The 'icing of global modernity': After Utopia

International global modernity - from reality TV to the forces of the moneymarkets; global brands to selfie sticks - and the traditions of ancient cultures make strange bedfellows. Or do they? Perhaps there's a seamless integration - a global cultural soup - in which we all float like Alphabet Spaghetti.

Luo Brothers, Double Happiness (The World's Most Famous Brands Series), 2008 Bronze painted bronze 31.5 x 23.62 x 19.69 in. (80.01 x 59.99 x 50.01 cm.)

Last night I attended a talk at the University of Sydney in which the past director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales (and noted China scholar) Edmund Capon, engaged two Chinese artists in conversation about how they navigate the treacherous morass of artistic freedom - and its limitations - in China. Shen Jiawei left China in 1989 with the diaspora who emigrated to Paris, New York, Sydney, Vancouver and other cities. Guo Jian dealt with his own troubles with the authorities just last year, returning to Sydney under difficult circumstances. Shen Jiawei painted propaganda pictures, very famous ones, in an earlier life, but is now better known for massive history paintings and portraits of luminaries ranging from the Pope, to Princess Mary of Denmark, to the collector and philanthropist Judith Neilson. Guo Jian enlisted in the People's Liberation Army at the age of 17, and painted propaganda pictures for the PLA. As a 'Cynical Realist' painter in the 1990s he overtly explored the nature of propaganda in pop-inspired paintings. The conversation was measured, and, it must be said, a little guarded, but interesting in that each artist represents the experience of living and working in two entirely different worlds.

Shen Jiawei, now and then.
Above, 'Standing Guard for our Great Motherland', a famous 1970s propaganda poster.
Below, 'How to Explain Art to a White Rabbit' (portrait of Judith Neilson) 2015

Capon played a role as the urbane western observer, inevitably on the outside looking in despite his long experience of China (first visiting in 1972, touring cadre schools, tractor factories, Potemkin communes and operations carried out under acupuncture) and his scholarly knowledge of ancient China. He appeared bemused at times, confessing he is completely mystified by the art market in China. "Who is buying all this stuff?" he exclaimed, after Guo Jian revealed that in the artist 'village' of Songzhuang there are, by some estimates, 20,000 artists living and working at any one time.

He spoke of the apparent materialism of the younger generation in comparison with the political commitment of the older, and I struggled to contain my disagreement. Artists born in the '80s and '90s may have come to adulthood in a dog-eat-dog aspirational and individualist world, where the phrase 'Serve the People' seems a quaint relic of a discarded past, but in my experience they are no less serious about the comments they make about their world. There are many ways to be political, and subversive images of Mao are no longer at any kind of cutting edge. Women artists, in particular, are seeking ways to explore the particularities of their lives, in hugely diverse ways, something which I explore at length in my forthcoming book, 'Half the Sky: Conversations with Contemporary Women Artists in China.'

Nevertheless, Capon is always good for a snappy quote, and last night was no exception. He showed images by the great ink master, Ba Da Shenren, to explain that rebellion was nothing new in Chinese art, before telling the assembled audience, 'The icing of global modernity on the cake of Chinese tradition is getting thicker and thicker - but there is still plenty of cake left.' This, certainly, seems a self-evident truth, and many artists in the major centres of Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Guangzhou are embedding traditional practices and philosophies in their work, in ways both more and less obvious.

The strength of traditional culture was evident in an excellent exhibition I saw a few weeks ago at the Singapore Art Museum, 'After Utopia: Revisiting the Ideal in Asian Contemporary Art.' My review of the show is published today in 'Daily Serving':

After Utopia: Revisiting the Ideal in Asian Contemporary Art at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) explores the dissonance between our innermost longings and the contemporary world we have created. Gunter Grass said, rather gloomily, that melancholy and utopia are heads and tails of the same coin. Imagining perfection, we confront the contradiction between the Arcadia of our imagination and the imperfect realities of our everyday. Featuring eighteen artists and artists’ collectives from across the Asian region, the exhibition was conceived as a four-part narrative. From the potent metaphor of the garden, we move to the city as a “contested site of the utopian ideal.”[1] Discredited utopic ideologies are juxtaposed with the notion that the search for an ideal world is now a psychological, inner journey, an entirely individual pursuit.

Ian Woo. We Have Crossed the Lake, 2009; Acrylic on Linen; 194 x 244 cm. Image courtesy of the Singapore Art Museum.

Other Edens presents the garden as a site of desire in the colonial imagination. Singaporean painter Ian Woo’s  lyrical, abstract representation of foliage and water represents the solace found in the natural world. A reference to mid-20th century abstraction is evident, but Woo has invented a powerful and idiosyncratic visual language. Underlying the gestural, calligraphic mark-making of We Have Crossed the Lake (2009) is a spare restraint emerging from his deep knowledge of Chinese ink-painting traditions.

Some works reflect the bitter aftermath of totalitarian ideologies. Asian nation states today—even the behemoth of a post-Mao China—are hostage to the forces of the global market, and old certainties have vanished. Shen Shaomin’s hyper-real embalmed bodies of Communist leaders lie in crystal sepulchres, as if awaiting a call to arms that might reanimate them. Mao lies next to Ho Chi Minh and Fidel, Kim Il-sung and Lenin. Summit (2009) is a G8 meeting of cadavers. The meta-narratives of the twentieth century, like these old men, lie in the morgue of history.

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

Vietnamese/American collective The Propeller Group collaborated with an advertising agency to re-brand Communism, a tongue-in-cheek attempt to make it newly palatable. The mise-en-scène of Television Commercial for Communism (2011– 2012) is all white—no red flags, no references to the glorious struggle of the proletarian masses, no cult-like imagery: a satirical “whitewashed” revolutionary ideology as empty and uninflected as a mouthwash commercial.

Anurendra Jegadeva. MA-NA-VA-REH – Love, Loss and Pre-Nuptials in The Time of the Big Debate, 2012-2014; multi-media installation; dimensions variable. Singapore Art Museum collection, image courtesy Singapore Art Museum

Anurendra Jegadeva’s MA-NA-VA-REH – Love, Loss and Pre-Nuptials in the Time of the Big Debate (2012–2014) presents the personal as unambiguously political. A seductively gaudy Hindu wedding altar is adorned with images of the artist’s parents, the religious iconography of four major religions, and a panoply of South Asian cultural references. Jegadeva comments on two definitions of marriage: the wedding of the artist’s parents, in 1957, the year of Malaysia’s independence; and the marriage of convenience that created Malaysia as a modern state. Caucasian Krishnas are juxtaposed with the Virgin Mary, and portraits of political leaders jostle in a joyously vibrant eclecticism. In a time of  increasing political and religious tension this exuberant mash-up of culture and tradition seems utopian indeed.

Kawayan De Guia. Bomba, 2011; installation comprising 18 mirror bombs, sputnik sound sculpture; dimensions variable. Singapore Art Museum collection, image courtesy Singapore Art Museum

18 sparkling “bombs” hang in the darkened space of the chapel (the museum was once a Catholic school.)  Terrifying disco balls promising destruction, they cast shards of light onto the Stations of the Cross that still adorn the walls. At once beautiful and menacing, Kawayan De Guia’s Bomba (2011) references the bombing of Manila in World War II, but evokes the horrors of more recent conflicts, and others of the past, contrasting the glittery lure of hedonism with a dance of death.

Chris Chong Chan Fui. Block B, 2012-2014; single-channel video with sound, 20 minutes (loop). Collection of the Artist, image courtesy Singapore Art Museum

Other works explore urban alienation. Chris Chong Chan Fui’s 2012–2014 video Block B was shot in a gritty neighbourhood of Kuala Lumpur where life unfolds chaotically within a grid of brutalist high-rise apartments. Shannon Lee Castleman set up sixteen video cameras in facing apartments on Singapore’s  Jurong West Street 81. Residents simultaneously filmed and were filmed by their neighbours. The work reflects the new realities of surveillance, but also reveals the joys of the everyday within these closely-packed buildings. In unscripted exchanges between neighbours who might otherwise never have spoken, we see the possibilities for human connection in unpromising environments. Through this examination of utopias lost and found, the exhibition reminds us that the universal desire for the perfect world remains a tantalisingly elusive aspiration.

Reality TV (If You Are the One) meets the Great Wall of China (photo Luise Guest 2013)

After Utopia: Revisiting the Ideal in Asian Contemporary Art is on view at the Singapore Art Museum through October 18, 2015.

[1] After Utopia catalogue, Singapore Art Museum, 2015.

We Have Crossed the Lake

Ian Woo, 'We Have Crossed the Lake', image used with permission of the artist

Ian Woo, 'The Great Interior',  image used with permission of the artist

I loved the work by Abstract painter Ian Woo in his review show at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Lasalle College of Fine Arts, SIngapore. I included a review of the show in a piece about contemporary art in Singapore I recently had posted on 'The Art Life'  http://theartlife.com.au/?p=5698. 

Here are my thoughts about the exhibition:

 Lyrical and beautiful, without ever descending into empty gesture, or becoming formulaic, Woo’s body of work reveals a practice of unremitting commitment and a single-minded examination of the possibilities of colour, mark and surface. Owing a debt to Philip Guston and Susan Rothenberg, as well as to canonical abstract painters of the mid-20th century such as Kline or Motherwell, the works represent nevertheless a powerful and idiosyncratic visual language all his own. In works such as ‘We Have Crossed the Lake’, 2009, the figure-ground relationships demonstrate a confident knowledge that what is left out is just as important as what is shown. An energetic calligraphy of white and black lines scrawls with apparent abandon across the surface of the work, yet underlying the gestural mark-making is a sure, spare restraint which derives from his evident knowledge of Chinese ink-painting traditions.

Playing with hard edge shapes versus lyrical, smoky drifts of grey and ochre, an earlier work such as Before I give an answer I see a flower indicates more obviously the artist’s influence from New York painters such as Guston. The ethereal drawn lines of The Clearest Symbol, dating from 1997, tantalise with hints of mysterious half-seen objects or landscapes. The subtlety of the grey washes and stains and the spare restraint of the floating forms evoke a dream-like state. Large ink drawings in this show reinforced this sense of meditation – a surprising calm as many of the individual works are so filled with energy and crammed with disparate shapes, colours and forms. Woo has said he is interested in complication, confusion and connection, and this sense that the artist is working out difficult problems on the surface of each painting is a thread running through this show.

Ian Woo, Before I Give an Answer I See a Flower, image used with permission of the artist

These works were showing in the wonderful new buildings of the Lasalle College of Fine Arts,  making me fantasise about being an art student once more. Why did I not fully appreciate the wonderful luxury of those 4 years spent at art college, all those many years ago? Why on earth did I not spend every precious moment learning as much as I possibly could? Too much time dancing to rockabilly bands (it WAS the '70s!) and drinking cheap beer, and not enough time painting! Especially way too much time spent on nonsensical student politics. What can I say? "That was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead"....(to quote either Christopher Marlowe's 'The Jew of Malta', or the crime novelist PD James, depending on which Wikipedia entry you want to go with.) I was seized by the same sense of nostalgia and a degree of longing when I spent a day in the painting studios of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in March this year. Such intent young people, so serious of purpose, so very unlike my memories of the early 70s! No good wishing for the past to return, I tell myself briskly as I vow to make the most of every minute and seize every opportunity that presents itself.


'We have crossed the lake', indeed. 

Lasalle College of Fine Arts Buildings, Singapore

Chinese Whispers / Singapore Stories

Life After Death, Justin Lee, at the Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore

On the plane coming home from Singapore I began to read Jan Wong's 'Chinese Whispers', her excruciating, harrowing, sometimes funny and sometimes very moving account of her quest to track down a fellow student from Beijing University where she had studied in the years immediately following the dramatic upheavals of the Cultural Revolution. At the time Wong was the first foreign (Canadian of Chinese descent) student to be admitted to the university, and an ardent Maoist. A fellow student approached her and asked for her help to get to America. Wong made the momentous decision to denounce her to the university authorities. By her own account, in the intervening 30 years, working as a Beijing-based foreign correspondent and then back in North America, she forgot all about this incident. It was only when she re-read her old diaries that she began to realise the enormity of what she had done, and begin (somewhat belatedly, some might think) to feel a great weight of guilt and remorse. The book recounts her quest in 2006 to find out what happened to this student. 


Without revealing too much, it  goes without saying that the consequences of her action were catastrophic. Despite some reservations about books of this quest-like and somewhat confessional nature (it is too easy to imagine the conversations with her agent and publisher, negotiating a book deal and a trip back to China) I found that I couldn't put it down. I especially enjoyed her astonishment, amusement and dismay at the enormous changes in China and in Beijing since she had last lived there in the 1990s - the condos for the wealthy, the emphasis on flashy designer labels, the BMWs and Mercedes, the shiny new pre-Olympics architecture and shopping malls. And the wholesale destruction of ancient neighbourhoods and significant buildings. All this in contrast with the wages and conditions of the migrant construction workers and maids (once a Maoist.....)


 I recognised much in her descriptions from my own bemused wanderings in Beijing,  although I agree to some extent with those who suggest that the foreigners (and it is mostly foreigners) who are eager to save the old courtyard houses in the hutongs are engaging in a kind of orientalism, a nostalgic chinoiserie of blue jackets, cloth shoes and bicycles.

So, despite being in Singapore and immersing myself in the colonial architecture, the food (fabulous as always) and the chaos and colour of Little India, I found myself thinking about the Chinese diaspora and the ways that it has played out in the artworld internationally, most particularly of course since 1989.  Similarly to Hong Kong, many of the commercial galleries were showing works by Chinese painters from the mainland. However I enjoyed quirky works by Lu Yifei painted on the covers of old books - these have a somewhat Japanese 'kawaii' or cute aesthetic which is also found in much contemporary graphic design. Lu was born in Shandong Province but studied and now lives and works in Singapore. In contrast, I also enjoyed the strong review show at the Lasalle College of the Arts (where Lu Yifei also studied) of abstract painter Ian Woo. 

Ian Woo

Lyrical and beautiful without descending into empty gesture or ever becoming formulaic, this body of work represents a practice of unremitting commitment and a single-minded examination of the possibilities of colour, mark and surface. Owing a debt to Philip Guston or Susan Rothenberg, as well as to canonical abstract painters such as Kline and Motherwell, the resulting series reveals nevertheless a powerful and idiosyncratic visual language. 


And the other huge surprise was the campus building - an  extraordinary sculptural edifice of glass and tilting planes. Designed by RSP Architects and completed in 2007 the project represented Singapore in the architectural section of the Venice Biennale in 2004. 

Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore

That a city of this size has three significant  art and design schools is interesting, although the quality of what was on show in the various gallery spaces was variable. A show running concurrently in the smaller gallery space at Lasalle, Ava Tan's "Woman, Body, Fetish" exploring the representation of the female body in a series of paintings offered little that is new, despite some energetic and expressive painterly surfaces.


At the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Gallery (NAFA)  "Sooner or Later this Happens to Everyone, Everyone" included conceptual works by Erica Lai, Joey Soh and Miguel Chew. These were perhaps more interesting in their conceptualisation by the artists than in the experience of the audience. The always interesting experimental Substation on Armenian Street showed an installation by Bruce Quek, "The Hall of Mirrors". So it would seem that the vital signs of the visual arts in Singapore are in good shape, despite all the usual problems faced by artists everywhere, and others which are unique to this small city of so many diverse cultural traditions and languages. One very strong thread seems to be the interest in design in all its forms, and the breaking down of barriers between artists, architects and graphic designers in particular. The Red Dot Design Museum had a steady stream of Singaporean visitors while I was there, and the works of Zxerokool (see previous post) and Justin Lee demonstrate the successful hybridisation of art and design.

Tupperware Display at the Red Dot Design Museum

Justin Lee installation at the Asian Civilisations Museum