July 14th through August 31st, 2007
Opening Reception and Performance: Saturday, July 14th, 6:00 to 9:00 PM
CANG Xin, CAO Fei, CUI Xiuwen, DAI Guangyu, GAO Brothers, HAN Bing, HE Yunchang, HEI Yue - JI Shengli, HONG Lei, HUANG Yan, JIAO Yingqi, MA Yongfeng, OU Ning, PENG Kailin, Qing Qing, QIU Zhijie, Rongrong & inri, TAO Aimin, WANLI (Mari), WENG Peijun (WENG Fen), WU Gaozhong, WU Yuren, XU Yong & YU Na, ZENG Yicheng, ZHAN Wang
Catalogue Available
Deborah Colton Gallery is pleased to present China Under Construction: Contemporary Art from the People’s Republic, featuring many of China’s most prominent contemporary artists, curated by Beijing-based art critic Maya Kóvskaya. The exhibition is an illuminating and provocative alternative to the clichéd, dated images of Chinese art that have over-saturated the international media of late. These internationally acclaimed artists have been included in the most prestigious institutional and private exhibitions, and their work engages the transformations that are constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing the new China.
Chinese contemporary art has reached a turning point and the artists in China Under Construction are at the forefront of the new trajectory. In the early and mid-1990s, easily digestible, foreigner-pleasing formulas from China, such as Political Pop and Cynical Realism, captured the international art community's imagination. This first generation of works played on well-known Cultural Revolution imagery, popular political symbols, and representations of social disaffectation and alienation that fed easily into Western narratives about a China in transition embraced by the mainstream foreign media. By the late 90s, however, growing numbers of Chinese artists, many born in the 70s, were unwilling to manipulate this new discourse of power in order to follow the previous generation's path to easy success. Their formative experiences centered less around the Cultural Revolution imagery and more on the new processes of social and economic transformation unleashed by Reform and Opening (initiated in '78). Images of a country attempting to carry out unprecedented and rapid economic "modernization" have overtaken the old creative canons, bringing a more diverse generation of new Chinese contemporary art to the international stage. As rapid urbanization and globalization throw China into a state of post-modern flux, the experiences of the new era are more fragmented and diverse than ever before and the most relevant and progressive art coming out of China reflects and comments upon that diversity in ways that illuminate the human condition for us all.
China Under Construction is organized around conceptual clusters that involve various facets of the major changes taking place in China, which are illuminated by the artworks in the show: Deconstructing Landscape, Reconstructing Selves and Lives, Contesting Power/Constituting Knowledge, Destruction of an Old Order, and Constructing a Tenuous Modernity. Deconstructing Landscape explores change in the relationship between people and the natural environment, landscape, and built environment, in particular the shifts in conceptions of the "the human being and nature," as people rethink tradition in the context of "modernization." This section features photography works by Wu Gaozhong, Zhan Wang, Hong Lei, Dai Guangyu, Han Bing, Huang Yan, He Yunchang and video by Ma Yongfeng. Reconstructing Selves and Lives investigates change in the conditions of everyday life, change in social status, class and identity, and the tension between ordinary people's dreams of a new world and uneuphemized realities of the present world, featuring Cao Fei & Ou Ning's acclaimed video "San Yuan Li", and photography by Qiu Zhijie, Weng Peijun (Weng Fen), Han Bing and Cang Xin. Contesting Power/Constituting Knowledge interrogates change in discourses of power and authority, discipline and punishment, and the ways in which gender, capital, discourse and power intersect poignantly in the ever-expanding sex trade that has come to represent the seedy underbelly of China's transformation of lives and livelihoods at the nexus of public and private. This section features Cui Xiuwen's pathbreaking video Lady's, Dai Guangyu's eerie performance video "Missing," Ma Yongfeng's disturbing video "The Swirl," anthropological installation by Tao Aimin, and photography by Hei Yue Ji Shengli, Qing Qing, Zeng Yicheng, and the team of photographer Xu Yong and former sex worker Yu Na. Capturing the changing world from another direction, with works by Cao Fei, the Gao Brothers and the Sino-Japanese husband-wife team of Rong Rong & inri, Destruction of an Old Order examines the massive project of demolishing what has been deemed "backward," "outmoded," and insufficiently "modern," to make way for towering skyscrapers and gated community high-rises of glass, steel and concrete. In the midst of transformation, China is caught in a state of limbo between two fundamentally different modes of modernity. With an array of works; photography by the Cui Xiuwen, Qiu Zhijie, Peng Kailin, the Gao Brothers, sculpture by Wanli (Mari), video by Wu Yuren, and a live multimedia performance installation of "Love in the Age of Big Construction IV," by Han Bing. Constructing a Tenuous Modernity searches for the place of the human being in the context of China's massive juggernaut triad of "industrialization, urbanization and modernization," with its concomitant construction and arduous human labor.
Through photography, video, sculpture, installation, and performance, China Under Construction examines the ways in which China is being constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed in this era of transnational flows of people, culture and capital, localized globalization, and so-called "modernization." We live in fragmented times, times that need an art that offers not only a mirror in which to see the status quo, but also transforms our understandings of ourselves, giving us new ways of seeing who we are and can be. Explorations of the everyday lived connections between the individual and the social, the micro and the macro, and the local and global realities that we all, increasingly face in this rapidly changing world, imbue this new generation of Chinese art with unprecedented global relevance.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Maya Kóvskaya is a Beijing-based art critic, curator and writer with over a decade of experience in China. She is Art Director and Chief Curator of Futurista Art Beijing and has curated contemporary art exhibitions and underground cultural events in North America and China including Bitter Sea (PRC, 1996), Spaces of Appearance (USA, 1997), Cold Blooded (PRC, 1998), Post-Socialist Visions of Selfhood: Documents of the Beijing Underground (USA, 2002), Love in the Age of Big Construction (PRC and USA, 2006),Quotidian Iconic (co-curated, PRC, 2006), The Other Shore of Desire (USA, 2006) Estrangements and Engagements (Canada, 2006), Misalignments (USA, 2006), Other Modernities (USA, 2006), The Fatalistic Language of Things (USA, 2007), Han Bing: On the Stage of Modernization (USA, 2007) and The Fragmented Gaze (USA, 2007), and others. Her writing has appeared in English and Chinese in numerous art catalogues, academic volumes, journals, and magazines, including Contemporary, Eyemazing International Contemporary Photography Magazine,Yishu: Journal Chinese Contemporary Art, Flash Art, ArtPost, Art iT, Art Map, Today Art, Art Management and Investment,and positions: east asia cultures critique. She is currently writing a book on Chinese contemporary art.
Deborah Colton Gallery is founded on being an innovative showcase for ongoing presentation and promotion of strong historical and visionary contemporary artists world-wide, whose diverse practices include painting, works on paper, sculpture, video, photography, and conceptual future media installations. The gallery aspires to provide a forum through connecting Texas, national and international artists to make positive change.
Deborah Colton Gallery
2500 Summer Street, Third Floor
Houston, TX 77007
T 713.864.2364
F 713.869.9592
info@deborahcoltongallery.com
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