"Revising Chinese Identity" a feature about Power Station of Art, Shanghai Published in Art in ASIA, Nov-Dec 2015 issue

1. Yang Yongliang, Rising Mist, HD video, 9min 44sec, 2014.
The fog in the image getting denser from left to right
alludes to the air pollution in Shanghai.
REVIEW
Revising
Chinese
Identity
The Power Station of Art (PSA), the first state-run
museum in China that was established back in 2012,
is producing art exhibitions in a vigorous manner in
the hopes of gearing up the Chinese contemporary
art. PSA is currently hosting two exhibitions
that are, in a sense, of the similar frequencies.
Calligraphic Time and Space: Abstract Art in China
(8. 22~11. 22) attempts at converging the Chinese
calligraphy and the modern abstract art.Copyleft:
the Appropriation Art in China (8. 15~11. 15) takes
the social phenomenon called the shanzhai that is
rampant in China and examines it in comparison to
the origins of Chinese contemporary art. What does
the phrase “Chinese art” denote exactly? Is it a far-
fetched claim to say that our perception of Chinese
art is tainted by the scope of exoticism of the West?
Is it possible to suppose a purely independent local
art movement excluding the external influences?
Will China rise to the G2 status in the the domain of
art as well? / Tiffany Chae, Editor

2. 9998 art in ASIA November · December 2015
Top: Wang Huaiqing,
Vertical and Horizontal,
mixed mdia, 100×244cm,
2009. Juxtaposing rough
brushstrokes in ink with
pieces of wood carved into
shapes resembling said
brushstrokes, Chinese
letters are deconstructed in
an abstract form.
Bottom: Zhou Changjiang,
Roaming in the Mustard
Seed Garden, oil on canvas,
130×760cm. A partial view.
Page on the right
Top: Yang Guoxin, Nothing,
3 min 6 sec, 2007. A video
still. The dropped tree
branches form haphazard
stacks recalling the layering
of calligraphic brushstrokes.
Bottom: Ding Yi,
Appearance of Crosses
2015-B1, mixed media on
canvas, 45×30cm, 2015.
“There exists no problem unless you present a problem.” is a remark
made by a character working for a trading company in China, in
the novel "The Great Jungle (Jungle malli)", a bestseller by a
renowned Korean novelist Jo Jeong-rae. This novel marked a total
of 12 million page views at the time it was being published serially
online on Navercast in 2013, and its book series was reprinted over
a 100 times. The reason behind its popularity was the reputation
this novel received that it could practically double as a guide that
can offer insights into Chinese society and its value system, and the
book’s realistic portrayal of the Chinese business customs. There
were criticisms as well, that the novel might misguide the readers
due to the writer’s excessively nationalistic view and that one should
stay away from this novel to avoid the danger of misinterpreting
China. The record-breaking popularity, however, proved one thing
for sure: the immense curiosity and the craving of the Korean
public wanting to understand China. As it is well know, China is
a number one trading partner to Korea. Interactions between the
two countries are constantly expanding on all fronts: increase in
the number of business partnerships, outsourcing of production
facilities, number of tourists and students, and the growing
exchanges in the cultural domain as shown in the case of hanryu.
The case isn’t much different in the art industry. Since the 2000s,
Korean galleries have actively proceeded to China in the purpose of
exposing Korean artists to the bigger market; Chinese artists are
actively displaying their works to Korean audience as well.
Despite this external growth in artistic exchange between
the two countries, our knowledge of the contemporary Chinese
art remains miniscule. Of course, we are aware of WangGuangyi
of the Political Pop; We are also familiar with the group of artists
known as Cynical Realists including Yue Minjun, Zhang Xiaogang,
Zeng Fanzhi, who were active in the early 1990s; and we are well-
informed of Ai Weiwei’s political performances as well, which
became known to the Western art world since the 2000s. But this
genealogy is not the one constructed voluntarily by China with a
clear self-perception. It is rather an impressionistic compilation of
the art movements that imitated the pre-existing art movements of
the West, or it’s a chronological assemblage of market trends that
was driven by art markets of the West. When we say contemporary
Chinese Art, the general image that comes to mind is a collection
of fragments that is edited by the Western perspective. But as the
world’s art market got reconfigured since the global financial crisis
of 2008, and with the emergence of the ba ling hou generation
of artists who were born in the 1980s, the new wave came to the
forefront in Chinese art scene which took on new themes and new
visual styles, that are no longer fettered by the political clichés of
the past. Those new artworks didn’t exactly fit well into the existing
rules of the game. Also the new approaches have arisen that seek to
redefine in their own terms what Chinese contemporary art really
means. Can we expect someday to see the real Chinese guide that
hasn’t been tainted by the prejudices of the outsiders?
Contemporary Art Indigenous to China
Out of all Chinese cities, Shanghai has always been very special.
Recently the city of Shanghai has been constructing cultural
infrastructure quite aggressively. During the preparation stage
for the 2010 Shanghai Exposition they invested money almost as
much as the entire budget for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. They

3. 101100 art in ASIA November · December 2015
re-innovated the area that had long been underdeveloped or
illegally-occupied, especially the area west of the Huangpu River,
turning it into an art district. What is unique is that the Chinese
government is taking control and trying to run the art business
and the museums on its own. The most important incident in the
recent years is that in 2012, the first state-run museum in China
called the Power Station of Art has opened in Shanghai. Previously
a thermal power station that was first built in Nanxi in 1897, it had
been moved to the current location in 1935 and used for another
80 years or so as a power plant until 2007. PSA, seated beside the
Huangpu River, occupies 42,000 sq. meters of land, its chimney
standing as high as 165 meters, and its ceiling hanging 27 meters
above the floor. Its vast size reminds one of the Turbine Hall at the
Tate Modern in UK. Just like the Southbank area near Tate, the
Puxi area where PSA is located is crowded with copious galleries
and museums along the Huangpu River.
The time of my visit was one week before the inauguration
of Shanghai Art Week. Its elevated artistic spirit was very much
redolent of Hong Kong. There were myriad of art events going
on including Yang Fudong exhibition in the Yuz Museum, Wang
Yuyang’s exhibition in the Long Museum at West Bund, and Chen
Zhen’s solo show at RAM. PSA was then hosting two simultaneous
exhibitions featuring calligraphy and appropriation art, respectively.
Appropriation art and calligraphy seem to be a very heterogeneous
combination, but one common underlying element — Chinese art —
bound the two together, the result of which was distinctively shown
in the curatorial composition of the two exhibitions.
Calligraphic Time and Space: Abstract Art in China was
curated by Li Xu, a former vice president of PSA, who is also a
founding member and has worked since 2011. 28 participating
artists submitted a total of 174 art works. Li Xu confessed that
this exhibition was a culmination of 10 year’s worth of curatorial
endeavor. He said that the the genre of calligraphy is a byproduct of
the act of writing Chinese letters. Writing letters, just like the act of
painting, requires the faculty of abstract expression. It seems well
worth looking into how the formality and the concept of calligraphy
is reflected in the modern form of abstract art of China.
Rewriting Art History in the Calligraphic Manner
When Li Xu commissioned artists for the exhibition he asked
for only two things. First, answer through artwork why he or she
is creating abstract works. Second, avoid direct and literal use of
the Chinese letters in the work. Participating artist Jiang Dahai
in his statement posted up on the exhibition wall, quoted Herbert
Read, to meet the first requirement: “Abstract Expressionism, as a
movement in art, is but an extension and elaboration of calligraphic
expressionism, and has a close relationship to the Oriental art of
calligraphy.” Jiang Dahai’s huge canvas that spans 4 by 1 meters
is completely black and looks like a big ink stick. He put four such
paintings side by side to form a square. The work exuded traces
of symbolism and abstract art. Artist Ding Yi displayed 12 pieces
of his famous work Appearance of Crosses 2015-B1. Wood boards
were carved in one consistent direction above which he layered
vast array of color. The result looks like go-boards, but on further
contemplation they reminded me of Chinese penmanship grids.
Artist Qi Haiping painted a form that resembles a Chinese letter on
a canvas that were built into folding screens, which at first glance
looked very archaic, but was actually created in 2015. The letter-
like image was in fact a fake letter that had no meaning at all. In
The Sea of Tea I by Liang Quan, the artist put a cup of tea on top
of mulberry paper then removed it. The random marks left by the
cup created a very subtle and flimsy rhythm.Cindy Ng Sio Ieng is
a long-take footage of close-up images of the inside of a water tank
where the artist spilled drops of ink. There were also the works
that took as motives the weight of the letters. Artist Chen Qiang
submitted his 2 dimensional sculpture series: under a thick layer
of resin, the artist placed an accumulation of brushstrokes that
resembled the shape of a letter. Li Shun wrote a letter using a light
device and took a photo of it, then recreated the light image using
cement concrete. The ephemeral letters that were created by light
was given a sculptural body and gained a physical gravity of its own.
There were works that attempted to shed light on the space
upon which letter are seated. An architect Cheng Dapeng’s
interactive piece featured many aluminum balls filling a long
wooden table that were designed to move along whenever it sensed
a nearby human motion and recreate the sound and energy of
calligraphic brushstrokes. Shi Hui’s Suspending Foundation Stones
is a work in which dozens of round objects made from fabric and
paper are hung from the ceiling. Leah Lihua Wong, in her Floating
Memory, hung cutout phrases from the ancient Chinese poems
from the ceiling like a mobile work. Strong lights were cast upon
both pieces resulting in distinctive shadows on the floor that looked
like calligraphy written by sculptures themselves.
Overall, the exhibition seemed to suggest a new term
“calligraphic abstraction”. The exhibition appeared to be making
an argument that abstract art in China may have started off by
emulating abstract art of the West, but the bodily gesture of
calligraphy and the Taoistic emptying state of mind combined
can create an entirely original art movement of China. Moreover,
calligraphic abstraction can function as a framework that can
bind all the art scenes of East Asian countries that share the same
culture and form a formidable alliance in the global art world.
Complementary Exhibition Engineering
The Copyleft: Appropriation Art in China, on the contrary,
focused not on the past, but on the phenomenon of the now and
attempted to relate it to the origin of the Chinese contemporary
art. Theshanzhai, a sociocultural phenomenon of imitating and
pirating brands and goods, is prevalent in China. Manufacturers
of shanzhai products first start their business by copying the looks
Top: Jiao Xingtao, Huisheng
Sculpture Group, mixed
media, dimensions variable,
2004. The artist took
various objects from across
all times and cultures and
put warranties on the wall
vouching for the works’
authenticity.
Bottom left: Li Qing, Images
of Mutual Undoing and
Unity·Leslie Cheung, oil on
canvas, each 170×127cm,
2007.
Right: Zhou Tiehai, Fake
Cover, print, 30×40cm,
1995-1997. The artist
photoshopped his face
onto the covers of major
Western magazines and
put on fake head copies.

4. 103102 art in ASIA November · December 2015
of the market-leading products and as they gradually catch up on
the technology they add one special feature on top of an original
product and this is when the act of copying takes on a dimension
of creation. The curator Xiang Liping tries to draw an analogy
between shanzhai and Chinese contemporary art. He seems to pose
the question whether Chinese art, that has developed emulating the
West, is giving birth to a new value that is absent in the West.” The
curator takes a step further and even attempts to make an academic
comparison of shanzhai to another tradition called the linmo,
an artistic tradition of tracing the works of the masters, and to
appropriation art of the West. “The West has embraced the notion
of appropriation art. What stops China from putting shanzhai
aesthetics into practice? This unique culture of shanzhai is well
capable of contributing to the creative process of contemporary art.”
The exhibition hall was filled with art versions of shanzhai
products. Yang Yongliang’s Rising Mist took a Shanshui that is in
the danger of going obsolete in the today's art world and mixed it
with the new media technology, creating a giant triptych Shanshui
painting. Taking as its motives the elements from the urban
Chinese landscapes, this image from left to right gets foggier,
alluding to the severe air pollution in Shanghai. There were works
that appropriated Western contemporary art in Chinese way. Shi
Yong took Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs in a shameless
manner and entitled his work Adding One Concept on Top of
Another. Yang Zhenzhong set up a gallery inside the exhibition
space and installed low-res print versions of contemporary classics
i.e., the works of Gursky, Araki, Serrano, Jeff Wall, Nan Goldin,
Cindy Sherman, and Yang Fudong. Blatant parodies may have made
the viewers smirk a bit, but also felt like leveling down the beauty of
the the classics rather hastily. Meanwhile, Jiao Xingtao’s Huicheng
Sculpture Group took various objects from across all times and
cultures. He made sculptures of Jesus, Guan Yu, Buddha, tiger,
the Mashimaro, and the Piglet. On the wall next to them the artist
put up the warranties vouching for the works’ authenticity. But the
sculptures were of factory-quality and didn’t have much aura to it
to begin with. All of the shanzhai artworks had critical weaknesses
of entirely giving up the aura or the shock value of the original
artworks in the process of appropriation. To be fair, it isn’t entirely
impossible for these artworks to cut through the noise and create
something better, just like the famous shanzhai brand Xiaomi that
created a massive success by providing a feature that was absent in
the then reigning market leader, iPhone.
Both exhibitions at PSA surely served as decent Chinese
art’s guides. Indeed, China’s ambition to step up their game and
reach for the title of artistic G2 was evident. The reality is, however,
although everyone wishes to create something original outside the
Western hegemony, without playing the existing game one cannot
even enter the arena. One thing surely was respectable: not denying
the history of repetitive mimicry; an attempt to turn it around as a
new energy source for new creation. Whether these attempts will
bear fruit is something to be decided by the passage of time.
Top: Ye Funa, Peach
Flower Tree, mixed media,
dimensions variable, 2014.
Bottom left: Chen Chun-
Hao, 2010 Imitating Early
Spring by Kuo Hsi in Song
Dynasty 1072, mosquito
nail, canvas, wood,
280x188x6cm, 2010.
Below: Yao Jui-Chung,
Collapsing Cloud,
handmade paper, oil, ink
with glitter, 93×130cm,
2013.