chinese contemporary art, manhattan magazine, dec 2009 issue

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THE CITY | ART PHOTO COURTESY OF ZHANG HUAN STUDIO Made in China A decade after its initial splash, Eastern art has become big business in NYC | By Marina Cashdan | In a performance-art work premiered in 1998, Zhang Huan traversed the gravel-covered courtyard of P.S.1, throwing himself on the ground in postures of pain and perseverance, smacking wooden clappers with each step. When he reached the central prop, a traditional Chinese bed frame, he undressed and lie face down upon a four-inch-thick ice “mattress” for 10 minutes, clenching every muscle in his freezing, mostly naked body. “I wanted to change the ice to water, but the ice changed me,” Zhang says. “My body went from warm to cooler. And so, that is a lesson: My life cannot change.” e work, accompanied by WRITING ON THE WALL Then-up-and-coming artist Zhang Huan, photographed for his own three-part series, 1/2, 1998. 2 | | December 2009

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Page 1: Chinese Contemporary Art, Manhattan magazine, Dec 2009 Issue

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ioMade in China A decade after its initial splash, Eastern art has become big business in NYC | By Marina Cashdan |

In a performance-art work premiered in 1998, Zhang Huan traversed the gravel-covered courtyard of P.S.1, throwing himself on the ground in postures of pain and perseverance, smacking wooden clappers with each step. When he reached the central prop, a traditional Chinese bed frame, he undressed and lie face down upon a four-inch-thick ice “mattress” for 10 minutes, clenching every muscle in his freezing, mostly naked body. “I wanted to change the ice to water, but the ice changed me,” Zhang says. “My body went from warm to cooler. And so, that is a lesson: My life cannot change.” The work, accompanied by

WRITING ON THE WALLThen-up-and-coming artist Zhang Huan, photographed for his own three-part series, 1/2, 1998.

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Page 2: Chinese Contemporary Art, Manhattan magazine, Dec 2009 Issue

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Buddhist chanting, was both a contemporary depiction of the Tibetan diaspora but also the artist’s struggle with his own assimilation into the Western world. Now, more than a decade later, Zhang is among the most sought-after contemporary artists in the world, and his second show, Neither Coming nor Going, opens at PaceWildenstein in Chelsea this month. His endurance during Pilgrimage—Wind and Water at P.S.1 was just a taste of China’s art scene—relatively unknown territory for the West at the time. To many, the Chinese takeover of the contemporary-art market seems like a tsunami that swept over the West in the last five years, but Dr. Alexandra Munroe, senior curator of Asian art at the Guggenheim Museum, says it’s been a longer process. “If you look at activities in the auction houses among galleries and among select museums,” she says, “there has been a steady increase in activities dedicated to contemporary Chinese art since the early ’80s.” Then came exhibitions in the late ’90s and early noughts—including Inside Out: New Chinese Art at the Asia Society in New York in 1999, and Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, presented jointly at the International Center of Photography and the Asia Society and Museum in 2004—that led to a sea change in the West’s perception of Eastern contemporary art, putting Chinese work on par with American and European artists. This interest culminated in a Sotheby’s auction in March 2006, which marked a turning point in the Chinese art market. “The international fury and speculation—critical fury and financial speculation—in Chinese contemporary art really became world news,” says Munroe.

massive 22,000-square-foot former arms factory in the 798 District, a thriving Chinese and expat artist community. Arthur Solway launched a branch of James Cohan in Shanghai. Both followed in the footsteps of the world’s biggest collectors of Chinese contemporary art, Belgian philanthropists Guy and Myriam Ullens. They opened the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in the 798 District in 2007, showcasing their collection of 1,500 paintings, sculptures, installations and video works from Chinese artists including Zhang Xiaogang, Zeng Fanzhi, Wang Guangyi, Wang Du and the late Chen Yifei. This year the momentum has even accelerated despite the economic

downturn. “The Olympics threw enormous focus onto China once again as an emerging superpower,” Munroe says. “There was a lot of attention paid to artists, including Cai Guo-Qiang, who was the artist in charge of the visual effects and a firework spectacle around the Beijing Olympics.” Munroe has an affinity for Cai, for whom she curated a critically acclaimed exhibition at the Guggenheim last year, the museum’s first major exhibition by a Chinese-born artist. Nine cars hung from the ceiling of the

rotunda, firework-like lights emanating from their insides, while a massive herd of stuffed wolves raced up the rotunda, crashing into a glass barrier. That show proved to be a catalyst of sorts, spurring many major American institutions to beef up their permanent collections, filling in the once lackluster Asian departments. On the fair front, China has not skipped a beat. ShContemporary, Shanghai Art Fair, Art Beijing Contemporary Art Fair and ART HK are emerging as some of the most important global art fairs and, this month, SCOPE teams up with ART ASIA in Miami for the second consecutive year; the partnership has been extended through 2010. “I think there has been a tendency to view Chinese contemporary art as a fashion,” says Dr. Melissa Chiu, director of the Asia Society Museum and the author of Chinese Contemporary Art: 7 Things You Should Know. “But I think the real change occurred when collectors of international art started to include Chinese contemporary artists in their collections. That has had an enormously positive effect on the level of recognition that Chinese contemporary artists have today—they are accepted internationally.” In other words, Chinese contemporary art is no longer just fashionable, it’s classic. M

UPTOWN CHINESE From left: “Portrait 09-7-7,” 2008, by Zeng Fanzhi (of Acquavella Galleries); woodblock print, by Zhang Huan (of PaceWildenstein Gallery).

WILD THINGS Cai Guo-Qiang’s 2008 show at the Guggenheim included Head On, an installation of 99 stuffed wolves running up the rotundra.

According to the Art Price Index, Chinese artists took 35 of the top 100 prices for living contemporary artists at auction that year, rivaling Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and other major Western artists. Gallery owners jumped on the bandwagon quickly, pursuing artists who, just a few years earlier, were unknown. Zeng Fanzhi signed a million-dollar deal with Acquavella Galleries; Zhang Xiaogang and Zhang Huan joined PaceWildenstein; and Ai Weiwei and Liu Xiaodong were picked up by Mary Boone. Since 2006, practically every major New York gallery has signed a Chinese artist. Collectors, gallerists and dealers even ventured into the East. In summer 2008 (just in time for the Olympics) Arne Glimcher, founder and president of PaceWildenstein, opened a branch of his gallery in Beijing, located in a

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