Dig out Cui Bo

Appetite for something easier to digest in Modern Chinese Contemporary Art? Here's someone for you. Cui Bo. His comical setting depicts life in China. Certain lifestyles had changed over the years, practices gone, habits evolved. His artworks painted a lifestyle that will slowly disappear from Modern China. Still, beliefs and practices linger, no matter how fast a chase for a western-to-be city is taking place.



source: Images from New Chinese Art.

If China Art Scene would do this...

I read an article recently about Art for Grabs by New Strait Times Malaysia by Lucien de Guise. He is currently a curator of the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia. There was an event held in The Annexe @ Central Market, in Kuala Lumpur, selling off works of art for as little as RM100. It's hard to believe so, but it sure is a good way to promote awareness and allow the general to collect works of art by local artists.

Participating artists included Ng Sek San, Fathul, Super Sunday, Amir Muhammad, Saiful Razman, Valentine Willie Resource Centre, James Lee, Goh Lee Kwang, Hands Percussion, Mun Kao, Circlesongs, Kurasaraksaksa, Pipit, Soundscape, and many more of Malaysia’s young and talented yet to be digged.

I am sure this will allow the public to build up a general interest for the art scene. Citizens need not think that art is something that need to be paid in the millions to be ever collected at home and be of certain appriciation and aesthetic values.

Because of this, I sometimes wonder whether anyone in China would actually pull off a team of artists, young and energetic, not famous, but with absolute content and reach out to the general public, exposing these new raw talents to the society. Let's not talk about big masters who are earning an international reputation. Why not start off a big scale of art creativity using talents who are unheard of and do the job? In general, the society will welcome the effects of it: collections of art locally produced with stunning modern effects as a way to beautify and sooth the souls of many.

Artists can gain the awareness needed. Come on, those bunch from the 80s did not get the attention they wanted back then. It was brought forth by international know galleries that China exists really good contemporay works of art, letting the world know about their works.

Why not do it locally now for a new generation of talent? Perhaps you might argue that doing so is more for the effects of commercialised art, and many artists out there are crying to be recognised. But doing it cheap, unique, and in mass, might draw the attention needed, allowing more space for art to boom in China, no?

Christie's auctions setting mad statistics

Sales of fine art, jewelry and ceramics are predicted to fetched an estimated HK$7.1 billion in total at Christie's Hong Kong 2007 fall auctions at the end of the month.

The interesting part about this auction off this fall are the growing numbers of Chinese 20th century and Asian contemporary art being auctioned off. More than 460 lots under this category went on sale, and will be fetching an estimated value of HK400 million dollars.

Works by Zhang Xiao Gang, Yue Mingjun, Cai Guoqiang are high on a record setting. In a bid to attract buyers from around the world Christie's has held pre-sale exhibition in Jakarta, Beijing, Singapore, London and Moscow.

Looks like Christie's is really set in making Modern Asian Contemporary Art a growing trend in collectibles. Whether a not this is a drive for profits. I am sure many museums out there in the world will be happy to collect some of this master pieces which depict stories of an era of chaos and social reform.

Zhang Jianhua's Coal Mine Workers

In Beijing, one cannot miss going to Great Wall of China, The Tian An Men Square, the forbidden city, the summer palace. In the other part of Beijing, the little known area in which Chinese Contemporary Art thrive and a must to visit for art lovers is the 798 factory. Many post cultural revolution Chinese artists host their art works there. However, even though so, many artists reknown internationally still remain ambigous to the locals. Such is the case for Zhang Jianhua, whose sculpture works are disturbing and profound, especially those he made: life size sculptures of Chinese coal miners

His life works depicts depict miners sitting on the ground in their black rubber boots wearing looks of sheer fatigue. Some stare blankly into the distance or prop up their heads with both hands, their faces fixed in nameless agony. Although seeing it, one might not feel any connection to it without before hand understanding the social issues in China, in which coal miners die in the thousand annually due to the hazardous working environment and poor safety issues. Little do the locals look upon the sculptures with interests, and silently, it also symbolizes the problems coal miners face in modern China, making them silent victims to disasters little known to people. Or simply, not many care about them.

The works of Zhang, now in his mid thirties, received many critical praises from the art industry. However, locally, no Chinese museum or established gallery is willing to take in his display of the coal miners entirety, even though he insists, due to the controversy and troubles it might bring from the local authorities. This can be seen clearly when his works was exhibited in 798 factory during April this year, but demanded by the censors to remove the six dead coal mine workers out of the show. They just do not wish to see it somehow.

If you look at it in a picture most Chinese in this era want to depict a progressive China, full of smiles and great improvements. No one like to look at the ugly side being depicted. Everything is good and merry, the air is tinged and filled with love songs. There is nothing "wrong" with China. There is no bubble reality at all.

Officially, 4,794 coal miners died in work-related accidents in China last year - more than 13 every day, on average, though many believe the official figures understate the real toll. But Zhang's temerity in representing the victims has won his work what might be called a soft ban.

And Zhang is not aiming to criticize the authorities. He would just like to see that from his works, he can change and affect the society, gaining awareness from the public, in which changes can happen to make his belove country more open and transparents about making changes possible, not with empty promises and propaganda. Everyone should know what is going on in the country. The thing is, a large majority do know, but they choose to leap into a safety zone of "i fuck care as long nothing disturb me" attitude.

Personally, I think people outside of China are more interested with the Chinese Contemporary Artists than the locals. If these artists did not gain International attention when they exhibited their works overseas, pressures forced upon China internationally, a lucrative art market in which China wants to put his paws upon, and also because of the WTO few years back, the voice of the artists locally will still remain unclear throughout the country.

more about the artist, extract

The artist's first taste of successful shock realism came with another series of sculptures four years ago in which he depicted the lives of peasants from his native Henan Province. The 12 figures in that series included an elderly woman sitting alone, threadbare migrant workers and rural schoolteachers.

The work drew critical praise when it was introduced at a gallery in Beijing. But when the show began touring other venues in the capital that year, displayed on the grounds of two middle-class housing developments and at China Agricultural University, it drew strong protests, with residents and students attacking it as vulgar, striking the artist and knocking over some of the figures.

The university exhibition had to be canceled after only two hours.

"These were beggars," said one commentator in a school newspaper. "It's sick." Another complained that "rural areas have progress, too, why not show that?"

Zhang's choice of topics is not the only thing that sets him apart from many contemporaries. He said that to prepare for his miner series, he made numerous trips to the coal country in Shanxi and Henan provinces, living with miners for weeks at a time, soaking up their hard-knocks culture while simultaneously observing the lives of the illegal mine owners, with their flashy, sudden wealth.

The artist grew particularly animated as he described the scenes of lavish weddings organized for the daughters of coal mine owners in Datong, one of China's most famous mining towns, of motorcades of stretched Cadillacs and Hummers and Mercedes-Benzes, festively honking their horns. "This is the kind of ostentation they want," he said. "Yet underneath the wheels are piles of white bones and pools of fresh blood."

For his next project, clearly another effort at unveiling a ubiquitous but officially invisible social problem, Zhang said he planned to portray the country's large numbers of prostitutes. "Not the prostitutes of the rich, but the ordinary, working-class prostitutes, who live in very difficult conditions."

Chen Yu Fei - 2004 [３５ ｗｅｌｃｏｍｅ ｇｉｆｔｓ ｆｏｒ ｍｅ] depiction of social issues

Miel 发表于 2006-10-24 18:14:53