese art. Her husband was very supportive, encouraging her to take those twenty and, in her words, “double it up—go for forty or fifty.”

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).”

Coinciding with the anniversary of the “Art For Sale” exhibition, the haudenschildGarage held a Ten Year Reunion Celebration for artists, critics, and curators on January 18, 2009 in Shanghai and on January 20, 2009 in Beijing.

Organized by Laura Zhou and Lorenz Helbling, some attendees included Li Xiangyang, Liu Wei, Yang Fudong, Yang Zhenzong, Shi Yong, Song Tao, Xiang Liqing, Wang Youshen, Zhu Jia, Yang Enli, Zhao Bandi, Lisa Movius, Tang Maohong, Hu Jieming, Lynn Zhang, Zhou Tiehai, Ding Yi, Helen Zhu, Chen Ya, Lu Leiping, Florence Dinar, Shaway Yeh and Xu Zhen.

Cao Fei, Whose Utopia, 2006 Video

The videos selected were Cao Fei’s Whose Utopia (2006) and Yang Fudong’s City Lights (2000) and Honey (2003). Click here for more information about the exhibition.

Business As Usual is an opportunity to examine two of the most prominent contemporary Chinese video artists. Both Cao Fei and Yang Fudong address the emergence of a new middle class in China. Contemporary artists in China employ a range of media to explore the experience of living in a rapidly changing urban environment. Globalization has brought them into contact with Western contemporary art, which explains the increasing visual similarity, but their concerns remain unique to present-day China.

In Whose Utopia, Cao Fei portrays workers who left their small hometown to pursue life in the big city. They took with them dreams to be dancers and singers, and ended up in factories. Working with employees in a light bulb factory, Cao Fei has the workers dress in the garb of their dreams and perform within the environment of their actual lives, the factory.

Yang Fudoing’s film and video work portrays his generations of people in their late 20s and 30s who are part of the emerging middle class in China who hover between the past and present. Fudong’s work epitomizes how the recent and rapid modernization of China has overthrown traditional values and culture. He skillfully balances this dichotomy to create works endowed with classic beauty and timelessness.

The exhibition is co-curated by Marilyn A. Zeitlin, former-Director and Chief Curator, and Heather S. Lineberry, Senior Curator and Interim Director, of the ASU Art Museum.

Yang Fudong, CIty Light, 2000 Video

Yang Fudong, Honey, 2003 Video

The Haudenschild Collection was the inspiration for the exhibition City Lights: Shanghai – Los Angeles on view from November 7 – December 17, 2006. The exhibition was organized by Yeonsoo Chee and examined contemporary life in Shanghai and Los Angeles. Chee writes that these cities were “two of the most dynamic and influential urban centers of the 21st century. On the streets—and in the artists’ images—of these two great metropolises are played out many of the issues confronting post-modern society: the globalization of markets and cultures, the search for individual identity in the face of homogenization, the proliferation of artifice and spectacle, the excesses of consumer culture, and the endless sprawl of urban development.” Click here for more information about the exhibition.

Works on loan for this exhibition included Lui Wei Unlimited 2004; Yang Fudong City Light 2000 (video); Song Tao In Loud Crowds I Dream of Hanging Myself 2 2002; Yang Fudong Honey 5, 2003; Yang Fudong Honey 2003 (video); Xiang Liqing Rock Never (Facades) #2 2002.  The Los Angeles portion of the exhibition featured works by Uta Barth, Martin Kersels, Michael Light, Robbert Flick, and Melanie Pullen.

Lui Wei, Unlimited, 2004

Yang Fudong, Honey, 2003 Video

The Haudenschild Collection was the inspiration for the exhibition City Lights: Shanghai – Los Angeles at the University Art Gallery, CSULB on view November 7 – December 17, 2006. The exhibition was organized by Yeonsoo Chee and it examined contemporary life in Shanghai and Los Angeles. Chee writes that these cities were “two of the most dynamic and influential urban centers of the 21st century. On the streets—and in the artists’ images—of these two great metropolises are played out many of the issues confronting post-modern society: the globalization of markets and cultures, the search for individual identity in the face of homogenization, the proliferation of artifice and spectacle, the excesses of consumer culture, and the endless sprawl of urban development.”

Song Tao, In Loud Crowds I Dream of Hanging Myself 2, 2002

Yang Fudong, City Light, 2000 Video

Works on loan for this exhibition included Lui Wei Unlimited (2004); Yang Fudong City Light (2000) video; Song Tao In Loud Crowds I Dream of Hanging Myself 2 (2002); Yang Fudong Honey 5 (2003); Yang Fudong Honey (2003) video; Xiang Liqing Rock Never (Facades) #2 (2002).  The Los Angeles portion of the exhibition featured works by Uta Barth, Martin Kersels, Michael Light, Robbert Flick, and Melanie Pullen.

On November 16, 2006 Eloisa Haudenschild was in conversation with CSULB Professor Todd Gray as part of the exhibition.

Click here for more information about the exhibition.

Xiang Liqing, Rock Never, 2002

Yang Fudong, Honey 5, 2003

Shi Yong, Gravity: Shanghai Night Sky, 2004

Shi Yong’s light box installation Gravity: Shanghai Night Sky (2004) from the Haudenschild Collection was loaned to the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo for the exhibition Follow Me! Contemporary Chinese Art at the Threshold of the Millennium on view July 2 – September 4, 2005. Curator Mami Kataoka invited artists Cao Fei, Chen Shaoxiong, Chen Wenbo, Liu Zheng, Lu Hao, Ou Ning, Shao Yinong / Mu Chen, Shi Yong, Wang Qingsong, Weng Fen, Xu Zhen, Yang Fudong, Yang Zhenzhong, The Yangjiang Group (Zheng Guogu, Chen Zaiyan, Sun Qinglin), Yin Xiuzhen and Zhou Tiehai.

Click here for more information about the exhibition.

“Follow Me! Chinese Contemporary Art at the Threshold of the New Millennium introduces over forty works by nineteen artists of this new generation. The title of the exhibition is taken from Wang Qingsong’s photo-tableau “Follow Me,” included in the show, which shows the artist as a teacher seated in front of a blackboard covered in Chinese and English writing on which the logos of famous American and European brands can be seen – a sideways comments perhaps on China’s recent wave of privatizations and opening up to foreign markets. But the words at the center of the board – “Let China walks towards the world! Let the world learns about China!” – suggest that they should not slavishly follow the developed world. In fact, the artist seems to be asking who, in the future, will be doing the leading. In confronting the many faces of the new China there can no longer be any single point of view or message in the art. One thing is sure though, the influence of this country’s artists is certain to grow in the future.

Contemporary China is characterized by an incredible dynamism. Things seem to be transformed everyday, fuelled by astonishing economic growth, frantic urban development and the preparations for the 2008 Olympics. Of course these changes are reflected in art. Throughout the 1990s Chinese artists slowly emerged into the international art world and were invited to take part in numerous exhibitions across the world. Now, at the threshold of the new millennium, interest in Chinese contemporary art is peaking again, as a new generation of artists – born in the late 1960s and 1970s – appears on the scene.

This new generation presents us with an accurate and complex picture of a culture in transition. They take as their subject matter the country’s disappearing traditional landscape, its new urbanism and rapidly changing social values. They are also concerned with the ways in which Chinese people are adapting their lifestyles to contemporary realities, freeing themselves from traditional stereotypes while actively utilizing new technologies.” – Mami Kataoka

About Mami Kataoka

Mami Kataoka is currently the senior curator at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo and is the international curator at Hayward Gallery, London, where earlier in 2009 she presented the exhibition Laughing in a Foreign Language, exploring the role of humor in contemporary art practice worldwide. She has co-curated the exhibitions Tokyo-Berlin / Berlin-Tokyo (2006) in collaboration with the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; New Territories (2005) at ARCO Madrid. From 1997-2002 she was chief curator at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery. In 2001 she co-curated “My Home is Yours / Your Home is Mine” with Hou Hanru and Jerome Sans. In 2002 she worked with the Barbican Art Gallery in London to produce “JAM: Tokyo-London” which included the work of over forty artists, fashion and graphic designers, photographers, musicians, and performers. In the same year Kataoka was one of nine curators to develop the exhibition “Under Construction: New Dimensions of Asian Art“. She was also the selector, with Hou Hanru, of the Asian galleries that participated in the 2004 ARCO held in Madrid. More recently she has worked on projects with artists: Rirkrit Tiravanija, Santiago Cucullu, Ozawa Tsuyoshi and Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba.

Chinese artist Yang Zhenzhong premiered his video installation Let’s Pray at the Museum of Photographic Art, San Diego on January 31, 2004.

This work was filmed during his residency at the haudenschildGarage from October 22 – November 12, 2003.  Let’s Pray was produced in collaboration with Tina Yapelli of the University Art Gallery of San Diego State University. Yang Zhenzhong was invited for the exhibition Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography & Video from the Haudenschild Collection.

Prior to the video installation premiere at MOPA, Christopher Phillips introduced the video screening, Chinese Video and Film NOW!; Yang Fudong present in cooperation with the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The videos included Song Dong’s My Motherland Made the Scene for Me, 1999; Wang Gognxin’s Fly, 2000; Cao Fei’s Rabid Dogs, 2002; and Yang Fudong’s Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest (Part I), 2003.

Additionally, while in residence, the haudenschildGarage supported Yang Zhenzhong’s filming of the Spanish and English portions of his video I Will Die in San Diego and Tijuana. The ten channel video was later chosen for the 2007 Venice Biennale.

About Yang Zhenzhong

Born in Xiaoshan in 1968, Yang Zhengzhong now lives and works in Shanghai. He graduated from the oil painting department of the China Fine Arts Academy in Hangzhou in 1993 and began working with video and photography in 1995. Yang Zhengshong’s work has showed at major biennales and triennials including Venice (2003), Shanghai (2002), Guangzhou (2002) and Gwangju (2002). Yang Zhengzhong became famous in 2000 with his ten channel video “(I Know) I Will Die” that features short sequences in which a series of people speak the phrase “I will die” to the camera. It is a disconcerting, soberly presented film that confronts the viewer with existential questions.

Yang Zhengzhong recognizes that individual participation is the starting point for the transformation of perception. The video “922 Grains of Rice” plays with the interaction of the image of a cock and a chicken pecking grains of rice and the sound of a male and a female voice counting the number of pecked grains. It is a humorous representation of the battle of sexes as well a comment on today’s competitive behavior.

The desire to challenge normative notions of social behavior informs the practices of Yang Zhenzhong’s work. He is pre-occupied with China’s intrinsic disharmony and extreme discrepancies and often touches upon taboos such as death and out-dated social norms. His approach is metaphorical rather than narrative. His videos often start from witty ideas, employing image repetition and rhythmic coordination of sound, language and image. “Let’s Puff” (4th Shanghai Biennale, Zone of Urgency, 50th Venice Biennial) similarly starts from the interplay of two images: a young woman puffing and a busy street. Every time the woman breathes, the image of the street moves away from the viewer. The rhythm of the traffic and the angle of perception are altered with the rhythm of the woman’s breath.

Yang Zhengzhong’s playful videos are more than visual reflections; they are intelligent comments on the design of contemporary society. In a series of photos entitled “Light and Easy,” he perceives the weight of urban changes as an exterior phenomenon, and literally depicts the process as a weightless factor, turning urban landmarks upside down. “Light and Easy” is based upon a conviction that the lightness of the isolated exterior or interior is a source of interesting material. The successful experiments the artists have executed to formulate connections are exciting, sincere and disturbing. (ShanghART; Shanghai, China)