ALM18 CHINA (Beijing) WC: 3000-3100 President Xi Jinping was bestowed the status of “President for Life” in March, when the National People’s Congress voted to remove term limits for its leaders. In China’s northwestern Xinjiang province multiple international media outlets reported on the apparently forced detention and education of high numbers Uighur minority citizens. Internationally China continued on its path of assertive geopolitical growth, typified by both the bolstering of the now well-known Belt and Road Initiative with a new Artic Silk Road, intended to take advantage of international shipping lines opened up by global warming, as well as by a hostile incident in September between Chinese and US warships that China justified as defense of its sovereign waters in the disputed South China Sea. China’s relationship with the US, notably in the economic terms of the trade war begun by President Donald Trump that saw both countries levying tariffs on traded goods, negatively impacted China’s economy during the 40th anniversary of its “reform and opening up”; China’s slowing growth and cooling economy is understood to have the potential for significant domestic and international damage. China’s march towards more acute, technologically advanced forms of control grew more apparent, not least of all the government’s planned social credit system, which for the first time hit some citizens with restrictions like not being able to board certain trains. Livestreaming platforms saw significant growth in both use and government censorship. Similarly, there was also noticeable official attention towards high- profile figures, as demonstrated by the disappearance and subsequent prosecution of celebrity Fan Bingbing for tax evasion. Beijing’s demolition was again a major talking point. Ai Weiwei posted a number of videos on his social media showing the razing of one of his Beijing studios in the Songzhuang area. Beijing’s Caochangdi, the city’s second most important gallery area after nearby 798, was also hit by destruction, with de Sarthe and next-door X Gallery forced to shutter after being given short notice of the impending destruction of their buildings. Although only a few sites were affected there was widespread worry among galleries in Caochangdi that this was just the first of the destruction to come. The painter and video artist Cui Xinwen (1970–2018) passed away in August. BEIJING Major state-run art institutions located in the heart of the capital include the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), which held almost 70 shows over the course of 2018. As is common for the institution most exhibitions were politically motivated, shows like, “Chinese Homeland Art Creation Project Sketch Exhibition” (4/11–22) had prominent government organizational involvement, while “Uniqueness and Convergence -- Special Exhibition of BRICS Alliance of Art Museums and Galleries” (4/12–22) was intended to demonstrate a newly formed multicounty cultural alliance. Due south, on the edge of the Forbidden City beside Tiananmen Square, is the National Museum of China, which hosts a mix of ethnographical presentations in support of a cohesive nationalist narrative and large-scale international collaborations. The former epitomized by a showing of traditional style Tibetan paintings (5/27–6/7), and the latter by “Stuff of French Dreams - Academy and Salon in the 19th Century: Exhibition of Selected Works from CNAP and ENSBA” (1/31–5/13), which presented works by well-known academic painters such as Jean-Dominique-Auguste Ingres. Northeast of Beijing’s fourth ring road, on the fringe of Beijing’s city center, is the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum (CAFAM), it’s parent institution, the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), celebrated one-hundred years since its formation with the exhibition, “Keep Pace with the Times – Artworks for the 100th Anniversary of CAFA” (3/22–5/1), a show of twentieth-century works from the museum’s collection made by previous students and faculty members. As is the norm for the museum, these kinds of exhibitions are balanced with more progressive happenings related to contemporary art, such as “Post-Life: Beijing Media Art Biennale” (9/5–9/24). Since opening in 2016, the Tsinghua University Art Museum has organized shows marked by well-researched presentations of Chinese historical artefacts, such as “Aesthetic Education, Facing the Public: Exhibition of 20th Century Design Magazine in China” (9/28– 10/23), and exhibitions of high-quality Western artworks, as was the case with “500 Years of Western Paintings —— Collections of Tokyo Fuji Art Museum” (10/23–12/23), which featured paintings from a broad range of artists including Giovanni Bellini and Andy Warhol. Sponsored by the China Minsheng Banking Corporation, Beijing Minsheng Art Museum is the bank’s third arts venue after its two museums in Shanghai. The 35,000- square-meter industrial steel-and-glass structure, located in 798, begun the year with a large group show bringing together Chinese and Brazilian contemporary artists (2017/12/9– 2018/3/3). Later in the year hosting another comprehensive group show, “The Exhibition of Annual of Contemporary Art of China 2017” (6/8–8/24). 2018 was a crucial year for Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) as it adjusted to new owners and commenced the massive refurbishment of its 798 site. It faced the challenge head on with three ambitious solo showings: Xie Nanxing (3/17–5/27), Sarah Morris (3/24–5/27), and a career survey of Xu Bing (7/21–10/21). Its New Directions series, which focuses on new works by rising mid-career artists, included Yang Luzi (6/9–8/12) and an exhibition from Taiwanese artist Musquiqui Chihying, focused on the question of China’s role in present-day Africa (8/25–10/28). UCCA organized “Cao Fei: A Hollow in a World Too Full” (9/8–12/9), which was exhibited off-site at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong. In the last months of 2018 UCCA’s 798 site closed for refurbishment, while opening the new UCCA Dune Art Museum—situated within a popular beachfront holiday getaway in neighboring Hebei province, some 300 kilometers from UCCA’s original site—the inaugural exhibition included works from Nabuqi and Zheng Bo (10/13–2019/4/7). A 2014 arrival in 798, the smaller private museum M Woods was founded by collectors Lin Han and Wanwan Lei. It’s most important show for the year was, “Paul McCarthy: Innocence” (3/17–6/17), a museum-wide show of 43 works from the American best known for his difficult to watch video works. Continuing to organize shows that include artworks from across history, “Monks and Artists” (7/14–9/2), brought replicas of wall paintings from the Kizil Buddhist grottoes in Xinjiang, into dialogue with contemporary artworks, including Kader Attia’s Open Your Eyes (2010). The privately owned, non- commercial, Faurschou Foundation, which also has a space in Copenhagen, had two long- running exhibitions: “Ragnar Kjartansson & The National: A Lot of Sorrow” (3/18–7/18), and the group show, “Entropy” (9/9–2/24), which brought together one work each from He An, Yang Fudong, Liu Wei, Sun Xun, Zhao Zhao, Yu Ji and Chen Tianzhuo. Located on the outskirts of Beijing, the Red Brick Art Museum has continued to grow with shows involving key international artists and curators. Solo exhibitions included Japanese artist Izumi Kato (25/8–10/14) and “Olafur Eliasson: The Unspeakable Openness of Things” (3/25–8/12), an artist integral to the private collection of museum owner Yan Shijie. It’s last exhibition for the year was a group show curated by Tarek Abou El Fetouh, “Rituals of Signs and Metamorphosis” (3/11–2019/4/7), which united works from artists with ties to the Asian continent, including Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Walid Raad, as well as Anish Kapoor’s black water whirlpool, Descension (2015). Another institution in the outer reaches of Beijing is Inside-Out Art Museum, led by curator and researcher Carol Yingua-Lu and artist Liu Ding, its shows are marked by academic rigor and retrospective historical assessments of Chinese and Asian modern and contemporary art. Exhibitions in 2018 included the two heavily archival exhibitions, “Discordant Harmony: Observations of Artistic Practices in East Asia at the Transition Between the 1980s and the 1990s” (2017/11/4–2018/2/4) and “Salon, Salon: Fine Art Practices from 1972 to 1982 in Profile – A Beijing Perspective” (1/8–5/7). More centrally located, 16-year-old nonprofit Today Art Museum, which is partially funded by the Beijing district government, has a weak program of exhibitions. Government sanctioned exhibitions such as, “Win-win Cooperation/Belt and Road International Printmaking Exchange Project” (1/19–3/8), are balanced by attempts to stay abreast with new trends in contemporary Chinese art, such as, “Rhizome --- A Survey Subject of Chinese Contemporary Arts” (1/14–3/4), which included works by Xu Zhen & MadeIn Company. Of Beijing’s foreign cultural institutes, the Goethe-Institut continues to be the most active, organizing a number of events, talks and exhibitions. For the celebration of its 30th anniversary in China a 30-hour, non-stop program of art, music, lectures and workshops was programed (11/17–11/18). Beijing’s independent nonprofit spaces have usually setup shop in the city’s hutongs, but the continued purge of illegal structures in the historic alleyways saw many facing problems and led to searches for spaces elsewhere. One hutong space is I: project space, although its original exhibition and office space remains intact, their recently opened second space situated in a hutong in the west of the city is slated for destruction. The space hosted the Nightlife Residency, the first of its kind, inviting an artist working in the intersection of electronic music, club culture and contemporary art (2/1–3/31) and later hosted a performance of multidisciplinary artist Rainbow Chan (9/22), typical of the space’s focus on experimental works from young artist. The Institute for Provocation (IFP) another hutong residency-cum-exhibition space has also avoided any destruction, allowing them to host the Beijing stop of curator Ruth Noack’s multicity, group exhibition series, “Sleeping with a Vengeance, Dreaming of a Life” (7/10–11/1). Arrow Factory, one of Beijing’s longest- lasting hutong spaces, lost its trademark window through which artworks were viewed, but perserved with a number of exhibitions that took the new bricked wall as a starting point for newly commissioned works, including a sound installation piece by English artist Matt Hope (11/8–2019/1/15). Salt Projects was another hutong space to lose its window but also continued to organize exhibitions, such as “Li Shurui: Light Extracts” (2/4–3/31) and “Ke Peng: The Secured” (7/27–8/30), as well as interactive lecture performances such as “Xiaoshi Vivian Vivian Qin: Lv Hua Dai” (4/15–6/2). Wyoming Project began the year with a strong series of exhibitions, including a two-screen video installation by Elizabeth Price (3/21– 5/28), her first solo showing in China, but by the last months of the year one of its owners was mired in sexual misconduct allegations and the space closed as it was also hit by hutong restructuring. Outside of the hutongs, Video Bureau in 798 has an explicit focus on video art, archiving and exhibiting a selected artists’ videos on a rolling basis; this year the collection added videos by Hao Jingban and Yao Qingmei, among others. Taikang Space in Caochangdi was the very first domestic nonprofit art space in Beijing and is supported by the Taikang Insurance Group, its most significant 2018 show was “Genders Engender” (3/22–5/19), which as well as an exhibition of works by artists such as Ma Qiusha, Mountain River Jump and Zhang Sirui, was also a series of talks, workshops and events centered around contemporary gender studies. Another Caochangdi constant is Telescope, a non-profit space opened in 2012 by American James Elaine, artists shown included Liu Fujie (1/20–3/31) and the linear minimalist paintings of Dutch artist Jan van der Ploeg (3/31–5/30). Nearby PPPP was a newly opened non-profit located in an office block, the first outing was a group video works by artists including Chen Zhou, Kim Laughton and Lin Ke (9/15–10/15). Another newly opened space was Tattoo Parlour, a two-window space located in the central Sanlitun area and sat next to a hotel from which it was partially funded, the space showed works by Colin Siyuan Chinnery (2017/12/23–2018/3/8) and Liu Yaohua’s powdered paint pigments and electronic fans creation (6/22–9/9), before announcing its closure in October. Tattoo Parlour was conceptualized by Peng Xiaoyang, the same person behind two more non-profits The Bunker and DRC No. 12, the latter located inside Beijing’s Diplomatic Residence Compound, which among other shows hosted Yang Zhengzhong’s “Background” (9/27–11/29), chiefly a collage of online news and gossip clippings. De Art Center was another new, non-profit space to appear, located outside of the hutongs in a former government building and founded curator Xia Yanguo, the space was inaugurated with an exhibition by director and video artist Ju Anqi (3/20–4/14), followed by the surreal, black and white drawings of Korean artist Seung Ae Lee (7/7–9/9). Beijing’s commercial galleries are mostly in one of two clusters—a former factory area, 798 Art District, and a former migrant village, Caochangdi. Longtime 798 resident Long March Space, hosted Liu Wei’s moving sculptural forms (3/18–5/6), Zhao Gang’s mostly figural paintings taken from across his career (5/16–7/10), the group show, “Building Code Violations III – Special Economic Zones” (7/21–8/26), curated by the Long March Project Space, a unit within the gallery tasked with supplying comparatively probing, research-based exhibitions, and a show of Vivien Zhang’s paintings marked by multifarious iconographic and conceptual influences (9/8–11/4). Galleria Continua continued its habit of arranging ambitious largescale exhibitions of well-known artists from its roster, this year that included Carston Höller’s “Method” (3/23–6/2), which brought together sculptures of mushrooms of varying sizes, stacks of televisions and huge light installations, and a showing of new and old works from Michelangelo Pistoletto (6/23–11/11). Next door is Boers-Li Gallery, which hosted Wang Jiajia’s chromatic abstract paintings (5/12–6/24) and later in the year “Zhang Peili: Now That” (10/27–12/12), four recent works from an artist widely understood to be immutable from the development of Chinese contemporary art. One door down is Tang Contemporary Art, here Zhu Jinshi presented two separate bodies of work, a hanging paper installation and a series of thick impasto paintings (3/10– 4/30), while the group show, “New Historical Drama” (5/12–6/30), brought outstanding modern Chinese art into dialogue with contemporary art objects, including works by Fang Lijun, Li Songhua and Zhang Dali. At longtime 798 resident Pace Beijing, Yin Xiuzhen held a show of multimedia artworks, including a giant figure in the brace position created from scaffolding and clothing (2017/12/14–2018/3/3). Xiao Yu exhibited a grouping of sculptural works created from reeds (3/17–4/28), while the year closed with a set of softly colored, figural paintings from German artist Tim Eitel (9/26–11/10). Transplanted to 798 last year but a veteran of Beijing, Galerie Urs Meile showed Shao Fan’s large black-and-white paintings of animals and landscapes (3/23–5/6), young Swiss painter Rebekka Steiger’s brighter but equally enigmatic paintings (8/28–10/21), and Hu Qingyan’s bulky mixed media sculptures (11/3–12/30). Opposite is Magician Space, who underwent a significant refurbishment at the end of the year significantly increasing their exhibition space. Liang Wei’s “Before Itself” (3/22– 5/6) brought together a selection of her new abstract painting, “No Easy Symbolism” (5/14– 6/20) showed new video works, comical parodies of advertisements, from Lie Yefu, and also shown were video works and realist paintings from Jiang Zhi (7/21–9/8). Other galleries in 798 include Gallery Yang whose key exhibition was “Zhang Yue: If I Could” (3/23–5/20), curated by Cui Canan, the grouping of documentary-cum- investigative projects won the award for best exhibition from Gallery Weekend Beijing. Since establishing in 2015, Tabula Rasa has been quietly and proficiently developing its exhibition program, this year that included exhibitions of the video works of Ma Haijiao (3/24–4/29), picturesque paintings by Xiao Hanqiu (9/22–10/26), as well as the group shows “Aberrant Decoding” (8/31–9/9) and “Atous Les Chevaux Du Roi” (9/22–10/26) with the works of Li Ming, Zhang Si and Chang Yuhan. Beijing Commune presented new sculpture from Richard Deacon (3/17–5/12) and Zhao Yao’s refashioned TED talk videos played from within a number of wooden boxes (11/3–12/25). Space Station organized a number of painting exhibitions, Wang Rongzhi’s “Shit and Gold” (3/17–4/22) and the watercolors of Wang Mengsha filled with figures and animals (6/30–7/28). C5, who has a space in Sanlitun, opened a new micro-space in 798, showing the sculptural objects of Zhang Miao (10/17– 11/18). Husand Space showed the sculptures of Qiu Shijie (8/28–10/14) and He Chi’s videos filmed by his mother after the artist returned to his hometown after his father’s death (11/3– 2019/1/13). Less than three kilometers north, in Caochangdi, ShanghArt held the first China solo presentation of Indonesian performance artist Melati Suryodarmo, including a live performance during the show’s opening (4/18–5/14), later they showed a selection of new photographs from Birdhead (9/9–10/21). White Space Beijing has a busy schedule, which this year included colorful, abstract paintings by young painter Gao Ludi (8/28–10/18), and Yang Jian’s minimalist sculptures made of everyday objects and clear yellow plastic (10/27– 12/7). Several galleries are located inside Caochangdi’s complex of redbrick buildings. Ink Studio, focused almost solely on the medium of ink, held an adjunct exhibition of ink and print works for Xu Bing’s UCCA show (7/14–9/23), and “Bingyi: Impossible Landscapes” (10/13–11/25), a grouping of conceptually vast works that were as much land art as ink works. At Chambers Fine Art, exhibitions of older painters were common, including Cai Jin (3/10–4/15) and Wang Gongyi (4/22–6/10). The strongest presentation at Pékin Fine Arts was a solo show of new Zhang Dali sculptures and paintings, the latter of fastmoving flocks of white birds against blue backdrops (3/10–9/10). Just outside the main gallery area of Caochangdi is the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, a nonprofit founded and run by artist-couple RongRong and inri. Most significantly, they hosted the first exhibition in China of pioneering twentieth-century photographer Shoji Ueda (9/23–11/25). Both longtime presences in the capital, the China International Gallery Exposition (9/30–10/2) and Art Beijing (4/29–5/2) were this year joined by two new fairs as attempts to solidify the presence of a fair in the city continue. JINGART (5/17–5/20), conceptualized by the team behind Shanghai’s Art021, stood out with a number of premier international galleries including David Zwirner and Hauser & Wirth. Beijing Contemporary (8/30–9/2) was purposefully more insular attracting many of the most important Chinese galleries including, Antenna Space and Madein Gallery. At the second edition of Gallery Weekend Beijing (5/23–5/30) an increased roster of quality gallery and museum shows as well as ancillary events has become increasingly successful in drawing collectors and art-world folk on their way to Art Basel Hong Kong. The world’s top-three auction houses by sales of Chinese art objects are now all based in Beijing: Beijing Poly International Auction, Beijing Council International Auction and China Guardian International Auction.
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