The Almanac Exhibition of Contemporary Art of China 2015 recently opened in Minsheng Art Museum in Beijing on June 25, 2016. Based on the book Annual Contemporary Art China 2015, compiled by Zhu Qingsheng and his team from Peking University, the exhibition attempted to represent the development of art during the year 2015 in mainland China. The book is a basic directory of art exhibitions and events in mainland China, but the show focuses more on contemporary art works that were created or first shown in 2015.
I had high expectations of the exhibition due to its documentary nature. Through the curator’s choices, the trends of Chinese contemporary art from the last year become visible. Only 36 of the 109 artists listed in the book are represented in the show. Although the curator emphasizes objectivity in both the book and the exhibition, how to compare the artists of different ages, education backgrounds and living experiences is still worth considering. The subtle “objectivity” is a hidden question that haunts the audience.
Installation shot of The Almanac Exhibition of Contemporary Art of China 2015, Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing
The show opens with a video by Lin Ke, one of the most representative artists of those born after 1980. Watching 01 (2015) is displayed prominently at the entrance of the musem. Lin’s video is composed of a recording of the repeated action of opening different files on his computer. It feels young and “post-internet,” two themes echoed in the exhibition’s introductory wall text.
Lin Ke, Watching 01, 2015
However, the works that come after Lin Ke’s video are not that young or post-internet. This show is comprised largely of artists born after the 1960’s who currently occupy salaried positions in art academies. Compared to this older generation, the artists born after 1980 do not receive as much attention as they ought to.
The exhibition is chaotic due to its confusing, illogical arrangement and is thematically incoherent. The young artists’ work exists in isolation due to a lack of context. Yan Xing’s Thief (2015) and Hu Xiangqian’s The Secret Mission (2014-2015) are two seminalnew media works, displayed adjacently in two white cubes. Yan discusses the sensitive state that contemporary humans face. Hu eliminates the criterion of our daily experiences by his performance practices. Due to the lack of wall labels and descriptions, much of the meaning behind these two pieces is lost. Also, there is no information to suggest why the curator placed these two works next to each other.
Hu Xiangqian, The Secret Mission, 2015
The difficulty discerning the relationship of artworks to others in their proximity is not unique to Thief and The Secret Mission. For example, Liu Wei’s abstract installations, White Baseline and White Silver No.8 (2015), are displayed directly outside of Hu’s video, rendering them visually subordinate, like mere decorative reflective wall pieces. Another work that suffers from lack of context is Double Fly’s Klein Blue (2015), a performance by the collective Double Fly Art Center on Beijing’s Space Station. This work is represented by a documentary photograph, which is printed huge and hangs from the ceiling. For the audience who is not familiar with the group, the piece is reduced from a drastic performance to a still image.
Tao Hui, Talking about the Body, 2013
An Annual Exhibition and Annual Book are two different concepts. It is difficult to generalize Chinese contemporary art in 2015: a book has the space to uncover market trends and unpack academic theory, but a museum show is limited in this regard. Zhu and his team started the Annual Book projects in 2005, and after ten years, the projects function as a huge archive for the artists and the researchers of Chinese contemporary art. But the exhibition is less effective in communicating overarching themes and serving as a complete archive. It is not easy for audiences to draw their own conclusions about the art world in the last year when the museum space is filled with works without any didactic information. Rather than using the exhibition to communicate general themes, the curator utilizes the individual art work as a unit that reflects Chinese contemporary art. A by-product of thiscuratorial methodology is that the exhibition confuses the audience.
Zhangbolong Liu, The Future of the Museum, 2014
The show is not a total failure. Compared to the annual exhibition of 2014, it benefits from the addition of projects curated by artists. Photographer Zhangbolong Liu’s The Future of the Museum is one of the two artist-curated projects in the exhibition. The photographer’s interdisciplinary academic background motivated him to connect art and science museums. Liu Zhang does so by showcasing the documents of several unpublished science experiments. By exhibiting documents about research on the history of science as an art project, Liu seeks to reconnect the two important museum branches: scientific museums and art museums. At the same time the project discusses the dialectic between the role of artist and curator.While the curator concluded that Chinese contemporary art in 2015 “did not have real highlights in general,” it is undeniable that the emergence of artist-curated projects is one of the biggest highlights.
