The heart of a society is most open when dealing with death. Its spoken and unspoken fears and hopes, both for life and the afterlife, are embedded in rituals of remembrance and memorial. In China, this has taken the form of detailed objects made of Joss paper that are burned for the deceased.
A few years ago, artist Guy Laramee began his The Great Wall series, which imagines a 23rd century when the Chinese empire has overthrown its American rival. His artist statement is a piece of science fiction and it sets the stage for his sculptural works that tap into American anxieties about empire, civilization and, most importantly, decline.
MANILA, Philippines — As is so often said about Chongqing, you’ve never heard of it, but with 30 million people and rising, it’s one of the largest municipalities in the world (for perspective, all of New York state has some 20 million people). Located in the heart of southwest China, a former city in Sichuan Province but now independent, Chongqing also hosts the country’s largest graffiti street, and perhaps the world’s.
After having been released on bail in June, Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei received a notice today from Chinese authorities that indicates he owes $2.3 million (15 million yuan) for “tax evasion.”
MÉRIDA, MEXICO — Over the past two years planet art has born witness to a drastic metamorphosis. The mental apparition of “Asian Art,” inhabiting its blanket concept, was once as innocuous as Casper the friendly ghost. Westerners were at leisure to muse and amuse themselves with its mysteries and exoticisms, with the fleeting attentions of a visitor into another lord’s cabinet of curiosities.
Today our imaginations and anticipations have fed it to megalithic proportions. And the economic boom of contemporary art in the 21st Century continues to relentlessly close the gap between the world’s cultures of expression, to the point where the bedsheets of West and East have begun to rub up against one another — sometimes roughly. There is even talk of the voracious appetite of the Yellow Peril of Asian Art, positioning its markets and state-ordained “cultural industries” to consume planet art altogether.
The Arsenale and its Corderie (Rope Walk) compose the remainder of the curatorial effort of the Biennale’s director. It is the sprawling nasty sibling of the Padiglione Centrale, and is somewhat of a chore to tackle. The entire layout of the Arsenale this year feels disjointed. On a whole, I felt like there was a dearth of strong work. I believe Curiger had aspirations to move beyond the trends of participatory art and ostentatious work seen everywhere else in Venice and other art fairs.
“…Chinese press…reported that that a painting, ‘Put Down Your Whip’ by Xu Beihong…which sold last year at auction in Beijing for 14 million dollars, is claimed to have been painted by an art student in the 1980s.Ten former students signed an open letter…stating that the painting had been ‘a class exercise from one of us.’” [Telegraph]
PROVIDENCE, RI — Cai Guo-Qiang’s Move Along, Nothing to See Here opened last Friday at the Cohen Gallery at Brown University in Rhode Island. The inaugural event for Brown’s “Year of China,” the exhibit includes work common to Cai’s oeuvre. The main sculptural work of the show, “Moving Along Nothing to See Here” (2006), has a title comprised of a phrase hear commonly used by policemen at a crime scene. It consists of two life-sized crocodiles, supported by wooden stills, their jaws wide open and writhing in pain.
I’m not really sure what to think of dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s new post on the Daily Beast. It feels like the work of a frustrated artist who is coming to terms with the notion of exile.
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