The Revolution Continues: New Art from China
Saatchi Gallery
London, England
9 October 2008 - 18 January 2009

by Rea Cris

Since the build-up to the Beijing Olympic games, interest in all things Chinese has been bubbling over. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Saatchi’s latest investment should be contemporary Chinese art, but how representative is the work on display here, from a country that is as vast as it is conflicted?

The majority of the works in the exhibition are of a political nature and address the distortion of history and the manner in which it is remembered. Most of the works are greyscale paintings that copy documentary photographs from World War II or the Maoist era and repaint them in a fragmented manner. They are also empty and devoid as if the artists are making these works like robots, neither committing to the criticism they present nor condemning it. Others are a little more thought provoking. Shi Xinning’s paintings rewrite history as it could have been. Chairman Mao is painted at different pivotal historical moments, such as McCarthy’s witch-hunt trials. In YALTA No. 2, Mao is placed inconspicuously between Churchill and FDR in the iconic photograph of the great and victorious leaders of WWII. Li Qing’s mischievous WEDDING (THERE ARE SIX DIFFERENCES IN THE TWO PAINTINGS) depicts the famous balcony photograph of Charles and Diana’s wedding, only this time inserting the grown Princes, William and Harry, into the equation as well.

Others are simply plain awful. Qiu Jie’s lead drawing, PORTRAIT OF MAO, represents a portrait of a cat rendered in a traditional Chinese style with calligraphy. It is a word play on the word ‘mao’ which in one of the four tones of Mandarin means cat. The work is cringe-worthy and one of those artworks that you think “I could have done that, but I didn’t because its that stupid.”

Some of the works reference the allures and deceiving nature of the advertising world and follows much in the footsteps of Pop Art. Zhang Hongtu’s LONG LIVE CHAIRMAN MAO SERIES No. 29 uses an original Quakers Oats box, which he has scarcely painted over to resemble a rosy cheeked and smiling Mao. The resemblance between the communist leader and wholesome American Quaker is uncanny. Wang Guangyi mixes Chinese government propaganda posters from the 60s and 70s with brash advertising jargon to represent the conflicting nature between an ever increasing commercialized consciousness and a turbulent political past. Feng Zhengjie’s gigantic canvases of women with wandering eyes resemble commercial billboards devoid of products, but left with the absurd and alluring trap of sexuality.

The theme in Zhang Xiaogang’s work is interesting in addressing a concept quite foreign to western consciousness: the notion of collective oneness for the country’s greater good and the forfeit of individuality, something highly valued in the west. Based on family portraits from the Cultural Revolution, Xiaogang’s eerie family portraits are practically indistinguishable from one to another, while the human aspect is completely lost as his faces are more alien than human and seem just as bored looking at us as we are of them.

The best piece in the whole exhibition is Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s OLD PERSONS HOME. Life-sized wax figures of old men who look similar to world leaders or religious figures slump decrepitly in mechanical wheelchairs which wheeze and grind slowly around, occasionally colliding with each other. The mixture of humour, horror and truth in the piece is a refreshing change from the rest of the heavy-handed, one-sided and dull exhibit.

I went to see this exhibition with my boyfriend, who greatly enjoyed the show and suggested that I was being too harsh, as the exhibition was themed and did not purport to represent Chinese art in all its glory, but rather a branch of it. He suggested that the name implied a distopia to the idea of revolutions of the past and that the revolution continues in the sense that people continue to criticize and question their surroundings. He is perhaps correct, but what I took issue with is more the manner in which Saatchi parades these artists. Chinese art and artists are now reveling in a golden age. The sudden interest and flooding of foreign collectors and their money has caused rapid changes in Chinese contemporary art. Many artists welcome the chance to become commercial, with some hiring assistants to churn out works, while others rebel against it. It seems that money is going to choke contemporary Chinese art before it has even had a chance to grow old.

I take issue with Saatchi and his undermining manner of pronouncing that this is contemporary Chinese art. The exhibition is accompanied by a (for sale) picture-by-picture explanation of the works, as if implying that Chinese art is so foreign and strange that us mere Westerners would not be able to understand the depth of the works. I do not purport myself as a scholar of Asian art, but on my recent trip to China, I witnessed a varied and flourishing art scene that goes beyond clichéd political criticism and sterile painterly techniques. I think Saatchi is more concerned with buying what is hot rather than what really exemplifies contemporary Chinese art.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/new_art_from-china.htm