randian | 燃点

ABOUT THE BOOK

Xu Zhen (b. 1977, lives and works in Shanghai) came to prominence at the 49. Biennale di Venezia with Rainbow, 1998, a visceral video performance of his back being slapped, turning red, with hand marks visible but never the hands. Further actions including sawing off the summit of Mount Everest equivalent to his own height, 8,848-1.86, 2005, invading neighboring countries with radio-controlled tanks, ships and helicopters, 18 Days, 2006, the controversial The Starving of sudan, 2008, and Untitled, 2009, a vast house of poker cards in the form of the Potala Palace. With essays by David Elliott, Philippe Pirotte and Christopher Moore and an interview with Li Zhenhua, this is the first monograph concentrating on Xu Zhen’s practice, focuses on his early career until 2009, when he subsumed his identity within the corporate-collective “MadeIn” (in Chinese “No Roof”), and with a postscript on MadeIn’s recent adoption of a new brand–”Xu Zhen.”

ABOUT XU ZHEN

Xu Zhen (b. 1977, Shanghai) is a trans-medial conceptual artist based in Shanghai. Incorporating painting, installation, video, photography performance and even extending into curatorial practice, Xu’s work satirizes, exposes and reworks dominant rhetoric of the contemporary art-world. Currently working under his company name MadeIn Inc, a self-declared ‘multi-functional art company’, he appropriates the art-as-brand discourse to criticize it from within. A jester at heart, he plays on authorial conventions and expectations, creating pseudo-fictions replete with cultural clichés, wittingly challenging the pervasive longing for clearly delineated so-called cultural authenticity. An irreverent artist with a unique ability to produce work across multiple platforms and media, Xu Zhen is the key figure of the Shanghai art scene and a foundational figure for the generations of Chinese artists born since 1970. Xu’s practice reflects the lingering concerns of an artist participating in the international art world while remaining deeply sceptical of it and its conventions, most immediately the label ‘Chinese contemporary art’. Working in his own name since the late 1990s, Xu Zhen is now producing new works under MadeIn Company’s newly launched brand ‘Xu Zhen’. Recent major exhibitions include his retrospective, Xu Zhen: A MadeIn Company Production, at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing (2014) and his Commissioned Artist exhibition at the Armory Show in New York (2014).

ABOUT CHRISTOPHER MOORE

Christopher Moore is the publisher of randian 燃点 digital art magazine. From 2008-10 Christopher was the Shanghai correspondent for Saatchi Online. In 2012 Chris co-curated “Forbidden Castle” at Muzeum Montanelli in Prague, an exhibition of Xu Zhen’s pre-MadeIn work, and in April 2014 he curated Yan Pijie “Children of God” at orangelab Berlin. He is also the editor of the first monograph on Xu Zhen, to be published by Distanz Verlag this Spring, with contributions by David Elliott, Philippe Pirotte and Li Zhenhua.

ABOUT DAVID ELLIOTT

David Elliott is an English born curator and writer. From 1976 to 1996 he was Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England, Director of Moderna Museet [The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art] in Stockholm, Sweden (1996-2001), founding Director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (2001-2006), the first Director of the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art [Istanbul Modern] (2007), Artistic Director of the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2008 – 2010) and Artistic Director of the 1st Kiev International Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011-12), Artistic Director of the 4th International Biennale of Work by Young Artists in Moscow (2014-2014), Rudolf Arnheim Guest Professor in Art History at the Humboldt University, Berlin (2008) and Visiting Professor in Museum Studies at the Chinese University in Hong Kong (2008/11/13). From 1998 until 2004 he was President of CIMAM (the International Committee of ICOM for Museums of Modern Art). He is Hon President of the Board of Triangle Art Network/Gasworks in London and on the Asia Advisory Board of the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

8848-1.86
2005, 8:11 min

In August 2005 Xu Zhen and his team climbed the 8,848-meter high Mount Everest, which sits partly within China’s borders. They succeeded in slicing off the peak of the mountain—an amount equal to Xu Zhen’s own height—and taking it down. His video 8.848-1.86 (2005) documents the expedition, which included displaying the removed 1.86 metres of the mountain’s peak in a large refrigerated vitrine cabinet (now in the collection of Tate Modern). The video, among other allusions, is a subtle and humorous commentary on China’s nationalism but also on the ‘measure’ and perception of the individual within the mass. At the time, the work caused huge outcry in China because many people thought it had really happened, whereas the entire performance was actually a calculated confection.

Rainbow
2005, 8:11 min

Xu Zhen started out making videos that focused on the body and public space in a manner reminiscent of early Bruce Nauman or Vito Acconci: the video Rainbow (1998) depicts the gradual change in color of an anonymous subject’s back. Using arhythmic shots and ominous slap sounds, the viewer never actually observes the assaults but waits to see the next inevitable blow. Rainbow was first exhibited at the 49. Venice Biennale 2001.