Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win
Young Chinese Art at
the 60 Wall Street Gallery
Deutsche Bank New York's 60
Wall Street Gallery introduces a new generation of Chinese artists. Their
works make a radical break with the clichés ordinarily associated with
Chinese art. Achim Drucks on the show Dare to Struggle, Dare to
Win.
Annysa
Ng, Tea, Silk and Porcelain IV, 2007,
Courtesy
of the Artist and Vanina Holasek gallery
The
female figure with the lavish frill collar seems right out of a baroque
Dutch painting. Yet the impression is deceiving. The garment and ruffles
are inspired by Chinese fashion. The elegant women in Annysa
Ng's silhouette drawings are hybrid constructs that merge elements of
western and eastern culture. In her paper works and sculptures, the Hong
Kong-born artist explores the influences of colonialism as well as images
of women in male-dominated societies.
Annysa
Ng, Tea, Silk and Porcelain II, 2007,
Courtesy
of the Artist and Vanina Holasek gallery
Young
Chinese art has long been undergoing a boom. The record-breaking auction
results of recent years prove that contemporary art from the People's
Republic comprises one of the fastest growing sectors of the art market
worldwide. The Guggenheim
Museum in New York, for instance, is giving Cai
Guo-Qiang a spectacular solo
show, the first Chinese artist to receive this honor. On the other
hand, a tremendous amount is happening in the country itself: in the early
1990s, there were a mere five galleries in Peking, and since then the
number has grown to over a hundred offering a forum to native artists. And
there's another thing happening on the young Chinese scene: with
protagonists like Annysa Ng, a new generation is forming that doesn't
limit itself to stereotypical "Chinese" motifs and themes or produce the
usual mixture of Pop
and communist Agitprop.
Dare
to Struggle, Dare to Win is the programmatic title of the show at the
60 Wall Street Gallery of Deutsche Bank New York, which presents a highly
divergent picture of the scene. The exhibition's curator, Eric
C. Shiner, had already organized Making
a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York at Japan
Society; he also works as editor of the magazine ArtAsiaPacific.
To his mind, Chinese art no longer focuses on local themes: "The new
generation is choosing instead to work in an international system that
melds together styles and philosophies culled from the global stage upon
which they play." Indeed, the works currently on show at Deutsche Bank New
York are diametrically opposed to the many works commonly associated with
contemporary Chinese art - such as the bald grimacing heads that brought Fang
Lijun international success. The artists in the show have departed
from this "Cynical Realism," which has almost reached the point of cliché.
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O Zhang, from the series Horizon , 2004,
Courtesy
CRG Gallery, NY
Almost all of them are
under 40 and live in New York. This also goes for the photographer O
Zhang, whose portraits from the larger series Horizon were made
in central China, where he photographed young girls in a remote village.
The larger-than-life prints are ordered in three rows: the girls in the
top row gaze down at the viewer, the middle row is at eye level, and the
bottom row is peering up. The austere presentation of the works,
reminiscent of Becher
typologies and Minimalist grid structures, subtracts the sweetness from
these images of colorfully dressed children, while the individual
portraits form a collective that expresses a hope for a better future.
Ride
me like a cowboy (the new China) #1 & #2, 2007
Courtesy
of the Artist
Samson
Young's Kiddie Rides, on the other hand, have nothing to do
with childish innocence. For his work Ride Me like a Cowboy, the
artist and composer added a small video monitor to two of the electric
coin-operated riding automats for children of the kind one finds outside
supermarkets. When you throw a quarter in, the garishly colored toy, Made
in China, jolts into motion to the tune of a spry melody. In the meantime,
the screen is playing footage of the student
protests on Peking's Tiananmen
Square, which were violently repressed by the regime. The work's
subtitle, The New China, suggests that the artist would like it to
be understood as a commentary on the current situation in the People's
Republic. Hiding behind the image the country propagates to the outside
world of a land that successfully unites communist ideology and capitalist
business lies another reality entirely.
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