Conceptual Art and the China Experience

By Wang Lin

Conceptual art in China first began to appear in the mid-1980's, as manifest in the Xiamen Dada Movement. Shanghai artists also became interested in the ideas that challenged traditional artistic practices of sculpture and painting. By the time of the 1989 China Avant-Garde Art exhibition, art on canvas was no longer what aroused the most interest among the art-going public. Rather it was conceptual works and related news events that impacted on the cultural psychology of the time. The environmental works of Gu Wenda, Xu Bing and Lu Shengzhong; The installations of Huang Yongping, Song Haidong, Zhang Peili; the performances of Xiao Lu, Zhang Nian, Wu Shanzhuan; were all representative of this period; omens of the transformation from Modernism to Contemporary art that was to take place in the 90's.

Following the June 4th incident, Chinese art suddenly found itself adrift. Subsequently Political Pop art and Cynical Realism emerged in the early 1990's and, in as much as these works tended to suite exhibition organizers in the West, artists associated with these movements appeared predominantly in international exhibitions. But, in fact, the real progress in Chinese art at the time was taking place in Conceptual Art. The activities of Chinese artists living overseas flourished with such as Huang Yongping, Gu Wenda, Xu Bing, Chen Zhen, Zhang Jianjun, Yang Jiechang, Wang Du whereas this was a relatively quiet period within China. There were those including Wang Chuan's"Ink.Dots" installation/environment; Kong Yongqian's pop "Cultural T-Shirts" and, Zhang Long's installation and performance piece, "Explanation of An Apple."which were significant works emerging at the time At this very crucial point in China's history, these works dared to address directly the cultural experience and existential surroundings of the people of China and, for this reason, had a special, if not transformative, cultural significance. With time, their importance will be increasingly recognized.

Originating in Wuhan and Guangzhou, continuing in Shanghai and Chengdu and then ultimately arriving in Beijing, Conceptual Art in the 1990's seemed gradually to come alive through the independent efforts of individual artists and art groups. Some significant actions included: "The New History Group" (Xin Lishi Xiaozu), the many exhibitions by the "Big Tailed Elephant Group"; the Huashan Art School (Huashan Yixiao) installation art exhibition; the art document exhibition, "Installations Environments Performances"; "The Positioning of Art" (Yishu de Fangwei) and "In the Name of Art". In addition, there was the "Video. Video" exhibition; a series of exhibitions entitled, "The Protectors of Water" and "Listening to Men Tell Stories About Women"; Lastly, the artistic activities of the "Cartoon Generation". By focusing on broader social issues and cultural concerns very much within the realms of world discourse, these exhibitions reversed the slide toward commercialism that had begun among more traditional paint mediums and gave a new look to visual art in China.

Among these artists, Lin Yilin's "Results of 1000 Pieces"; Huang Yihan's "Barbie Dolls Versus the Destroyers"; Zhang Peili's video works; Zhang Lei's cotton quilt installations; Wang Nanming's "Character Balls"; Zhang Xin's ice carvings; Wang Tiande's "Ink Fast Food"; Zhou Xiaohu's "A Lying Age"; Qiu Zhijie's repitious copies; Huang Yan's flashlight photos; Song Dong's exhaling on the bricks of Tiananmen; Ma Liuming's sexual transformations; Wang Luyan's bicycles; Sui Jianguo's Mao suits; The Gao Brothers' crosses; Yin Xiuzhen's "Washing the River"; Zhang Huan's "To Raise and Anonymous Mountain by One Meter"; Dai Guangyu's "A Water Meter Left a Long Time Ago"; Ye Yongqing's "Lonliness is Beautiful After All"; Luo Zidan's "Half White Collar, Half Peasant" - all created a bedrock for Conceptual art in the 1990s. These Conceptual artworks produced at the end of the Millennium are no less impressive than the best artistic achievements in outside China.

From the very beginning, Chinese Conceptual Art sought to extricate itself from the modernist story and post-colonialism in an effort to return to the cultural realm of today's China, to lay an artistic foundation built on creativity and spiritual awareness.

The cultural sphere of China in the 1990s has already undergone tremendous change. With the popularization of modern telecommunications tools and public broadcast media, all of China (major cities in particular), are increasingly able to keep stride with cultural developments in the world at large, and to stay abreast of the vast array of issues in the world. It is precisely at this point in time that Chinese Art entered into the "contemporary". The pursuit of the West and the copying of the West of the New Tide movement [in the 80s] has given way to concerns with real issues. Art became focused more on the relationship between China's experience and those of World cultures. We might catagorize today's artists as follows: On the one hand, [today's artists] excavate traditional culture as a resource and then transform, evolve or expand it, often to an extreme. In this way, works by artists such as Wang Nanming, Wang Tiande, Qiu Zhijie, Sui Jianguo, Zhang Huan are able to arouse the visual psychology and existential state of the Chinese people today.

Other artists employ concepts from Eastern culture to emphasize the emptiness, the transitory nature and the cliqueshness of culture and society. In this way, the works of artists such as Lin Yilin, Zhang Xin, Song Dong, Dai Guangyu, and Ye Yongqing among others, are able to expose cultural and spiritual issues faced by contemporary man.

Then, there are the artists like Huang Yihan, Zhang Peili, Zhang Lei, Zhou Xiaohu, Haung Yan, Ma Liuming, Wang Luyan, the Gao Brothers, Luo Zidan, among others, who are situated in the cultural realm of exchange and interactivity between the East and the West. These artists respond in their works to the existential predicament of contemporary man, but from a unique Chinese sensitivity.

As an important nation with a long history, China will not lightly acknowledge or come to agree with the value proposition that is "the other". Even as it moves forward along the road toward modernity, it will strive to maintain and develop its own thinking and knowledge, as well as an aesthetic awareness of its own. A complex cultural predicament, that is timely and up to date, a dynamic spiritual power and the psychology of a major nation, makes for the existential experience of the Chinese people the primary resource for contemporary art, and the artistic underpinning of a cultural identity for these artists.

When I refer to "the China experience", it is not the existential experience of a race, nor am I referring to experiences deriving from traditional culture. Such things if overly dogmatic can have the effect of inhibiting art. With regard to Conceptual Art, the China experience is but the existential experience of the individual Chinese person; it is the concrete part (as opposed to the whole); it is the natural state of individual reality. This distinction is important if we are to preserve historical, regional and cultural states of being, as well as the spiritual difference that distinguishes us all from the others. Contemporary art is testimony to this. It has proven that the spirituality of man comprises endless possibilities. For isn't it precisely these possibilities that offer hope to mankind?

Wang Lin
Sichuan, February 20, 2000

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Liu Chengying
�Kite with a Severed String�, No 1
1999
Performance in which artist chooses a street on which he places an imperial chair and a pair of scissors.� After giving flight to the �Kite of Past Emperors� for a few minutes, the artist severs the string, allowing the kite to drift to the ground in the distance.� The artist then assumes the imperial chair.