The Chinese exhibition at the 55th Venice Biennale, which opened June 1 and runs through Nov. 24, has been organized by Wang Chunchen, head of curatorial research at the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum in Beijing. Its theme, “Transfiguration,” is a religious term referring to the transformation of Christ, Mr. Wang said in an interview, and is now “the perfect term to describe China’s ongoing cultural changes.” China is still marked by “a centralized and controlled power system,” Mr. Wang said. At the same time, “Chinese artists have become more proactive because of the transformation of China,” he wrote in the exhibition catalog. “On this level, ‘transfiguration’ becomes an action; artists attempt to make sure their art is no longer blocked out, no longer suspended.” Including a reference to government bans on artists in the catalog “is a form of microresistance,” he said in an interview. “Chinese artists need more liberty, more freedom.” To explore China’s myriad conflicts and transformations, Mr. Wang selected for Venice the works of seven artists. Tong Hongsheng is showing six small still-life paintings of objects used in Buddhist ceremonies, while Wang Qingsong is contributing three works in tableau photography that critique Chinese society. In “The Water of Venice,” He Yunchang presents 2,013 bottles filled with seawater collected off the Venetian coast, each with a number and his signature. Hu Yaolin’s “Thing-in-Itself” showcases the artist’s efforts “to restore ancient buildings demolished during the urbanization drive,” Wang Chunchen, the curator, said. Miao Xiaochun, an instructor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, is unveiling in Venice a digital print on canvas titled “The Last Judgment in Cyberspace,” an Internet-era update on Michelangelo’s fresco in the Sistine Chapel, and a 3-D animation called “Limitless.” He is also showing “Out of Nothing: Public Enemy,” an oil painting that depicts a violin player, a child and a dog — all robots — pondering life in Garden of Eden-like surroundings. “I create a parallel world, a utopia, in virtual reality,” Mr. Miao said of his artworks, adding that he is so constantly immersed in Web-based worlds and virtual artworks that he sometimes feels “controlled by the machine.” The filmmaker Zhang Xiaotao brings to Venice a digital animation titled “Sakya,” an exploration of the shifting limitations on freedom of religion. Mr. Zhang explained that during the Tang Dynasty, from 618 to 907, “there was a fusion between art and Buddhism that gave rise to great frescoes and carvings across ancient temples.” But during Mao Zedong’s reign, the Cultural Revolution crushed classical art and religion, and Chinese society and artists lost their spiritual moorings, he said. Now, Mr. Zhang wants to help restore a link between Buddhist beliefs and art. After spending two years exploring the ruins of the Sakya Monastery in Tibet, which was razed by the Red Guards, and consulting with lamas there, Mr. Zhang used 3-D modeling software to recreate Sakya’s Northern Temple. In its digital incarnation, Sakya is a surreal space where glowing golden Buddhas take form and disappear; Tibetan mandalas spin and become time tunnels that transport virtual pilgrims to new futures and lifetimes. The time-bending, animated promotion of Tibetan Buddhism stands in stark contrast to Beijing’s depiction of Tibetan lamaseries as fortresses of pro-independence dissent. “My utopia would be to see China in the middle of a Buddhist renaissance,” the artist said. Shu Yong, whose works are also at the China Pavilion, focuses on another powerful force transforming China: the Internet. To depict China’s cyberzeitgeist, Mr. Shu compiled 1,500 of the most common slogans to appear on Chinese microblogs and Web sites. He painted the Chinese slogans on rice paper, along with their English equivalents, provided by Google Translate. These machine translations produced quirky slogans like “Towards the Dream Forward” and “Marching Towards Science.” He encapsulated the writings in translucent bricks used to build a wall, partially in ruins, outside the China Pavilion. The artist calls the work “Google Bricks,” which represents the seemingly endless fount of Internet-channeled ideas and images that are remaking China. But the “Google Bricks” wall also symbolizes the protracted struggle Chinese censors waged with Google over access to films, art and information that Beijing deemed dangerous. “Google represents free access to not just American culture, but global culture, and the Chinese government demanded the right to control that access at its borders,” Mr. Shu said. “In the end, Google had no option but to withdraw from China.” But transfiguration in the country is not over, the artist added. “This wall will inevitably disappear, just as the Berlin Wall fell,” he predicted. The barricades that China has erected against Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and that now also block the Venice Biennale Web site, “are the same as the censorship of contemporary art or the media,” said Cao Fei, a Chinese digital designer who exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2007. One Chinese artist whose works will not be shown at the China Pavilion this year is Ai Weiwei, perhaps the country’s best-known contemporary artist, in part because of his escalating confrontations with the Communist Party. Mr. Ai’s work will, however, be on display in Venice — in the German Pavilion. In a commentary he wrote for The Guardian newspaper in September, Mr. Ai lashed out against Chinese artists who fail to embed dissent into their works. “The Chinese art world does not exist,” he charged. Creators who are apolitical, he wrote, cannot be called true artists. Mr. Wang said that he viewed Mr. Ai’s characterizations of contemporary Chinese art as narrowly restrictive. At the same time, however, he views Mr. Ai’s participation in the Germany Pavilion in Venice as a positive “symbol of cultural globalization.” Just as Chinese artists are being transfigured by cultural globalization, he said, they are reshaping the boundaries of Chinese culture
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 14:28:38 +0000
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