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. 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.

Coinciding with the anniversary of the “Art For Sale” exhibition, the haudenschildGarage held a Ten Year Reunion Celebration for artists, critics, and curators in Shanghai and Beijing organized by Laura Zhou and Lorenz Helbling.

The Haudenschild Collection installation Shanghai Sky by Shi Yong was loaned to the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo for the exhibition Follow Me! Contemporary Chinese Art at the Threshold of the Millennium curated by Mami Kataoka on view July 2 – September 4, 2005.

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.

Arts & Collection Series II in Asia Art Archive, July 2004
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 [...]

Published at ARTnews.com, February 2004
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