CHINA IN TRANSITION

Zhang Xiaogang, Yue Minjun, Zeng Fanzhi, Fang Lijun...

– FROM MID-FEBRUARY ALSO FEATURING PHOTOGRAPHIC WORKS BY GEORGES LEGRADY

China is a country in transition. A vast country, the fourth biggest on the planet, with a population of 1.3 billion people, balanced precariously between communism, Confucianism and capitalism, between tradition and modernity, and seeking to find its place in today’s world. In the last year, the Olympic Games have seen the whole world turn its gaze towards China. Those interested in art have however had their attention drawn towards Chinese artists for somewhat longer, especially since Harald Szeemann exhibited works by Chinese artists at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999, if not earlier. And collectors have had their sights set upon these artists for even longer. Among the artists whose works are presented at the Ahlers Pro Arte Foundation are prominent names like Fang Lijun, Zhang Xiaogang, Feng Zhengjie, Wang Guangyi and Yue Minjun.

Contemporary China finds itself in a difficult phase of awakening and transition. The new division of society into economic classes, the influence of consumerism and capital on the people, freer forms of social interaction and a new hedonism, the sexualisation of society and the role of the emancipated woman, the reckless exploitation of resources and the accompanying pollution of the environment: all of these developments worry the Chinese, and all of these trends are now informing artists and their art. 

The focusing gaze of the painter becomes a mirror in which the fractures and fault lines of Chinese society are reflected. The influential protagonist of this art is Yue Minjun with his laughing man, a clone of the artist’s self who recurs repeatedly in his images. In his one-man operation, he parodies the uniformisation of collective society, as well as the optimism prescribed by its autocratic leaders. Fang Lijun’s ambivalent doomsday scenarios and Guo Jin’s ironic gallery of heroes are also marked by a strain of subversive humour. The amalgamation of all values in the painting of Wang Guangyi is no less captivating. In these works, the Chinese working class is paraded before the luxury brands of Western consumerism. 

We also encounter such synthesisations in the images of Feng Zhengjie, in which Mao Zedong smiles out at us in the manner of a Western fashion icon. Melancholy, which is a vital part of a rapidly changing world, is particularly tangible in the family portraits of Zhang Xiaogang (born 1958), undoubtedly the most well-known Chinese painter of his generation. The serious faces, which look at us head on, are often painted in a manner reminiscent of black-and-white photography. Only occasionally are they illuminated through individual splashes of colour or through red: bloodlines which symbolise belonging to a family. The skilled craftsmanship of the artist is clear in every work. But Xiaogang’s pieces never indulge in a flat representational realism, but instead link surrealist and veristic elements. They contribute to a narrative which renders the local universal, and we can therefore find as much to relate to in the images as can their Chinese viewers.

Liu Bolin’s Red Hand (Reflection) of 2007 is a group sculpture made up of ten figures. The sculptural population, made out of shiny synthetic resin, includes the same figure over and over again, a kind of childish man with a large head and a thin body, who is presented in every possible pose and situation. The juxtaposition of the colours white and red plays an important role. Sometimes they symbiotically occupy one figure, for example when the white head of the sculpture is nestled in a red hand. Or a red hand reaches upwards and squashes a small white figure between its fingers. A state of war sets in – as happened between the ‘whites’ and the ‘reds’ in the early years of communism. Another of Bolin’s works is a monochrome red sculpture whose skull is being rammed by an aeroplane, creating an effect that is as surreal as it is suggestive.