December 2008
For years now, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts has been talking about China. Enormous economic growth has been accompanied by radical social change – cities and communities have been transformed in a single decade. This capitalist expansion has been matched by an explosion in the art market for Chinese contemporary art.
Curators from all over the world have been beating a path to studios in Shanghai and Beijing and art works, particularly painting, have achieved record values in auction rooms in Hong King, London and New York. China, China, China takes a long look at the impact of this global art phenomenon and features artists whose work is located beyond the boom and bust of the market.
Reflecting different perspectives on current art practice in China, the exhibition China, China, China is organised into three sections, within which each curator explores the global market for Chinese art by selecting artists who are not bound by the market’s rules, but who represent the complex reality of a modern China.
The work on show is radical, critical and often playful. Wang Yuyang‘s gigantic Artificial Moon dominates the Upper Gallery, illuminating it with a thousand low-energy bulbs; Wu Ershan’s futuristic Nomadic Plan for Outer Space also look back at the life of Ghengis Khan; Duan Jian Yu’s Art Chickens sit in front of watercolours of Chinese landscapes; China Tracey explores the lonely on-line world of Second Life in her film I-Mirror and Chu Yun’s photographic work Career documents government officials in their private time.
Each artist featured in China, China, China makes work that is rooted in their local context and yet participates in an international art arena. The result is a collection of fascinating and uncompromising works that give new depth to our understanding of what it means to live in a society which finds itself in the process of immense change.
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