More AB-EX/BAN ZHENG 办证 images

Remember folks all of these precious prints of guerrilla advertising in Hangzhou and more are available at very reasonable prices. All of your contributions will go to the Mathieu Borysevicz studio fund for the zillion, brilliant projects he is working on.

I'll try to stay away from this blatant marketing stuff in the future, promise

Learning from Hanzhou, AB-EX/BAN ZHENG 办证 OR How I Learned NOT to apologize for promoting my own very interesting projects

I've been working on Learning from Hangzhou for about 3+ years now. Way too long for China... for me. In one way it's about time... watching things appear and dissappear in the context of a city over the course of time, especially in China's accelerated metropolisis of no turning back.
Learning from Hangzhou is about trying to capture a moment (s) in the trajectory of a city's and its inhabitant's development, its building and rebuilding.

Learning from Hangzhou has recently grown some legs:
The article below appeared (in edited form) in last month's MODERN PAINTER'S Magazine.
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown (the authors of the original Learning from Las Vegas) wrote a very kind and flattering introduction to Learning from Hangzhou (the yet unpublished book version see a few lines below)
AND We god willing, will show the piece as a construction billboard around Storefront for Art and Architecture starting next month - which is the perfect form to show the piece in (except for smaller more refined collectible prints which can now be purchased at reasonable prices if you just email me mabzchina@gmail.com)
ALSO - after a long and enthusiastic dialogue with APERTURE, MIT Press, Princeton Architectural Press and Chronicle Books... I still am looking for a publisher (no legs here- but beaming with optimism)
If you know any or would like to donate to the Timezone Book/LFZ printing fund please write me at mabzchina@gmail.com


Here's the short intro to the project proper:

"Above there is Heaven, below there is Hangzhou"

Over the last ten years the city of Hangzhou, China has tripled in size and gained over a million people in population. Learning from Hangzhou is an extended photo essay with brief, incisive texts that present the historical city of Hangzhou under the physically and culturally transformative influence of China's unbridled economic expansion.

From 2003-06 over three thousand images were taken and divided into patterns of reoccurring visual phenomenon. The resulting photographic catalog presents a developing city codified along the edges of its own physical utterances. The ubiquity of demolition and construction, vast architectural eclecticism, accouterments of habitation, graffiti advertising, the tenuous relationship of architecture and signage, climate control and cultural desire all collide in an orgy of permissiveness in a city once renown for its tranquil beauty.

The case study of Hangzhou is indicative of the rapid physical evolution and concurrent social transformation that is taking place in many of China's urban centers; it also provides lessons for a globalizing world and its increasingly frivolous commoditization of public space.


Here's the MODERN PAINTER's piece (in the current/May issue) which describes one singular section of the project:

AB-EX/BAN ZHENG 办证
In the last ten years the city of Hangzhou has tripled in size and gained over 1 million new residents, making it China’s 11th largest city with a population of almost 7 million. In the spring of 2003, amidst this traditionally romantic city’s infinite urban swell and the impending doom of the SARS epidemic, I began noticing something that looked strangely like defacement of public property. Due perhaps to the Confucian backbone of this authoritarian society, in my ten years of coming to China at this point, the only thing that I could identify as slightly resembling western-style vandalism was the ubiquitous 拆 chai character, which marked buildings for demolition. But this was different - cell phone numbers scrawled onto surfaces accompanied by the characters 办证 banzheng. From the center of the city to the outlying suburbs, these mysterious numbers enveloped everything from road signs to pedestrian overpasses, outdoor advertisements, newspaper kiosks to sides of buildings and light-posts. But it wasn’t just the scribbly cell phone numbers, redolent as they were -with their rapid-fire territoriality- of graffiti tagging, that was so interesting. Broad strokes of mismatching house paint slapped atop the numbers created a rich aesthetic language that brought the action painters and pop artists of the early 60’s immediately to mind. But while the drippy paint was seemingly intended to conceal the cell phone digits it was only a matter of time before the numbers would once again reappear over the paint. The results of this improvised public discourse left a weave of beautifully abstracted splotches throughout the city. But what was the meaning of this vandalistic game of numbers?

办证 ban zheng directly translated means to ‘make certificates’, i.e., fake certificates. Bad foreign press notwithstanding China’s growing problem with copyright infringement, intellectual property violations and other infractions of authorship is not only an export business. It is an enterprise whose pervasiveness puts China itself in the awkward position of continually re-assessing authenticity at home. One police officer observed that all the documents one needs from birth until death are obtainable by responding to these ads: marriage, driver’s and business licenses, identity cards, land deeds, diplomas, even army officer ID badges. An official from the Department of Education estimated that there are five to six thousand people holding fake degrees in China. One such banzheng company claims to employ 10,000 people, while the city of Harbin has an equal amount of workers dedicated to cleaning up the advertising mess.

China’s speedy urbanization and rise to economic superpower status has left behind many interesting ruptures in its wake but what happens when a country’s organs of legitimization have been circumvented? One banzheng worker described the situation as such, “only once society has advanced to a point of moral enlightenment will there no longer be room for us” . In the meantime demand for false documents is high and the “urban psoriasis” caused by its guerrilla marketing departments continue to abstract China’s urban canvases.

Mathieu Borysevicz 3.17.08


AB-EX/BAN ZHENG 办证 is part of LEARNING FROM HANGZHOU, a photographic archiving project that maps urbanization in Hangzhou from 2003-2007. This book and exhibition project will be shown at the Storefront for Art & Architecture in NYC this fall. All photos by Mathieu Borysevicz.

Mathieu Borysevicz, artist, critic, curator and filmmaker, splits his time between NYC and Shanghai. His photography and film work has been shown internationally at venues such as The Tribeca Film Festival, ICA London, the Bauhaus, Duolun Museum Shanghai, the Bronx Museum, Artists Space NY, Center for Contemporary Culture, Barcelona and at the Israeli Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv. Since 1994 Borysevicz has been involved, as critic and curator, with the contemporary culture of China focusing on the intersections of social transformation and artistic production. He is currently ART FORUM’s editor in Shanghai. His writings have also appeared in Art in America, ART Asia Pacific, WORLD ART, Yishu Journal, tema celeste as well as Chinese Art at the End of the Millennium, New Media Art Limited Press. He has also curated and consulted for numerous exhibition venues in the US, Europe and China including Asia Society, APERTURE, Jack Tilton Gallery, Thomas Erben Gallery, Le Sous-Salon, Paris, DDM Warehouse, Shanghai and Millenaris Park in Budapest. Since 1995 Borysevicz has also worked in the production and post-production of films and television for such networks as ABC, CNN, BET, ZDF, Channel 4 UK, Arté, History Channel, and National Geographic TV. He has also made films for the UNHCR, The European Union, and The World Bank as well as many commercial clients. His Film 'Zhang Huan Studio' is currently on view at Asia Society in NY.

Beijing Week Part 3: Wang Qingsong (Earthquaked into another plan), Caution at PKM

Wang Qingsong lives and works in a complex in Cao Changdi that Ai Weiwei designed. Ai designed the whole area basically and if there are buildings that he didn’t design, someone else designed the buildings to look like his – a poor man’s Ai Weiwei as Pauline Yao calls it. Wang Qingsong makes photos like one makes movies… The CC Demille of the static image he often employs hundreds and even thousands of hired extras… sometimes they all take off their clothes … it must feel nice to be around so many naked bodies in a big film studio… with the cold and dampness seeking through the floor..
Anyway Wang Qingsong has a great space where he’s carving a bunch of prohibition signs (the circular signs witha diagnol line through it that means NO: spitting, walking on the grass, noise making, fireworks, pooping) into his wall because he had this idea and he has some folks hanging around that can execute it. It’s part home decoration, part art … a little experimental relief from the epic images. He’s also having a BIG show at the BIG PKM Gallery around the block from his studio . The complex where PKM is housed is one of the aforementioned poor man Ai Weiwei’s but quite impressive nonetheless as is most every gallery and studio space that one finds in China these days.
Wang Qingsong was originally going to modify the gallery to look like it was poised midway in a state of demolition- broken beams, concrete carnage, reinforcement rod, etc. But after the Earthquake hit he decided it’d be plain wrong. So he changed gears and came up with the idea of wrapping the entire space in the ubiquitous and multipurpose red, white and blue plastic tarp that seems to cloak much of China’s urban centers. Used for construction blinds, makeshift roofs, protective covering the material has also played a big part in Sichuan’s earthquake relief. As much as Wang Qingsong wanted to avoid the earthquake he essentially walked right back into it. The material used to cover the near 1000sqm surface area of PKM gallery proved difficult in gathering – instead of having one type of the material the artist had to patch together a few different types- due to efforts to move the stuff out to Sichuan for the millions of homeless.
On the walls the artist printed some classical works of art from both China and the west extra large, effectually converting the space into a makeshift museum. The reproduced works of Van Gogh, Rembrant, Qi Baishi, Munch and Xu Beihong become a foreground in the backdrop of Wang Qingsong’s photographic work. Upstairs the resulting mural size prints were displayed and sold as a set of three in an edition of three for about 50,000USD. In the backroom a direct feed from the gallery’s surveillance cameras were projected. “Caution”, as the piece is titled is wide open to interpretation … but somehow, in this earthquake saturated media zone, never ends up getting too far from the tremor.

Beijing Week Part 2: Legation Quarter, Guanxi with a vengeance and How to Look at Video Art Without Electricity

Legation Quarter is a nice, serious, colonialist, albeit slightly Star Trekky name for the new developmental project effort of Handel Lee (and probably a host of other super-rich, high-profile, big-governmental related folks). With a yellow Hummer, MBenz A-class and Land Rover parked outside its very well guarded gate, Legation Quarter sits to the direct south east of Tiananmen Square, very near Qianmen (the front gate of the forbidden city) and across the street from the Urban Planning museum, a very sensitive and significant setting indeed. The complex purports to host a bunch of luxury boutiques, restaurants, spas, hotel(?) and The Beijing Contemporary Art Center (which, despite the rest of the place being in a sloppy scramble to finish renovations, had opened independently to the public last week.)

Not only is the National Museum of Arts currently hosting “avant garde” art at the moment but this nice little slice of Beijing Central is being besieged by a private, sophisticated contemporary art center which depends on the pretenses of dissent and subversion in order to keep its critical status as avant garde and subsequently nosebleed prices at auction. Weng Ling, CCA’s (Chinese Contemporary Art/ Contemporary Chinese Art/ Contemporary Art from China) dragon lady numero uno and long time cohort of Handel Lee (lawyer, founder of Beijing’s first gallery/restaurant The Courtyard, and partner in Shanghai’s 3 on the Bund including Shanghai Gallery of Art) is the curator/ director of this art palace. The inaugural exhibition is called “Where Are We?” Despite the intriguing title Weng Ling knows damn well where we are. The show includes the blue chip list of mainly the usual suspects – with Liu Wei (aka Xiao Liuwei) thrown in as an up and coming twist on this mostly 40 something year old bunch. The show’s lower floors is mostly video but on the day we went the electricity in the whole complex, maybe even the entire district had gone out. So much for all the hype… But this left an interesting little dilemma How to view electronic art without the electricity... What did all these idle machines, monitors, and projectors amount to- poised as they were in eternity, pointed against blank walls, strapped to cross beams with strips of tape across the lenses? Did this collection of wires and circuits possess any of its own sublimity? What essentially is the projected image? Aren't these spaces and equipment almost equally as essential as the content?
Anyway – these blackout works were my favorite pieces in the show

Beijing week part1: Earthquake art philanthropy or Auction as Sympathy

In the aftermath of Sichuan’s devastating earthquake the art world everywhere responded with warm generous altruism.

Guardian Auction in Beijing scurried together a handful of works, mostly coming directly from the artists studios, with all proceeds going to Earth Quake relief. With few exceptions (like the six print set of Liu Zheng’s mythological "Three Realms"-only an edition of 3 which sold for 500,000+RMB = more than 72,000USD (wow) to Taikang Insurance Collection - or a Huang Yongping water color painting of the Pentagon- also going for more than a water color of a living artist should to the same insurance company) most of the works weren’t the best and brightest that the artists had to offer - but still a lure for collectors and cure for Sichuan’s devastation woes.

The piece that I would’ve bought had I the money was one of Wang Xingwei’s big balloon bicycle oil paintings (appropriatley titled "Untitled") that seem to stem from some sort of pre-postmodern futuristic imaginary zone that only this goofy artist has access to. The big sale that night – though I didn’t stay because I hadn’t eaten and a friend with a hot pot full of thin slices of beef called me away – was a Cai Guo Qiang gun powder piece… that sold for truck loads of RMB.

Contemporary Chinese avant-garde aside was one symphonic piece, which lined the walls of Kerry Center’s Conference Halls (where the auction was held) was actually a combination of a dozen academic painter’s efforts. One canvas after the next formed an allegory to earthquake relief ala CCTV’s violin soaked montages that have been broadcast and rebroadcast since the tremors hit. One section shows a line of doctors taking blood from a line of donors, another canvas showed a bandaged man standing atop a crushed building, another a girl at a vigil with a candle illuminating her sad face. Here immortalized in paint are the news images that Susan Sontag (in her swan song Regarding the Pain of Others) sees as not heightening but instead diminishing our capacity to sympathize.