798 District Blog

CHICAGO, IL.- This fall, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, presents Urban China: Informal Cities, an exhibition that draws parallels between how cities across the globe, from Chinese cities to Chicago, grow and transform. This retrospective of the only magazine devoted to issues of urbanism published in China, marks Urban China’s first U.S. commission. With its unique multidisciplinary inquiry into the rapid state of change in China — employing diagrams, photographs, texts, and archive of artifacts and images — Urban China has become a databank recording the fastest urbanization in history. Utilizing a network of correspondents and collaborators around the world, Urban China has become a research network, think tank, documentary archive, and tool for artistic production and urban activism.

For the interactive Chicago presentation, the magazine’s visionary language of display explodes out from the pages onto the walls, with space available for the public to comment on the issues presented. Comprised of an interactive image database; massively scaled interactive wall graphics; a suite of scavenged “readily remade” objects; a re-creation of ad hoc refugee housing; and a retrospective of past magazines, the installation fuses interrelated elements to better understand common issues between Chinese cities, Chicago, and cities across the globe. The wall graphic includes Urban China magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Jiang Jun’s research of historical and contemporary urbanization in China, Chicago’s Mas Studio’s Iker Gil’s history of the urbanization of Chicago, and texts from experimental architect Kyong Park, and director of New York’s Skyscraper Museum’s Carol Willis. The presentation highlights the dynamics of urbanism as metropolitan cities adapt to multiple influences, including re-urbanism and informal transformation. Also included are objects and remnants of American manufacturing in China, which suggests how informalism can be used as a strategy for individuals.
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BEIJING—Hearing that an artist has made work out of panda feces, one can quickly think of a few possible suspects: panda-mad Rob Pruitt perhaps, or Chris Ofili, who has used elephant dung in past works. Even Piero Manzoni, who famously canned his own excrement, seems a possible culprit. However, it turns out that Chinese artist Zhao Bandi is, in fact, the man responsible, and that these new works are only the latest (and dirtiest) work stemming from his ongoing artistic fascination with pandas.

Although several years ago he mounted a pitched campaign against the public screening of the “Kung Fu Panda” movie in China, petitioning the central government’s bureau of broadcasting on the grounds that it was an insulting misappropriation of a precious Chinese cultural symbol, his own use of China’s beloved bear has brought a hail of criticism down on his own head. His “haute couture” panda works have drawn on a dizzying array of Chinese types — construction workers and stock brokers, hostesses and sex workers, beggars and gays — for inspiration and have created public furor and widespread animosity on the grounds that his work was insulted and injured China’s self-respect.

In spite of his seeming indifference to public opinion, he has recently embraced philanthropy and held a series of auctions of his work in aid of his favorite charity, which supports old people’s homes on the banks of the Yellow River.

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BEIJING.- From September 8, 2010 to October 28, the National Art Museum of China is to launch a large-sized exhibition named “Road of Futurism”, to exhibit the quintessence of the Italian futurism with 250 pieces of excellent works. This is the first global art movement at the beginning of 20th century, and its idea has influenced all art creation fields profoundly and lastingly, such as visual arts, literature, film, music, theater, fashion, cooking, practical art, advertising design, and photography.

The special exhibition, jointly organized by the National Art Museum of China, City of Alexandria, and the Beijing Cultural Office of Italy, is to exhibit painting masterpieces, and other works like declaration, posters, books, photography, design and furniture of futurism representatives, such as Balla Giacomo and Carrà Carlo, on all sides at the National Art Museum of China for the first time.

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People look at a series of paintings entitled ‘paint a little color, paint a little red, paint a little blue, sorrow’ by Chinese artist Ye Yongqing, hanging on a wall behind an installation by Qiu Zhijie entitled ‘The horse distant after the revolution,’ during a group exhibit entitled ‘The Constructed Dimension’ at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China, 20 August 2010. The exhibit showcases the works of twenty Chinese artists, and will run until 02 September 2010.

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People visit a painting exhibition named “Artistic Beauty of Taipei County” at the Zhejiang Art Gallery in Hangzhou, capital of east China’s Zhejiang Province, Aug. 18, 2010. The 12-day painting exhibition opening on Wednesday displayed 82 works by eight artists of Taipei County in southeast China’s Taiwan.

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Sotheby’s Hong Kong Autumn Sales 2010 will be held at Hall 3, Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from 2 to 8 October 2010. The sale series will offer over 3,200 lots of Modern and Contemporary Asian Art, traditional Chinese paintings, fine Chinese ceramics and works of art as well as jewellery, watches and wine with a total estimate in excess of HK$1.6 billion / US$205 million.

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Tangka painter Dengga draws on a piece of Tangka painting at Tibet Museum in Lhasa, capital of southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, August 6, 2010. The first Tangka exhibition lowered its curtain on Friday as a total of 100 pieces of Tangka works were displayed during the five-day exhibition.

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Chengdu is an important city in Chinese Contemporary Art, Which nurtured a lot of famous artists and critics, but the art collection is not so active comparing to Beijing and Shanghai. How to accelerate the development of the Chengdu art market and to increase the number of local collectors, is the question to be deal with.

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Zhang Huan is one of China’s best-known performance and conceptual artists. He is also known for his shocking and absurd photographs and images. For his solo show at the UCCA, Zhang Huan will exhibit remains of the train which crashed during the 5.12 Earthquake in Sichuan and stretch it over the whole Big Hall exhibition space.

“This exhibition is a way of showing the victims of the Sichuan earthquake that they haven’t been forgotten. It’s a curated social project, an artist and an institution working together to help solve a problem.

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Contemporary ink painting Utopia No. 57 Many ink painters find it hard to depict contemporary life with their traditional tools of rice paper, black soot–based ink and bamboo-handled brushes. To overcome the obstacle, artists young and old are devoting themselves to innovating the ancient art form, both in subject matter and technique.

There is a gradually growing interest in contemporary ink painting both within China and abroad, with the introduction of modern styles as a unique way to celebrate the old art form while acknowledging an ever-changing society and artistic style, according to independent art critic Liu Siyan.

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