A thriving sugar business has allowed Belgian multi-millionaires Guy and Myriam Ullens to assemble the world's largest private collection of Chinese contemporary art. The passionate patrons of the arts boast more than 1,500 Chinese contemporary works, by three generations of artists. The couple is now holding an unprecedented exhibition at Beijing's 798 art zone and exhibition curator, Fei Dawei, says the show is a retrospective of one of the world's most dynamic art scenes.

The exhibition is being held at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) at 798 from November to February and has already attracted major attention from around the world, including visits from French President Nicolas Sarkozy and President of the Commission of the European Union Jose Manuel Barroso.

The Ullens developed a love of Chinese art in their youth, and Guy Ullens says he feels it "very necessary" to return the collection to its home country for the public to appreciate.

The industrialist says the UCCA, a platform for exhibitions, education and dialogue for Chinese contemporary art, is the ultimate location for his collection.

A total of 137 seminal works, comprising paintings, photography, video and installations, by 30 well-known artists, are displayed in the '85 New Wave exhibition.

Visitors dress up to become part of an installation work during an art exhibition in the 798 Art Zone in Beijing.

Prominent works include Wang Guangyi's Concretionary Northern Polar Region, Xu Bing's A Book from the Sky, Geng Jianyi's The Second Situation and Huang Yongping's Reptile - newspapers washed in three washing machines and piled up next to a group of Chinese-style tombs to depict the cycle of cultural birth and death.

Also on display is Zhang Peili's X - a series of paintings depicting rubber gloves used in medical operations, a symbol of life in the artist's eyes.

The installation Waterbed, by Shen Yuan, wife of Huang Yongping and one of the few major female artists, featured in the 1989 exhibition, is now on show at the UCCA. It features a transparent plastic mattress filled with water, small fish, and plants.

Waterbeds, a symbol of fashion and affluence in 1980s China, was depicted as a way to kill the fish through a lack of oxygen, offering a criticism of "the new consumerism" in China or "a metaphor for the political situation", commentators say.

The exhibition has drawn major public interest.

"It's the first major exhibition exploring the revolutionary movement of artistic and social transformation," says Fei, head of the Ullens Foundation, established in Switzerland in 2002.

He says this part of art history is largely unknown because "a great number of works have been lost or dispersed abroad", and to most people, including a young generation of Chinese artists, the story of Chinese contemporary art only began in the 1990s. "Chinese artists in the 1980s, although inspired by new ideas from the West, had begun to write their own story, and this was the real beginning of Chinese contemporary art," Fei says.

Breaking through 30 years of cultural seclusion, the artists, working almost from scratch, created a parallel and alternative contemporary art history to the West.

In five years, thousands of artists all over the country spontaneously formed collectives, instigated debate, and organized hundreds of experimental exhibitions.

Marianne Brouwer, a curator and writer from the Netherlands, says many Westerners had believed that contemporary art only existed in the West, but Chinese artists had been working hard for the recognition of Chinese contemporary art and trying to "legitimize" it domestically.

"Chinese people should let the world know that this country, with a long history of civilization, boasts not only classical, but also contemporary art, the peer of the Western contemporary form," critic Zhou Yan says.

Some critics say the '85 Movement took just five years to imitate a 100 years of history in Western contemporary art, and should not be claimed as the start of Chinese contemporary art.

However Zhou says it enriched China's art scene through both Western and classical Chinese expression and elements. "That is one of the contributions of Chinese artists to the world art scene."

"Twenty years on, looking back on the era could give us a perspective on rethinking the meaning of art," Fei says, adding he often recalls the "passionately idealistic spirit" of the time, when artists created for art's sake and not for money.

Artist Gu Dexin said in 1989 that he believed "Chinese artists had everything that was best in the world, except for money and large studios."

However, critic Wang Mingxian has pointed out a sharp difference between now and then: "Chinese artists nowadays have nothing except money and big studios."

"The market prices of Chinese contemporary art have soared dramatically, but not for the sake of art," critic Gao Minglu says, voicing disappointment that the market has become an incentive for the development of Chinese contemporary art, but not artistic or academic aptitude.

"Many artists of the '85 Movement continue their artistic explorations, but some artists have lost their artistic reason," Gao says.

Many documentary materials, manuscripts, letters, sketches, photos and rare videos are made public for the first time at the exhibition. An album of more than 4,000 pages recording artists' stories and works has been published for the exhibition to explain the period.

The '85 Movement fizzled out in the early 1990s when China's economy began to take off, and the heritage of the period was "sealed up", says critic Huang Zhuan, of the Guangzhou Academy of Arts in the south.

"We want to cure the amnesia of Chinese art circles," Fei says, adding the UCCA exhibition will show contemporary artists, especially young, emerging artists, that their value is so immense that they should continue their pursuits, but not reduce themselves to mere "interior decorators".

He says the reason the movement was forgotten so quickly was its "heavy idealism" and "missionary zeal", and the aim of the exhibition is to observe the movement from a distance and leave room for viewers to use their own assessments to further understand what is happening in Chinese art today.

(China Daily December 18, 2007)