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Here’s my review of Shanghai Biennale
CORRECTION:
THis is weird, I thought I’d already corrected this but seems cyberspace ate my edit. Anyhow…the train at Art Basel and the one at Shanghai Biennale are not the same train. I bumped into Qiu Anxiong who did the Art Basel train and he told me the same. Also the gallery emailed to clear it up-
Quote: (Boers Li) was the space responsible for bringing his (Qiu Anxiong’s)train-based video installation Staring into Amnesia to Basel earlier this summer. I was just reading your review of the Shanghai Biennale, and I think the part about the train piece there is a bit confusing. Two different artists, and two very different pieces. Qiu Anxiong’s piece at Basel is a solemn meditation on the uses and abuses of history; the piece in Shanghai copies the form of Qiu’s work but replaces its potential with a festival atmosphere. Hope this helps clear up the confusion. For any further information, please see our website at http://www.boersligallery.com.
Copy has been edited..

More refined, more controlled- Shanghai Biennale makes its statement
on urbanization
The 2008 7th Shanghai Biennale at Shanghai Art Museum

Shanghai Biennale got underway in a heady week of major art events
across China, with a signature show that showcased the city’s powerful
position in the international art scene.

Shanghai Biennale is considered globally one of the most important art
events in China, since its groundbreaking edition in the year 2000. So
does the seventh edition, held at Shanghai Art Museum from September
9- November 16 this year, live up to expectations?

Visitors expressed mixed reactions at the opening, most likely due in
part to the onset of art fatigue, with an estimated 70 art events in
the city over the space of a few days, and over zealous security. As
the main focus of the show is much more local, talking to the varied
residents of the city, about their presence in the ‘economic
metropolis’ of 20 million people, the theme was not that clearly
explained at the outset, and perhaps some failure in communication
meant the audience were left wandering lost around the museum, in many
ways the sense of loss and misadventure sums up for many the
experience of visiting Shanghai, having failed to find the treasure
they sought.

I talked to the Artistic director Zhang Qing, who out lined a few of
the ideas that inspired this edition of the Shanghai Biennale.
Firstly he commented on the tradition of the Biennale: “Our dream in
the year 2000 was to create an international event, that answers
questions about contemporary society, as well as including and
combining various disciplines, which had not been considered pure art
forms in China, such as film and architecture. It was a dream of 13
years.” Zhang said.

This edition of the Shanghai Biennale is entitled “Translocalmotion”
in English, and a literal translation of the Chinese name “kuai cheng,
kuai ke” is “quick city, quick visitors.” The aim of the curators
was to focus on the local environment in the East China region, within
a global context of migration and movement, examining the dynamic
urban space and inhabitants against the background of urbanization.
.Zhang pointed out that Shanghai is now the center of an urban nucleus
encompassing 16 cities, and 150 million people. “I read in the
newspapers that soon we can travel anywhere in this hub, within an
hour say to Nanjing by fast train, these bridges connecting cities
like Suzhou and Nantong, I couldn’t believe it myself what I see in
the newspapers, I thought perhaps it is just all big talk, but really
it is true. By 2010 Shanghai will have several hundred kilometers of
new subway lines for instance. So all this energy, we want to reflect
it in the Biennale, how this impacts on people, the influence on their
way of life and experience.”
Zhang said his curating of the biennale was strongly influenced by
artists’ experience of migration, Chinese people who have emigrated
abroad, or internally within China, and foreigners interpretation of
China.

“Shanghai is a city with a historical background suitable for this,” Zhang said.
This September, we have seen a plethora of art events in China, the
Guangzhou Triennial, the Shanghai Art Fair, the Nanjing Triennial,
Taipei Biennial, and the Beijing Art Fair, etc. So I asked Zhang why
the Shanghai Biennial is considered so central to the Chinese art
scene?
“I cannot say, I cannot comment on those other shows, it is like going
to someone else’s house and saying you don’t like their light
fittings, or, to say, I am from Suzhou, and we like our noodles with
soup, while in Beijing they really don’t like noodles with soup, in
Sichuan they like their noodles spicy, everywhere is different, all I
know is every time it is held people queue around the block to get in
the Shanghai Biennale, I cannot tell you why,” Zhang said.
The entrance to the show is dominated by a large old locomotive,
rolling stock and a metal sculpture, collectively entitled, “Express
Train: Shanghai Biennale Station” by Jing Shijian. [As the work
reportedly was also recently at Art Basel, it very neatly fits the
'translocalmotion' title of the show in an almost comic parody, with
the train being speedily shipped across continents with an almost
futuristic speed. CORRECTION- it was not the same train..] The other work featured at the museum entrance, the
former Shanghai race course club house, are a series of huge colourful
chrome ants, clambering over the buildings façade, as if we had
suddenly entered a sci-fi B movie, with the ants preying on the
decaying institution and reputation of Shanghai Art Museum, or perhaps
the ants are being employed to eat the party apparatchiks who
invariably interfere with the running of the museum. The ants, by Chen
Zhiguang, are entitled “Migration Times, Ant Paradise.” For the artist
the ants represent the relentless efforts of migrants to progress in
their new adoptive territories, a very useful comment for Shanghai,
which has an estimated migrant population of 2 million, not including
foreigners. Zhang Qing also emphasized that Shanghai is almost
entirely a city of migrants, with its short 100 year history.
The former race course itself, now People’s Square, the center of the
city, is also a focus of the exhibition, notably the performance work
by Ricardo Bisbaum, “me & you: choreographies and exercises,” with
young Chinese people dressed up in bright red and yellow clothes
bearing the characters for me and you, which the artist said is a
comment of real time surveillance and crowd control, a comment on
Shanghai’s big brother, who has a strong presence on People’s Square
in case of impromptu demonstrations.

Inside the museum the curators clearly delineated each floor of the
museum as each being an area of specific interest. The main hall is
usually the staging ground for Chinese artists signature ‘big show’ of
their careers. For the Biennale the show hosts an interesting but
eclectic collection of works by international and local artists. Some
works are weaker than others, and some failed to meet the high
expectations of a demanding Shanghai crowd, who like to be entertained
by whiz bangs and huge dramatic pieces. The dominant position given to
the subtle neon sculpture by Bethan Huws and other works featuring
English texts was too obscure for the audience, and its inclusion in
this position seems at odds with the shows stated aims.
In the main hall diminutive paintings by Beijing artist Liu Ye, with
sweet and tony Shanghai girls with a melancholy air dressed up in
their traveling gear, best sums up the Shanghai experience and
expectations of migration and upward mobility. “I’m afraid of those
Shanghai girls,” Liu said.

Adjoining Liu’s work are large paintings from his “scenery Series” by
Lu Hao, one of China’s new popular artists from Bejing. These are
photo like representative paintings of products on supermarket
shelves, a not too subtle comment of the capitalist indulgencies that
are now available in this supposedly communist state. More complex are
his paintings of crammed book shelves, and commentary on the titles he
chooses to represent, juxtaposed with the alcoholic fizzy drinks,
seems self evident.

A huge painting (415 x 1200) by Ma Baozhong a huge complex work,
incorporating various local images of pop stars, the Bund, visiting
foreign delegates, various blurry neon shapes, and scraps of text is a
bit too busy, over relying on graphic skills, and the composition
doesn’t seem to gel as a whole. It looks more accessible as a printed
image and the work seems a little flat in the museum space, partly due
to the direct copying of photographic lighting in the painting. This
is the kind of very strong controlled brush work that typifies a lot
of Chinese artists, following their strict academic art training, that
stands in stark contrast to many painters in the western traditions of
abstraction and expression, so the work does meet expectations of a
large proportion of the local audience.
Another major series of work in the main hall, “jpegs” by Thomas Ruff,
are a series of what appears to be mobile phone pictures or low
resolution pictures from the internet, of Shanghai landmarks blown up
to a large size, so blurring the images. Given the nature of the
biennale, and the random positioning of these images of the Oriental
Pearl Tower, the Bund, etc, the effect comes across as a bit too
easy, a bit too lazy, but perhaps that was the artists intent.
The installation of a traffic light entitled ’signals’ by Tang
Maohong in the corridor leading to the toilet looked a bit the worse
for wear from all the passing traffic. As a graphic image Tang’s
Oriental Pearl growing roots and tubers or various animals having sex
at a party, come across as slightly surrealist representations of
creativity, but the strongest association of the traffic lights would
be when the city was taken over by Red Guards during the cultural
revolution. During this period red was changed to mean ‘go’ and green
to mean ’stop.’ Only in China can traffic lights have such deep and
psychologically disturbed meanings.
The remainder of the main hall is taken up by various large scale
works, most notable a series of realistic reproduction luggage in
copper by Wang Qingsong, entitled “luggage.” As the Chinese population
annually migrates across the country, such as during the peak travel
season of Chinese New Year, these ubiquitous items of luggage, a kind
of history of Chinese carry on items, were popular with visitors, who
continuously prodded the works ‘to see if they were real’ as they were
impressed by the technical aspects of the work as well as the intent.
I cannot comment if the works were meant to be this interactive, but
museum staff did not intervene.
A series of paintings by Wu Minzhong “Park hotel 501″ is a series of
views from a hotel window. Bright and technically strong the paintings
and associated video quite superficially express the fluidity and
movement of the city successfully, and not all ideas have to be big
ones, so the images gives visitors a brisk impression of the city, the
inclusion of wine glasses leads one to think the artist was inspired
as you would be while flashing through the streets in a taxi in an
alcoholic haze, a not uncommon occurrence in this city.
The major installation piece on the ground floor is by Yin Xiuzhen,
called ‘flying machine’ – a life size walk in airplane, come car, come
tractor, with exits and entrances, that gives the impression it can be
spun around in an instant. The obvious connotation in this reference
to urbanization, from village to town, is that migration is a dizzy
uncomfortable experience, but in first class seats on the airplane you
can have some fun.
Zhou Tao’s “1,2,3,4″ a video installation by the toilet, is a powerful
video work commenting on the daily work rallies held by employees in
the various service industry enterprises across the city. For me, this
became slightly surreal as a team of real life guards marched into the
toilet as I was watching the video, and the militaristic chorus of
“1,2,3,4″ became a sudden reality.
On to the second floor of the Museum, a difficult space for artists
and visitors alike to navigate, as it is dominated by a huge cavernous
corridor with various side rooms jutting off, the curators put their
keynote pieces.
Mike Kelly’s Kandors, an ongoing project with the appearance of a
laboratory for cultivating cities and buildings, as well as various
modernist commentaries on the idea and crazy, unreal construction of
cities, is a useful and playful comment on the Shanghai skyline.
Shanghai’s recent urban infrastructure has grown in only the last
decade or so, with all number of hallucinogenic shapes and
constructions, and urban planning officials would benefit from a visit
to the work for inspiration.

About the strongest socio-economic-political work, of which the
Biennale was lacking in great quantity and substance, was the work by
Lonnie Van Brummelen and Siebren De Hann, “Monument of Sugar.”
Strongly researched, the work focus’ on the cycle by how sugar moves
through the world, including the personalities involved, and how the
end product we receive is a degraded version of the original, after it
has passed various geographical and political boundaries.

The greatest excitement and debate for the Biennale mostly revolves
around the work ‘colourful running dinosaurs’ by Yue Ming Jun, a truly
monumental enterprise to create life size dinosaurs out of steel,
which seemed impossibly installed in the tight confines of the
corridor space. Yue said that the larger pieces had to be cut into six
segments each for installation, and then were spray painted. The
lighting in the corridor is dark, an attempt to create the impression
of a tunnel according to the artist, through which visitors wind and
squeeze their way past the long procession of dinosaurs, all bearing
his signature grinning head. Yue said that the dinosaurs represented
the past, the head the modern. Yue’s signature grinning face is a well
known representative of the liumang generation of the 90s that arose
after the Tiananmen Square crackdown, grinning falsely and hiding
their true thoughts and feelings. The new, later generation does not
quite understand, or if they do, appear not to care too much, about
this cynical realism, as the massacre and associated events have been
dispatched down the collective memory hole due to censorship, both
personal and government led. So in some way Yue feels a bit like a
dinosaur himself, attached to ideals and events that are no longer
held important by the population at large. Hopefully this fate won’t
attach itself to the future editions of the Shanghai Biennale.
A further 33 works are installed on the third and fourth floors of the museum.