March Art Madness turns the spotlight on China
- By Harvey Dzodin
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E-mail China.org.cn, March 20, 2014
In America, this month is known for its March Madness, the college basketball fight to the death to crown a national champion. Competing with these NBA-wannabes, there is what can be called the March Art Madness. This event sees the world's art aficionados descend on New York for a variety of art shows at the prestigious art fair known as the Armory Show, right down to its polar opposite: THE (UN)FAIR. This year, China is a prominent presence.
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| Artist Xu Zhen [Courtesy of Xu Zhen and MadeIn Company] |
Curated by Beijing's 798 Ullens Center for Contemporary Art Director Philip Tinari, "Focus: China" featured 17 specially-selected Chinese galleries selected by Tinari himself, as well as a two-day symposium on contemporary Chinese art.
According to Armory Show Executive Director Noah Horowitz, the exhibition "showcases the strength and diversity of players who now make up the country's cultural scene. It ultimately aims to demonstrate that China is not just a site for great art, but a place where current art world models are being made and remade, and serious collecting is happening at an ever larger scale".
The "Focus: China" symposium featured eight 75-minute panels consisting of noted art world professionals. Among the most interesting were those panels discussing China's museum boom -- almost one new museum a day by some estimates. Although many recent museums are intellectually empty shells created to attract government tax concessions and/or feed the creator's ego, several notable exceptions offering hope for the future were also discussed.
Key speakers included Lu Xun and his breathtaking Sifang Museum complex outside Nanjing; Karen Smith, director of the upcoming OCT Contemporary Art Terminal in Xi'an; and Colin Chinnery, artistic director of the Wuhan Art Terminus discussing his soon to be completed art zone.
The final panel then featured a discussion of its annual artist-commissioned work, continuing a 12-year-standing tradition. This year's artist is Xu Zhen, born in Shanghai in 1977, who is regarded as a leading figure of that city's art scene and of the larger generation of artists born in the post-Mao era. Xu's "Currency's Ideal," a sculpture made out of various fabrics and created from the composition of images from political cartoons, is this year's Armory Show commissioned art.
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