Young artists question frail personal relations in modern world
Compared with their predecessors from the 1990s, young artists in China today enjoy much greater exposure. They exhibit more, at museums, galleries and art fairs both at home and abroad. Many of them even start to make money from their work while still in college.
But Zhao Wenjiao, a curator in Beijing, says artists face more competition today than before as their artworks need to evolve and resonate with audiences and critics for them to stay on the market.
Zhao is behind an ongoing exhibition titled Grasping the Normality Within the Abnormality in Beijing’s 798 art compound that showcases the paintings and installations by 16 artists who are in their 20s and 30s. The pieces show the diversity of their approaches and reveal a development in thought that will promote them to a higher level of creativity, she says.
The exhibition is the third edition of Parkview Green Art’s group project, Xun-Xun, which serves as a launchpad for upcoming artists. Xun xun in Chinese means “progressing smoothly and in an orderly fashion”, and the project aims to offer a glimpse into the future of contemporary Chinese art.
Zhao says the featured artists can be grouped into three sections, based on their approaches to life experiences.
Zhu Peihong, for instance, builds up a world in his work by taking unrelated segments from real life and putting them together. In his abstract series My Space, the 30-yearold Shanghai-born artist hopes to relieve the anxieties that people suffer. He has a master’s degree in lithography from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in the capital.
He also exhibited at the second exhibition of Xun-Xun held last April. His current show of oil paintings present a vibrant color palette, but dwell on the less glamorous side of urban life. “Metro cities surround its residents with neon lights, traffic, building blocks and display screens that rotate advertisements all day long,” he says of his inspiration for the series.
“Are people as delighted by these visually enticing objects as they seem to be?”
Some other artists on show attempt to reveal the dark side of the human mind, which they believe is universal despite cultural and aesthetic differences.
Wang Xiaoshuang, 31, who lives in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, focuses on city women and their emotions. The subjects of her paintings are charming, confident women, but she exposes their weaknesses by portraying their skin in a semi-translucent manner. Thereafter, she uncovers the loneliness and depression that many in her generation share.
The female sin her paintings often look aloof when in a crowd, and Zhao the curator, says the works also reflect the weaknesses in interpersonal relations in today’s world.
Other artists question if abnormal social phenomena would become the normal way of existence that people have to accept in order to avoid conflict.
Huang Kunxiong, 27, fills his paintings with rows of small squares that look quite like the windows on high-rises seen from afar. He presents a cold, robotic feeling and compares the work with the emotional distance between people. The artist from Sichuan province invites the audience to seek possibilities of changing the situation.
“The artists haven’t found the answers to the questions raised in their works. Maybe, the process of involving viewers’ thoughts is more important,” says Zhao.