Despite the extraordinary range of works presented, Great Performances feels like an opportunity missed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most visitors to \u201cGreat Performances\u201d were likely struck by the extraordinary range of works the exhibition presented, but what they actually made of those works, or of the exhibition as a whole, depended upon their knowledge of performance art in China (or in general). It also mattered how much each visitor cared about the matching of artworks to an exhibition title or theme. For me, \u201cGreat Performances\u201d prompted reflection upon the role of a commercial gallery in promoting art of a radical nature\u2014which habitually and electively sits outside mainstream practice\u2014but left the question hanging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, though, the \u201cextraordinary range of works.\u201d Given the siting of this exhibition in a leading commercial gallery, it was not wrong to expect the works on display would be by artists of some significance. Pace, after all, is a \u201ctaste-maker\u201d for collectors, which naturally makes its tastes of particular importance to the artists the gallery shows or doesn\u2019t show, as the case may be. But the act of affirming individual artworks through exhibiting them is not equal to the validation of an artform, and one as difficult as performance. Perhaps for this reason, the term performance invoked here was somewhat misleading. For one thing, there were no live bodies present in the space: all that was awkward and potentially disturbing was contained in the safe borders of a photograph, or within the confines of a projection or video. To recreate performance works in venues or at times to which they are unrelated is a sticky issue. But unpicking the history\u2014context and meaning\u2014of performance works ought to have been part of an exhibition with a title like \u201cGreat Performances,\u201d and which described its objective as interpreting \u201cthe occurrence, development and status quo of Chinese contemporary art (mid-1990s to now)\u201d (1). Clearly such an objective necessarily requires more circumstantial material than a commercial gallery finds it appropriate to provide. But perhaps that\u2019s open to debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the plus side, a good number of the works included in \u201cGreat Performances\u201d represent the finer points of the individual artists\u2019 career: Wu Xiaojun\u2019s brilliant string of luminescence \u201cGift\u201d from 2006 verged on the sublime. As a gesture, it is simplicity itself: a series of neon tubes that appear to have been gently hand-crafted and painstakingly strung together to achieve a faltering upward trajectory that is both haunting and determined, vulnerable as well as otherworldly. \u201cGift\u201d was previously shown in 798 in an exhibition titled \u201cEnemy at the Gates\u201d organised by 798\u2019s renegade-founder, Huang Rui, in 2006. However, that previous presentation failed to display it to such effect as in \u201cGreat Performances\u201d: here, it felt positively exalted, its inexorable air of fragility a prescient reminder of the zeitgeist of this present age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another work that found good advantage in this setting was Hai Bo\u2019s photographic diptych \u201c2008-1.\u201d Presenting the image of an elderly man from the front, apparently in motion walking towards the viewer, and from the back, appearing to walk away, \u201c2008-1\u2033 is one of the most enduring \u201cdouble portraits\u201d from the artist\u2019s recent work that build on the comparative approach between \u201cthen\u201d and \u201cnow\u201d that won Hai Bo deserved acclaim in the late 1990s. The light is perfect, the mood poignantly nuanced. Although recognisably elderly in years, the figure is nondescript\u2014working class probably, but retired and therefore dressed in the generic simplicity adopted by those of his generation, except for the contemplative aura in which he is deeply immersed. The intensity of his inward-looking gaze is compelling, and somehow renders him so utterly, comfortably alone such that we are drawn into the aura of the work utterly ourselves, and into our own zone of introspection, fuelled by far less a measure of comfort than what Hai Bo\u2019s subject enjoys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A similarly mesmerising aura pervades Li Songsong\u2019s \u201cBig Container.\u201d This new work\u2014one of only a few from recent years in the show\u2014is a pale, slumbering mass. The surface formed precisely of a final fat coat of pure paint, similar to Li\u2019s paintings, to achieve a form that is a striking embodiment of pure power: its elegantly champfered sides might suggest the lower section of an elongated pyramid should the work be presented outside of China; yet, in being shown here in Beijing, whispered, instead, the language of the monumental associated with ideology and its icons. Was it this inalienable quality and the inevitable readings of the work being anticipated that led to its placement in one corner of the gallery space? For sure, the semi-umbra of the site enhanced the work\u2019s present but did leave it hanging in the dark. This, for me at least, was the first hint of the problems of reconciling powerful and radical experimental art forms with the material efficiency demanded of collectable art and, of necessity, by its purveyors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conversely, He An\u2019s installation \u201cDo You Think that You Can Help Her, Brother?\u201d was both beautifully placed and beautifully installed, but as a result of this failure to reconcile the extremes, the work felt emasculated, its decorative aspects overwhelming its original intent. \u201cDo You Think that You Can Help Her, Brother?\u201d comprises a set of individual characters each of which was acquired by illicit means from their original place within one form of public signage or another. In short, each word \/ character was removed at the behest of the artist in a clandestine fashion without the prior knowledge of their owners. So, on one level \u201cDo You Think that You Can Help Her, Brother?\u201d is intended as a radical statement on ownership: think \u201cProperty is theft,\u201d the statement by the French anarchist Proudhon, compounded with \u201cwhat\u2019s yours is mine\u201d (and that what\u2019s mine is also mine\u2026) in deep cohesion with (Western) materialist society today. In terms of both form and content the sentiment expressed further references the state of being alienated, excluded and disenfranchised that accompanies the experience of urban life for many young people in China today. Its inclusion in \u201cGreat Performances\u201d reveals how far a work born of a gritty social realism can be transformed into a parody of itself, certainly a travesty of an artistic idea when co-opted by \u201cthe establishment.\u201d A fitting analogy might be how the most worrisome emblems of punk circa 1977\u2014safety pins, rips and tatters, skulls and crossbones as well as God Save the Queen sloganeering\u2014latterly found their way into couture by luxury brands such as Chanel or Dior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Xiao Yu\u2019s extraordinary installation, \u201cWu\u201d (2000), provided another example, for although this work sat right out in the open as it were, it also suffered for this placement in the display: there is something about the formal arrangement of the gallery space, its whiteness, clinical contours and hushed atmosphere, that contrived to make \u201cWu\u201d appear closer to an attraction in a children\u2019s petting zoo rather than the insightful exploration of manmade \/ mutated \/ gnomically-altered life forms that pass for domestic animals today. Under these circumstances, \u201cWu\u201d also failed to induce the dramatic viewer response that was indeed elicited upon its debut in 2000 as part of the exhibition \u201cHarm \/ Hurt,\u201d a seminal exhibition of its moment when issues of cloning and moral-ethical attitudes towards life \/ life forms were subject to fierce debate. Naturally the aura of \u201cHarm \/ Hurt,\u201d coupled with its considered siting in an old theatre in a hutong in Beijing, contributed to the shock and awe in which it was received, none of which was addressed for any of these \u201cgreat performances.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moving through the exhibition, despite there being an extraordinary range of works, those most relevant to the history and development of performance art in China suffered from the lack of context provided, specifically of the complex web of relationships and circumstances that inspired them. This was manifest in various ways, foremost in the neutering affect that this pristine space had upon many of the works in the show, and in particular those associated with real acts of performance: He Yunchang\u2019s \u201cKeeping Promise\u201d was originally a work of gruelling endurance. The artist had himself incarcerated in a concrete block in a gallery for 24 hours, alone in total darkness with no escape. Here, the performance was rendered in a single photograph of the artist as he emerged half suffocated and exhausted in front of the audience. A dramatic image but one that provided little sense of the extraordinary physical and, one imagines, psychological experience that preceded it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What was most intriguing, though, was the inclusion of works that were not only not<\/em>produced by a self-professed performance artist, but that visually and intrinsically have little relation to performance per se<\/em>. Foremost here are works by Yang Maoyuan and Duan Jianyu, but includes Liu Wei\u2019s \u201cLandscape No. 4, 6\u201d (2004), Zhou Tiehai\u2019s \u201cMagazine Covers\u201d (1995-97), and Zhan Wang\u2019s piece as well as pieces already discussed. Of course, the interpretation of performance under such a wide-ranging context, or as a \u201cconsciousness of performance\u201d (or \u201cperformative expression within contemporary art,\u201d as the curator Leng Lin prefers to describe it) is an interesting idea, innovative even. How about the surprising inclusion of the painter Liu Xiaodong, who has always asserted a distance from even conceptual practice? If he accepts the labelling of his painting from life as performance, then do we need to reappraise the same preference in historical figures like van Gogh, Monet or Turner\u2014the latter surely a candidate for a performance artist if ever there was one? Or is that too literal an interpretation? Several works led off in a more appreciable direction: for example Xu Zhen\u2019s brilliant video \u201c8848-1.86,\u201d a parody of summiting the great mountain peak intended to be seen as a film. There were Qiu Zhijie\u2019s light writing\u2014\u201cwriting\u201d done in the air in the dark with a torch before an open camera shutter\u2014which only has visual form as a photograph. Hu Xiangqian\u2019s \u201cSun,\u201d which shows the artist acquiring a tan, which can also only be experienced via a video produced over time. These represent the various ways that \u201cperformative expression\u201d has provided a liberating avenue of exploration for many of China\u2019s most creative minds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Performance has never been an easy choice of artistic career. The urge to \u201cperform\u201d fulfils a different need from that inspired by other art forms, say, painting: it is a full physical immersion in art that\u2014usually\u2014requires the presence of an audience, or interaction with the immediacy of a time and place, to be completed as each artist envisions. Thus, it is not surprising that the development of performance art in China occurs at some of the most challenging times that artists have faced: in the late 1980s, as culture flowered under the radar of economic reforms; in tandem with social change and unrest that these reforms engendered through the 1990s; and against scientific developments in the late 1990s through the start of the new millennium. To choose this distinctly non-mainstream form of art in China, and as a response to particular moments, was never happenstance. To perform was to engage in a moment and effectively to leave no trace of anything that could be used against the individual artist at some point immediately after or in the future. But the need to document these actions and performances was soon felt, hence the significance of the work that photographer Rong Rong did in the 1990s recording the performance works of fellow members of Beijing\u2019s East Village co-operative. These times were, as Rong Rong has described, \u201cdark, dark, dark\u201d (2). These artists were inevitably poor, marginalized, and living on the fringes of society. Their body was the only thing they could call their own, and the works they produced, therefore, have a far different intent, meaning, and resonance than other forms of expression\u2014or even those performance works that followed them in the new millennium by which time all forms of contemporary art in China had achieved a degree of legitimacy and official acceptance. That is, of course, with the exception of performance art, which continues to struggle for validation in the public realm as the organisers of the 8th Shanghai Biennale 2010 would attest (3). According to one writer in an essay on Zhang Huan: \u201cNothing is more politically, socially, economically or culturally challenged than the free expression of the human body as an autonomous entity. For while we are all inclined to say \u2018this is my body,\u2019 the container of \u2018my consciousness,\u2019 the body is nonetheless historically hemmed in and determined by many culture-based and structural suppositions of distinction and dissonance\u201d (4). It is hardly surprising therefore that performance art in China has always been presented to a privileged few. Even before an official edict prohibiting it (5), performance art in China was positively underground. Yet, since the inception of an \u201cavant-garde\u201d scene in the mid-1980s, performance has drawn some of China\u2019s most dynamic, innovative and fearless artists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The question is this: should we really be surprised to find performance art now entering the mainstream? Of course, looking back, 2010 was a good year for performance art. The obvious example is \u201cThe Artist is Present,\u201d the solo exhibition of the world\u2019s most famous living performance artist Marina Abramovic held at MoMA, New York. If anything can be said to have made performance art \u201csafe\u201d for general consumption, surely it is this landmark exhibition of a radical performance artist in a major mainstream museum. Billed as the first significant presentation of Abramovic\u2019s art, \u201cThe Artist is Present\u201d celebrated four decades of her career: a long road to \u201cpopular\u201d recognition, which reflects the choice of positioning of Abramovic herself as an artist, and the general attitudes towards the particularly \u201cextreme\u201d form of performance art she was instrumental in pioneering\u2014relevant here because this is the side of performance that has dominated performance art in China. Flick through the exhibition catalogue and you get an idea of the struggle artists faced in those early years of performance art and to sense the often shocking extremes to which many of them felt they had to go in order to get their message and their commitment across. Abramovic is a relevant example, too, since many of her works have a parallel in the shape, form, and content of those of Chinese performance artists, beginning with the East Village artists in the early 1990s to Sun Yuan and Peng Yu later on. That was inevitable at the time, where artists who wished to depart from the visible norms and to experiment with life itself drew confidence and a certain raison d\u2019\u00eatre<\/em> from the work of pioneers such as Abramovic for everything from physical endurance, to placing the body\/self in imminent danger, and to the use of live animals or dangerous props.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps performance art is gaining ground in general\u2014hence Performa as part of the 2010 Shanghai Biennale. It was also this year that, in conjunction with an exhibition of works from the Domus Collection at UCCA in 798, Beijing art audiences were able to experience the very latest in \u201ccutting-edge\u201d performance from the Chinese-Canadian artist Terence Koh. UCCA also offered the mother of monumental performances\u2014if ever there was a performance it was surely this\u2014in \u201cHope Tunnel,\u201d Zhang Huan\u2019s rescue of a train buried in Sichuan earthquake. Zhang Huan is, of course, one of China\u2019s leading performance artists, its most infamous even, and is, too, represented by Pace. Thus, he was surely under-represented in the work included in Great Performances: there was no mention of \u201cHope Tunnel.\u201d \u201cTo Raise the Water Level of a Fish Pond\u201d (1997), included here, is possibly Zhang Huan\u2019s most widely known and credited works abroad, but the body of earlier works beginning in 1993 is essential to any map of the history of performance art in China: if these were not \u201cgreat performances,\u201d then how should a great performance be adjudged? In a historic sense, the works of other artists, like Ma Liuming, Wang Jin, Yang Zhichao, Zhu Fadong, Zhang Dali, Zhao Bandi and Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, were more representative: a photograph of \u201cFen-Ma Liuming\u201d in female costume from 1993; one image from the triptych \u201cRed Flag Canal\u201d (1994), showing the artist dying a river red with \u201cbrick dust\u201d; images of \u201cPlanting Grass\u201d in the artist\u2019s shoulder, 2000; photos of this \u201cArtist for Sale\u201d (1995); a single image of Zhang Dali\u2019s infamous graffiti tag from the \u201cDemolish\u201d series; a selection of the info-posters featuring \u201cBandi\u201d; and a video of \u201cDogs which cannot touch each other\u201d (2003). Each of these interventions has a place in history, and many fed off each other as well as the circumstances of the society and the art scene they were intended to defy or, arguably, to defile. Qin Ga\u2019s \u201cMiniature Long March\u201d has resonance here, as does Ma Qiusha\u2019s performance \u201cFrom 4 Pingyuanli to 4 Tianqiao beili,\u201d although as artists they, like Lin Yilin, are perhaps as yet less well known to general audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It doesn\u2019t matter that, in addressing an art form that does not have a high profile in the art world, \u201cGreat Performances\u201d would include artists as yet unfamiliar to viewers. What does matter is that there was no real attempt to address the unfamiliar, either the complexities that underscore performance art, or the forms it has adopted and embraced. The mediation of random text\u2014quotations from the artists out of context, or from philosophers \/ theorists whose connection to the artists is unclear\u2014for me, at least, intruded upon viewing and interpreting the works. Some kind of historical timeline or overview would have helped set the scene for those more dramatic videos of actual performances\u2014Yang Zhichao being one, Wang Qingsong another, and Ma Qiusha. All could be seen as shocking but, equally, each illustrates the extremes to which such artists were willing to go to make themselves seen and to be taken seriously; ergo, the most extreme of works from Zhu Yu, like \u201cSkin Graft\u201d and \u201cEating People\u201d (both 2000). In \u201c123,456 Chops,\u201d Wang Qingsong performs a death by a thousand cuts on the corpse of a dead goat. We are not privy to the manner in which the goat met its death, and are instead forced to wonder and to imagine why the artist chose this mode of expression. This type of work cannot be separated from the context either in which it was conceived, actuated, or, latterly, in which it is presented. It is an extreme act, with little in the way of redeeming features, laced with anger, violence and isolated solitude, hopeless helplessness. In the artist\u2019s words, it is specifically \u201cimbued with the general attitude, personality and character we are taught is the ideal male in Chinese society,\u201d which is perhaps hard to reconcile with the newly minted image of the \u201cmetrosexual male\u201d in Western society. Its placing in this \u201cblue-chip\u201d gallery was awkward and made a theatrical, callous gesture of what was a consciously constructed act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The main reason that \u201cGreat Performances\u201d feels like an opportunity missed is that it is arguably the first exhibition of its kind to take place in Beijing and could have marked a milestone in its art history. It says much about the perception of galleries, about success, and about achievement in in the Chinese art world that artists who have successfully navigated the complexities of live performance within the constraints of the highly controlled or watched public arena find it now natural to present their demonstrative stands against social convention, mores, and controls in mainstream, albeit elitist, galleries. In terms of art, Beijing Commune would have been so much better suited to the task, but to return to the analogy of punk, this type of exhibition makes the unknown \/ abnormal safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the title didn\u2019t lay claim to a theme, none of the above would really matter. And maybe taking issue is merely being pedantic: it was a great selection of works after all. I can\u2019t help feeling that comment is necessary, however: because the positioning of galleries like Pace and that of curator Leng Lin command huge respect, where they lead, others follow. So we can expect a spate of further presentations of performance art. Great or not: who will be in a position to decide?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Gallery press release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Rong Rong in conversation with the critic Gu Zheng, \u201cWorld Photography Festival,\u201d Bund 18, Shanghai, 16 October 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. This is in specific reference to the Performa<\/em>section of the Biennale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. Mark Gisbourne \u201cZhang Huan: Palimpsest: Writing on the Body,\u201d Zhang Huan<\/em>, published by Gallery Volker Diehl, Germany, 2006.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. In 2001, it was specifically outlawed by the Ministry of Culture in a \u201cNotice on its Resolution to Cease All Performances and Bloody, Brutal Displays of Obscenity in the Name of \u2018Art\u2019.\u201d The ban has yet to be formally lifted. See Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents<\/em>, published by MoMA, 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Despite the extraordinary range of works … Continue reading \u201cTo choose this distinctly non-mainstream form of art in China, and as a response to particular moments, was never happenstance. To perform was to engage in a moment and effectively to leave no trace of anything that could be used against the individual artist at some point immediately after or in the future.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u201c\u2018To Raise the Water Level of a Fish Pond\u2019 (1997), included here, is possibly Zhang Huan\u2019s most widely known and credited works abroad, but the body of earlier works beginning in 1993 is essential to any map of the history of performance art in China: if these were not \u2018great performances,\u2019 then how should a great performance be adjudged?\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEach of these interventions has a place in history, and many fed off each other as well as the circumstances of the society and the art scene they were intended to defy or, arguably, to defile.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe mediation of random text\u2014quotations from the artists out of context, or from philosophers \/ theorists whose connection to the artists is unclear<\/em>\u2014<\/em>for me, at least, intruded upon viewing and interpreting the works. Some kind of historical timeline or overview would have helped set the scene for those more dramatic videos of actual performances.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis type of work cannot be separated from the context either in which it was conceived, actuated, or, latterly, in which it is presented. It is an extreme act, with little in the way of redeeming features, laced with anger, violence and isolated solitude, hopeless helplessness.\u201d<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n