SHContemporary (better late than never?): The art experience as flea market

The SHContemporary fair came and went like a wave of refreshing artness in this otherwise culturally deprived megalopolis. Apologies for not writing anything sooner but I figured the real media kept you abreast of all the hoopla and my cynical comments would just be an unwelcome diatribe next to the hard driving fluff that makes good reporting on art fairs. If you haven’t yet heard the fair news please check out Phil Tanari in artforum.com, and Karen Smith for Bloomberg (where she says the richest people in the world will get their only dose of art news), artnet, Art in America (courtesy of our lovely Lisa Movius) etc., also reported. All in all SHContemporary was a fine event: good parties, mix of people, art, weather, nicely dressed security guards, great pretenses to charitable giving, one or two actually interesting installations, BUT not so many sales (except James Cohan's whopping Nam June Paik and Bill Viola sale- we won’t mention any names but we will say it was an Asian collector which is a good indication that there is a market out here for Western contemporary (and hopefully reason for J.Cohan to stick around in Asia), and maybe that Damien Hirst purchase by the same restaurant mogul that captured the world’s attention with her 2.3 million $ purchase earlier this year for Liu Xiaodong’s very large and mediocre painting of a bunch of very poor migrant workers (ala Courbet), then there was Thomas Erben who sold 40% of his booth on opening night to a bunch of Floridians, even Erna Hecey Gallery sold some small Johan Grimonprez drawings to Huang Liaoyuan and Aura Gallery’s William Zhang both under the table to avoid the ridiculous 33% tax imposed on sales at the sale)

But everything has to do with sales. Does it or does it? Can an art fair be like a game of chess where all the moves override the result? Probably not. Art is a business and this is a sales convention. Our foreign guests- galleries from Europe, India, America, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, etc. seemed to have a splendid time and (besides talk of dire sales) they will come back if they know what’s good for them because you need to invest as a business.

Overall what we learned from the fair is that today we look at art in fairs and auctions (if not mammoth Biennales which are like fairs in museums) – the experience of art going has been reduced to a the flea market effect- a labyrinth of stalls toting art goods to be consumed in the 30sec-2min time it will take to browse each of the 130 booths (somehow K.Smith listed it as 100 – it was originally to be 100 (100 of the best and brightest galleries) but somewhere along the way Pierre Huber (who made speeches at every occasion and at every occasion lost the battle with his English – think an intoxicated Kermit the Frog with a thick Swiss accent) and Zhou Tiehai (artist businessman turned artfair businessman) gave in to the huge demand and opened up the upstairs level of the building).

A note on art and architecture: The sophisticated mood and look of the fair had everything to do with the grand architecture of the Shanghai exhibition Center – apparently a gift of Stalin back in the heyday of cross Siberian pinko love ins. It was originally known as the Hall of Sino-Soviet Friendship and was built with Soviet help in the late 1950s to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Chinese communist victory in 1949. At night, the spire is often lit up with garish pink and lime green lights. A nice departure from the cubbied, wholesale halls of the usual art fairs, and here a nice example of art and architecture being happily married.

Further note: Liu Jianhua’s mammoth exhibition of 10 tons of illegally imported foreign electronic garbage at 3 on the Bund, which opened during the fair, is a mutherload of post-colonial, late-capital, global-market, environmentally abusive shit and will be the subject of my first review for Art Forum (which was banned from the fair because an Ai Weiwei photo offended the authorities- see artforum.com) … but you have to wait till November. Just like this report - tardy to the max.

Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair Part 1- The boring press conference poem, “Art Fair = Utopia“

The Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair has already taken Shanghai (and the anxious rest of the world) by storm and it hasn’t even yet begun, but the press conference (held at the Italian consulate) was soo boring that I started taking notes, kind of, then Lisa Movius (freelance darling of the Shanghai Cultural Scene) starting texting me.
Below is compilation of the texts and notes etc.

Something about simultaneous translation
Sleeping in the back
Everybody plugging away on their Blackberries
The trajectory of contemporary art in China and all the people who helped along the way
minus everyone who actually helped, ruminates behind the Blackberry punches
Pierre Huber responsible for bringing Asian Art to the world's attention
Which world was that again?
Where is that International Art world anyway?
“I am dying of boredom, you?”
Overlapping
Translators and Speakers interrupting one another
Starts and Stops
Simultaneous stutter like a cd skipping
“Seems escapism. The government asshole should be fun”
Sides of faces and backs of heads, the usual Shanghai art suspects:
Victoria Lu, Laura Zhou from Shangart, Lisa Movious, Davide from BizArt, James Cohan guy AKA Arthur Solway, local press busier than bees
Enter Chinese Speaker:
Booms. Change of tone
Self Flattery, Mobility, Enthusiasm, Morale
You'd never see this in the days of Hans Van Dyck
Was this an Art Fair or Utopia?
Voice projects outwards and upwards hitting highs that puff out the back wall of glass overlooking 19 floors of Shanghai
More on China’s miraculous economic reform
“Glorious History”
Did he say that or is it the translator stuttering again?
“At least his bull is funny”
Enter: Lorenzo Rudolf
The Art world was once an easy place to navigate
(was it a place once?)
You had the west and then the rest of the world
Where is the international Art world located?
You had the west and then the west of the world
Local, Global, Asian, Contemporary, Community
careful buzzing sounds
“This will last for days. Go back to sleep”
Artists, Collectors, Professionals, Galleries, Artworks, Asian public
130 Galleries
Even Latin America
“He’s quoting his fucking press release”
And all of Asia is growing
“Ohhh he discovered Asia!”
Art Fairs are popping up like mushrooms after a September rain (He actually said that)
All of what happens in Asia and the world
“It takes a 老外 (laowai- old foreigner)”
Art Fair=Utopia
“Think they’ll feed us?”
Enter Pierre Huber
Is that English he's speaking
Simultaneous translator collision
Another historical retrospect
Once upon a time there was only Hans Van Dyck- This is true
And now all these.... what did he say?
Critical Discourse
Art Fair = Utopia
Thank You for Coming
谢谢光临

The Producer(s)- Making Patty Chang's dream come true while Gorged on incompetency and indecisivness at the 3 Gorges

In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse
-TS Eliot

One of my multiple hats is that of an artist but I must say:
Working for artists is like a bullet in the head
I would feel bad for gallerists if most of them weren't such slimebullies themselves ... Or maybe it's working for artists that makes them that way in the first place... Or maybe vice versa, who knows
Either way wishy washiness reached tremendous heights during the last 3 weeks and my producing skills gained new momentum- somebody mentioned changing course and becoming a diplomat...
having said that artists and gallerists are alright
Intuition itself is to blame!

I just spent the last 3 weeks in YiChang, Hubei along the Yangtze river, known here as ChangJiang, producing a film for the American artist duo of Patty Chang and David Kelley. The film was a fantastical, very broken narrative about man and his futile attempts to control nature... I think. Fused into this general theme was the story of a submarine that crashed into a mountain and the Three Gorges Dam project which is one mutherload of engineering that is an attempt by man to control nature. And then there were scenes loosely based on the pyscho-drama technique of acting out one another's dreams as a a form of healing. These employed a bunch of out of work Beijing Opera actors and their hitherto untapped dreams.
When you're in the position of producer all the theoretical narrative twists and overriding concepts are pushed aside and you're left concentrating on nuts and bolts. So I'm not sure what the film is really about. Truthfully I don't think the authors do either. That's the majic of art.
"We need a submarine for the next scene" you don't ask why? you think how to get a sub in this pinko little town? what color do you want the sub? You ask questions that will eliminate future misunderstandings and OT
Let's just say that artist's, by nature of relying on intuition rather than careful planning, tend to make things a lot more complicated and time consuming than most other professionals. For instance we were to be shooting in an altogether city just 2 weeks before production which needless to say, made things very frantic. A lot of reliance was put in the direction of a bunch of unsuspecting drivers, baritones, laid off state workers and museum tour guides all of which performed exceptionally well in their new found roles as casting agents, line producers and prop stylists.
In the end Patty and David were delivered what they wanted and everybody was happy. In between - a lot of chaos and sleepless nights.
The truth is there couldn't have been any other way to make the piece. Sometimes you just have to toss all the ideas and practice into the breeze and chase it around till you have the piece you want.
The work was commissioned for an Italian art space in Turin. It will be a hit for sure. Stay tuned.
PS. a very special thanks to Liu Peng- my right hand man- met while on set with (and recommended by) Yang Fudong- Liu Peng and his friends have a little art production brigade and criss/cross between working on films, TV and sappy esoteric artshit

A tree grows in the world

They took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum And then they charged all the people twenty-five bucks just to see 'em Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you've got till it's gone They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

Bai Yiluo, Shi Jinsong and Xu Longsen (all studio neighbors in Beijing’s Huantie lane studios) combined efforts to create works and a show that was devoid of fancy, complicated thematic issues. They came up with “tree”. Yes just tree- A woody perennial thing that sprouts out of the ground, stands proud and strong and sends CO2 wafing up through the atmosphere. No, not “Sensation” or “Inside/out” or “Infanticide” Just “Tree.” These three distinctly different artists came up with diverse but equally elegant renditions of the this simple concept.

'Once there was a tree...and she loved a little boy. Every day the boy would come to the tree to eat her apples, swing from her branches, or slide down her trunk...and the tree was happy. But as the boy grew older he began to want more from the tree, and the tree gave and gave and gave.’ -The Givin Tree, Shel Silverstein

“Tree”, an exhibition that slipped quietly in between two other major shows at the Today Art Museum stood for a mere 2 weeks, has to have been one of the more calming and thoughtful shows around this capital town in quite some time. Not only by the sheer simplicity of the curatorial concept but the grace of the space delectably complimented the splendor of each of the works. Harking back to China’s mythical tree of extreme elegance Shi Jinsong used glass to help reassemble an actual Song tree, piece by painstaking piece. The Song tree has multiple meanings in folklore and legend- it is often equated with manhood, it that stands valiant like a soldier, resilient and brave. Shi Jinsong seems to have exploded this elegant Song shu and then carefully restructured it with splints and braces as a skeleton of the original.
Xu, a successful Chinese painter who seldom enters the contemporary art sphere, displayed 25 feet high ink wash drawings of three trees or sections of trees. These almost real-life size hundred year old trees rendered delicately in ink were (certainly a bitch to) mounted beautifully giving landscape painting a newfound dimensionality.
Bai Yiluo’s tree ideas were manifested in three different pieces: One employing his signature b/w identity portrait montage. Tiny b/w photo portraits were nailed, one by one to form a tight skin around a 3m long trunk. The trunk was then laid softly upon white linens of a hospital bed?? His next tree stood upright and was hauntingly backlit like a Tim Burtoneseque scarecrow- complete with all kinds of antiquated farm tools protruding from its lanky branches. His third installation wasn’t a tree so much as a collection of single branch pitch-forks (beautiful objects in and of themselves that was – last time I checked- going to compose an installation at the Asia Society in NY as part of Zhang Huan’s mini retrospective.) It’s hard to imagine these branch/stick/pitch forks being in such abundance somewhere in China’s hinterlands as to inspire 2 artists in one season -because the sticks aren’t manipulated- they are single branches that can be used as forks to toss hay around. Anyway, they did inspire two artists just like a lot of old stuff inspires new people in general. Bai Yi luo has taken these branches and inserted them into a stack of plaster Greek busts (ones used in academic drawing/molding classes throughout the world) to create an explosive take on the intersections of east and west, traditional agricultural culture and bourgeoisie culture, penetration and protrusion.
And then I went to NYC where, across from the world famous flat-iron building, and next to the infamous Madison Square Park dog run, stood an awe inspiring stainless steel structure by the artist Roxy Paine in the shape of a tree! Actually it was two cantilevered trees reaching out to one another and fused at the tips of their branches to create an arc under which fine looking NYers sunbathed and inhaled that fresh dog manure smell emanating from the aforementioned dog run.
And to make this tree story go on just a little longer. Back in Shanghai yesterday as I sat in the very long, very boring press conference for the Shanghai Art Fair (poised to take the city by storm) I began to chat with the man next to me who happened to be James Cohen’s (the gallery that reps Roxy Paine) cousin/business partner Arthur Solway and They’ll be showing a small replica of that very same tree in Madison Square Park at the fair where it will go for a bargain basement price of 80,000 USD (edition of 1). Get it while you can- it’s gonna be in Shanghai!

At At Cafe with Seredipity and my Critic's Pick- Shi Jinsong a mutherload of Kitsch

Shi Jinsong was hanging out on AT CAFÉ’s patio sipping a coffee and juggling phone calls while basking in the glory of his new show across the lane at Marella Gallery. A huge window carpeted with mock Luis Vuitton logos stared back at this dynamic artist. Deeper inside the shadowy space a few white horses were poised with Gucci sunglass- wearing little boys on their backs. As serendipitous as things may seem I am now the Shanghai correspondent for ART FORUM, which doesn’t mean too much save my name in the paper 3 times a year if I’m lucky, but on the website to which I have more access they have a Critic’s Pick column and Shi Jinsong’s show would be one of my picks had I had the job earlier. The show entitled “The Long Wei Elite School” plays off the phenomenon of private schooling for China’s upper class children. The one family policy coupled with an accelerated upward and outlooking population has the private school business rearing in China. While the importance of a better education has been slapped down on a bunch of unsuspecting video gaming tots it’s still a lot of brand recognition and pretense that paves the way for their brighter future. Hence “The Long Wei” like long way to go (a nod to internationalism), or the dragon’s tail, as it means literally in Chinese (which also conjures up notions of military academy might- y’know China the sleeping dragon). Blue prints of the school’s actuall buildings in thick golden frames line the astro-turfed floor of the gallery. The Baroque designs are flanked by fountains and capped with domes catering to China’s burgeoning middle class obsession with bling-bling. The white horses decor take their licks from a combo of Chinese supra kitsch, Matthew Barney, Jeff Koons and Donatella Versace. Overall Shi Jinsong passes the torch of China’s often-misguided excess down to the next generation and displays his own carefree versatility.

PastFowarding: I heart NY, Chris Phillips and Victoria Lu arm wrestling like art and architecture

So I’ve taken a 3 + week hiatus to straighten things out on the other side of the globe. Nueva York beckoned and I heeded, and I must say “what a time it was” I Heart NY with all my heart especially when I’m just passing through. But in order to catch up as I am continually doing, continually past forwarding… I go back to about a month ago when Christopher Phillips and Victoria Lu look poised for an arm wrestling match… y’know I’m not sure where I’d place my bets if it came to an arm wrestling match between these two curatorial VIP’s but I’d say it’d be a good match. Christopher is currently co-curating, with his friend Sally Wu, an exhibition called “Shanghai Kaleidoscope” for the Royal Ontario Museum’s stunning new contemporary wing. The wing is a mind fuck for any installer or curator and comes to us via another one of Daniel Libeskind’s wet dreams. It is truly impossible to hang art or project art or find an electrical socket close enough to where you may want to place art, you get the picture - just a bunch of haphazardly cantilevered walls made of expensive imported German steels so that the building will always win in the ongoing arm wrestling match with the art it holds. Anyway Christopher is interviewing major players on Shanghai’s contemporary cultural scene for the exhibition. These interviews with architects, artists, designers, curators, etc. will be part of the show- most likely they’ll be presented on pedestals because the only 10ft sq upright wall may be taken by a painting at this point. Victoria Lu is the creative director at the Shanghai MoCA, a private museum tyrannically governed by Jade magnate, Samuel Kung. Victoria, still super-funky after all these years, lets the museum’s young curators run amok in effort to counter the evil leader’s fuzzy dictatorial agenda, sometimes even mounting a comprehensive show in their wake. Victoria is from Taiwan but her family originates from Shanghai- they left with the Kuomingdang when the PRC took over- a street is still named after her grandfather who must have been quite important– like she is today (no street names yet). She feels a particular affinity to Shanghai, speaks the local dialect and gets to go to all the fancy city goverment parties because she is like one of us. She is a proponent of something she calls Animatronix - a mix of the cartoon world and the new media world and she thinks it’s taking over as a major aesthetic shift much like hip-hop is/was or neo-retro is/was or the cool Wolfgang Tillman snapshot aesthetic so well employed by Marc Jacobs ads or was that a Nan Goldin aesthetic, anyway nothing’s taking over, maybe taken for a short ride but …. Victoria was recently interviewed by China Vogue where she disclosed all the juicy stuff about her last three husbands, a suicide attempt, and shopping secrets but not too much about the Animatronic thing. A far more interesting interview to say the least. Christopher shot away from a pre-composed scribbly list of questions and shook his head yes to everything she said. I’m sure a lot of people react that way to her. She is rumored to leave MoCA soon but not Shanghai. Stay tuned.

Li Feixue, Shengci Island and yet another monstrous gallery district opening in East Beijing

When I met Li Feixue he was hobbling along on a homemade crutch fixed out of a 2x4 and some scrap wood. A cigarette dangled down to his goateed chin as he lulled out orders and answers to the beckoning bunch of foreign artists trying to make sense out a football field sized exhibition space with no real program in mind other than “a kinda big party”. In the car Zhang Hui and Yu Ji described Lei Feixue as an artist curator who lived in NY for 9 years with his rich Jewish wife and daughter until something happened and he was legally booted out of his family and adopted country with his tail between his legs. Now his leg is a little broken… a wall fell on it during this exhibition installation to end all exhibition installations in yet another new enclave of artist studios and super sized galleries on the eastern edges of Beijing. Located between Suojiacun and Feijiacun this old helmet factory is now at the hands of some developers who have the hootzpah and hindsight (albeit a little unoriginal by this point) to open another big bunch of commercial galleries. Anyway Li Feixue’s loosely assembled show of foreign and Chinese artists looked like a big beautiful mess (take in mind it was still two days before the show and some of the works were being made on the spot) ala art school grad shows or the like with Zhang Hui’s painting shining like a star on the wall- The new series, coming along painstakingly slow but worth every tortured moment … “but I’m starting to loose interest” he says so he’ll go do an installation to get the linseed oil smell off his fingers for a while and come back raging, I hope. Yu Ji’s two new photos of a pregnant woman poised in two landscapes with a sex doll strewn somewhere in the background is the first thing I’ve ever liked of this scraggly Sichuan artist and will include it in a show I will do at Scope Hamptons and at YOUNGBLOOD in Sag Harbor, NY at the end of the month.
Li Feixue, as it happened to be, originates from an island off the shores of Shanghai very close to Putuoshan. It’s a fishing village where he says you can buy a house for less than 6000USD’s. I pull all the info I can out of the man over the next few weeks. Telephoning whenever me and the lady are getting sick and tired of the absolutely horrendous Shanghai summer weather. Finally we go early one Sunday morning to a delightful surprise – actual breathable sea soaked air and a bodacious breeze… Not to mention Li Feixue’s little village all covered with murals... all kinds of murals from all kinds of artists from all over the world. We spot in the distance Zhou Tiehai’s camel guy! (later he says that he never went there but that the work is indeed his- I think Li painted it for his lazy Shanghai buddy) Apparently Li convinced the local town leader to apply for district grants to spruce up the place. They didn’t get all the moolah they asked for according to the town leader’s lovely Sunday painting wife but enough to convince a bunch of friends to hang out for a month and literally paint the town. It might seem like oh yea so what’s the big deal but this is China not Barcelona baby painting on people’s houses just doesn’t happen nor does any form of homemade gratuitous public decoration or even graffiti for that matter. Hat’s off to Li Feixue!