As to be expected from the invariably weird National Art Museum of China, the exhibition design for “Pneuma, Enlightenment, Harmonious: Sculpture Exhibition of Zhao Chengmin” was really freakin’ weird. First there were the dingy maroon walls — apart from the feeling of being in a ’70s smoking lounge, they wouldn’t be so bad except that everything in the exhibition was made out of reflective metal. Kind of changes the experience. What would be an immaculate, radiant sheen turns into a dumpy glimmer. It’s not an inspiring feeling. While boring, white walls are the standard for museums to avoid distractions like this.

Then, hanging on those walls were giant pictures of the artist and his studio megaplex near Badaling. I don’t think it’s necessary that we see both the night and day views of Zhao’s swimming pool. If Mark Rothko, curmudgeonly Ab Ex painter who spent the first three decades of his career playing jump rope with the poverty line, saw Zhao’s private library or nautical-themed reception room, his head would explode.

But onto the artwork: actually, not bad. If you’ve never been to the National Art Museum of China, you perhaps don’t understand how shocking the experience can be. NAMoC typically specializes in neo-realist paintings of swarthy, wizened minority men and pale, remarkably Han-looking minority women with perfect skin gaily frolicking and dancing in traditional festivities. Zhao’s work, however — supposedly his first solo exhibition in 35 years (where did the mansion come from, exactly?) — are massive constructions, such as our friend Turbo Pony up there. They are made of industrial items, nuts and bolts, wire rope, metal coils, tubes and plates welded together with varying degrees of finish. There are around 50 pieces spanning two decades.

There’s something very gleeful in their construction, a sense of joy evident from the artist that is very infectious. The horse and warrior sculptures make me wish for handheld versions so I can play with them while making sound effects with my mouth. There’s something to be said for that, and not just that I’m a man-child who could be the subject of a Lana Del Rey song.

The smaller, less grandiloquent works complement these well. Whereas the big pieces are all bombast and emotion, the small pieces are contemplative. The chinoiserie shifts from fawning over politics and history to philosophy and nature. Some of them are even quite spiritual, and in an abstract way that avoids the pratfalls of being too literal.

The style isn’t completely original, as you’ll soon see, but most of the pieces have flashes of technical inspiration that sustain your attention. Take the above piece, “A Group of Clouds Trample the Snow and Gallop Towards the Sky” (sounds much, much better in Chinese). Zhao abstracts the horses’ features to give them a sense of solidity and strength while simultaneously dissolving that structure in the center by breaking it down into attenuated strips and sinews. It evokes power alongside the intricate, fragile and unfathomably complex biological motor for that power. And it does this in a way that’s uplifting. These, too, are ultimately works of Triumph.

And that’s where it starts to get a bit uncomfortable. It’s pretty much cut-and-copy Futurism, the stuff of early-20th-century Italian artists who fetishized war and industrialization, rendering the power of nature in the language of steel, etc. There’s a reason that Zhao’s horses’ feet are shaped like gun barrels. Sure, thematically you have to substitute the course of Chinese politico-military-philosophical history for Italian nationalism during the Industrial Revolution, but there’s an uncanny amount of overlap.

This hunch came to me even before I read Zhao’s preface to the exhibition, subtitled, “My Dream of a Strong Nation.” He extols, at length, his desire to see China rise up and triumph over America through the power of her art and aesthetic principles, something about qi and enlightenment and harmony that are incomprehensible to the Western mind.

Note to Chinese aestheticians (and dieticians, and doctors, and anyone inclined to hold such theories as legitimate counterpoint to the West): qi has not and cannot be shown to exist in any empirical way. It is not a thing. Remember when Mao advocated smashing superstitions? This is what he was talking about. It’s no coincidence the Wikipedia page on qi refers you to the page “Force (Star Wars).”

Mercifully, little to none of the exhibition has to do with qi, or harmony, or any of Zhao’s vague batshit themes. It is about Chinese history. Or, more accurately, a myth of Chinese glory and military triumph and spiritual attainment that gives nationalists the hardest of hard-ons. This is where the artworks start to lose a bit of their charm. The magnificence and affective power of some of the works are speaking a very different language to the intended audience, to which I, sadly, do not belong. This is an exhibition meant to inspire not reflection but feelings of a patriotic community, a sense of duty to a cultural lineage. It’s no wonder reviews of the exhibition all laud Zhao’s “sincere nationalism.” It just goes to show you art can be technically and aesthetically solid but have a rotten ethical core.

“Pneuma, Enlightenment, Harmonious: Sculpture Exhibition of Zhao Chengmin” will be on display at the National Art Museum of China until April 24. Go and feel the Pneuma.

Guy Templeton is an art critic in Beijing. |Art Review Archives|

Installation art may be the only type that lets artists actually live up to their outsider, free-spirit, totally bullshit reputation. It’s also more fun for the audience to get to step into/touch/eat the artwork, so they tend to be crowd pleasers and museum favorites.

I’m inclined to give artists more credit for giant installations because A) they’re distinctly unsellable and B) they leave little room for repeat or rehash. If someone tries to do the same thing a second time, he or she will get called out on it. (Unless you’re Damien Hirst — a big fuck-you to him and the Tate Modern, by the way.) In this sense (and only in this sense), installation work can be viewed more as art-for-art’s-sake, even if we acknowledge that this phrase needs to be retired and shot. There is art for expression and entertainment and social change and money. That’s about it.

Bai Yiluo’s “Illuminations” (above) is the product of two years of work in which he “tries to stress the feeling of being observed from afar.” Not to sound snide, but something like that is too easy to dismiss. Why would surrounding a person with lamps rusted to the point of being indistinguishable inspire any feeling? 

I suppose it’s intended to make me feel overwhelmed? There is an immediate claustrophobic perceptual excess, not unlike walking into an antique shop too small for its wares. The moribund lanterns do evoke eyes and vision in a Tower of Sauron kind of way, and serve as a conceptual juxtaposition with the paintings and the fabricated illumination that now defines life on earth. Perhaps I’m jaded or an ass or whatever, but I don’t really think it’s useful for me to stand in awe of the amount of electricity we produce. It’s just not that compelling of an idea. Bai is trying to get the viewer to step out of his limited perspective and contemplate the world on a macro scale. But aside from oohs and aahs, what else does he want us to think about our technological advances? There are a lot of profound and terrifying things to say about how we now live and how little we understand its implications, but Bai doesn’t really say any of them. “Raising awareness” is not an admirable goal in itself, it’s just lazy and self-satisfying. That goes for you KONY people, too.

The paintings themselves are very beautiful, electric macro-nightscapes of that sort of gauzy lapis lazuli blue under shimmering silver dots. If he stuck with just these I think I’d like the exhibition a lot more. Of course, then it’d just be pretty pictures.

Li Zhanyang, by contrast, goes for a more, erm, direct approach:

In case it’s hard to discern, yes, those are long shards of glass dangling between the backpacks. So, a sort of Cask of Amontillado-cum-Pit and the Pendulum situation, except the sociopathic killer is the Chinese education system. Right. The shards are there because the school materials are a METAPHOR, METAPHOR for LOOMING DANGER, sword of Damocles, Chicken Little, etc. The problem with this kind of METAPHOR is that it hits hard but doesn’t try for depth. What you see is what you get.

The man in the background is a nice touch, set in the back corner so that you don’t quite realize he is made of fiberglass until you get closer. He’s genuinely discomfiting. At the time I assumed he was supposed to be the little girl’s father. After some snooping around on Google (what we in the arts call “due diligence”), I found out that it’s actually a self-portrait. Li Zhanyang is also the father of a nine-year-old girl.

Even though I think it’s pretty weak to rely on outside information or a wall text to complete the meaning of a work of art, this detail makes the piece. It’s still a ham-fisted visual metaphor for what isn’t an especially original idea, but in a country where mental health and suicide among kids are both alarming and, for practical purposes, largely ignored, it begs the question whether subtlety or nuance are even important. The self-portrait also shifts the message from “What the hell is wrong with you?” to “What the hell is wrong with us?,” which is always much more effective, rhetorically.

It’s for this reason that I have to give this round to Li. Neither installation is going down in the history books, but at least Li’s has an immediacy to it that sits uncomfortably alongside its aesthetic value. He too doesn’t go much beyond “raising awareness,” but his installation works emotionally instead of conceptually, which is more appropriate. It’s also a far cry from what most Chinese contemporary artists are doing, which is trying at all costs to avoid being pinned to any single meaning. If people understand you, they can dismiss you. Obscurity has a premium. Make no mistake, artists know that it’s in their best interest to keep you confused, which is why Li’s work is far bolder than he’ll get credit for.

The best art is still that which is subtle, profound, and containing complexities drawn out by slow contemplation. Barring that, you might as well get a rise out of your audience.

Li Zhanyang’s “The Nightmare” will be on display at Galerie Urs Meile in Caochangdi until April 29. “Bai Yiluo: New Works” will be on display until April 16 at Pekin Fine Arts in Caochangdi. Also, just go to Caochangdi. The art is way better and you get to feel superior to the all the 798 folks. Dilettantes.

Guy Templeton is an art critic in Beijing. |Art Review Archives|

Monkeys do not have opinions on curatorial ethics.

Today Art Museum, a totally unprecedented factory-cum-gallery space (it’s not unprecedented at all), has done us all the favor of cutting back on the galleries to focus on what art lovers really want: posh restaurants and cafes. I could go on along this vein, but this review really isn’t about Today Art Museum, featuring a front-yard sculpture by the shallowest man in Chinese contemporary art, Yue Minjun. No, I’m here to talk about Conversing with the Moon – He Sen’s Solo Exhibition, a quite decent show that opened on February 11, which I would totally recommend you go see if only it were still there. That’s right, it ended less than two weeks after opening. So yeah, thanks, Today Art Museum.

Let’s talk about the monkey.

That particular simian is He Sen’s “Monkey King on the Peach Tree” from 2007. The Monkey King, Sun Wukong to acquaintances, is the sutra-toting rapscallion from the 16th-century novel Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’En, or, to those who can’t read archaic vernacular Chinese (plebes), from the 1980s live-action television show now in relentless syndication. He Sen’s exhibition included several pieces based on Journey to the West, and while these were mostly an excuse for the artist to show off his traditional brushwork and oil skills, they are still awesome because they involve Journey to the West.

Moving on…

He Sen, "Ma Yuan Conversing with the Moon - Distant" (2011, oil on canvas))

In the above series, He Sen uses oil paint to copy post-Song ink compositions, splitting each canvas into zones of different brushwork styles or tonal fields. The juxtapositions are engaging and playful. They invite semiotic questions of form and meaning and how classic tropes mutate over time, what that says about us and them and whether we can ever really understand what was there in the first place, if there was ever anything there at all. The TV show Journey to the West raised many of the same questions, but in a much subtler way.

He Sen, "Picture Album of Plum Blossoms" (2008, oil on canvas)

Some have made the terribly wrong claim that He Sen is pioneering a contemporary artform with traditional Chinese culture at its core. These people are probably dull Chinese art historians. If anything, He Sen is commenting on how traditional Chinese art symbols fail to resonate with contemporary audiences because they represent a foregone culture that can’t be recreated without getting our grubby little modern-day fingerprints all over it. His creations are also just really pretty. The pink pastels look like cake frosting.

The artist’s earlier works were on the second-floor exhibition hall. I’d guess the curator (rightly) assumed most exhibition-goers wouldn’t care enough to climb a set of stairs. Of these pieces, the press release says ([sic], obviously), “The decadent and sophisticated female figures portrayed were the most fierce and literal expression to confront impact of mainstream cultural trends of the time, especially the anxiety and void in those images projected the artist’s psychological response to that particular context.” I’d call them excuses to paint his squeeze’s barely unexposed vagina.

He Sen, “Dudu" (2006, oil on canvas)

He made dozens of these, and they sell for tens of thousands of dollars apiece. I can actually picture the sleazy Shanxi coal baron who buys and subsequently jerks to this painting. They’re certainly not good for much else.

You could have gone to see “Conversing with the Moon – He Sen’s Solo Exhibition” before it was inexplicable shut down two days early on February 22. You can still watch the greatest TV series known to man though:

Guy Templeton is an art critic in Beijing. |Art Review Archives|

拆 - chai: demolish. Say what you want about Art Bridge's art selection, but its logo is pretty cool. UPDATE: Ah, it's probably "桥" - bridge. I prefer chai.

First, as a token of good faith, I offer this piece of advice to all Chinese galleries: don’t skimp on wine at openings. Free-flowing liquor will ultimately work to your advantage when plying potential customers, especially when you’re going to need to exact mental debilitation on them to sell your wares.

Case in point, the most recent group exhibition hosted by 798’s Art Bridge gallery, in which demure volunteers poured quarter-glasses of garden-variety reds, orange juice and Coca-Cola. Art Bridge, HELLO: you’re hosting an exhibition opening, not a wine tasting. Forget pouring samples, the purpose of wine is not to train a visitor’s palate but to make the shit you’re hawking more palatable.

The exhibition was titled “Changing View: Round Two Nominating Exhibition of Contemporary Ink and Water,” and it is still unclear what the artists were nominated for. I was accompanied by the dauntingly sober Lola B, resident Creamer and recovering art student, who plowed through the paintings doing full-on crits. God bless her, it was like watching Bob Costas commentate tee ball. What do you say about a painting of a puppy lying next to an old phone receiver? Nice stock image? Why yes, puppies are cute? His plaintive and innocent eyes gazing into mine assure me of naïveté and perfect love?

Zheng Qingyu, The Wrong Number :: 郑庆余, 打错的电话 (Ed's note: this is a photo, please pardon the reflection)

Okay, actually I did like the puppy piece, though for no good reason. To everyone’s detriment, the exhibition was not entirely puppy-themed. As is the case with many works of Chinese contemporary art, the draftsmanship was unimpeachable, but they failed to live up thematically. Specifically, this:

Zheng Qingyu, A Rose is a Rose :: 郑庆余，天使的玫瑰也会枯萎 (Chinese title translates as "Even an angel's rose will wilt")

This should not happen in a professional exhibition. Setting aside the Pre-Raphaelite-on-a-bad-day coiffure, what in the world would possess an artist (or adult human, really) to paint this? It’s like a particularly shallow teenage girl’s idea of beauty. I especially like the black rose, which looks like it comes straight out of Evanescence’s Tumblr feed. It’s so cheesy it may legitimately be a postmodern joke, or at least a what-can-I-get-into-a-Chinese-gallery drunken bet between artists. Zheng Qingyu had three pieces in the show, and none of them communicate a damn thing. As a viewer, I felt like I was listening to muffled sounds of the artist in a one-way conversation with himself. Fun fact: in 2009 Zheng was in a group exhibition subtitled “Contemporary art exhibition of new intellectuals” at the China National Museum of Art. I’ll leave that without comment.

But as with most group exhibitions, somehow a couple of artists of talent managed to slip in. Dang Zhen’s “Monochrome Fable – Farewell to My Concubine” (the movie Farewell My Concubine in all its majesty is here on Hulu). depicts a slovenly, pants-less man and an actor in full Peking opera regalia riding sidesaddle on a purple horse. This is, admittedly, something of a dream of mine (I am the horse). It’s nonsensical and disorienting in a good way. It’s challenging.

Dang Zeng, Farewell to My Concubine :: 党震, 灰色寓宫之霸王别姬

Which is probably why I also liked Chen Lin’s meticulously plumed bird paintings, one of which is below. Yes, they felt banal, probably even more so if I knew more Chinese art history, but they at least tried to find meaning somewhere other than fantastically beautiful women and voluptuous nudes. (Quick interlude regarding nudes: it’s vaguely sexist and astounding that this can still fly in the 21st century. It’s also why sometimes even the best technically crafted pieces are just so-so – they mine tired symbols and cheap sentimentality for a sense of significance, when in fact they are lazy and formulaic and not worth my time.)

Chen Lin, in a picture that may or may not be titled "Memories of the Harem No. 1" :: 陈林, 后宫往事之一

The biggest problem with most of the works at Art Bridge’s exhibition is not that they’re trite, but that, sadly, they’re still convincing. They were convincing enough to a handful of artists and academics to get into an exhibition at an established gallery. Artists are well aware that they get away with this crap. It’s a delicate, insular and insecure art world in China, and I think on some level a lot of successful artists and professionals at least vaguely understand that they’re shilling glorified pet rocks.

“Changing View: Round Two Nominating Exhibition of Contemporary Ink and Water” will run at Art Bridge Gallery until February 28. Go see it. Or, you know, don’t.

Guy Templeton is an art critic in Beijing. |Art Review Archives|