Artist’s Explanation “Thousands and Thousands of Points”

Shan Weijun attaches great importance to the purity of expression in his paintings. On the surface he depicts the French countryside, however his homeland of Jiangsu Province, China serves as the image’s underlying theme. He skillfully uses Chinese traditional painting tools – rice paper, brush, and ink – and meticulously dots the paper. The accumulation of different shades of lightly applied ink creates a rich, subtle suburban landscape. The artist describes the creative technique of painting, reminiscent of the Impressionist pointillism that flourished in France at the end of the nineteenth century, as “a thousand points.” The work may seem simple, or a Chinese copy of pointillism, yet is actually a more complex masterpiece of ink painting that combines Chinese culture, French feeling, and contemporary aesthetics. An obvious difference with Impressionism is that Shan Weijun uses only grayscale ink. The subjects featured in most of his paintings include mountains, stones, trees, and clouds. The static landscape presents a kind of detached artistic conception, beyond attachment to the material world, and trains the viewer’s eyes to stay on the image, allowing the viewer to enter the realm of contemplation. This sensation draws a parallel to the tranquility and pureness of mind Shan experiences via the repetitive and meditative practice of applying the paint point-by-point to the paper. “Thousands of Points,” as the artist explains, is his personal method of Zen retreat.

As Artist Shan Weijun writes:

“Silence is the foundation of simplicity.” My art is rooted in Eastern cultural identity and artistic practices. By blending time and space, understanding the spirit of ink and wash, responding with my inner heart to the painting, I find the ultimate and pure escape.

Nathalie Obadia is one of the most influential gallerists in France. A strong advocate for the internationalisation of art, Obadia has been instrumental in introducing Chinese artists such as MadeIn, Ni Youyu and Wang Keping to the Paris art scene. Her gallery is particularly notable for its very strong contemporary art photography program, including representing the sometimes-controversial artist, Andres Serrano. Here Ran Dian speaks with Nathalie about her upbringing, how she became a gallerist, art photography and the Chinese art market.

Nathalie Obadia will show at Art Basel Hong Kong, Booth 1D32

Chris Moore: Nathalie, can you tell us about your early life? Also, what was your introduction to art? 

Nathalie Obadia: Two academics from the “Post-68” generation, my parents were in their thirties when they discovered contemporary art. Their curiosity led them to develop an interest for French artists from Narrative Figuration, like Erró (b.1932) and Jacques Monory (b.1924). Then, they started buying American pop art – Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Tom Wesselmann – from Ileana Sonnabend (1914-2007), who had a gallery in Paris in the 70s. They had understood that American art was breathing new life into Europe.

Nathalie Obadia

So as a young teen, I would follow my parents through the galleries and museums of Paris and elsewhere, like the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam or the Ludwig Collection of Aix-la-Chapelle that featured works by American artists you could see nowhere else. I keep wonderful memories of “The Beanery” (1965) by Edward Kienholz at the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam, as well as of Robert Rauschenberg’s paintings at the Ludwig Collection. I saw my parents gain intellectual freedom thanks to contemporary art and the friendships they developed with artists. In 1974, my mother organized a pop art exhibition assisted by Sonnabend at the city hall of La Baule, a famous seaside resort on the Atlantic coast. Featuring Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), Roy Lichtenstein (1923-97) and a series of Mao portraits, it caused havoc among the local upper class and the mayor had it removed. At the beginning of the 70s, showing Mao in a conservative city hall was unconceivable.

Jonas Stampe (curator), Nathalie Obadia, Mister and Madam Yan (director and wife), Wenjie Sun (assistant curator) at Andres Serrano’s opening at Red Brick Art Museum in Beijing, 2017 (image courtesy Galerie Nathalie Obadia)

This is how, at the age of 15, I decided to become an art dealer. Back then, people did not say “gallerist” when they represented contemporary artists, in order to differentiate themselves from those who sold the work of deceased artists. I thought it was an incredible job, which, through artists, would allow me to be in the very heart of creation. I would meet intellectuals and art critics as well as museum directors and collectors, fascinating people looking to better understand their time. Being an art dealer, I could rub shoulders with them and be the link between these different categories.

CM: How did you come to Paris? 

NO:  I spent my childhood and adolescence in the province, first in the North, then in Nantes [Brittany]. Instead of having a countryside house, my parents had an apartment in Paris where we would come during school holidays. This is how, from the mid-70s, I frequently went to museums. I saw the beginning of the Pompidou Center, the amazing exhibitions held at the American Center on boulevard Raspail and I visited galleries like Yvon Lambert, Maeght and Daniel Templon.

Aline Wang, Wang Keping, Nathalie Obadia during a studio visit, 2017 (image courtesy Galerie Nathalie Obadia)

I moved to Paris in 1980 for my post-graduate studies: I got a masters in international law and studied at Sciences Po while I continued to go to galleries. [Nathalie now gives a course at Sciences Po on the contemporary art market] I also read a lot of literature and political and philosophical essays, and I spent a lot of time at the cinema. I’m convinced that to understand contemporary art, you need to have a global awareness of the world that art helps you grasp in even more depth. It’s a virtuous circle.

CM: What is it like being a gallerist now? 

NO: 25 years later, I am still as passionate about my job. Every day is a new challenge because it’s never over. You can never think: “I have 25 years of experience, a good reputation, faithful collectors and talented artists, I’m out of the woods”. Today you either go forward or backward. There’s no standing still. What’s difficult in my job is to combine my artistic convictions with the strategy of the gallery, which is to grow bigger and bigger on the international scene. You have to manage sales with highly influential collectors on a daily basis, find institutional opportunities for your artists, and assist them for they can produce without financial concerns.

CM: What makes the Chinese art market different from traditional Western markets?

NO:

China is the second biggest economy. In the Chinese and Asian market, that is still very young though it is developing quickly, there is an important number of potential collectors with a lot of money who are looking to buy and invest in Contemporary Art. But we can see than over to 1 million dollars (in the Contemporary Art Market) the Chinese market prefers to invest in well known western values. Finally, we can note while looking at the auctions results than the Chinese market is more confident with Western artists than with the Chinese ones. This is the main difference with America from 1945 which was used to trust and invest in artists from their own country.

CM: One of the specialisations of your gallery is photography. Why is that? 

NO: All the photographers – or rather all the artists who practice photography – that I represent came into the gallery because their questioning of painting caught my attention: Andres Serrano (b.1950), Valérie Belin (b.1964), Youssef Nabil (b.1972), Luc Delahaye (b.1962) and Patrick Faigenbaum (b.1954) have a direct and complex dialogue with painting and the contemporary world. We just saw it with Andres Serrano exhibiting his works in the middle of the 18^th and 20^th century paintings and sculptures of the Petit Palais in Paris. I fall in love with artists, not their medium.

CM: When did you first come to China?

NO: It was 8 years ago now. I knew I had to go because, since the 60s, New York is no longer the only art center in the world. In Asia, Japan, India, Korea and China have become very dynamic creative centers. This mix of artistic tradition and great contemporary installations immediately fascinated me. Chinese literature also helped me discover a universe that was unfamiliar to me and to better understand the art I saw. I started with classic literature, Dream of the red chamber by Hóng Lóu Mèng, then Lu Xun, Lao She and Mo Yan from the 20^th century. Chinese cinema, like Jia Zhangke (b.1970), also sparked my desire to visit China and discover its contemporary culture. The 2010 Shanghai World Exposition was a great turnaround for me. I saw China becoming a great world power while also trying to impose its “soft power”. The Chinese Pavilion was stunning and showed an amazing capacity to reinvent Chinese tradition while opening up to the world. All the great world powers had understood the importance of the event – the United Kingdom, France, the United States and India had great Pavilions too. Competition was at its highest.

CM: And how does the China art scene fit into the program of Galerie Nathalie Obadia? 

NO: Since I have always been interested in foreign art scenes, it was only natural that I exhibit Chinese artists. In 2012 I curated Madeln’s first French exhibition, with XU Zhen (b.1977) and I showed Ni Youyu (b.1984) for the first time in France – one of the best artists of the emerging Chinese scene. What I like in his art is the blend of traditional and contemporary. In 2015, I exhibited him next to another very gifted young painter, Lu Chao (b.1988), along with two great masters of Ink Art, Gu Wenda (b.1955) and Shang Yang (b.1942), who were also showed in France for the first time.

And since 2017, I have been representing the great sculptor Wang Keping (b.1949)from The Stars group. His works express an incredible strength and serenity. I can’t work without one of his sculptures in front of me. It exudes a great spiritual power and soothes me.

CM: You run galleries in both Paris and Brussels. What is the essential difference between the art scenes of these two cities?

NO: Belgium is a more “baroque” country, in the sense that collectors interests are less limited by the aesthetic standards of “good taste” like in France. I opened my Brussels gallery in 2008 and I continue to be surprised by the curiosity of Belgians. They take more risks. They buy young artists more easily without waiting for market or institutional recognition. There are few public museums in Belgium but hundreds of big private collections. It was important to have a gallery in Brussels to be close to the collectors and institutions that tend to go more often to London and Berlin than Paris.

CM: What are you planning for Hong Kong? 

NO: For the upcoming Hong Kong Art Basel show, we’ll focus on Asian or Asian-related artists who had exhibitions in the course of last year, like Rina Banerjee (b.1963), of Indian origins, who took part in the Venice Biennale; Ni Youyu, who exhibited at the Kunstverein Museum of Konstanz in Germany, as well as for the first time in France, in our gallery; Australian Brook Andrew (b.1970), who had a great show at the National Gallery of Victoria (Australia) in 2017; and Manuel Ocampo (b.1965), who represented the Philippines at the 2017 Venice Biennale. We’ll present two of his works along with a Kabinett and a series of portraits done in China by Andres Serrano, who just finished a major exhibition at the Red Brick Art Museum of Beijing. It was the very first retrospective show in China of one of the greatest American contemporary photographers, besides, have undergone hard censorship in America. The Beijing exhibition was a great success. Ran Dian 燃点

“The Male Artist and Female Art”: Wang Keping AND Ai Weiwei—A New York Affair

Writer: Wang Keping

Characters: Female artist, male artist, translator, visitors

Location: A small room next to the main hall of the art museum

—————

Some new artworks are on display in the hall in the background.

There are two chairs and a small table in the room, and a row of chairs and a TV by the entrance.

The spectators come in and out. Some are waiting by the door of the small room and watching TV.

The female artist is taking notes in the small room.

Several groups of visitors walk in and out of the room in order, with different expressions.

The male artist and his translator enter the hall and look at the works on display. While walking towards the doorway, the translator whispers and explains to the male artist the text on the door. They go to sit in the chairs and wait.

(A middle-aged woman opens the door and entered the room.)

(W: Middle-aged woman, F: Female artist, M: Male artist, T: Translator, V: Spectator with a video camera, E: Elder lady)

W: (to the female artist) Hello.

F: Hello.

(The middle-aged woman runs around in a circle in the room.)

W: Only you?

F: Yes.

W: That’s simple. Is this some sort of joke?

F: No.

W: Are you exhibiting yourself?

F: Yes.

W: Sounds interesting… That’s easy. Hope I didn’t interrupt you, did I?

F: No, please have a seat.

W: Thank you. I’m only staying for a minute. There are a lot of people waiting to see you outside. I come to museums often. It’s not that I don’t like new things, but it’s doing my head in. I have a question I’d like to ask for some advice if I may.

F: (picks up a piece of paper from the small table) Excuse me, could you sign here please?

W: (takes the paper and reads it through) Of course. (Writes her signature) It says, “Life is art” on the door. Do you mean this?

F: Yes.

W: Is life art?

F: Life is art.

W: So is art life?

F: Yes, art is life. Life is art.

W: (Sighs), but my life isn’t art. There is no art in my life at all. My life is boring, really boring, and meaningless…

F: If you can discover that life is art, it can change your life.

W: I am different from you. You are an artist. I only live my life. Life is boring. I am different from you…

F: I am the same as you. I am also an ordinary person. By coming here you have come to an ordinary person’s home. Let’s sit down and have a chat. We will get to know one another and become friends.

W: I don’t have any friends. I am alone. I am lonely. Even my cat runs out every day. I would like art for art’s sake, but I know nothing about art.

F: If you think your life is art, it is. To create your life is to create art. You don’t have friends. Why don’t you go and look for some and get to know more people? From now on, if you get to know a stranger by day, three hundred and sixty five days, you will get to know three hundred and sixty five people. There will be someone amongst the three hundred and sixty five people who becomes your friend. This is a concept of performance art. If you record your experience, it can be introduced in the museum as an exhibition in the future.

W: Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Goodbye. Thanks and goodbye…

F: Goodbye. Thank you.

(The middle-aged woman opens and shuts the door, and exits the stage.)

(The awaiting visitors enter gradually.)

(One visitor with a video camera enters through the door.)

V: Hello.

F: Hello.

V: Please may I…? (Holding the video camera)

F: Of course, please.

(The spectator who holds the video camera leaves the room.)

(The male artist and his translator open the door and enter the room.)

M: Hello.

T: Hello.

F: Hello.

(The male artist looks at the female artist and looks around the room.)

T: (To the male artist) How is it? Open your eyes. This is live modern art for real.

M: And it’s very beautiful. Will she really sit here for a year?

T: The contract she signed with the museum has been put to paper.

M: A brave warrior.

T: Well, don’t miss the boat.

M: Can I talk to her?

T: Of course, she is waiting for you. (To the female artist) Excuse me, the gentleman would like to talk to you if he may?

F: My pleasure. Where are you from?

T: He just came from China. I’m his friend, and his translator at the moment.

M: I am very interested in what you do.

T: (Translating)…

(The translator keeps a sense of humor in both languages to translate the conversations between the male and female artists as below.)

F: I would also be interested in the thoughts of my audience.

M: It’s the first time I come across this kind of art. Perhaps I don’t understand, but it seems very simple, very simple but somehow mysterious.

F: Please sit down. I’m sorry. The museum has a rule: if you would like to talk to me, you need to sign the contract first.

T: Why? Do we need to pay for it?

F: No, please don’t be nervous. It is precisely to avoid the payment. Money is the thing most likely to spoil the mood. There’s nothing to do with money. The contract states that you agree with what I say and do here, and you won’t sue me in court.

T: Ah, okay. But to be fair, you shouldn’t sue us in court either.

F: Ah, agree.

(The translator took a pen and paper.)

M: Are you going to sign it? Please be careful. She seems very tough.

T: Not to worry, I can be tough too. (Writes his signature)

M: Then I’ll sign it. You will take care of me if anything happens anyway.

F: What did he say?

T: He said he… he is very tough.

F: I can tell. He has got bright eyes.

T: In Chinese we’d say you’d been dazzled.

F: No, no, no, I didn’t mean that. Perhaps, maybe, but I feel the artists’ eyes are always so eager.

M: It depends on what he sees.

F: See the money – or a woman?

M: It depends on what kind of woman.

T: He’s eyes are brightening up when he sees a woman like you.

F: Are you an artist?

M: Maybe.

F: I looked at your hand – are you a sculptor?

M: If you think so.

F: A sculptor is more grounded than a painter. What kind of sculpture do you do? Abstract? Figurative?

T: Mainly the human body, female body.

F: Oh, there are so many women on the planet, and you want to create more? Wouldn’t the natural and real ones be better?

M: Even the most beautiful flowers will eventually wither. I seek eternity.

F: There is nothing eternal in the world. The transient nature makes it more precious. Why do you only consider it as art once the living are dead?

M: If living is art, there’s no need for artists to do what they do. If there’s no need for them to do it, then anyone can do it.

F: If there is no need, then it has reached its peak. If anyone can do it, then it depends on who discovers it first.

M: What do you think, in your opinion, is the concept of art?

F: If there is endless art, then there are countless conceptions of art.

M: Do you think there are boundaries between life and art?

F: I think life and art have no boundaries.

M: Do you think you are a work of art?

F: Why not? Today, be it a painting, a sculpture, a bundle of twigs, a pile of rubbish, they are all equally art. A men’s urinal is on display in a museum as a work of art; so is a woman sitting in an art museum.

M: What is the difference between a woman sitting in a museum and her sitting at home?

F: Actually there’s no difference.

T: (To the man) isn’t she saying that there is hardly any difference between her sitting here and sitting on your bed?

M: Mmm, there are meanings between the lines!

(The male artist looks the female artist up and down.)

T: At your museum, there are signs everywhere that read ‘Please do not touch the artwork’. Do you have them here?

F: No, no need.

M: Does that mean you can touch?

F: Ah – you can (reaches out her hand)

(The male artist touches the female artist’s hand.)

F: You have powerful hands.

M: I am a manual laborer, moving bodies around all day.

F: Dead or alive?

M: Dead and alive are all the same. They are all works of art. I like to touch and feel my artworks everyday.

F: Do you do the same when you meet a girl?

M: Why not? I like all good things. Oh, I like all things art.

F: I’ve never had a visitor like you before.

T: (To the man) It’s love at first sight.

M: I don’t know your kind of art. It’s the first time – can I see? Can I touch? (Continues to feel her by moving his hands up and down)

F: This is not eternal. (Falling onto the male artist)

M: Transient is more precious.

F: Do you like it?

M: Ah, I don’t think the artwork would object to people liking it.

F: If it’s true, why not?

T: (To the man) Don’t miss the boat. You mustn’t think twice at the critical moment. (Turns around facing back towards the wall and continues to translate)

(to the male artist) Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile.

F: Your hand is cold.

M: Your body is burning.

F: Please don’t go too far.

M: But there’s no point in creating anything if I doesn’t push the boundary.

F: It’s in a museum.

M: There’s no difference between being in a museum and at home.

F: You are simply out of control.

T: We have made it clear; the law here does not bind us. You make life into art, and he puts the art into life.

F: No, life is art, and art is life.

M: Now I fully agree. Wu Suo Wu Wei is life. Wu Wei Er Wei is art.

F: What do you mean?

M: “Wu Suo Yu Wei” [1] means to do whatever one pleases; such is life. “Wu Wei Er Wei” [2] means inaction, to let things take their own course without any external pressure; such is art.

F: It is well said.

M: Well done is better than well said.

F: You are so strange.

M: It’s not strange at all.

F: You have no disguise. You are completely natural.

T: Too natural is too artful.

F: Too artful is just brilliant.

(The male and female artist kiss.)

(Suddenly the door is pushed open, an elderly lady standing by the door. The rest of the audience take a glimpse inside the room.)

(The male artist quickly turns around to hold the female artist in his lap and hides himself behind her, making only his lap visible.)

E: What are you doing? We have been waiting for so long outside!

F: Please close the door.

(The elder lady closes the door.)

F: (standing up from the male artist’s lap) if you were not to hide yourself just now, it might be more of an art. Please excuse me; we cannot have any more time. Thank you. I hope there will be an opportunity to see you again.

M: Thank you. Goodbye, bye, bye.

T: Goodbye.

(The translator pulls the male artist away.)

F: (taking notes) it was the most interesting day today. A shame! Why didn’t I video record it just now?

Postscript:

This is a script, and also a note after visiting an exhibition—a dialogue for artistic discussion. In fact, it can be called “conceptual art”, an “artistic concept”, “performance art”, and an “artistic performance”.

It was also originally a true story. The time was the morning of the December 1, 1985. It took place at a museum in New York. “Female Art” was the performance artist Linda Montano who was very active then, and the translator is Ai Weiwei. The sculptor is, naturally, myself. The artwork Linda presented was one person sitting alone in her room in the museum, as an ordinary living person, to meet and talk to the audience.

This bilingual one act play has been performed in Chinese and English, and in Chinese and French. Because the roles in the play communicate through the translator in two languages, it can be understood by both Chinese and international audiences.

The translation in the script is very important on stage. The actual lines are elaborate, which allows a variety of possibilities for performance.

The script was first published in May 1987 by the Lion Art magazine in Taiwan.

It took ten years to make into a play, after several amended versions.

---

[1] “Wu Suo Yu Wei” (为所欲为), a Chinese idiom.

[2]  “Wu Wei Er Wei” (无为而为), a phrase drawn from the Daoist doctrine of inaction.

Wang Keping and Ai Weiwei
王克平与艾未未

Wang Keping
王克平

Wang Keping
王克平

When I go to meet him there, he has closely shaved his head, but there are still bristles like a paintbrush, and a clipped moustache. He cuts his hair himself with a clipper, meticulously.

We sit down for tea in a light, unadorned atelier room with a copper stove. He prepares tea for me in two large noodle bowls. Opposite us are two chairs, male and female, crisscrossed with marks and breasts (even the man’s). The seat of the chair is a protruding male organ, the woman’s a slit like lips or a cowrie shell.

On the wall hangs a sort of mask sculpture with pouting African-looking lips. Lips, eyes, and images of the female vulva seem to be all around the room. In the corner is what looks like a book-end—but it has breasts, voluptuous and bouncy.

“Those are wings,” Keping says, smiling.

On another table lies a polished copper necklace with a slit in the middle.

“A smile,” Keping says, “or turn it around—something else, a woman…”

Wang Keping, “Eternal Smile”, bronze pendant, 4 x 4 cm, edition of 200, 2013
王克平，《笑口常开》

Somehow, looking across at this man—his eyes like small fireballs, his large hands and torso—makes this meeting seem like a confrontation, a silent one, between male and female. He looks like a peasant worker, his only gentility in the cleanliness of his appearance—black shirt and black trousers. I can see his old Maoist work jackets and pants behind us, hanging on another chair; stained, limp, worn out, torn. He has obviously dressed to meet me.

When I ask him which of his works are new, he insists there aren’t any. He always sculpts the same thing, women and birds, some with erotic beaks. Sometimes he sculpts couples, male and female, often in an embrace. He is sculpting feelings, not series and instincts, not theories.

“I never think of a series,” he tells me, “I find how to do it with the wood, and it is organic. The most important thing is to look for the wood—it is difficult to buy. Mostly planks or beams are for sale. But I need big, rounder pieces. I sometimes go on excursions to the countryside to look for appropriate wood. Even when I find it, I am not sure I can use it but I bring it home anyway. I dry it. Then I mark the form and cut it with a chainsaw. Then I dry it again. Sometimes, I wait a year for it to dry and to crack properly. It is ready if it has cracked many times. I then use a chisel. And sand it. I then use a blowtorch to achieve the black, ebony color. The color is beautiful, yin and natural. Painted wood would not be the same. The contact with fire makes it natural. Fire is nature.”

He takes me outside to the stacks of penciled marked trunks and the chiseled pieces drying in the sun. The garden around is wild, with pink-hued peonies falling over in clumps next to raspberry bushes weighed down with berries.

I notice a work on the table outside—a male figure with an oblong head and two phalluses touching each other.

“There were two wooden branches entwined, I saw them. Erotic and unusual, isn’t it?” he says, catching my eye.

It reminds me of a painting I saw once at the old Shanghai painter’s house, Li Shan, a male figure with male and female attributes—beyond sex.

Somehow, the two phalluses make the wooden sculpture look more feminine.

“My works are not erotic,” he adds. “They are just real, human. Even the birds I sculpt: The beaks look masculine but this is the way people see them. If you look at Bada Shanren, all of his birds look sexual, but it is because they seem human—they seem to have feelings. Nature is a form of beauty and aesthetic.” I wonder if all art is not innately erotic.

Wang Keping, “Bird”, cypress, 58 cm high, 2006
王克平，《鸟》，柏木，高58厘米，2006

We go back inside for some more tea. I ask him about the painting in the back room, a small, tarnished work on canvas.

“Oh, that is Liu Dahong’s,” he tells me. “He made it for me when I came to Paris in 1989. You can see me peeking out of a small window, in the buildings above. It is a depiction of Pigalle, the red light district. The man with the cap on crutches in the street, seen from the back, is Ma Desheng, also a “Stars” artist…. Liu asked me if he ever came to Paris, how would he find me? It was his way of joking—he’d know where to look. Pigalle, Montmartre, where all the artists end up, with women. I kept it as a memory.”

Women beckon from doorways in the painting; the sky is Van Gogh blue with stars. Wang Keping seems to have had a sort of Casanova reputation, except that he spends most of his time alone at the studio, with his family elsewhere. He is like a lone monk, day after day, with his pieces of wood, unremitting. Most of them are women, anyway.

He takes out an old play he had written when he was in New York with Ai Weiwei, visiting in the 1980s. It is about a woman artist sitting in a museum, talking to people, part of a performance. Wang comes in with his translator, Lao Ai (Ai Weiwei, in fact), and asks the woman if he can touch her, if she is an exhibit. She says, “Yes.” He replies that he is a sculptor, in any case: “I am a manual laborer, moving around bodies all day.”

Yet the rebellious machismo of the short play seems to stem less from the artist than from the socio-historical context. The Stars endured a lack of freedom which was not only political but also sexual; that generation lived under sexual repression. Another artist friend from the same period told me that the first time he drew a nude, the police came to knock down his door and the poor girl had not fully undressed. The nude as such was unthinkable.

Seeing Huang Rui’s erotic drawings of the same period, one can sense the repression, the lure of the forbidden, the hurried sessions.

The story of his life as Keping tells it sounds like Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night—a voyage of self-discovery, more than anything. It is as though the “Beijing Spring” generation was simply grappling for freedom and in the end, turned to art, freedom’s highest form.

“I was a Red Guard; we were sent to Heilongjiang, the far North,” Keping recounts. “We lost our hukou or residence permit. I joined a theater troupe—an army troupe to escape the countryside and return to the city. I was originally cast as Lei Feng, the Communist Party hero in a Shenyang theater group, but then I was refused the part as they thought I had gotten it through the houmen or back door (my mother was an actress with connections). I was eventually accepted into a Kunming theater group—It was paradise. We were two to a bed, not more, no fleas; we could sleep lying down instead of vertically. But most of us at that time underwent a sort of sexual depression. One couldn’t even talk to girls or dare look at them without being criticized and punished.”

“At first, I was happy being an actor, but then I thought, everything I do can be subject to criticism. It is like prison. I decided to leave the army troupe and work in a factory in Hebei. But I left that too and started working for CCTV first as an actor, then script writer. The director thought I was so talented, acting and scriptwriting at the same time—he couldn’t get over it. But whenever I mentioned the Gang of Four or some other touchy subject, I was censored. I was asked to put on Waiting for Godot with the French embassy. But it had to be done according to party ‘guidelines’. I was under the yoke. I thought, ‘I need to escape again.’”

“When Mao Zedong died, Beijing was really starting to really “swing”. Foreigners were coming, people were into freedom, and the ‘thing’ at that time was a ghetto blaster. I traded one for a painting—people did in those days. If you had one, you could dance in the park or at home, have a party. Soon, the Party put up signs: NO DANCING. The police arrested dancers. Everything was forbidden.”

“Some of the art movement began as fankang yishu ["revolt art" or "resistance art"]. I started to sculpt as a revolt. My first sculpture was a man screaming holding a book, a little Red Book, It was theatrical, representing political figures as puppets.”

“I had never had any training. Just a need to create. To do my own thing.”

“Everyone was an autodidact back then. The universities were shut down. Writers, artists, we all gathered round the Stars group—people like Ma Desheng, Bei Dao and Wei Jingsheng, the activist. I met Forest Blackfield, the New York Times correspondent in a park, clandestinely. He wrote about me first, a new art movement around the Beijing Spring. People looking for freedom.”

Wang Keping, “EX-VOTO: Hearty Laugh”, maple, 45 cm high, 1996

“Now people can do things in the freedom of their homes, in China. Of course, there is a lot of self-censorship; this business of Ai Weiwei with UCCA is part and parcel of that. When I did my show at UCCA, I wasn’t allowed to invite Li Xianting. He could come, but he couldn’t speak. Artists now have a great life – unless you make a conscious decision to oppose the government. My father was a writer, my mother was an actress, and everything they did was criticized. From my youth, I thought: all art should be free. That is what I said on the banner I carried during the Beijing Spring.”

“What about influences?” I ask. “If you didn’t study art, what inspired you?”

“I do think I was inspired in some sense afterwards; I traveled to Henan, collected the wanju, old toys of the peasants. The Han dynasty I like in its simplicity.”

But Wang Keping doesn’t really remember any of the first Western artists he saw or any foreign influence. He told me he feels his art is “instinctive”. Some might call it “art brut” or primitivism; his works often remind people of African idols or Brancusi’s animals and birds. He tells me he did not want to suffer outside influences, preferring instead to keep a clear, simple eye and mind.

“I have always had the temperament of a sculptor. I was arrogant even as a child. People said I should study. But I didn’t want to join in, look at this, and look at that. Some artists now just take from here and there; they have no language of their own.”

“Technique can be taught, but the jingli (experience) and gexing (character) can’t be. There are composers and there are interpreters.”

“Sometimes, I use half a day and nothing comes out of it. The most important is not to make something beautiful or resembling a thing, but to make something original. I want to be a composer.”

“I am also Chinese; I do not make Chinese contemporary art or Chinese art, necessarily. I am making art as an individual.”

With this, Keping tells me he has to get back to work. He heads towards the chiseling room where a few women are kneeling forward into a circle, their hair tied in a bun like a dot at the end of a question mark. They look like spirals, infinite, spiraling mother figures, the origin of the universe. The simplest thing and yet the truest. If you never move—wu wei, non-action—you might attain some truth, some inescapable reality, some revelation.

The bear lumbers back to his den with his chisel, ready to find something in the wood.

Wang Keping, “EX-VOTO: Fruits”, poplar, 46 cm high, 2003
王克平，《性品系列：果实》，白杨木，高46厘米，2003

Wang Keping, “WOMAN: Under the Moon”, cypress, 60 cm high, 2010
王克平，《女人系列：月亮之下》，柏木，高60厘米，2010

Wang Keping
王克平

Saturday 29 march 4PM to 8PM

OPENING
In the presence of the artist

Opening: Saturday, March 29th, 2014 from 4pm to 8pm
Exhibition from March 29th to May 10th , 2014
Venue :Magda Danysz Gallery, 188 Linqing Road (near YangShupu Road), Shanghai, China
Information : +86 21 5513 9599

As one of the founding members of the first non-conformist artist group “The Stars” of 1979 and pioneer of the 798 art district in Beijing, artist Huang Rui is a highly regarded, pivotal figure of Chinese Avant-garde. Since the 1970s,his conceptual artwork has covered many areas and has been hard to fit into any one category. From social mockery, satire of reality, to pure abstraction, his paintings carry many layers of meanings and evoke different responses from different people.

MD Gallery is proud to present Huang Rui’s recent series of experimental works, which focus on the lyrical resonance between words and colors, the long conversation between poetry and visual experience. Through his “Language Color” series and other installations, Huang Rui achieves a perfect coexistence between words and colors.

Huang Rui’s works have been shown extensively in China and abroad, from the National Convention Center in Beijing to Chinese Contemporary in New York. The Shanghai Magda Danysz Gallery is pleased to dedicate a first major solo exhibition to this historical artist.

This year’s Fair will feature the fifth edition of Armory Focus at Pier 94. As the curated section of the Armory Show, Armory Focus highlights art from a specific geographical region. The 2013 Focus was curated by Eric Shiner, and featured art from the United States, and the 2013 edition was curated by Jacob Fabricius, and revolved around Northern European countries. This year, the spotlight of the Armory Focus will fall on China, with the director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing (UCCA, Beijing), Philip Tinari, curating the exhibition program. An American, Tinari has been in his role as the director of UCCA, Beijing since 2011, and has long been established in China as a contemporary art critic and curator. He was also the former Editor in Chief of bilingual arts magazine LEAP. Randian interviewed him just prior to The Armory Show’s launch.

randian: The section you organized “Armory Focus: China” will present 17 galleries and works by 20 artists, and a lot of them have had shows at UCCA where you’re the director. On which principles did you select these artists?

Phil Tinari: No, not at all. In this show about half of the galleries are delivering specifically solo presentations because it’s younger artists from what we might call the “On/Off” generation. And the other half are doing two, three or even four artist presentations that hint at different trends or different moments in this 35 year long story of contemporary China. So it was about striking a balance between those two. In terms of the actual galleries, they do decide that they want to be there and they do assume a huge fee as they do for any fair. It was really a very mutually selecting process. I made the rounds to the usual suspects amongst our friends and long-time collaborators. There are some who felt, for whatever reason, that it wasn’t right for them to do this show, and there were a few that came over. But the nice thing about it was that it wasn’t really a selection process in the way that Art Basel is, where 900 applications are sorted by a committee that’s been to China twice. It was really more like a dialogue process of seeking out the galleries and either saying “I think this part of your program would be very interesting to take to New York,” or in some cases me thinking I would like to see these artists there and seeing if they are willing to play ball.

randian: What aspects of Chinese contemporary art do you think these artists illustrate or represent?

PT: Among these younger artists—He Xiangyu, Li Shurui, Zhao Yao, Lu Pingyuan and Liang Shuo—I think you see a sensibility that I’ve been very interested in lately, which is art that speaks to a Chinese situation and conditions but doesn’t actually look Chinese on the surface. That’s I think a defining method for this younger generation, the so-called “On/Off” generation. I have also included work that goes back to some moments from earlier in history, so for example 10 Chancery Lane Gallery is doing a booth that puts Wang Keping and He An [together] and Huang Rui also, who will present a group of paintings from the mid-80s—some abstractions based on the geometries of courtyard houses that have never been shown before. So that’s two key figures from the Stars. And Meg Maggio is doing a three-man presentation of Wang Luyang, Chen Shaoxiong and Zhao Liang, which is looking back to the new analysts and post-sense-sensibility. Or what Osage is doing, which is a Northern Salon of painters from Dongbei [Northeast China] and Northern China  for example, who are taking that idea of a sort of updated socialist realism in different directions—and that display will also rotate. So, I hope that different threads will be visible from socialist realism and its academic systems to various avant-garde movements that have happened after different points in the 80s, 90s and 2000s, to the advent of very real-time, present work.

randian: As this is your first director job, in what ways is your experience at UCCA shaping your understanding of Chinese art, and what are the challenges so far?

PT: Coming from this institutional place now, I see it very differently from when I was editing a magazine. Simply because magazines are looking for things to laugh at and make fun of or cast a critical light on, and then when you are on the other side you are trying to build things that can at least stand up for a little while. So yes, as we’ve done different shows and had to work indirectly with these different galleries. You just get a better and deeper understanding of where the overall ecology is…Many of these artists for the Armory have [had] shows at UCCA at one point or another in some way or form, and so this sort of becomes a report on the work we’ve been doing at UCCA—of course mediated through the galleries, but, you know, it’s the same artists. To bring it to New York in this necessarily quick manner is exciting.

UCCA Director Philip Tinari.尤伦斯当代艺术中心馆长田霏宇

First of all, no one should miss Taryn Simon at UCCA. Her extensive project “A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I-XVIII” saw her trace – for four years – eighteen family bloodlines and their attendant stories. Systematic, thoughtful, beautifully presented and relevant, this exhibition and document is one to absorb and retain in memory. A powerful show of wooden sculptures by Wang Keping continues, also, at UCCA.

A view of “A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I-XVIII” by Tarny Simon at UCCA
泰伦·西蒙在尤伦斯的展览“一个被宣告死亡的活人及其他章节一至十八”

A view of “Difference Engine” at Magician Space
魔金石空间的展览“差异引擎”

At Magician Space, a new exhibition opened last weekend of pieces by young experimental artists. “Difference Engine” addresses itself to the issue of how to create “difference” in contemporary art – this gallery has made moves towards more theoretical approaches in its recent shows. The works range from the sardonic (Song Ta’s video of a zoo-park has subtitles in colored lettering of the announcer’s voice calling lost children to the gate — in fact the names of local officials), to the downright cocky. Chen Zhou suspended a plastic chicken toy from the ceiling as his contribution.

As Pace gallery lies in wait for a new installation, go into Faurschou, where a solo outing by Gabriel Orozco spreads a mass of burst tyres over the floor. This exhibition, called “Chicotes”, is the artist’s first in China. Before leaving, flick through the catalogue at the reception. In it is included “Parking Lot” (1995), to which Michael Lin’s current installation at Tang Gallery, “Place Libre”, bears more than a striking resemblance. Regardless, the latter is one of the more successful occupations of Tang’s huge space this year.

A view of “Chicotes” at Faurschou Foundation
林冠画廊的展览“旧轮胎”

Jing Yuan Huang, “I am your Agency No.23″, oil on canvas, 63.5 x 84 cm, 2013
黄静远《各就各位，23号》，布面油画，63.5 x 84 cm，2013

“Satire”, Qiu Zhijie’s canny mixture of commercial and conceptual works, still has a couple of weeks to go at Galeria Continua. For paintings, one might choose Force gallery, which is currently showing a large, competent solo exhibition by Jing Yuan Huang—“I am your Agency”.

Finally, at Boers-Li, Fang Lu has installed screens and monitors for her show “Lost Seconds”—an exploration of the contemporary self as controlled and staged. How do we perceive, present and watch ourselves? The question is pertinent and asked here, visually, without embellishment.

A view of Fang Lu’s “Lost Seconds” exhibition at Boers-Li
方璐于博而励画廊的个展“失秒

Ben Brown Fine Arts is pleased to present the first UK solo exhibition of Wang Keping, one of China’s foremost contemporary sculptors. Wang Keping burst onto the Chinese art scene in the late 1970s as a founding member of the Beijing avant-garde group The Stars (Xing Xing). Featuring over 20 works, the exhibition spans almost 25 years of exceptional artistic production and presents brand new pieces alongside significant creations from the artist’s earlier career.

Wang Keping works almost exclusively in a single medium: wood. The figures and abstract forms in his sculptures seem to emerge organically out of the wood’s grain, knots and flaws. He strives towards simplicity, creating monumental symbols of human nature and sensuality. This exhibition places particular emphasis on his interest in human forms, as demonstrated by the male and female companion pieces Le Matin and La Nuit (1989) as well as newer pieces Yin et Yang (2004) and Renaissance (2013).

Wang Keping, “Couple,” 2004, Maple, 44 x 45 x 35 cm; (17 3/8 x 17 3/4 x 13 3/4 in.)
王克平，《Couple》，2004，枫树，44 x 45 x 35 公分 (17 3/8 x 17 3/4 x 13 3/4 英寸)

Unusual among contemporary artists, Wang Keping completes each sculpture without delegating to studio assistants, a practice attributed to his belief in the intimate nature of artistic production. To prepare the wood for his sculptures, Wang Keping will let logs sit for months, sometimes years, to allow the innate features of the material to grow and deepen until they take on their own distinctive, biologically-determined shapes. Beginning the carving process while the wood is still fresh and moist, Wang Keping encourages cracks to form which eventually dry to form details such as facial features, clenched fists and folds of skin.

Ben Brown Fine Arts will publish a catalogue with a preface by Ai WeiWei to accompany the exhibition. ‘I have known Wang Keping for almost 40 years,’ WeiWei writes. ‘A member of the avant-garde non-conformist artists’ collective, The Stars Group, he has always been seen as the pioneer of contemporary Chinese culture from the late ’70s onwards. His early works have already shown that he is a brilliant artist with a vigorous creative force. At the same time, he actively fights for the right and freedom for artistic expression – the courage and passion he has shown in this regard has been highly influential to me, as well as other artists to come.’

Wang Keping, “Fruits,” 1995, Ash, 51 x 51 x 39 cm; (20 1/8 x 20 1/8 x 15 3/8 in.)
王克平，《Fruits》，1995，岑树，51 x 51 x 39 公分 (20 1/8 x 20 1/8 x 15 3/8 英寸)

NOTES TO THE EDITOR

Wang Keping was born in Beijing in 1949 and has lived in Paris since 1984. He is a founding member of The Stars (Zing Zing), often called the first avant-garde contemporary art movement in China. His work has been exhibited widely around the world, including in the Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée Maillol and Musée Zadkine in France; in the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland; in the Brooklyn Museum in the US; and in the National Art Museum of China and He Ziagning Art Museum in China. His sculptures have been acquired by several important art institutions around the world including the Fonds Muncipal d’Art Contemporain, Paris; M+ museum, Hong Kong, Musée Cernuischi, Paris; and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

The Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing will present an exhibition of the artist’s works from 27 September 2013 – 5 January 2014.

The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art is proud to present “Wang Keping” an exhibition of more than 50 works by one of China’s first contemporary sculptors. The show contains sculptures from various moments in the artist’s 35-year career and covers a wide range of different subjects and themes.
Wang Keping (b. 1949, Beijing) is an artist of near-monomaniacal dedication to his chosen medium: wood. Wang’s artworks range in size from 30 cm to several meters tall, variously evoking grotesque deformity, sensual beauty, and sublime abstraction. The artist’s seemingly anachronistic, lyrical sculpture cuts an intriguing figure in an art world dominated by increasingly complex and reflexive systems of meaning and signification. His works are evocative of Constantin Brâncusi’s Modernist explorations, Han Dynasty funereal figures, and African fertility sculptures, though their warped formal abstractions and embrace of eroticism place them squarely into a class of their own.
Wang Keping started out making political sculpture as part of the charged environment of late 1970s Beijing. After moving to France in 1984, he shifted to a more naturalistic way of working. The artist’s work can be roughly divided into five thematic categories—men, women, birds, couples, and pure forms—into which they are grouped for the UCCA exhibition.
Wang Keping’s practice evinces a patience beyond that of virtually any artist practicing today. To prepare the wood for his sculptures, he will let logs sit for months, sometimes years, allowing the innate features and fissures of the material to grow and deepen until they take on their own distinctive, biologically-determined shapes. Wang’s decades of woodworking experience allows him some measure of foresight into how the wood will splinter, though every piece contains an element of chance. For each sculpture, Wang blends his aesthetic perspective with the form determined by the wood itself, a quasi-Modernist Michelangelo living in the age of contemporary art. As Wang has said, “The wood tells me something, gives me an idea. Each tree is like a human body: there is flesh and there is bone; there are tender parts, hard parts, solid parts, and fragile parts. You cannot go against its nature but must follow it.”
The artist is remarkably consistent, even to the point of defiance. Wang Keping’s defiant streak first emerged in the late 1970s, as a founding member of one of China’s first experimental art groups, The Stars. Alongside fellow members Huang Rui, Ma Desheng, and Ai Weiwei, Wang fervently championed artistic freedom in China. Though he has lived abroad for nearly 30 years, his defiant streak persists, now articulated as aesthetic rather than political rebellion: He is an outspoken critic of the French art establishment and of the contemporary art scene as a whole, insistent that his sculptural practice is a more honest and sincere artistic expression than those which blindly follow new trends.
Wang Keping also bucks the current trend of delegating artistic production to studio assistants, completing his sculptures entirely on his own. As the artist has put it, “Making a sculpture is like making love to a woman. No one can do it for you, nor would I want others to take my place.” From the initial collection of the wood, to the carving, firing, burnishing, and glazing of each piece, Wang exerts total control over his artworks, a craftsman of obsessive dedication.
Despite distancing himself from the mainstream art establishment, the artist sees no contradiction between his style and the spirit of contemporary art. Of his work, Wang has said, “In my sculpture, I strive to find that which is universal in primitive Chinese form, and the further back I go to the origins of this art, the closer I am to my idea of contemporary art.”

Wang Keping was born in Beijing in 1949 and has lived in Paris since 1984. He is a founding member of The Stars (Xing Xing), often called the first avant-garde contemporary art movement in China. Wang is primarily a sculptor of wood and is inspired by the figurative form, both female and male. He strives towards simplicity, creating symbols of human nature and sensuality. His work has been exhibited widely around the world, including in the Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée Maillol, and Musée Zadkine in France; in the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland; in the Brooklyn Museum in the US; and in the National Art Museum of China and He Xiangning Art Museum in China. His work has been acquired by several important international art institutions, including the Fonds Municipal d’Art Contemporain, Paris; Olympic Games Park, Seoul; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taizhong; M+ museum, Hong Kong; Musée Cernuschi, Paris; and Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Dear friends,

Please join us in Shanghai at the China Art Museum, halls 15 and 16, for the exhibition “China Dream, Thirty Years: Liu Heung Shing’s Photography” opening on July 25 at 6pm.

The exhibition runs from July 26 to August 27, 2013.