Seoul, August 5, 2015, Arko Art Center, Seoul, http://www.arkoartcenter.or.kr
Aimee Lin, a critic, writer and editor of ArtReview Asia, gave a lecture on Chinese art, surveying the last decades and providing insights towards possible developments. I will first summarize the lecture, and then add my own view on the most recent developments on post-internet art in the post-identity age, comparing China (PRC) and Korea (ROK).
The lecture started gently, with examples of work of cynical realism by artists Yue Minjun and Zheng Fangzhi, followed by Zhang Xiaogang (family portraits, less cynical and more nostalgic) and Wang Guangyi (policial pop). The initial section of the lecture concluded with Wang Xinwei’s painting of Li Xianting (critic/curator) on a Dong Fang Hong (Red East) tractor driving Fang Lijun, Liu Wei and Wang Guangyi to the Western art market. Lin stressed the focus on the face/portraits, and generally depictions of humans during this period/movement. The painters were credited with trying to depict the psychological state of the Chinese people during a time of rapid transition. At the same time, she rightly highlighted, that they did not represent the only ‘style’, but the style which entered history via the art market and popular demand: The works by these artists nicely fitted with the Western stereotypes of the changes going on in China, they were welcomed as easily consumable icons for audiences abroad, a bit like postcards from a holiday.
A concurrent thread, highlighted by Lin, was the line of artists inspired by and building on the “5000 years of Chinese culture”. Gu Wenda (fake Chinese characters made from human hair), Xu Bing (fake Chinese characters in multiple media), Yang Yongliang (digital animation constructed from urban landscapes which resembles Chinese ink painting when viewed as a whole) and Ai Weiwei (using Chinese cultural objects like vases, furniture, etc.) were mentioned. First I was a bit surprised by the inclusion of Ai Weiei, but after a split second, I realized it was quite telling. Once the PR smoke is removed, he indeed belongs into the lineage selling “Chinese tradition” to the West, which can also explain while his domestic audience is small without falling back to simplistic political ‘explanation’. This lineage of artists was equally well received in the west. While cynical realists and political pop-artists sold the “changing China” to the outside, the contemporary traditionalists sold the “ancient China” in a contemporary package.
After setting this background, Lin went on into the more recent developments. She stressed that the “young generation cares about mostly their own problems”. Artists became dissatisfied with the art education system, where professors likely belonged to one of the two aforementioned groups, and as a result looked for ways of self-education and self-organization. The list of artist mentioned here became much more eclectic, with the common denominator that the art “doesn’t look like Chinese art anymore” (doesn’t fit into the two aforementioned categories). Artist mentioned included Guan Xiao (doing a kind of postmodern installation art), Yao Qingmei (doing research based artwork around knowledge production – a fake professor explaining fake truths), Yan Xing (performance/video questioning what is art(y) enough), Yu Honglei (3D animation amassing as much 20th century art history references as possible), Chen Tianzuo (post-internet mashup installation), Ye Funa (countryside culture aesthetics / Shanzhai) and Ying Miao (post-internet net.art, URL: https://newhive.com/thedeadpixelofmyeye:Feed). Lin summarized the post-2k generation’s themes as urban x rural (shanzhai) x virtual worlds, with the internet being a kind of new ‘countryside’ in terms of aesthetics, i.e. a mash-up, cheap, ‘tasteless’ on-line aesthetic comparable to the world of shanzhai products.
Lin stressed the difference of this generation from the prior ones, but she also admitted that the selection only represents one lineage within the Chinese arts scene. As a representative example of a different lineage, she mentioned He Xiangyu’s burned Coca-Cola leftover project: A large-scale installation, addressing questions of consumerism and development.
As the latter part of the lecture entered the most fresh and contemporary territory, the trends and examples were more disputable than in the initial ‘proven by the art market’ section of the lecture. But given the fact that Lin is an art magazine editor, it also nicely shows how self-fulfilling proclamations can be when communicated through efficient channels: By the saying what she said, Lin identified a trend but also created the trend to some extent. The old ‘power of mass media’ at work.
Even though the works presented in section two of the talk did not look as “Chinese” as the works in section one, I think this statement is only valid for the formal analysis, describing the outer appearance of the paintings. Content-wise, the works looked still very Chinese to me. It is true that the aesthetic has moved somewhere else, as a result of access to information as well as a maturing of the consumer society in China (a generation of first-tier city kids grown up in Chinese capitalism and with access to the internet). As a result, visually, at first sight, the works may look similar to post-internet art from anywhere in the world. However, I do not think that the works are the same as anywhere else. The situation can be likened to the infrastructural development in China: First-tier cities look on par, if not better (because brand new) than their Western counterparts. It was not a coincidence that Shanghai was used as the shooting location for Spike Jonze’s movie “Her” (set in future Los Angeles). The same however cannot be said about the ‘software’ of the cities, the social, political and cultural issues. There are specifics which are not going to go away, which also reflects in the artistic output. Some differences are the results of status-quo power relations, some are proudly protected as Chinese characteristics and some are simply there to stay until a post-growth equilibrium is reached. In a nutshell: I believe that the “Chineseness” of the works has not disappeared, but it has moved from the level of form to the level of content.
An example: On a formal level, the works presented by Lin in the second part of the lecture very much reminded me of the kind of works I saw at the Ilmin Museum’s New Skin and Common Center’s Autosave exhibition, both under the curatorial guidance of Youngjune Hahm. Works that can be described as post-internet mannerism, digital nihilism, etc. However below the common denominator of virtual/real meltdown and post-internet mashup, the aforementioned works from Korea and China do show significant differences.
The Chinese examples given by Lin clearly address the Chinese reality as such, and are to me second-order political works. Why second-order? Because it is not possible to take on politics within the first order of meaning in China. And for critics, it is neither allowed to discuss it at the second-level, unless the artist in question aspires for the position of a post-internet generation successor of Ai Wei Wei, such are the rules of the market. Yao Qingmei is questioning the production of knowledge by authorities. Yan Xing provides a sarcastic allegory of capitalism with Chinese characteristics in the art sector. Yu Honglei’s theme discusses the import of the Western art canon into China. Chen Tianzuo touches on censored topics of religion and alternative lifestyle. Ye Funa talks about the transformation of society through changing aesthetics. – A side note here: It is interesting that just a few years ago, Ye Funa was fully within the nostalgia/political pop category, with self-portraits in 70’s Mao-suits, replicating poses from her parent’s photographs, probably a result of her parent’s generation art circle influence. Now she understood the new trend, and changed horses quickly. – Lastly, Ying Miao fully represents a feeling of both empowerment and futility within Chinese internet culture: The seemingly infinite creative possibilities, yet the nervous necessity to act quickly, at least one step ahead of the server traffic filters and 5 cent party running dogs. Showing an amount of disinterestedness and decadence is a necessity in China, and not a choice. People make money and talk about money, because that’s a safe topic, and the same goes for the formal aspects of these works.
This reality also manifests itself in a stronger stress on the narrative function of the works: The works are vessels for carrying meaning, and the aesthetics is sometimes secondary, and usually less informed. Personally, I find the gap between post-internet and early net.art much narrower in China than in the West. As China did not have its own early net.art period, it has to live through a phase when (what was termed in the West as) early net.art coexists with (what was termed in the West as) post-internet art. The term shanzhai reflects this, and I believe that in a similar way as it is applied to electronic products, we could also apply it to the conglomerate of Chinese net.art/post-internet art: It is a fully functional copy, adapted to local circumstances, thus possibly making it even more functional than the original.
Comparing this with the works in the New Skin and Autosave exhibitions, maybe because of the lesser freedom of speech restrictions in Korea, I could not see this expressive power constrained within the limits of the formal aspects of the works. As if the greater creative freedom took away some of the motivation. This is not better or worse, but it is different. For the Korean version of post-internet art (and if we would extend the continuum from China to Korea and further towards the West, then also for the Western version) the term digital nihilism would be more fitting than for the Chinese variant. The West lived through its phase of political, utopian net.art, and in Korea, this was somehow accelerated, skipped and suppressed into the art historical unconsciousness. As a result, the urge to express personal convictions or beliefs has already been historically satisfied. In this geopolitical realm, post-internet truly means post-internet: The sense of an awakening from the utopian dreams of a better tomorrow brought about by new technologies. In the post-internet rubble the only thing left to do is to play, like children in a sandpit after a storm which looked so fun before it turned really scary. The focus shifts back to the basics: Everyday seemingly meaningless activities, obsessing with the self, escaping the insurmountable difficulties of real life. A celebration of the ruins of the internet dream.
The formal aspect, which at first sight may look same in Chinese, Korean and Western variants, in fact sometimes overtakes the whole purpose of the work’s existence, leading into a post-internet mannerism. Formal (design) decisions are not haphazard but educated and carry an air of connoisseurship. The artistic product’s commodification is complete, adding another cyclical self-fulfilling celebration of its own failure.
Only the future will tell ‘what’s next’, but for now, Lin’s talk presented a very complex topic in a very compact and well-structured way, leaving multiple directions of reading open. It is exciting to observe history in the making. In the art historical case, the “Chinese characteristics” indeed exist, and they manifest themselves by these strange mutations where different art historical times as well as different cultural circuits all coexists and overlap – coexistence squared.