Looking back on 2020, the epidemic has changed the way many people live, and the tests and challenges for Chinese contemporary art are unprecedented; at the same time, the duality of media and media is also leaving unpredictable possibilities for Chinese contemporary art.
On the occasion of the upcoming transition from 2021 to 2022, the "China Contemporary Art Yearbook Exhibition (Shanghai) 2020" (hereinafter referred to as the "Yearbook Exhibition 2020") opened at the Duolun Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai, at this time, look at the 2020 from the epidemic, how will the world be transformed, and how will the transformation be recorded by art? What happened to Chinese contemporary art at this critical turning point? These are the questions that the Yearbook of Chinese Contemporary Art (hereinafter referred to as the "Yearbook") focuses on recording and questioning.
At the exhibition site of "Yearbook Exhibition 2020", the audience is watching Tong Kunbird's work "Golden Evil Trotopia on Three Millimeters"
On the opening day of December 25, artist Cao Yu's work "I just want you to live better than me" lit up outside the museum, which is like a huge classical Chinese neon signboard, red and green colors, and the words hidden in the depths of human nature are expressed in a commercial advertisement style with great fanfare. The appearance of this sentence, combined with the cold current and a little Christmas atmosphere in the city of Duolun Road, triggered a special reflection on coldness and warmth.
In the exhibition, the exhibition manual of each art museum in 2020
Stepping into the art museum, the "Yearbook" and the exhibition manuals collected from various art museums on the wall suddenly brought people back to 2020. At the beginning of 2020, the epidemic struck, making everything uncertain, after the epidemic eased slightly, the West Bund Art Museum brought a "silent long holiday", thinking about change and eternity, confusion and hope; since then, the 2020 Shanghai Biennale "Water Body" has been opened online; the West Bund Expo and ART021 in November 2020 have become the only art fairs in the world to open offline...
Undoubtedly, "epidemic" is one of the key words in 2020, and the expression of contemporary art is often the most directly related to the current reality and the activities of contemporary aesthetic consciousness. Presenting the development of contemporary art and documenting the era with art is the main purpose of the compilation of the Yearbook.
How does the current situation enter the expression of art
It is reported that the Yearbook has been in one volume per year since its launch in 2005. Its basic working method emphasizes continuous and deep cultivation, and tries to reflect this era and its accompanying problems through the recording, observation, questioning and reflection of the contemporary art scene and ecology. The Yearbook focuses on documenting its "variables" rather than "constants", thus documenting and archiving the art scene.
January 1, 2020 as recorded in the Yearbook
The 2020 Yearbook contains a total of 1,819 exhibitions and activities of Chinese contemporary art, 3,168 documents, and activity information involving more than 6,000 artists. Through archival investigation work, we can see that the exploration of art in contemporaneity, the concern for social reality issues, the specific practice of art and technology, gender art, and artistic intervention have all shown a more diversified and phased development. The Yearbook also ranks the more than 6,000 artists involved and selects 99 artists out of the top 300 artists to build an archive.
The "Yearbook Exhibition 2020" is based on the above research, the exhibition is based on the "activation and reset", "social strain", "the possibility of media", "concept presentation", "the expansion of painting", "technology and experimentation", "global and geographical reflection", "intervention and self-organization" 99 artists in the form of literature, and between the venue and other factors, Cao Yu, Hu Jieming, Li Binyuan, Pu Yingwei, Shi Yong, Tong Kunniao, Wang Yuyang and other 10 artists' original works are exhibited. Although these works and keywords are difficult to "glimpse and see the whole leopard", they also really reveal the face of Chinese contemporary art in 2020.
At the exhibition site, Hu Jieming's work "14 Days"
For example, in the exhibition, Hu Jieming's work "14 Days" is divided into the "social adaptation" section that presents social reality, and the artists listed in this section include Chen Wenling, Li Jin, Pu Yingwei, Wang Qingsong, Zhao Bandi, etc., who created in 2020 or accompanied the modernization and transformation of Chinese society, or focused on the impact of the new crown epidemic on personal experience and society.
The title of "14 Days" naturally reminds people of isolation. This work is based on Hu Jieming's exhibition project of "Diplomatic Apartment No. 12". At that time, the exhibition was originally planned to exhibit other works, but because of the background of the epidemic, Hu Jieming chose to stay in the diplomatic apartment from July 28 to August 10, 2020, and lived and created in the space for 14 days, and the resulting works and daily record texts were the final result of the 14-day plan. On August 15, 2020, his solo exhibition "14 Days" was opened, and the audience saw the process of the artist's work in the 14 days of eating and living without leaving home, indoor living space, and the exchange of objects.
Hu Jieming's "14 Days" "My Rome"
In the summer of 2020, it was closed for 14 days in the diplomatic apartment, and it was reproduced in the Doron Art Museum in the winter of 2021. The exhibition photography directly corresponds to the real scenes, installations and living conditions to be photographed, which leads to various associations of survival and reality, the colors of sunrise and sunset, the Roman pillars stacked on top of fast food boxes, the sense of ritual of each meal... In the midst of boredom, it brings complex experiences that are difficult to predict. The result of these dialogues and coexistence with space, time, and objects is once again all the works in the exhibition hall.
Shi Yong's work "2020 New "Abstract" Font Research - Quanwang Qiuhua" at the exhibition site
Among the artists shown in the original work, Shi Yong and Tong Kunbird belong to the "Possibility of The Medium" section, where Shi Yong's "2020 New "Abstract" Font Research - Quanwang Qiuhua" disintegrates the original meaning through the reconstruction of the font. Tong Kunbird's "Golden Evil Trotopia on Three Millimeters" forms a structure of "hugging the group and taking gold", which seems to be balanced and orderly and the golden light is confused, but in fact it is crumbling in mid-air.
Li Binyuan's "The Last Letter"
In the "Global and Geographical" section, Li Binyuan's "Last Letter" is a 36-year-old artist who returns to the place where his father last lived (Dongguan) with the last family letter sent by his father when he was 36 years old. He split the letter into 36 paragraphs, asked 36 security guards working in Dongguan to teach him the 36 Cantonese passages, and finally read the letter in cantonese in its entirety. Or crappy or standard Cantonese sentences, becoming the language of the artist facing loss and emotion. This kind of detachment is the real experience of social development and globalization process befell ordinary individuals.
Exhibition site, display of documents
Artists in the "Global and Geographical" section also include Cai Guoqiang, Liu Xiaodong, Yang Yuanyuan, etc., some of whom explore "decentralization" and "local globalization", and some focus on geography, and through interdisciplinary research, they amplify and activate a humanistic perspective of regions and cities in the context and narrative of contemporary art. From a small perspective, the "Yearbook Exhibition 2020" itself is also an amplification and activation of Chinese contemporary art in 2020.
How to choose 99 artists and 9 themes
In the face of more than 6,000 names that appear in the 2020 Yearbook, why did you choose these 99 ranks as project artists? What are the criteria for selection?
According to Zhu Qingsheng, editor-in-chief of the Yearbook of Chinese Contemporary Art, there are four criteria for being listed as a project artist: whether the artist's creation has explored and contributed to the ontological problem of "what art is"; whether it has made wonderful and complete works with the latest media, methods, technologies and new creative possibilities; whether the method is modern or not, whether it expresses the author's concern and revelation of the problems that are happening in the contemporary era; and what performances important artists have performed this year.
Exhibition Scene, Wang Yuyang, "Relationship", Motor, LED, Microcomputer, Wire Size Variable, 2020
"Based on this line of thinking, we rank artists through some weighted statistics to reveal their contributions for the year." After sorting, the editors and expert judges of the Yearbook selected 99 artists out of the top 300 artists to establish the archives. But the list of artists selected for the Yearbook serves only as an example, because the energy and ability of the current research is only enough to be about 100 artists. "Since 2005, we have established 850 special archives of artists. The list of artists from year to year is partially repetitive, and the performance of these people in previous years is supplemented into the archives. ”
This method of work also determines that the "Yearbook Exhibition" is not "strong curatorial", not the curator to choose the artist, but all the activities of the artist in the past year, including art institutions, the entire group of practitioners of all kinds of issues presented to promote the "Yearbook Exhibition" to respond to social reality.
Exhibition site, Hu Wei, "Model Room - How to Live Together", Video, Birch, Cloth, Steel, Acrylic, Fog Maker, Wooden Board, LED Screen, Transparent Sheet, Printed Matter, Size Variable, 2020
The choice of 9 themes listed in the "Yearbook Exhibition" stems from the relatively concentrated focus in 2020, and for some topics that have emerged in the past, it also tries not to summarize them in old ideas and original forms. "For example, since the outbreak of the epidemic, the relevant discussions about the concept of 'globalization' have changed, and now it is more important to pay attention to and discuss the impact of 'anti-globalization' and the major changes in geopolitics."
Pu Yingwei, "Red and Black: The Second Continent of Chinese Capital", oil on canvas, acrylic, image collage, screen printing, spray paint, paint pen, graphite, 2020; the only work on the shelf in the exhibition, belonging to the theme of "social adaptation"
However, due to the limitations of venues and funds, most of the video and installation works in the exhibition are, and the two themes of "expansion of painting" (involving artists including Qiu Xiaofei, Duan Zhengqu, He Duoling, etc.) and "activation and resetting" (involving artists including Qiu Anxiong, Shen Qin, Sun Xun, Wu Jian'an, Yang Fudong, Yu Youhan, etc.) did not present the corresponding artists' works.
"The expansion of painting" points to the important category of painting, which is still in a state of continuous exploration at present. So how does "painting" as one of the entrances to the spiritual world persist and expand? Similarly, "activation and reset" contains the exploration of broad Chinese culture, in addition to the continuous excavation of visible aspects such as materials and display methods, how to continue the spirituality? These two topics worth exploring are obviously insufficient in the exhibition.
Of course, the "Yearbook Exhibition 2020" is not to explore the problem, but to present the state of art. At the opening ceremony of the exhibition, the curators did not come because of the epidemic, which also reflected the current situation during the epidemic period.
Note: The exhibition is co-sponsored by the Duolun Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai, the Institute of Contemporary Art of the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, the Archive of Modern Chinese Art (CMAA) of Peking University, and the Wu Zuoren International Art Foundation, and will be on display until April 10, 2022.