Traveling exhibition:
Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, CA. September 10, 2008 - January 4, 2009
Kunsthalle Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany. September 14, 2006 - February 18, 2007
Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland. June 14 - October 16, 2005
Visit:
Berkeley Museum of Art
Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection
September 10, 2008 - January 4, 2009
Chinese art has undergone enormous changes over the forty-year period from the Cultural Revolution to today. This transformation, at times glacially slow and at other times explosively fast, is represented at BAM/PFA this fall in artworks from the Sigg Collection, on view in the BAM Galleries, and in the films of Jia Zhangke and Ning Ying at the PFA Theater.
In 141 works by ninety-six artists, the exhibition Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection represents the historical span of art from the 1970s to today in China and demonstrates the dramatic evolution that has occurred, with artists exploring new materials and concepts far from what might have been imagined by even the most clairvoyant. As Chinese art emerged from the boundaries of state-sponsored and state-defined aesthetics to the complex initiatives of individuals with new intentions and motivations, it is possible to see the growth and development not only of art but of a nation.
The broad range of the work in Mahjong demonstrates the evolution of contemporary Chinese art and artists from an adaptation of Western realism in the Soviet style through many twists and turns to its current international idiom. A very few years ago, artists included in the exhibition would have been known only to specialists in the field, yet today a good many of them are recognized broadly both in China and throughout the United States and Europe. Much of this recent recognition can be credited to the Swiss businessman and art connoisseur Uli Sigg and his persistent attempts to encourage Chinese artists and present their works on an international stage. In addition to collecting, in 1997 Sigg founded the Chinese Contemporary Art Award (CCAA) for artists living in China.
Many of the artists featured in Mahjong have been instrumental in bringing about significant changes in Chinese art. The early artistic leaders of the late 1970s and the 1980s were not only creating art, they were creating an environment for a new way of thinking about art. The exhibitions, public performances, and ongoing dialogue among these artists brought considerable resistance from the government, which in some instances endorsed or allowed exhibitions to go forward at state-controlled sites only to later cancel, and occasionally close them within hours of opening.
Among the first exhibitions of nontraditional Chinese contemporary art held in China, the so-called First Exhibition of the Stars Group, held outside the China National Art Gallery in Beijing in 1979, proved to be a watershed event for the emergence of a new kind of art in China. Two of the principal architects of that event were Huang Rui and Ma Desheng, who also brought about the formation of the Stars Painting Society (Xingxing) in 1980. The group, led by Huang and Ma, enlisted the involvement of Wang Keping and Ai Weiwei; all are represented in the Sigg Collection. Exhibitions of works by these and other artists of the early 1980s challenged existing boundaries, as well as informed the art world of what could—and could not—be shown in exhibitions in China. The First Stars Exhibition was immediately shut down.
The images of Huang Rui's small oil on canvas Yuan Ming Yuan and Ma Desheng's untitled woodcut prints from the late 1970s are examples of new art trends that posed very different issues in an entirely different mode than the state-favored realist images of the Academy-trained artists. Typical of the work of the Stars group, these artists were interested in exploring Western artistic movements such as surrealism, postimpressionism, and Abstract Expressionism. Wang Keping's sculptural images in wood, such as Chain from 1979, were the most politically charged works of the Stars group.
Huang Rui, Ma Desheng, and Wang Keping, like many of the Stars group, were self-trained artists not affiliated with any art school—Ma in fact had been refused entry due to a physical disability. Both Huang and Ma were young, just in their late twenties, and Wang was only thirty at the time of the Stars Exhibition. A number of the artists in the Stars group became, because of their actions and artwork, part of the diaspora of artists who left China, at least for a time. Huang Rui went to Japan but returned to live in Beijing and helped to found the now-famous Factory 798. Ma Desheng left China for Europe, as did Wang Keping, while another of the early organizers, Ai Weiwei, moved to the United States in 1981, returned to China in 1993, and now seems comfortable in both worlds. (Ai Weiwei is an artist in residence at UC Berkeley this fall; see Public Programs.)
Out of this initial foray and over the next ten years, artists were emboldened to create new art associations, providing exhibition opportunities for artists like Huang Yongping, Wang Guangyi, Gu Wenda, Zhang Peili, Xu Bing, and Geng Jianyi, among many others. Wonderful examples of early works by these artists are an important and unique aspect of the Sigg Collection. This generation was not anti-academic (the key aspect of the Red Guard art of the 1970s); rather, they were fascinated and absorbed with creating works that reflected their newfound knowledge of Western art. They were typically graduates of some of the top art schools in the country, such as the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, and they also tended in these early years to identify themselves as part of larger groups, such as the Hangzhou Pond Society. The vocabulary of Huang Yongping's Six Small Turntables in mixed media from 1988 foreshadows the Dadaist approach to installation art (he was one of the founders of Xiamen Dada in the mid-1980s) that has made him an artist of high stature; his work has been included in international biennials in Venice and most recently in Istanbul, and has been shown frequently in Europe and America. Wang Guangyi's Death of Marat from 1986 borrows only the basic form from the eighteenth-century French work of the same name and reduces it to a gray oil of postclassical proportions. In the same year the artist produced one of the most politically charged works of its time, an oil of gray hues picturing a photorealistic portrait of Mao overlaid with a red grid, which redefined the cultural icon in a way that challenged both viewers and authorities. Geng Jianyi's array of four faces entitled The Second Situation from 1987 and Zhang Peili's 1988 series of paintings of a pair of gloves are both somewhat troubling images for their underlying ambiguity about the human condition.
This decade of progress, through exhibitions, discussions, conferences, and articles, culminated in the exhibition China/Avant-Garde, organized in 1989 by art critic Gao Minglu and seemingly destined to open and close within a few days at the China National Art Gallery. That same year several Chinese artists, including Huang Yongping, were invited to participate in an exhibition of 100 artists at the Centre Pompidou in Paris; this would be the first time Chinese artists were exhibited along with other international artists. Huang Yongping went to Paris to install his work and never left, making his career and reputation in an international forum.
The exposure of new Chinese art to an international audience in Paris was just the beginning, an opening that was quickly followed by other significant firsts, with inclusion in such international arenas as the 45th Venice Biennale (1993) and the First Kwangju Biennale (1995). Group exhibitions in Europe and the United States, occasionally organized or curated by Chinese artists living abroad, introduced contemporary arts of China far beyond its border, making those outside of China more informed about the arts than those inside China. Yet there was resistance to this outside influence on art and artists. Yan Lei (in collaboration with Hong Hao) reflects this in The Curators (2000), an image of real Western curators arriving in China to assess the "art scene." Through a false invitation to Chinese artists to appear in a fabricated section of Documenta X, Yan and Hong conspired to shed light on the influences these foreign arbiters of taste had on Chinese art. In other words, not all artists were thrilled that a Chinese artist's reputation had to be built first and foremost on foreign acceptance.
At home, Chinese artists repeatedly tested the limits of expression and succeeded in presenting numerous exhibitions that included a wider range of arts than had ever been seen before. What became immediately clear from these exhibitions was that Chinese artists were not working strictly as painters; by the late 1980s and early 1990s, many were exploring video, performance, and installation. Artists challenged the mythology of the past or icons of history in new media such as Song Dong's 1996 performance Breathing, in which a simple, everyday function was turned political by the placing of his act and his art in the center of Tiananmen Square in a demonstrative fashion. Ai Weiwei's Whitewash (1995–2000) used Neolithic storage jars in an installation that infers that the past can be eliminated by whitewash; in his 1995 Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo he goes so far as to rewrite the past with a ubiquitous emblem of commercialism. In Wang Jin's 1997 The Dream of China, the classical Chinese imperial robe is remanufactured not with silks but with the very reproducible plastic polyvinyl, a translucent material that may refer disparagingly to the past or to the present consumer-oriented world. Wordplay and the historically valued tradition of Chinese calligraphy are offered new interpretation utilizing old media in the hands of an artist like Xu Bing in his nonsensical 1989 Book from the Sky, or in Gu Wenda's Myths of Lost Dynasties from 1999, with its mysterious made-up character.
One of the most dramatic forays into new media came in 1992 with Zhang Peili's staged video Water: Standard Pronunciation Ci Hi (Sea of Words), which questioned the expectations of the viewer by appearing to present a real newscast but actually offering only the "talking head" reading a dictionary. Digging deeper into the question of what is real in the everyday, artists Ou Ning and Cao Fei created the 1999 video work San Yuan Li, which takes the viewer for a close look at the backstreets of an ordinary town. Wang Jianwei's Living Elsewhere (1999) and Song Tao's The Moment of One Shoot Another Dead (2004) expose the gritty side of urban life.
The artists of the 1990s and 2000s have expressed their work in a much more personal manner having to do with the challenges presented by a rapidly changing world. Artists like Zhang Xiaogang in his oil-on-canvas Red Child (2005) and Wang Jinsong in his 1996 photo series Standard Family explore the evolving nature of family. Personal and societal demons haunt the world of many artists, from Fang Lijun's anguished figures from the mid-1990s to the repetitive laughing man of Yue Minjun's painting and sculptural work. A sense of how the dehumanizing state of contemporary life bears down on the individual in the workplace is created by Shi Jinsong in his torturous Office Equipment—Prototype No. 1 of 2004. Urbanization, commercialization, and the struggle for identity are ever present in Weng Fen's photographs of a changing environment that picture a youth gazing into a real world, but one that is mutating so fast as to be beyond imagining. These are the challenges and realities of modern China, which became the subject of the artists of the 1990s up to today. The earlier concerns of style, or of Westernism or modernism, fade away as the artist struggles to express his or her own reality.
The presentation of films by Ning Ying and Jia Zhangke alongside works from the Sigg Collection provides the opportunity to assess the developments in Chinese art in a continuous array of visually exciting avenues. From the saccharine-sweet heroic images of the Soviet Realist–style paintings and the ubiquitous "happy worker" of the Cultural Revolution to the rapidly expanding world of emerging artistic developments of more recent times, China and its changing social, political, and economic realities are brought into focus. Clearly, the only constant is change.
Julia M. White
Senior Curator of Asian Art
Visit:
Kunsthalle Hamburg
Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection
14 September 2006 – 18 February 2007
Since the post-Mao reform era began in 1979, China has seen the emergence of an extremely diverse and dynamic art scene, a development that has taken place within a short space of time and in spite of the continuing difficulties faced by those involved in independent art production. In recent years, contemporary art from China has also been attracting great interest in the West.
Chinese artists have quickly found their place in the international art scene, and skilfully employ media, techniques and forms of expression that were developed in the West. Nevertheless, their specifically Chinese roots – pre-modern tradition on the one hand, the requirements of the Socialist Realist style prescribed by the Communist Party until the late 1970s on the other – are evident in many of the artists' works; in comparison to Western art, for example, greater emphasis is placed on figurative painting.
Some of these artists consciously address the issue of their national identity by adopting the techniques and formal language of traditional Chinese art and placing them in a new context. Another significant trend is to parody or reflect upon the art and art history of the West from a Chinese perspective. Above all, however, Chinese avant-garde art has to be viewed in the light of the tremendous social and economic upheavals that have taken place in recent decades; a large number of works specifically reflect the tension between the socialist ideals which are still officially valid and the wave of consumerism that has swept the country as a result of the capitalist reforms.
Swiss collector Uli Sigg, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Ringier Group, has taken a keen interest in China and its culture since the late 1970s. Together with his wife Rita, he has been building a collection devoted exclusively to Chinese art since the mid-1990s, and can justly be regarded as a pioneer in this field. Having initially concentrated on the acquisition of new art, Sigg soon began to extend his collection to include 'historic' works of Chinese avant-garde art from the 1980s and early 90s. The result of this systematic approach is a collection of contemporary Chinese art that is unparalleled in its scope and quality. All the leading positions and important trends are represented here by major works, many of which have now achieved iconic status in the Chinese art world.
The exhibition in the Hamburger Kunsthalle gives the German public the opportunity to view a representative selection of works from the Sigg Collection. It provides an overview of a quarter of a century of Chinese avant-garde art (1979–2005) and surpasses all previous exhibitions on the topic in terms of its focus and quality.
A comprehensive catalogue is being published to accompany the exhibition; besides an interview with the collector, it includes essays by the curators, descriptions and analyses of the individual works, as well as a general introduction to sociopolitical and artistic developments in China over the past three decades.
The exhibition has been organized in collaboration with the Kunstmuseum Bern, where it was curated by Bernhard Fibicher and Ai Weiei.
The exhibition in Hamburg has been curated by Dr. Christoph Heinrich.
Visit:
Kunstmuseum Bern
Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection
June 14 - October 16, 2005
New Chinese Art
Since China's post-Mao reform program began in 1979, the country has witnessed the emergence of an extremely diverse and dynamic art scene, in spite of the continuing difficulties still involved in independent art production. This has attracted considerable interest in the West in recent years. Chinese artists have entered the international art world with ease, adeptly making use of various media, techniques and forms of expression developed in the West, from the traditional genres of oil painting and sculpture to installation, photography, performance, body art and video. At the same time, the specifically Chinese roots – pre-modern tradition on one hand and the socialist realism prescribed by the CP until the late 1970s on the other hand – are tangible in many of their works. One typical trait, for instance, in comparison to Western art, is the emphasis on figurative painting. Some artists consciously address their national identity by adopting the techniques and/or formal syntax of traditional Chinese art (ink drawings, calligraphy, porcelain etc.) and placing them in a new context. Another important theme involves parodying or reflecting on Western art and its art historical canon from a Chinese point of view. Above all, however, Chinese avant-garde art is to be considered in the light of the enormous social and economic change the country has undergone in the past few decades; in particular, many works clearly reflect the tension between the socialist ideals that are still officially operative and the consumerism unleashed by capitalist reforms.
Uli Sigg and his collection
Swiss collector Uli Sigg, deputy chairman of the Ringier media group, has first-hand knowledge of Chinese culture through his close links with China since the late 1970s. In 1980, he established the first joint venture company between China and the West. From1995–98 he was Swiss ambassador to China. Today, Uli Sigg is still actively involved in a number of areas in China, and visits the country six or eight times a year on average.
Uli Sigg has been following the evolution of contemporary Chinese art from its beginnings in 1979 and, together with his wife Rita, has been the first to collect Chinese contemporary art in a systematic way since the 1990s. His collection includes "historic" avant-garde works since 1979 and extends to today. The result is a collection of contemporary Chinese art of a scope and quality unparalleled anywhere, comprising 1200 works of around 180 artists. The major trends are represented by key works, many of which are already iconic in the Chinese art world.
Uli Sigg also has a number of outstanding Socialist Realist paintings and has compiled the world's largest collection of Mao propaganda posters and paper cuts from the era of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Although this imagery was largely removed from circulation in the "cleaning out" phase of the post-Mao era and has been all but forgotten, it had a formative influence on most of today's generation of artists, and is therefore of fundamental importance in understanding their aesthetic approach and visual strategies.
Above and beyond his activities as a collector, Uli Sigg also plays an important role in Chinese art as a mediator, supporter and patron of artists for whom the interest of Western buyers is a crucial factor, given that the Chinese art market is still developing. In 1998, he founded the first Chinese Contemporary Art Award, which is presented every two years by an international jury comprising Harald Szeemann, Alanna Heiss, Hou Hanru and Ai Weiwei, co-curator of this exhibition and prominent Chinese artist. Curator Harald Szeemann, whose inclusion of several Chinese artists in the Venice Biennale in 1999 and 2001 also made a major contribution towards popularizing the Chinese avant-garde in the West, relied heavily on Uli Sigg's knowledge of the Chinese art scene and loans from his collection. In these respects, the reception of Chinese contemporary art in the West has been influenced significantly by the collector Uli Sigg.
The exhibition
The representative cross-section of works to be shown at Museum of Fine Arts Bern and Holderbank (exhibition hall of Holcim AG near Zurich) will be the first time that the Sigg Collection has been presented to the public on this scale. Art-lovers in Bern, already familiar with some aspects of Chinese contemporary art thanks to several exhibitions held at the Kunsthalle Bern in recent years, will be offered a broader survey of a quarter of a century of Chinese avant-garde art (1979–2004) in a show of work that surpasses previous exhibitions in both scope and quality. The exhibition will be structured into clearly legible themes, starting with a selection of Mao propaganda art intended to shed light on the roots of Chinese contemporary art that started in the late 1970s. A diachronous viewpoint will also be provided by a section dedicated to key works of the 1980s, now iconic, that were shown in the ground-breaking exhibition "China/Avant-Garde" at Beijing National Gallery in February 1989, shortly before the Tiananmen Square incident.
To ensure that the exhibition is also accessible to the many visitors who are likely to be more or less unfamiliar with the artistic, social and political context of the works, background information appropriate to the complexity of the subject matter will also be included. Ideally, this will enable visitors to gain an insight into the life and culture of modern China. An extensive catalogue will also be published to accompany the exhibition. It will include an interview with the collector, essays by the curators, explanations and analyses of individual works and general introductions to socio-political and artistic developments in China over the past three decades. Fringe events related to the exhibition, with lectures, seminars, performances, concerts, cuisine etc., will also introduce the audience to other aspects of Chinese culture.
In terms of space, the presentation of the Sigg Collection will be the largest exhibition in the history of the Fine Arts Museum Bern. In order to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity, much of the museum's permanent collection had to be dismantled for the period of the exhibition, which occupies the entire extension as well as part of the old Stettler building. At Holderbank especially the spectacular large installations and paintings that do not fit into the museum are displayed. Together with the Einstein exhibition at the History Museum and the inauguration of the Centre Paul Klee, the Sigg Collection will be a highlight of the 2005 "Berner Kunstsommer" that will attract attention far beyond the region. From an international point of view, this exhibition will undoubtedly set a landmark in the Western reception of Chinese art.