{"id":11912,"date":"2012-10-26T20:01:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-26T20:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/?p=11912"},"modified":"2023-05-01T20:04:24","modified_gmt":"2023-05-01T20:04:24","slug":"the-art-of-changing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/zh-hans\/the-art-of-changing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of Changing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cArt of Change: New Directions from China\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hayward Gallery<\/strong><\/a> (Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX, UK). Sept 7 \u2013 Dec 9, 2012.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A title is an ambivalent thing \u2014 just as tender to interpretation as what it purports to name. Noticeable is the tendency among contemporary Chinese artists, as others, either to leave works and exhibitions \u201cuntitled\u201d or to label them merely by their creation date, thus evading the intrusion of meaning. Needless to say, most of them still permit a wordy exhibition text which may confuse, inform or excite (or a combination of the three).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cArt of Change: New Directions from China\u201d is a case in point; context cannot be ignored. Whilst its intention is clear, for one positioned between London and Beijing it\u2019s difficult to avoid the involuntary substitution of \u201cNew Directions from China\u201d by a phantom alternative, something like \u201cArt of Changing Attitudes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, this is not the only recent high-profile Chinese exhibition at an international institution; this year alone has seen \u201cGo Figure! Contemporary Chinese Portraiture\u201d at the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation in Sydney, \u201cTransformation: A View on Chinese Contemporary Art\u201d at Istanbul Modern Museum and \u201cOpenness and Integration \u2014 Contemporary Chinese Art Exhibition\u201d at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. But the fact remains that each successive show feels atypical \u2014 even as momentum mounts; \u201ctaboo\u201d is not the right word, nor is \u201cproblematic\u201d, but perhaps \u201canomalous\u201d is. These exhibitions don\u2019t converge on a feeling of increasing integration, but are instead successive offerings widowed from wider progression. Their titles reiterate the mood emphasising change, or \u201ctransformation,\u201d or instructing one to \u201cwork it out for yourself.\u201d This is telling; why this sensation? And why always a sense of the sporadic?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contemporary art, so much is merely temporary. Chinese contemporary art is in many ways at the vacillating centre of international changes occurring now. Whilst it is change within China that is always emphasized \u2014 \u201ctransformation\u201d and \u201crapid urban development\u201d being the buzz words \u2014 this is by now an unbalanced focus when it is clear that unprecedented change is happening across the geopolitical landscape. As the prime example of a region previously excluded by a Western-centric artistic canon \u2014 not to mention the threat to old orders posed by its economic might \u2014 China arises as indicative of these changes. Whether it likes it or not, the \u201cart world\u201d as it is called \u2014 linked inextricably to politics and commerce \u2014 cannot deny the paradigm shifts that are happening, and that necessarily entail it, too. Ironic now is the etymological link between what once was called the Orient (\u201cEast\u201d in maps of the Middle Ages was often situated at the top, hence the link with the verb \u201cto orientate\u201d) \u2014 and the dis<\/em>orientation prevalent now and inherent in China\u2019s heightening presence on the global stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a symptom of this state of affairs, Chinese art remains largely radical and discomforting for the wider art world audience, a condition bolstered by its close association with the market (now undergoing something of an awkward adolescence) and lack of a critical framework. In the work of emerging artists from China there is much that speaks to the touchstone of artistic innovation, but attitudes keep it at bay. Asked recently to comment on Chinese art, most of the editorial team of one of Britain\u2019s main art mags declined to respond. \u201cI\u2019d have to say I don\u2019t really think about Chinese contemporary art,\u201d said one. In reality, focussing adjectives about change on China alone is simply another form of centrism, where it is only Western commentators that deliver these descriptions, at the same time assuming themselves to be separate from this state of flux. This is a fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the context of this exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, \u201cart of change\u201d refers to the evolution occurring during artists\u2019 careers, and to works of performance art that change over time; they are not finished aesthetic objects, but rather processes that continue to unfold. A parallel might have been drawn here between changing works and a changing environment, but inside the Hayward Gallery\u2019s windowless container (as non-porous as London\u2019s other white cubes), its walls lined with supporting documentation and where for the majority of people China, let alone its art, is wholly remote, it wasn\u2019t.  For some, such a concentrated encounter with challenging works would be positive; others will say the work \u201cdid not speak to them\u201d (as did the owners of one of the city\u2019s major contemporary art galleries, an echelon by no means exempt from a decided unfamiliarity with recent Chinese art). Noticeable was the agreement in both professional exhibition reviews in the local media and art blogs on which were the most striking works: Yingmei Duan\u2019s cute\/dark performance, \u201cHappy Yingmei\u201d (2011-2012, performed live in the gallery), the live silk worm works by Liang Shaoji (\u201cNature Series,\u201d dates variable) and Xu Zhen\u2019s following piece, \u201cMarch 6th\u201d (2012). The more complex works (one might say, those that were less easily \u201cChinese\u201d or obviously \u201ccreepy\u201d), for example an extract from the masterful \u201cMaking Do with Fakes\u201d (2011) by Wang Jianwei and the infamous meat-kneading sequence by Gu Dexin \u2014 \u201c1997-6-16-1998-6-13\u201d<\/em>, (1997-8) \u2014 were skirted by critical and colloquial commentators alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In general and regardless of a focus \u2014 predictable, with hindsight \u2014 on the more accessible works, the responses to \u201cArt of Change\u201d have been positive. For all on which this review has remarked, and less about the exhibition itself than the climate in which it arises, to seek straightforward change is unrealistic. Instead, and as part of the wider ferment, these exhibitions will continue; attitudes will swim around them, shifting in tandem with the wider image of instability and \u2014 one hopes \u2014 art world attrition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cArt of Change: New Directions from Chin … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":11913,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20],"tags":[607,8559,5531,1616,109,960,8560,66,117,2828,8561,4797,8562,8563],"yoast_head":"\nThe Art of Changing - \u71c3\u70b9 Ran Dian<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/the-art-of-changing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"zh_CN\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Art of Changing - \u71c3\u70b9 Ran Dian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cArt of Change: New Directions from Chin … Continue reading →\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/the-art-of-changing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"\u71c3\u70b9 Ran Dian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-10-26T20:01:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-05-01T20:04:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2023\/05\/WANG-JIANWEI-Surplus-Value-2010-Photo-Linda-Nylind1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1459\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"959\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Duyen Le\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"\u4f5c\u8005\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Duyen Le\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"\u9884\u8ba1\u9605\u8bfb\u65f6\u95f4\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5\u5206\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/the-art-of-changing\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/the-art-of-changing\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Duyen Le\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/#\/schema\/person\/4d95ceea857b4c4fde91b6437bfaee13\"},\"headline\":\"The Art of Changing\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-10-26T20:01:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-05-01T20:04:24+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/the-art-of-changing\/\"},\"wordCount\":961,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\""Art of Change"\",\"Chen Zhen\",\"Gu Dexin\",\"Hayward Gallery\",\"Iona Whittaker\",\"Liang Shaoji\",\"living art works\",\"London\",\"MadeIn Company\",\"performance art\",\"Stephanie Rosenthal\",\"Sun Yuan & Peng Yu\",\"Wang Jianwei and Xu Zhen\",\"Yingmei Duan\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Reviews\"],\"inLanguage\":\"zh-CN\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/the-art-of-changing\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/the-art-of-changing\/\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/the-art-of-changing\/\",\"name\":\"The Art of Changing - 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