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Beijing Frenzy
Xue Song, Red Five Stars,2007
No, no, the following has nothing to do with Beijing’s eight-year case of Olympic fever. It’s an up-to-date vision of the inspired delirium with which Chinese artists have been turning out the world’s most important art, ever since a group of ragtag painters defied Zhongnanhai and set up their work outside the National Museum in 1979, proclaiming themselves the “Star Group”.
The Chinese Contemporary Gallery, with locations in New York, London, and Beijing’s 798 Art District, focuses on the strongest work created by China’s avant garde post ’89.
Their ‘Beijing Frenzy’ August Group Show will run from August 2 – 27 [see below for details], providing an ideal escape for those who prefer oil and canvas to sweat and Astroturf. Here are the artists on view and some of their best pieces.
Huang Rui
Chai-na/China, 2006
An original founder of the avant-garde art Stars in 1979, Huang Rui’s works have taken on many forms. Most of them are characterized by a spirit of rebelliousness and an interest in exploring how the human condition faces up to the impenetrable walls of authority.
Li Li
Disposable Person, 2008
One of the ‘Cartoon Generation’, Lili employs simplified figures, and a graphic technique that allows her great license for exaggeration and contradiction. In Li Li’s works, violence can seem silly, even ridiculous.
Shi Guorui
Bird’s Nest Stadium, 2008
Shi Guorui is a master of camera obscura. His projects often result in huge photographs, 4 meters long by 1.2 meters high. Shi Guorui always selects iconic locales, providing surreal visions that he sees as a purification of the soul.
Ma Liuming
Slit Series, 2005
Ma Liuming was a founder of the legendary Beijing East Village art colony. His work is daring enough to have led to his imprisonment in ’94 on charges of pornography, and confiscation of his work. His most controversial creation is Fen.Maliuming, a nude transgender persona, which he employs to address questions of gender and sexuality.
Wang Ke
Lost the Way, 2008
Wang Ke speaks to the therapy-needy in all of us. In his own words, “Everyday I put myself through a rigorous self-assessment; it seems like everyday I have to paint myself. If I don’t, I might forget who I am. Every work reflects my mood and my thoughts at the time — frightened, glamorous, inferior, lazy, sad…my paintings make sure I like myself better.”
Zhang Dali
Chinese Offspring, 2005
Zhang Dali is perhaps the most socially proactive of the artists to appear in the Beijing Frenzy group show, committed to calling attention to the destruction of China’s communities and the estrangement that modernization engenders. In his AK-47 series, Zhang spotlights China’s migrant workers, evoking their uncertainty and disenfranchisement.
Xue Song
Five Stars, 2006
In the early 1990s Xue Song’s studio burned down, destroying all his works. In a cathartic process he took the ashes of his old works and used them to create new works. He has continued using burnt paper in his work ever since. His works form a continually evolving body of observation and assessment of his country’s adjustments in the post-Mao era.
Zhao Bo
The Power of Publicity, 2008
Zhao Bo is one of a group of young artists called New Realists. The artists of the new realism trend look to their immediate surroundings, most often life in the streets, as their inspiration and produce works inspired by these scenes. As Zhao Bo himself remarks:
“In this chaotic world, people are becoming sly, untruthful, preposterous, full of malicious symbols that are morphing and becoming conceptualized in the course of society’s progress. They grow without order, and flourish. Yet this is also what makes this age and this type of environment most moving and surprising. It is full of energy and possibility, and forms these contemporary scenes that are so attractive, real and vivid.”
Zhao Bo will have a solo show at the Chinese Contemporary Gallery from August 30 – September 30.
Gallery Details:
Chinese Contemporary Gallery
Factory 798
No 4 Jiu Xian Qiao Lu
Chaoyang District, Beijing 100015 PR China
+86 10 8456 2421
beijing@chinesecontemporary.com
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