"The Pluralistic Look of Chinese Contemporary Art Since the Mid-Nineties"
| Part II:
Performance Art, Site Specific Works and
New Media
In keeping with the cultural fever of the times, these Performance works for the most part seemed to be indicative of cultural criticism. In the early nineties, Performances took the forms of Happenings, often with Pop overtones, like Ren Jian's "The Sun at 100". Timed to take place on the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Mao Zedong, the Performance involved a number of volunteers, sweeping and cleaning public spaces. Something which might have been characteristic of Mao's era. However, today it could only be seen as a critical allusion to the fact that such social virtues have all but disappeared. Art in the mid-nineties placed more emphasis on body language and often involved self-mutilation or self-abuse as a way of expressing inner torment or other concepts. Representative artists included Ma Liuming, Zhang Huan, Zhu Min and Zhu Fadong, among others.  Zhuang Hui
Untitled
1991
Luoyang, Hebei
Performance: the
Artist Showing "Revolutionary" Concern for Workers and Soldiers by Giving
Towels to Local Mine Workers.
Site Specific Works and New Media A third new development was that of site specific works, which for the most part were carried out in Beijing. These works were mainly done by artists returning from abroad, who brought with them aspects of site specificity popular in the West. For instance, Wang Gongxin back from the US or Zhu Jinshi from Germany who, in 1994 and 1995, transformed their apartments into studios where they invited other artists to visit and congregate. While the works varied in quality, nonetheless they demonstrated the viability of the art form and became models for other artists to emulate; Yin Xiuzhen, Song Dong, Zhang Lei amongst others. From this starting point, these artists all became very adept at working with site specific spaces, even culturally charged spaces to achieve their art. Experimenting with new media such as video also became a trend whereby a number of artists grew to prominence, such as Feng Mengbo, Qiu Zhijie, Wang Jianwei to name a few. Wang's series of works entitled "Production" came out of the artist paying rent to farmers for a plot of land, which he would then either plant experimental fields with different varieties of cash crops or videotape to document Chinese farmers drinking in today's ubiquitous teahouses. He made a conscious effort to constantly change his mode of discourse in an attempt to free himself from the restricting bonds of over-specialization and, the false authority that came with technical prowess and knowledge. To unveil the ideology that is the "production" of everyday life. Feng Mengbo, is a leading Political Pop artist, who took a new direction in 1995 when he began working with computers. Feng has just completed over a year's work on an interactive multi-media work entitled, "Taking Mount Doom by Strategy" This piece recalls childhood memories of model plays and, movies from the Cultural Revolution, which he spliced into short segments and interwove into today's complex computer games. Their popular characters, whose symbols of different ideologies fight against one another in a violence-filled and strangely-haunting cyberspace. Using today's most sophisticated multi-media tools, the work also reflects very much Feng's own feelings of survival in today's world. The world is nothing, if not a game, where we are in constant combat with one another. Qiu Zhijie dabbled in Political Pop in the early nineties. Qiu believes each person's language is a unique construct. He discovered that the language strains of a Magritte or Joseph Kosuth were consistent with they way they conceptualized things. For instance, he copied the seminal calligraphic work, "The Preface from Orchid Pavilion" a thousand times over on the same sheet of Xuan paper. Eventually, this seminal work in China's history of calligraphy gradually disappeared and thus became meaningless as he inscribed it layer upon layer, time after time on the same sheet of paper. With this, Qiu's attention turned to contemporary life. Especially in the case of his video installation work "Objects". The work is comprised of several TVs showing video in a completely darkened space. The videos illustrated a series of matches being lit. With each strike of the match, a flash of light illuminated a different object -- a rock, a person's face. Sometimes the match only flared long enough to catch a partial glimpse of the object. Sometimes, the match didn't light at all, filling the viewer with a subtle, perhaps even a uniquely Chinese, sense of fated helplessness and regret. In this work, Qiu gives rise to his personal contemplation of man and his environment, reflecting a profound sense that man can but live in a partial world, a world that is no more than a clip of a larger video. Continue with article...
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 Ren Jian, Liang Xiaochuan and
others
"The Sun at 100"
1991
Shaoshan, Hunan
Performance:
the Artists Cleaning a Statue of Lei Feng, an icon of selflessness
in the Mao Period.
 Ma Liuming
"Fen/Ma Liuming"
1994
Beijing
Performance: the
Artist Introducing His Female Alter-Ego "Fen."
 Zhang Lei
"Natural Attributes"
1994
Beijing performance:
the artist fastening disposable chopsticks made of wood onto trees.
 1Wang Jianwei
"Cycle -- Planting"
1993-4
Chengdu, Sichuan
performance
 Feng Mengbo
"Taking Mount Doom by Storm"
1998
Interactive Multimedia
Work
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* click
on any image to enlarge, click again for full screen size.
 Zhang Huan
"65 Kilos"
1994
Beijing
Performance:
the artist strapped to ceiling rafters with chains. An IV needle bleeds
artist's blood onto white plate on burner below, filling the room
with an acrid burning odor.
 Zhu Min
"30 April 1994"
1994
Beijing
Performance: the
artist blowing bubbles non-stop.
 1Yin Xiuzhen
"Cleaning the River"
1995
Chengdu, Sichuan
Performance:
the artist freezing water of polluted river into ice blocks and then
proceeding to clean them.
 2Wang Jianwei
"Cycle -- Planting"
1993-4
Chengdu, Sichuan
performance
 1 2 3 4Qiu Zhijie
"Objects"
1994
Video Work
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Copyright ©
1999
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