Opening reception at REDCAT on Thursday, September 16, 6–9 pm

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the screening and conversation scheduled for Friday, September 17 at the haudenschildGarage, has been cancelled.

About the Artists

Zhang Peili (b. 1957, Hangzhou) graduated from the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou in 1984. He has been called the “Father of Chinese video art” and is a leading figure in the Chinese contemporary art scene ever since the mid-1980s. His influence on his peers and his role as educator of younger generations of artists cannot be emphasized enough. As the main founder of the first new media department in the Chinese art eductation system, his pedagogical engagement has been greatly fruitful. He has had solo exhibitions at Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth (2009); OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen (2008); and Museum of Modern Art, New York (1999). Zhang has also been included in ‘85 New Wave, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2007); China Power Station, Serpentine Gallery, London (2006); Alors la Chine?, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Zone of Urgency, Venice Biennale (2003); Global Conceptualism, Queens Museum of Art, New York (1999); Cities on the Move, CAPC musée d’Art contemporain de Bordeaux and Secession, Vienna (1997-9); Inside Out, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1998). Zhang lives and works in Hangzhou where he serves as founding dean and professor of the New Media Department at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou.

Zhu Jia (b. 1963, Beijing) graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing in 1988. He has presented work at Trans Local Motion, Shanghai Biennale (2008); Not Only Possible, But Also Necessary, Istanbul Biennale (2007); World Factory, San Francisco Art Institute (2007); Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography & Video from the Haudenschild Collection, National Art Museum of China (2005); The Second Guangzhou Triennial (2005); Alors la Chine?, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2003); Zone of Urgency, Venice Biennale (2003); Time After Time, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2003); Tempo, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2002); Living in Time, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2001); Translated Acts, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and Queens Museum of Art, New York (2001); Cities on the Move, CAPC musée d’Art contemporain de Bordeaux and Secession, Vienna (1997-9); Every Day, 11th Biennale of Sydney (1998). Zhu lives and works in Beijing.

*Image: Left: Zhang Peili, Uncertain Pleasure, Right: Zhu Jia, Forever

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.

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.

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.

It was in 1988 when Zhang Peili realized his 30 X 30, one of the first examples of Chinese video art. 30 X 30, a two hour sequence showing the artist breaking and reassembling a mirror over and over again, with its sobriety and its obvious Chan-Buddhist absurdity – at the time called grey humor – is not only typical of the contemporary Chinese art of the late 1980s, but also shows the main characteristics of early Chinese video art. Fixed camera positions, endlessly drawn out shots, underlying the absurdity and strangeness of the image or performance documented, or again the medium of the video installation, typical of Zhang’s later works, were main features of Chinese video art until the middle of the 1990s.

Since 1988, fifteen years have passed, and video art in China today is as pluralistic and colorful as Chinese society. Next to Zhang Peili, Wang Gongxin, Wang Jianwei, Chen Shaoxiong, Hu Jieming, Li Yongbing, Liang Juhui, Song Dong, Qiu Zhijie, Wu Wenguang, Xu Tan, Yan Lei, Zhu Jia, and Feng Mengbo belong to a first group of artists working with video and new media in China. Zhang, once pioneer, is today the head of the first multi media art department at a Chinese academy, the New Media Art Center of the China Fine Arts Academy in Hangzhou. Zhang Peili’s style, once experimental, today rather tends to be academic, still showing the quest to create a kind of universal visual language and to set aesthetic and technical standards.

The emergence of this kind of academism within the field of the relatively young Chinese video art guarantees the backing necessary for experimentally working younger generations. Since the mid-1990s, with more easily accessible technical equipment and information, video has become a major form of expression of young Chinese artists. A young generation primarily experimenting with video, film, and other new media has emerged in the urban centers, in particular in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. These young artists, mainly born in the 1960s and 1970s – for example Cao Fei, Jiang Zhi, Jin Jiangbo, Lu Chunsheng, Shi Yong, Weng Fen, Xu Zhen, Yang Fudong, Yang Zhenzhong, Zheng Guogu and others – not only gained immediate recognition in the Chinese art scene but also garnered success on an international level rather quickly. Since the late 1990s video and multi media art works of Chinese artists have been selected for numerous international video festivals and have been presented at high-profile exhibitions, such as the documenta X in Kassel in 1997 (Feng Mengbo, Wang Jianwei) or the documenta XI (2002) (Feng Mengbo,Yang Fudong) or again the 50th Venice Biennial (2003) (Cao Fei, Chen Shaoxiong, Gu Dexin, Jiang Zhi, Liang Juhui, Yang Fudong, Yang Zhenzhong, Zhang Peili, Zhu Jia).

The Haudenschild Collection is the first collection focusing on Chinese photography and video art, thus giving witness to the importance of these media. The present exhibition features video works from the collection by artists born in the 1960s and 1970s and working in the Southern Chinese urban centers Shanghai and Guangzhou. Certainly, this generation’s enormous interest in the medium video cannot merely be ascribed to the increasing accessibility of technical equipment and know-how. Having grown to maturity in a society in rapid transition, where the fleetness of change makes an individual’s life’s perspective appear totally unpredictable and where omnipresent media play major roles in determining the perception of what is real and what is imaginary, video (and photography alike) might be a most adequate and direct medium not only to capture the overwhelming changes of personal life, urban environment, and of society, but also to convey the feelings of uncertainty and vagueness felt by the majority of the young generation. Yang Fudong describes these feelings as a distance to life that is evident in the videos and films of his contemporaries on a conceptual and on an aesthetic level. Alienation and perception are major themes, and the wish to grasp reality and take hold of this ever-changing life, is at the origin of the quest to integrate art into life, or to consider art a “by-product of life”. On an aesthetic level this distance generates a kind of poetic melancholic mood and humor typical of this generation of artists.

Yang Fudong (1971) graduated from the China Fine Arts Academy in Hangzhou and moved to Shanghai in 1998. The so-called literati short films, as well as the Chinese cinema of the 1920s/1930s and the Yuefen-style typical of the Shanghai petit bourgeoisie of the early 20th century are important references for Yang. His strongly narrative videos, films, and photographic series can be read as allegories of the alienated city-dwellers’ lives. The narratives enfold sometimes in high-rise apartment and office-buildings, the typical environment of the new middle-class Chinese of the metropolis, the so-called “white-collar” (bailing), like for example in “City Lights” (“Chengshi zhi guang”) and “Honey” (“Mi”) – both part of the present exhibition – sometimes in a dreamlike setting reminiscent of traditional Chinese gardens and the Chinese literati landscape, like for example in “Su Xiaoxiao” (2001), “Tonight’s Moon” (2000), and “Liulan” (2003). “City Lights” (2000, 6 minutes, color) recounts the life of such a white-collar, performing his prescribed every-day ritual, sometimes feeling like standing besides himself and being left alone with his solitary but ready-made dreams of a modern life. The stereotype of him holding and passing on an umbrella occurs throughout the video. “Honey” (2003, color), evocative of some ominous spy-story, similarly is set in some apartment and backyard of high-rise buildings in the metropolis. The image of a young mundane girl moving from one place to another, or in the company of blankly gazing, discreet men in Mao-suits appears throughout the video. Close-ups of her body and dress might hint to the nature of relationship between the protagonists. But the story Yang recounts never gets explicit, only suggesting the possibility of their interaction through the creation of a never fulfilled suspense. Even though Yang Fudong’s works have a strong narrative component their message is never clear. Yang rather creates a filament of allusive images, underscored by sound and text, letting the viewer alone with a multitude of ambiguous insinuations that he calls “abstract imagery”. According to Yang, “abstract imagery” can convey the inexplicit feelings of the individual and engender a transformation of perception.

The transformation of perception is also a concern of Shanghai-based Yang Zhenzhong. Yang (1968) who graduated from the oil painting department of the China Fine Arts Academy in Hangzhou in 1993, started working with video and photography in 1995. His approach is rather metaphorical than narrative. His videos often start from witty ideas, using the repetition of images and the rhythmic coordination of sound, language and image. “922 Rice Corns” (“922 ke mi”, 2000, 8 min., color) plays with the interaction of the image of a cock and a chicken pecking grains of rice and the sound of a male and female voice counting the number of pecked grains. “Let’s Puff” (“Wo chui”, 2003, 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 is puffing, 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’s often playful videos could be called visual reflections. Individual perception and experience, as for example in his “I Will Die” (“Wo hui si de”, 2000), are the starting point for the transformation of perception, as Yang points out: “Sometimes I feel that if you deal with individual experience on a certain level it becomes universal experience. “That’s not to say I think theory is of no importance, actually art is also not that important, they are all the by-products of life.”

Guangzhou-based Chen Shaoxiong (1962) who graduated from the Guangzhou Fine Arts Academy is one of the pioneers of Chinese video art. With him, the concept to lead art back into life, or to consider art a by-product of life takes a more radical and subversive stance. As with other artists of the Cantonese avant-garde, for him the creation of an allusive imagery is less important. Being a member of the Big Tail Elephants Working Group (Daweixiang gongzuo xiaozu), called “urban guerrilla” by Hou Hanru , Chen searches a direct interaction with his urban environment. The perception of reality again is the artist’s concern. Chen’s early videos of performances, such as “Five Hours” (1993), as well as his “Sight-Adjusters” (1996), installations with split-screen videos, and his “Streets” (1997- today), a series of three-dimensional photo collages, tend to reveal perception as a conceptual construct depending on outer conditions, such as the rapidly changing urban environment. “Figure Anti-Terrorism” (“Huayang fankong”, 2003, Zone of Urgency, 50th Venice Biennial), which is part of the present exhibition, is Chen Shaoxiong’s answer to the global anti-terrorism campaign. The computer-generated video installation consists of a chessboard – the figures are airplanes and buildings – and two video projections that show high-rise buildings in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou using different tricks to avoid the impact of approaching airplanes. Chen’s work is not only a witty comment on current events, but also a reflection on how the perception of the urban environment changed after September 11. On a more general level, Chen’s work explores how the real-time mediation of a real event that had formerly only been thinkable as imaginary redefined the limits of perception. Within these newly defined limits, video can act as an expansion of reality.

The Haudenschild Collection focuses solely on the media of photography and video. In this respect, it is unique among the increasing number of collections of contemporary art from China. Starting in the late 1990s, Eloisa and Chris Haudenschild travelled regularly to China and slowly acquainted themselves with local art scenes. They started their explorations in Shanghai, where they bought their first pieces from artists such as Yang Fudong, Shi Yong, and Xu Zhen. Zooming into Focus: Chinese Contemporary Photography and Video from the Haudesnchild Collection debuted at the San Diego State University Art Gallery in October 2003. It was subsequently shown in Tijuana, Singapore and Shanghai only to end its travels with a grand finale at the National Museum in Beijing from November 5 to 20, 2005 becoming the first retrospective show of contemporary Chinese photograph and video to ever be held there. Although displayed in the side wing of the museum, the show occupied an impressive 1,000 square meters and showcased nearly fifty photo and video works by fourteen artists – the vast majority of them belonging to the Haudenschild Collection, with a few added pieces requested from artists to make the exhibition more representative of the overall field.

The first piece to greet visitors upon entering the exhibition space was Xu Zhen’s video Shout (1997), a version of which was also exhibited in the first Chinese national pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale. For this work, Xu Zhen positioned himself at busy intersections and then proceeded to periodically emit a scream. The reactions of passerby are videotaped from the artist’s perspective. While many of them are unfazed and go on about their business – life in the hectic metropolis having made them immune to unusual external stimulation – others turn around and stare, either to determine the origin of the scream or to simply gawk incredulously at its emitter. The video is highly intuitive in its interaction with the people on the street and immediately engages the viewer, thus making a great entrance piece for the exhibition.

The eerie sound of slapping lured the visitor further into the exhibition space. At the far end of the corridor a narrow crevice in the wall that both revealed and obscured another of Xu Zhen’s video work Rainbow (1998). The piece records a naked person’s back being violently slapped. All the viewer can see is the person’s flesh increasingly turning red. In the beginning, the distinct markings of hands are visible but slowly these prints merge into a large, indeterminate patch of redness. The video was installed in a freestanding cube with only a narrow entrance. Emulating a crack in the wall, the installation effectively conjured up the feeling of voyeurism. It forcefully catapulted the viewer into a state of conflict where the enjoyment of the artwork seems to equate itself with the enjoyment of pain, which in turn elicits a certain degree of revulsion. Beyond doubt, this push-and-pull effect makes Xu Zhen’s work more haunting then usual, especially as the muffed sound of slapping lingers and accomanies the visitor as he or she continues on to view the phtographs installed int ehoutside space of the room.

The majority of the photographs displayed in Zooming into Focus reflected the current canon of contemporary photography from China as it has been established by international museum and gallery exhibitions. A whole wall was dedicated to various prints from Zhao Bandi’s Zhao Bandi and Panda (1999) series and another to nine works from Yang Fudong’s Don’t Worry, It Will Be Better (2000) series. Cao Fei’s rabid-dog Elle cover girl in Beautiful Dog Brows (2002) lasciviously glared down at the viewer and prints from Chen Shaoxiong’s Street (1998), Hong Hao’s Mr. Hong Usually Wait Under the Arch Roof for Sunshine (2001), Feng Mengbo’s Q4U (2003), Weng Feng’s Sitting on the Wall (2002) and Yang Zhenzhong’s Lucky Family (1995) were all also prominently displayed. The majority of video works were also among those already widely disseminated in the international art circuit. In addition to the ones mentioned above, visitors could see Chen Shaoxiong’s Anti-Terrorism Variety (2001), Yang Zhenzhong’s 922 Rice Corns (2000) and I Will Die (2002), as well as Zhao Bandi’s The Sotry of Panda Man Losing His Love (2003).

But among these “old-timers” were also some less well-known but equally important works. Zhu Jia’s early video work Forever (1994) for example was displayed along with the tricycle to which the artist had tied the camera that filmed the piece. For twenty-seven minutes the viewer was taken on a head-spinning, ten kilometer tour through beijing. The blurry and ceaseless rotating images deny the viwer’s ability to situate themselves in space as well as in time. In like other works that focus on and document the change in Beijing’s urban landscape, Zhu Jia’s video seems to point at the constants of urban life, such as the chatter of passerby, cars honking, rushed footsteps, loud arguments at busy intersections and vendors shouting to promote their wares. Another piece that stood out were the two prints of Song Tao’s In Loud Crowds I Dream of Hanging Myself (2002). In front of the big black iron gate of a colonial looking building, a young man is propped up as if he had been hanged. The fact that the cord above his head is attached to a small balloon only seems to become clear upon second glance, with the iron gate morphing into an evil planck mask glaring down at its victim. Th absolute stillness of the image and its absurd construction such the view into a void where reality is suspended and emotion reigns supreme. It gives Song Tao’s work a mediative aura but equally makes the viewer shrink back from this sombre state of dislocation and alienation. The overall effet was haunting, especially as the echos of Xu Zhen’s slapping still resonated throughout the exhibition space.

While it is amazing that the National Art Museum allowed for such a show to be displayed in its hallowed halls, the censor’s prying eyes could not be completely prevented from finding something to offend them. The huge black-and-white print of Liu Wei’s humorous take on traditional Chinese shan shui aesthetic entitled Landscape (2000) illustrates a foggy mountainous vista reminiscent of Guilin’s famous peaks. But the mountains are not made of stone and vegetation but of human buttocks. In some cases pubic hair and genitalia are visible as well as mosquitos feasting on their fleshy hosts. Sadly, a week after the opening, Landscape had disappeared from the exhibition walls. It seems — as if to put it crudely– it hauled ass.

Video art, though an exotic genre of art, is not merely a consequence of following the trail of western society. The emergence of video art in China or its acceptance by Chinese artists found a happy medium only after certain cultural conditions had fallen into place. Therefore, before we go into the topic of Chinese contemporary video art, I believe it is more necessary and meaningful to review the process of how video art appeared in China.

The emergence of video art was first symbolized as an objection to the realistic creative methodology of utilitarianism. The peculiar fate of the Chinese nation in the last century has forced the Chinese society to view art in a way of utilitarianism (for example, the concept of content determining form and art for the sake of politics). Such thoughts were established at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art by Mao Tse-tung in 1942, which were then maintained as the guidelines for the arts. The emergence of Chinese contemporary art initially challenged the guideline. During the 1980s, the work done by Chinese contemporary artists overturned the emphasis on the “socialist realism” of ideological propaganda. Specifically, what they were overturning was not a kind of artistic style; rather it was the cultural authority that this style represented. Therefore, the Chinese contemporary artists nearly repeated the overall art history of the west society within the decade. During the process, the style of conceptual art such as installation, performance and etc began to appear. The political events of 1989 caused artists to realize that within their society there was a power that, at least temporarily, could not be contested, and that they really did not have the ability to carry out their own artistic convictions. Thus, low morale, cynicism and malaise began to spread.

On one hand, due to the change of political climate at that time, the style of concept art was animadverted as decadent. All the channels to introduce western concept art were blocked; on the other hand, due to the long existence and education of social realism in China, artists began to take advantage of their familiar painting style to satirize the society in a tedious, boring and ridiculous way. They also adopted the popular commercial symbols to amuse the ruling ideology and formed cynical realism and political bop. Compared with 80s, no matter from the angle of cultural aspiration or the artists’ exploring directions, the early 90s was a time of withdrawing. While the cynical realism and political bop, though conservative to some degree regained a different fate in the 90s.

Viewed from the angle of economy, 90s was a decade that Chinese market gradually opened to the west. In the past decade, numerous multi-national enterprises set up thousands of representative offices or branches in China. While the opening of China’s market appeared rather slow if compared with the wishes of western investors, multi national enterprises were still willing to spend great amount of money to operate their representative offices in China. People employed by such representative offices with little work to do, foreign ambassadors residing in Beijing and officious journalists from foreign media together formed the channel of the communication between Chinese contemporary art and its international counterpart. As a result of Chinese nationalization process in the last century, there was no economically independent middle class in China. Therefore, there was no chance for the art sustaining power to survive. The fanciers full of political discriminations formed the unique channel between the Chinese contemporary art and the outside world. China as the last socialist country began to draw interests from curious art tourists and collectors.

Driven by commercial interests, galleries in the west began to go through such channels to introduce and sell Chinese contemporary art to the outside world. Such non-professional channels enabled Chinese art represented by cynicism and political pop to frequently appear in the west. In 1993, Chinese contemporary art, which features political bop and cynical realism, first revealed in Venice Biennial, which brought Chinese contemporary artists great amount of economic income and chances of international exhibition. In terms of the West, this form of artistic style, which ultimately points towards non-western ideology, established the label and standard for Chinese contemporary art, and initiated the process of cultural understanding and sharing on these foundations. The success of cynical and political art encouraged even more young Chinese artists to embrace the status-giving image of “ political dissidents”.

If in the past the artists had sensed the danger of art being controlled by politics, then now the cynical realism and political pop would make young artists feel that framed paintings, driven by commercial interests, would be imposed by the west post colonialism. Both above mentioned are based on the old style art medium and creative methodology (realism-utilitarianism). Under such background, the Chinese artists began to introduce and experiment on video art. Young artists desired to find a new art medium which will not be commercialized by west galleries and also poses a strong contrast to the official art. The medium will not only allow the existence of personalized feelings and languages but also be easy to use, spread and communicate. Under such circumstances, video art became their choice.

In terms of young artists, the time perceived from the video art leads more deep experience than the traditional medium. The experience will enable the works a strength beyond the literal description, i.e. video, unlike realism paintings, will not be fully interpreted in words. It requires audiences’ real experience in a certain period of time. Meanwhile, the interaction of video installation will invite physical involvement during the appreciation process. In 1996, china held its first exhibition of video art named “ Phenomenon and image”. The title could be translated as “ Phenomenon and image” while in Chinese, the title has more meanings. Video means reflection and image indicates response. The reason why young artists chose video as the medium is that the video art embodies “reflection” which is rather deeper and closer to the nature of art than traditional paintings. The curator of the exhibition and video artist Qiu Zhijie wrote in the preface, “the falsehood of historical determinism is to consider human being as a simple perceptive object, while man not only perceive and sense, but also imagines and takes actions to practice.” Obviously the equation is as follows:

Traditional media= reaction= virtual individual = perception= unilateral
Video =reflection= real individual= perception, imagination, action= interactive

In 1989, a German professor was invited to Chinese Central Academy of Fine art to give lectures. He brought 8-hour video art information, which included Gary Hill, Bill Violla and Matthew Barney. Works of those artists enlightened the two-generation artists like Zhang Peili and Qiu Zhijie to access to the complete video art information and realize the possibility of this medium, whereas they chose different ways. Zhang Peili is known as one of the early experimentalists of the Chinese contemporary art and also the first Chinese video artist. In 1989, he completed his first works. Generally speaking, Chinese artists in 80s were mostly concerned with grand narration of society and culture, which made them to apply the language style of logic and conceptualism. To be simple, Zhang’s early works was greatly influenced by Gary Hill and his genre. Such orientation was even more distinctive in his famous works “ uncertain pleasure”. They were going all out to distinguish video art with mass TV programs. Therefore he denied the existence of any traditional measures, sound effects or even the figuration of TV to appear in his works. Zhang’s style influenced many artists, for example, Zhu Jia’s bound video camera on a wheel to conduct shots; Han Xuan and Yang Zhenzhong’s repetition of the daily life. Similar while different to Zhang is one artist named Wang Gongxin, who resided in New York for a decade and was greatly influenced by Violla. The magnification of life subtlety resulted in unconventional experiences. Such means undoubtedly generated many works with strong visual impact. It is perhaps due to the different origin of Chinese and foreign video art. The origin of west video art originated from their rebellions to the system while in China the art derived from concerns on media.

Just because of that, younger Chinese artists consider them as “standard video art” or “insipid tradition”. Representative video artist Qiu Zhijie has been concerned about the possibility of video technology and the aesthetic value it brings. For him, the route that Zhang followed was to worship the west video art as classics, while on the other hand he ignored the possibility that the new, inexpensive equipment and techniques have brought.

For Qiu, the reasons why the early video art appeared insipid, on one hand is due to their anti-system belief, on the other hand due to financial and technical reasons. Therefore in the second Video art exhibition in 1997, the curator Wu Meichun wrote: ”the problem we are facing is not what the video art is, rather what we can do with video. It is still early to define the video art. Though it appears that a standard video art is coming into being, but it destined to be weary during its shaping. Video with an innate media is full of challenges, which is powerful and inexpensive. It is private and easy to duplicate and spread: it is both intuitive and imaginative. Under the instruction of such thoughts, video art began to appear three new development directions, such as documentary, narrative and interactive.

Documentary

In the mid-90s, the movie circle in China launched a large-scale campaign of “New Documentary Movement”. Director represented by Wu Wenguang emphasize the absence of photographer during shoot, and try to exhibit the real state of the objective revealed. Chinese New Documentary Movement is regarded as resistance to the grand narration of the governmental TV programs since the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

Such orientation leads them no improvement in the documentary language and method. To be strict, what they created is “real documentary” rather than “New documentary”. While this movement interflowed with the video art in the art circle and combined a “new documentary art” beyond documentary. Wang Jianwei is the unique pioneer in this aspect. In his “Living Elsewhere”, he traced the life of four farmers in an unfinished villa, and disclosed that the function of the villa was never fulfilled. In his works, Wang created a very “nonprofessional” documentary in which some of the images stand still for as long as 8 minutes. While for him, all those are quite necessary because his works is to conduct review of phenomena rather than simple record.

Narrative

As the self-questioning of the video art, narration is brought about as an element. Video techniques enabled video art to share many achievements with the movie aesthetics—all the time disposal measures adopted by classical movies is applicable to video. Moreover, the time disposal in the video has more flexibility with the help of digital measures: various digital stunts created various relationships of time dimensions and greatly enriched the tradition movie language. The involvement of three-dimensioned animation makes every whim possible to become a visual reality. All these endowed many possibilities for younger artists. Representative artists in this field includes Yang Fudong, Jiang Zhi and etc. From these artists, they received more influence from movie aesthetics than the video art tradition. And moreover, they are seeking more chances to shoot film. While from them, we can see a possibility of applying video to conduct personal writings.

Interaction

Interaction actually derived from suspect to video art. Will video art finally be devoured by movie aesthetics and insipid tradition? Will Digital technology bring new aesthetic values except better image quality and convenience? Questioned by that, video installation was emphasized by artists as a “right time, right place” art. Because besides the attribution of video installation and video itself, it also includes the peculiarity of the installation more than the sum of the two. Telecasting of Multi-layer monitors or various reflected images distributed in pre-designed structures have formed a three-dimensional dramatic structure. The Chinese video art will develop into two distinguished video installations, which will focus on interior knowledge and interior experience respectively.

Video installations focused on interior knowledge will appear in a specific scene. The video image will have some semantic connection with property and also the images will produce meanings. The property can be used to stand out the topic. For example, Wang Gongxin’s “Cradle” and Wang Jianwei’s “Screen”. In Wang’s “baby talk”, different facial expressions are revealed when playing with the baby. All the milk flows out from the mouth of the image and then circulates from other places. In the video installation ”Screen”, Wang discussed the cultural relationship of secret and disclosure and the truth. It is more like a visual version of “knowledge archaeology”. The indication of the two works are both wavering between vague and clear. The spot visual, audio and kinaesthesia experience sometimes transcend the original enactment of the author to complex and profuse imagination. Video installation focused on interior experience sometimes calculated the trace of the audiences’ physical movement in the interior structure of the installation, such as Qiu Zhijie’s “the present tense” and Chen Shaoxiong’s “Sight Adjustor”. Such works is based on anthropo-engineering, waiting the approaching of audiences from a certain location and route. Audiences’ bodies were pre-designed as a factor that will influence the installation composition and spot scene itself. The phenomena world established when the audiences are passing by was evoked as an interior experience rather than exterior knowledge.

Video installation brings interaction to the agenda and artists try to ascertain the possibility of the video art through the pursuit of interaction. While that is more like a bitter choice. The more you seek for interaction, the more you suspect the spaces that the video art is able to provide. Therefore many artists began to seek for other interactive mode beyond the video installation. Artists focused on interior experience began to abandon video art and hope to seek the possibilities provided by new technology. More technical and more interactive multi media art then appeared.

Artists focused on knowledge try to seek spot and social interaction by breaking the media. In 1999, Wu Ershan together with installation artists, jazz singers, and modern dancers completed “evolved knight”. If Wu Ershan’s involvement was not spontaneous but incidental, Wang Jianwei adopted a more active manner. He invited video artist, puppet players and performance artists to complete the play “Screen” derived from. In this works, the overall stage was a magnificent interactive work synchronized video, installation and performance.

Through the development of video art in china, we can see that a new era is approaching. The west video art originated from their rebellion to the system while in china the video art derived from their concern on media. The professionalising of video art was strengthened in the west society since the involvement of foundations since 1968. In the west, people isolated video art with movie, TV and photography and brought it to galleries. It leaded to the combination of video and installation. During this process, video art turned from criticism of informational culture to the combination of social thoughts, which in return bring the validity of the video art itself.

It is the duty of video art to criticize the informational culture while that is not all. Personalized manual contemporary art cannot dialogize the commercialized informational media substantially and nor can it rein it. Judging through video art practice before 1968, we will see clearly that the relationship of video art and mass media is like that of a strong fly and a fly flap. Chinese artists like all the other artists in the word begin to realize that they can only find their own territories and manners beyond the scope of the mass media. Pursuit of interaction is a forever dream of contemporary art. While we also witness that during the pursuit of interaction, like all the other artists around the world, some of Chinese artists lost their confidence on the media and finally abandon the media itself and turned to multimedia art, which is more technical and more interactive. Here, I am not saying that I object the emergence and existence of multimedia art, on the contrary, I am so confident about the future of the multimedia. While the reality of Chinese video art makes me ponder: The video art turned from criticism of information culture to the combination with the social thoughts in order to assure the validity of the video art itself. Is it the time to connect video art with movie, TV, photography and a lot more? For Chinese video art, it may be the time to choose. Do we value the video as one kind of media or one kind of culture? Because different choice will result in evolution and multi-polarity, the two completely different results.