The Left Bank Gallery in the Zhongguancun area of Beijing's Haidian District unveiled "The Left-Wing" in late December 2003. The gallery housed the exhibit on two huge concrete floors within a commercial real estate project called Left Bank.
Besides founding the Left Wing, Lin Jian is also behind the development of Left Bank. His famous slogan, "When the world turns to the right, we turn left," has made him and his real estate project well known in Beijing's booming and highly competitive real estate business circle. In the past three years, the real estate business in Beijing has become one of the largest in China. What is phenomenal is that many real estate developers are interested in supporting avant-garde art projects, such as performance art, video, installation and modern dance. The idea behind this is to use art events as indirect advertisements for projects and to brand them as culturally savvy. As developer Pan Shiyi once noted, to build and sell is actually to promote culture and taste.
For the successful and well-educated younger generation, viewing contemporary art means appreciating advanced aesthetics and a greater sense of cultivation. Because of this, mass media have devoted growing coverage to art events, and some developers not only sponsor contemporary art exhibitions but also run exhibition spaces, such as East Art Center, X-ray Art Center, and Today's Gallery.
These spaces play an important role in fostering the artistic environment; through presenting exhibitions regularly, contemporary art is attracting a growing interest both from the media and viewing public. The Left Wing's December exhibition perfectly illustrates this reciprocal dynamic between business and art. About 30 artists are included, many very active and visible in the national and international art scene, such as Cao Fei, Fang Lijun, Gu Dexin, Song Dong, Sui Jianguo, Zhuang Hui, Du Zhenjun, Huang Yongbing and Shen Shaomin.
In 2003, many Chinese artists switched from experimenting with abstract art forms to expressing their views on societal issues such as environmental pollution, migrant workers, and the gap between rich and poor. Artists seem to have adopted a realistic attitude toward social context rather than a cynical one, and are more domestically concerned than international. In fact, the trend to anchor a work in the local and personal before looking to international horizons seems to have taken root within Chinese aesthetics.
Although contemporary Chinese art has been popular in the world art scene for almost a decade, it remains basically inaccessible to the general public. Also, the official art establishment seems reluctant to accept it as part of the mainstream. For example, the First Beijing International Art Biennale held in October of 2003 did not present any installation or video works.
Cao Fei is a young and talented female artist whose video work is attracting growing attention. Her latest video piece, Hi Hop, features people dancing on the street, repeating poses to looping music. Their dancing seems aimless and motivated by a mysterious power, perhaps the pressure of survival. The work is a visual metaphor for the social underclass' ambiguous psychological reaction to burgeoning city life; they come to the city for a better life and higher income but are discriminated against and despised by the local citizenry.
Guangzhou-based artist Xu Tan's Chinese Sauna is a combination of installation and performance piece. To create the work, Xu reproduced a standard sauna room where viewers can take a sauna. Those having a sauna in the transparent glass room are visible to the viewers outside. The piece thus becomes a greenroom with real-life performers where viewers become voyeurs when exposed to the half-naked people that are part of the installation. This work create tensions, in a particular social and physical context, between seeing and being seen, private and public, art and life.
A native Shanghai resident, artist Shi Yong has witnessed the dramatic changes in China's biggest city over the past two decades. For him, insatiable desire is engine of the city, and desire sparks the pursuit of the latest fashion, automobiles and luxury homes. This desire changes individual lives, cities, and even economics and politics. His new installation work, Standpoint, showcases a wooden narrow room in which is an array of translucent thin plastic knives. An electronic air pump works intermittently, making each knife alternately horizontally erect and limp, the latter, resembling a condom and the former an erect penis. This erotic and provocative device is a humorous allegory for desire-charged city life.
There were many eye-catching performance pieces at the Left Wing opening. Song Dong had ten acrobatic actors perform on stilts, walking around the gallery wearing fabric in a skyscraper design. Sun Yuan and Peng Yu hired several professional boxers to spar, turning the exhibition space into a gymnasium. A choral performance a combined performance/installation piece by Zhang Hui and Shi Qing, was another dynamic project.
Aside from the gala-like competition for attentions, the most significant event was cancellation of an installation work by Huang Yongping. His contribution to the show, Right Wing, is the third section of his Bat Project, Bat Project Ⅲ. Huang Yongping's first two Bat Projects are large replicas of segments of the US spy plane EP-3, a reminder of the collision that took place on April 1st, 2001 over the South China Seas. It was only after lengthy negotiation that the plane was dismantled, packed into containers and permitted to be sent back to the US -- an obvious humiliation for the superpower. Huang Yongping created "Bat Project I," a replica of the middle and rear portions of the airplane, for a Sino-French sculpture exhibition in Shenzhen in December 2001. For fear of undermining France and China's relations with the US, the piece had to be removed right before the show opened. Project II was a replica of the middle and front portions, as well as the left wing of the plane; due to pressure from the US consulate and Chinese Culture Ministry, the work could not be shown at the First Guangzhou Triennial in November 2002. Huang's Bat Project Ⅲ, "Right Wing," is the final portion of the spy plane and was supposed to be unveiled on December 30 on the yard of Left Bank compound in a scheduled ceremony. Immediately preceding it, Huang was informed that the work must be removed due to a "safety problem." Encountering a third frustration Huang announced online, "The slogan 'when the world turns to the right, we turn left' is merely advertising rhetoric. The truth is that when the world turns right, we follow it." The Right Wing event makes the Left Wing show more dramatic, revealing the subtle relationship between art, commerce and politics. To some degree, this event also demonstrates the real position of contemporary art in society; the art community as part of the new Chinese culture has long way to go to find its place.
Zhang Zhaohui, the writer, is a doctorate student at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.
(China Today March 25, 2004)
