The List: Ten Moments that Mattered

Cruising lazily out of the choppy seas of 2015 and into the uncharted waters of 2016 I have been reviewing experiences of Chinese art, and China, and doing that very cliched thing: making a list. I've read so many of these in the last few days. Lists of the best and worst of the year are metastastizing everywhere, from movies and music to food fads (kale is gone, you'll be glad to know) to the most over-used words of 2015 (''bae'', apparently, and I am sadly so out of touch with popular culture that I could not tell you what it even means) The list mania appears to be contagious. I decided to launch into my own "best of" compilation of art highlights - and a few lowlights. It's entirely personal; my retrospective musings over a year filled with art, mostly Chinese.

1 January saw Sydney audiences enthralled by the ever-so-slowly crumbling face of a giant Buddha made of ash from the burned prayers of temple worshippers in China and Taiwan. Zhang Huan, having reinvented himself entirely from his earlier persona as the bad boy of '90s violently masochistic performance art, presented this latest iteration at Carriageworks. And it was rather wonderful. I wrote about meeting the artist and encountering the silent presence of 'Sydney Buddha' for The Art Life. Click HERE for the story.

Zhang Huan, 'Sydney Buddha'' installed at Carriageworks, image courtesy the artist and Carriageworks

2 January also saw some younger Chinese bad boys hit town - the Yangjiang Group arrived with their unique brand of artistic anarchy for a crowd-funded project, 'Áctions for Tomorrow',  at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. Along with a bunch of other bemused scribes I had tea with the artists. So. Much. Tea. It was an artwork, and we were part of the art. Previously their performances of 'Fan Hou Shu Fa' (After Dinner Calligraphy) had involved prodigious feats of alcohol consumption, but they now stick mainly to tea, which they had brought with them from their home in Guangdong Province. What did we see in the gallery? Wax dripped over a shop full of mass produced clothing to create a frozen monument to retail therapy? Check. An installation of the remains of 7,000 sheets of paper covered with text from Marx’s Das Kapital in Chinese calligraphy, over which simultaneous games of soccer had been played? Check. A 24-metre mural juxtaposing expressive Chinese characters with scrawled English text reading “God is Dead! Long Live the RMB!”? Check. When I presumptuously asked if this last had a connection with their views about a materialistic new China, Zheng Guogu shook his head sadly at my outdated desire to find meaning. That's entirely beside the point, he said. Anti-art? To misquote the Chinese Communist Party’s description of socialism in the global marketplace, perhaps this was “dada with Chinese characteristics.” I wrote about my interview in Daily Serving. Click HERE for the story.

The Yangjiang Group at 4 A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Zheng Guogu in centre) photo: Luise Guest

3 In February I was a little bit preoccupied with arranging a wedding, and I have zero recollection of March to April. May brought the Sherman Foundation exhibition of Yang Zhichao's 'Chinese Bible'. Yang is another Chinese performance artist becoming a little less inclined in middle age to punish his own body with the surgical insertion of various objects - reputedly at the insistence of his daughter. Chinese Bible is a beautiful and important installation - part art, part anthropology, part social action. Not unlike his good friend Ai Weiwei, Yang Zhichao made a formalist, minimalist arrangement of found objects, some dating from the Cultural Revolution. 

“Historical experience is written in iron and blood,” said Mao Zedong. In Chinese Bible, historical experience is written in thousands of humble, mass-produced notebooks once owned by ordinary Chinese people, their worn covers testament to the weathering of time and the vicissitudes of social change. Ai Weiwei says, “Everything is art. Everything is politics,” and Chinese Bible reveals a similar approach to art as a form of social engagement. I interviewed Yang Zhichao at SCAF with the translation assistance of Claire Roberts, who curated the show and had written a most wonderful catalogue essay. They told me that after the installation, on their way to a celebratory lunch in Chinatown, they asked their Chinese taxi driver if he would like to see the exhibition. He said he could not possibly, his memories are so painful it would make him weep. Later, in October, I met sculptor Shi Jindian at his home and studio in the mountains outside Chengdu. Disarmingly humble, polite and hospitable, as the day wore on he was becoming monosyllabic and I was worrying about why my interview with this artist was proving to be such hard going. He suddenly said, "I have lived through every period of recent Chinese history, and it was all terrible. I don't want to talk about the past." Like the Sydney taxi driver, and for so many others of his generation, there are just too many bitter memories. You can read the article and my interview with Yang Zhichao  HERE.

Yang Zhichao, Chinese Bible, 2009 (detail, 3,000 found books, Dimensions variable
Image courtesy: the Gene and Brian Sherman Collection, and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney
Photo: Jenni Carter AGNSW

Lin Tianmiao, Badges 2009 White silk satin, coloured silk threads, gold embroidery frames made of stainless steel; sound component: 4 speakers with amplifier. Dimensions variable, diameters range from 25 cm - 120 cm, 266 badges total. Image courtesy: The Gene & Brian Sherman Collection, and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Photo: Jenny Carter

4 In the second part of this exhibition, 'Go East' at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, curated from the Sherman collection by Suhanya Raffel, it was wonderful to finally see Lin Tianmiao's 'Badges' hanging in the imposing domed vestibule. Visiting her studio in 2013, I had watched her assistants stitching the texts, words describing women in Chinese and English, onto embroidery hoops. I had wondered what they were thinking as their nimble fingers stitched words like "Slut", "Whore" and "Fox Spirit" (a terrible name for a woman in Chinese.) I was amused in Sydney, where all the badges were Chinese,  to encounter shocked groups of Mandarin speaking tourists making their children look the other way. In this show, in addition to works by Zhang Huan and Song Dong, Yin Xiuzhen's 'Suitcase Cities' were a highlight. A newly commissioned work by Ai Weiwei intrigued my students. ‘An Archive’ is a collection of the artist’s blog posts, banned since his efforts to name the children killed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake attracted the attention of the authorities, presented in the form of traditional Chinese books in a beautiful timber box. A clever and more than usually subtle representation of Ai's resistance to the censorship and constraint that saw him confined to Beijing without possession of his passport, constantly under surveillance, until 22 July this year.

Kawayan De Guia. Bomba, 2011; installation comprising 18 mirror bombs, sputnik sound sculpture; dimensions variable. Collection of Singapore Art Museum. Courtesy of Singapore Art Museum

5 In July, in Singapore, I saw 'After Utopia: Revisiting the Ideal in Asian Contemporary Art ' at the Singapore Art Museum, confirming my suspicion that after 'the sublime', 'Utopia' was THE buzzword of the 2015 artworld. It was an excellent and intriguing riff on the theme, featuring familiar works by Shen Shaomin and The Propellor Group with others that were new and wonderful discoveries. I loved 'Bomba': Eighteen sparkling 'bombs' hung in a darkened space. Terrifying disco balls promising destruction, they cast shards of light onto the Stations of the Cross that still adorn the walls of what was once the chapel of a Catholic school. Beautiful and menacing, Kawayan De Guia’s installation specifically references the bombing of Manila in World War II, but it also evokes the horrors of more recent conflicts, contrasting the glittery lure of hedonism with a dance of death. After that, Shen Shaomin's embalmed dictators lying in their glass coffins were an added bonus.

Shen Shaomin. Summit (detail – Ho Chi Minh), 2009; silica gel simulation, acrylic, and fabric; dimensions variable. Singapore Art Museum collection. Courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

6 August was about planning and organising my own reinvention, from one kind of life to another, and in September I went to China for 5 weeks, to interview artists for a new project, which (of course) provided more highlights. Of these, perhaps the most remarkable was my visit to the studio/manufacturing hub of Xu Zhen and the MadeIn Company, in Shanghai. You would have to have been wearing a blindfold or lived in a cave to remain unaware of Xu Zhen, who appears to have taken on the mantle of Andy Warhol (although he told me that his favourite artists are Jeff Koons and Matthew Barney.) His enormous installations merge art and commerce, art and design, east and west, past and present, and any other form of post-internet hybridity you care to mention. He will feature in the 2016 Biennale of Sydney, and the work of the artist and his company of assistants and employees has been seen simultaneously in almost as many locations as the ubiquitous Ai Weiwei. (Although Xu Zhen himself does not fly, so everything is arranged and organised, and all research outside of China completed, by teams of MadeIn employees.) A focus artist at the 2014 New York Armory Show, and one of my top picks of last year for the spectacle of his retrospective exhibition at Beijing's Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Xu Zhen is given to gnomic Warhol-like utterances. "Chinese contemporary art nowadays is a farce filled with surprises," he told Ocula. 'Eternity' has been wowing audiences at the White Rabbit Gallery since early September. And watch out Sydney, there is a promise of more to come! 

Xu Zhen by MadeIn Company, Eternity, 2013-2014, glass-fibre-reinforced concrete, artificial stone, steel, mineral pigments, 15 m x 1 m x 3.4 m image courtesy White Rabbit Collection

7 And so to Shanghai in late September, and a major highlight of my year: the exhibition of an artist who should be a household name. Chen Zhen died (much too young) in Paris in 2000. Although after 1986 he essentially lived and worked in Paris, his personal history and deep cultural roots lay in China, and specifically in Shanghai. From the mid-1990s he returned over and over to a city on fast-forward. Shanghai was undergoing a massive, controversial transformation, in the process of becoming the global megalopolis it is today. The exhibition at Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum presented works from this period. Sometimes witty, sometimes profoundly beautiful and melancholy, Chen Zhen’s works are steeped in his identity as a Chinese artist at a historical “tipping point.” As the artist said in his online project Shanghai Investigations, “without going to New York and Paris, life could be internationalized.” To finally see 'Crystal Landscape of the Inner Body' was a revelation - both sad and beautiful. HERE is the whole story.

Chen Zhen. Crystal Landscape of Inner Body, 2000; crystal, iron, glass; 95 x 70 x 190 cm. 
Courtesy of Rockbund Art Museum and Galleria Continua San Gimignano/Beijing/Les Moulins.

With Wang Qingsong in his Studio, October 2015, Caochangdi, Beijing

8 is for Beijing, in October, and meetings over three action-packed weeks with a ridiculous number of interesting artists, all represented in the White Rabbit Collection. Old friends and new faces: Bu Hua, Bingyi, Li Hongbo, Zhu Jia, Wang Qingsong, Wang Guofeng, Liu Zhuoquan, Qiu Xiaofei, Lin Zhi, Huang Jingyuan, and Zhou Jinhua. Dinners with friends, long walks through the hutongs and the never-ending struggles of language learning. I journeyed through the smog to studios on Beijing's far outskirts, collecting stories and looking at extraordinary work, as I had done the previous week in Shanghai and Hangzhou. I left China with a kaleidoscope of impressions that are just starting to crystallise into the possibility of words. I saw Liu Xiaodong at the Faurschou Foundation and Ai Weiwei at Continua, but disappointingly missed Liu Shiyuan in Shanghai at the Yuz Museum. One of the youngest artists I interviewed in 2013 and 2014, her work will next show at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, in an exhibition curated by Philip Tinari, among others, called 'Bentu: Chinese Artists in a Time of Turbulence and Transformation.'

9 is another repeat of one of my 2014 picks. The rather bizarre Red Brick Museum (practically empty on each occasion I have visited) on Beijing's northern outskirts was showing work by the artist who first inspired me to make Chinese art my focus of research, teaching and writing. Huang Yong Ping's fabulous thousand armed goddess of mercy was an unexpected delight when I visited in December of 2014. Again, in 2015, a new exhibition, curated by Hou Hanru (also the curator of the Chen Zhen show in Shanghai) presented a version of Baton - Serpent, seen in a previous Asia Pacific Triennial in Brisbane. Not quite the 'words fail me' experience of seeing Leviathanation at Tang Gallery in 2011, or the 'Thousand Armed Guanyin' at the Shanghai Biennale in 2012, but nonetheless extraordinary. And all the more wonderful for being encountered in the deserted echoing spaces of one of China's newest museums.

10 And here we are, washed up on shore, arrived at the final, dog days of 2015. 

November to December, hmmm. What to pick? NOT 'Ai Weiwei and Andy Warhol' at the NGV. If you have read my review (Click HERE if you want to) you know I had some issues with that exhibition - although I wish I had seen the London show at the Royal Academy. I admire Ai enormously for his genuine commitment - particularly his establishment of a studio on Lesbos to make art relating to the current refugee crisis. But boy oh boy did I hate those Lego portraits. And absolutely NOT the 'Rain Room' at the Yuz Museum in Shanghai - an empty spectacle. Nor anything at the major Sydney galleries - I cannot get excited about a few Renaissance works from Scotland, and Grayson Perry, whilst interesting, does not float my boat. 

YUAN GOANG-MING Dwelling - Moment III 2014. Digital Photography / Colour Photograph. 

120 x 180 cm Edition of 8. Image Courtesy of the Artist and Hanart TZ Gallery.

 I'm giving my Number 10 highlight spot to Yuan Goang-ming at Hanart TZ in Hong Kong. In this show, entitled Dwelling, we were presented with the uncomfortable intersection of the real and the apparently impossible. In the gallery space, an elegant table was laid as if for a dinner party, with crystal glasses and an ornate dinner service. Every now and then a loud clanking noise disrupted the silence, and the table shook as if the building had been hit by an earthquake. In the title work, Dwelling, (2014) the focus is a blandly modern living room, the only oddity the rather slow riffling pages of a magazine on the chair, a book on the coffee table. A breeze wafts the curtains. Suddenly, and without warning, the entire room explodes. Slowly, languidly, the wreckage of the room drifts back until the room once again regains its ordinary appearance. Filmed 

underwater, although it takes a while to realise this, the movement of every object seems dreamlike. Yuan suggests that what we accept as stable and fixed is in fact entirely unpredictable. In a split second, the apparently impossible can disrupt everything we take for granted. 

In my own 2015 version of the impossible becoming possible, I have changed careers, started new research and writing projects, and - in a total triumph of optimism over bitter experience, I enrolled in a new term of Chinese language classes.

Oh. And I have written a book. Out in February. 

Just what is it that makes Shanghai so different, so appealing?

My sentiments exactly, after a day experiencing all the contradictions of modern China. This is a work seen at Vanguard Gallery in M50

I go to sleep at night with all the Chinese phrases and sentences floating around in my head that I somehow haven't been able to remember during the day when I need them. In my dreams I am wonderfully fluent, but during my waking moments it is as if I have been rendered mute. I stumble through basic requests, usually forgetting the interrogative 'ma?' in my questions, so I must sound weirdly declarative. Sometimes I obviously sound better than I am, so am met with a flood, a torrent, an avalanche of Chinese and have to shamefully declare 'Wo bu mingbai' - I don't understand. I am absurdly pleased with myself when very simple conversations are conducted successfully in Chinese - albeit with a fair bit of mime and gesturing. People are wonderfully good-humoured and like to practice their English, so we get by with good grace on both sides - although I find they are generally very amused by the notion of any foreigner attempting to speak Chinese. Secretly I suspect they think we are absolute barbarians.

Sometimes this seems to be in fact the case. Last night as I was desperately flinging myself into the path of the terrifying Shanghai traffic, attempting to hail a cab, a middle aged Australian couple got out of a taxi next to me and the man said, "You might as well take this one, he can't seem to understand my instructions". Why on earth would you expect him to? is what I wanted to ask, but instead gratefully jumped in. Later I felt guilty, thinking I should have tried to help them communicate, but I must have been infected by some of the Chinese 'every woman for herself' attitude in public spaces. And I didn't like my compatriots appearing both ignorant AND arrogant. Also they had just come out of a very swanky hotel, so too bad!


Embarrassing Chinese moments: "Tai Chi Le!"

1. Almost falling headfirst out of a Chinese toilet at the feet of an artist in his gallery. I had temporarily forgotten that Chinese-style toilets have a steep step at the door. A quick recovery and a (probably unconvincing) attempt to suggest that I had always intended to exit the 'ce suo' with astonishing speed was my strategy to save face here
2. Involuntarily screaming loudly in the back of a Shanghai taxi as we swerved violently through an intersection, scattering riders of bicycles, pedi-cabs and pedestrians, almost colliding with a bus. I have become very used to the no-seatbelts, drive across multiple lanes and on the wrong side of the road and through red lights whenever you feel like it modus operandi, but this journey was horrific even by Shanghai standards. I sat gripping the door handle, thinking I may never see my children again. and  uttering moans and gasps, with the driver looking at me sideways in contempt

Three more things not to select from a Chinese menu:

1. Bullfrog in sauce
2. ' New York' pizza - I have tried this and it is neither New York style nor pizza
3. 'Yuanyang' or Cantonese coffee/tea drink, a mixture of a small amount of instant coffee and Hong Kong style milk tea. My very sophisticated university lecturer Chinese friend drank this to accompany stir fried seafood and a Malaysian curry, much to my disbelief

Shi Qing, Shanghai Electricity Shopping Mall, Shanghai Biennale

Installation, Shanghai Biennale

Installation detail, Shanghai Biennale

Installation, Shanghai Biennale

The last few days have exposed once again the extraordinary contradictions of China, as seen through the  the microcosm lens of the artworld. From the quiet, contemplative and thoughtful practice of Shi Zhiying, steeped in Buddhism and the traditions of ink painting; to the internationalism of the Shanghai Biennale and some apocalyptic exhibitions at M50; to the Shanghai Museum's blockbuster show of Chinese ink painting and calligraphy from American museums; to sentimental socialist realism at the Shanghai Art Museum; to social activism through art in the work of a number of painters and the performance artist Wu Meng: everything goes into the stir fry that is China today.

I started the day at the very wonderful Shanghai Museum, which is housed in a rather ugly building designed to resemble an ancient bronze 'ding' vessel and containing a fabulous collection. The exhibition of paintings and calligraphy from museums such as the Metropolitan in New York, the Cleveland Art Museum and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts was packed with Chinese visitors of all ages, intently reading the calligraphy and peering at the scrolls and paintings in silence. I felt like such a frivolous dilettante flitting from one to the next and trying to remember the historical sequence of the different dynasties. It is very possible to see the strong influence that these traditions continue to have on contemporary artists - especially literati painting and Song Dynasty Bird and Flower painting. And humbling to see what the Chinese were doing during Europe's  Dark Ages.

I visited my favourite Tang Dynasty 'equestrienne' sculptures - love those feisty girls riding bareback - and also the court ladies looking terribly smug with their moon-like faces and fat rosy cheeks.

With a brief detour past the men playing cards and mahjong in People's Square, under the eyes of a statue of a revolutionary hero, I entered the Shanghai Art Museum, previously the European-only club of the Shanghai Racecourse, to discover myself deep in the sentimental land of socialist realism - the motherland in fact, as the exhibitions title declared. I have seen a number of these exhibitions in China, where artists employ their exemplary skills to depict scenes like those in a Victorian narrative painting with a moral - they always remind me of the Holman Hunt  work 'The Awakening Conscience' except that they depict beautiful idealised peasant girls and happy ethnic minority peoples herding their sheep. In fact, they are not unlike the photographs sold to tourists in Xintiandi and Tianzifang, which so often use dirty-faced ethnic minority children as their subjects. In these there is an unpleasant kind of Orientalism and 'exotification', as well as a romanticisation of a reality that is more often difficult, unpleasant and politically fraught. Ironically, the artist is based in LA and paints for an international market of nostalgic Chinese. The Shanghai Art Museum was, however, once again, full of Chinese visitors taking photos of the works on their mobile phones and buying postcards to take home.

Li Zijian poster at the Shanghai Art Museum - teeth clenching sentimentalism

Li Zijan, part of a series of paintings of young idealised rural women clutching letters

Artists have responded to the dramatic and growing wealth disparity in China in a number of ways. Suzhou Gallery in M50 showed paintings by a  group of artists participating in a project travelling to Hunan and Jiangsu Province and painting old people, young migrant workers, and children in the village school. Unfortunately there was no information available in English about the artists or the project. The paintings were good - strong, expressive and allowing the subjects full dignity, without romanticising their hardship. These young migrant workers lead hard lives with an optimistic determination to reinvent themselves, far from rural poverty, in the factories of the Pearl River Delta. 

Artist Unknown, Young Migrant Workers, Suzhou Gallery, M50

Artist Unknown, Village School, Suzhou Gallery, M50

At the Biennale a project of video interviews of old people from the villages of remote provinces and from older areas of the big cities is an attempt to record their stories and memories. Walking through the hanging installation of the still images of their faces is quite a haunting experience.

The painter Yi Wei is showing large and fabulously painterly canvases recording the impoverished living conditions of migrant workers and the urban poor. Reminiscent of the virtuousity of Liu Xioadong, I found these paintings gripping, absolutely unsentimental yet filled with humanity and compassion. There is a growing awareness and unease here about the social implications of the changes that have taken place in the last ten years, and a growing bitterness about the 'mega-rich' and their conspicuous consumption of all the status symbols of western fashion, from Philippe Patek watches to Louis Vuitton handbags and Porsches. In fact there is a web site that tracks the watches worn by members of the People's Congress and publicises them online. The other day, performance artist and activist Wu Meng told me about the film project she is working on, recording interviews with the 'educated youth' who were exiled from Shanghai to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. Now elderly, and in many cases returned to the city of their birth, they feel angry and  unfairly treated. There are many such projects, some more politically sensitive and potentially dangerous to the artists than others, reflecting a growing interest in justice and a growing compassion for the 'underdog'.

Wu Meng in her Shanghai studio

Wu Meng's performance 'Security, Sad Clown' at Shanghai Expo, 2010

Another artist, Li Xiaofei, has presented a video work called 'Assembly Line' in which he interviewed factory workers, managers and owners about their lives, examining the relationships between man and machine, management and labour, and the individual and society. One of the women interviewed spoke about her work in the past enforcing family planning regulations and the one child policy, another issue currently being re-examined here.

Yi Wei, 'Slumdog'

Yi Wei, 'Slumdog'

Yi Wei, Old House

Yi Wei, Factory

At M50, the enclave of artist studios and galleries (the good, the bad and the ugly) next to Suzhou Creek I wandered the galleries for most of the afternoon. At Vanguard, a bizarre and interesting curated show 'Just What is it that Makes the End of the World so Appealing?' included works by the Made-In collective - a tent surely intended to reference Tracy Emin's notorious 'Everyone I Have Ever Slept With since 1963' and Yang Zhenzhong's video in which a series of people spit what appears to be blood over the camera in a repetitive sequence, recalling his famous 'I Know I Will Die' video from some years ago.

Hu Xiangcheng, ' Just What is it that Makes the End of the World so Different, So Appealing?', installation at Vanguard Gallery, M50, Shanghai

Hu Xiangcheng, ' Just What is it that Makes the End of the World so Different, So Appealing?', installation at Vanguard Gallery, M50, Shanghai

Made-In, Tent for Safety D

Yang Zhenzhong

Yang Zhenzhong

Yang Zhenzhong

At Island 6 (Liu Dao) 'The Cat That Eats Diodes' revealed their characteristic crossover hybrid works that blend painting, sculpture, light and sound, and computer generated animation. Sometimes too commercial for my taste (and, sometimes, quite frankly, sexist in their approach to the representation of women) nevertheless a really interesting collective art practice that integrates new technologies with artmaking. And a real indication of the interest in Shanghai of the way that boundaries between art, design, architecture, fashion and even events can be blurred.

Liu Dao (Island 6) Interactive Work - when you call the number, something will happen!
And you will get a text message from the character in the artwork. Witty, engaging and surprising. 
Art? I am still unsure.

At Studio Rouge, a number of different works including some of Huang Xu's beautiful plastic bags photographed to transmogrify them into 'scholar rocks', thus making a comment on the influence of the literati in Chinese tradition and the significant issues of environmental degradation and pollution. With his wife, Dai Dandan, he developed the recent installation show at Studio Rouge in Shanghai and later in Hong Kong. 'Mr and Mrs Huang in the Humble Administrator's Garden' combined his photographs and other sculptural works in which he uses buttons to create temples and pagodas, with Dai Dandan's 'luxe' scholar rocks encrusted with rhinestones.  A witty and beautiful play on the Chinese obsession with gardens as miniature perfected landscapes.

Huang Xu and Dai Dandan in their studio, Beijing, photograph Luise Guest reproduced with permission of the artists

Having spent a morning this week wandering the Yu Gardens here and having all the various levels of symbolism explained to me by my young and very serious translator I feel I have just a glimmering of understanding.

Yu Gardens Shanghai, a rare non-touristed moment of tranquillity

At OV Gallery, an exhibition by painter Shi Jing, 'The Remains of the Day', also seems a little apocalyptic. Curator Rebecca Catching, whom I met today, says that his "asteroid series takes this concept of elapsing time to a new and cosmological level. Images of asteroids, which were taken from an Internet fan-site, are applied to the canvas using a combination of brushstrokes moving in different directions to depict the bulbous, pockmarked forms. What fascinates Shi Jing is the idea that for an asteroid, travelling an average of 90,000 km an hour, these photos are outdated even by the time they are taken. What we perceive is merely an image of an asteroid which is now light-years away from where it once was." The paintings become an installation with frames constructed with protruding LED lights which cast eerie shades of green, blue and magenta onto the dark surfaces. This continues the artist's interest in the vastness of the cosmos.

Shi Jing, Seen in Passing, courtesy of Chambers Fine Art Beijing

There seems to be a somewhat apocalyptic theme here, and in a week in which North Korea fired a long range missile and many memorial ceremonies of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre took place across China,  that may be most appropriate. Meanwhile, however, the men in People's Square play mahjong and in Fuxin Park they fly kites and play cards. Life continues in all its banality and its beauty.

Playing cards under the watchful eye of Marx and Engels

Gathering in People's Square

Kite Flyer at Fuxin Park