Yishu has followed the work of Xu Bing for many years and from many different perspectives. His work is diverse and he takes a socially responsible approach. Maya Kóvskaya adds to the discourse on his work by bringing up issues of how language, nature, and culture function in his projects and how he plays with the vulnerability of visual and textual language and its ability to reflect an understanding of our experience of the world.
We also present the work of two younger artists who are exploring the contemporary relationship between nature and technology. Mandy Ginson brings forward the work of Karilynn Ming Ho and her projects that address the mind and body and their connections to the digital world. Digital technology also plays a primary role in the work of Liu Chang, who, Echo He proposes, confronts the link between nature and the world we live in.
Realism, especially that which emerged after the cultural Revolution, is often not looked upon kindly by promoters of contemporary Chinese art and its potential of representing the avant-garde. Sophia Kidd discusses the work of Chen Anjian and his strong relationship with the Transport Teahouse, and Alexandra Grimmer explores the recent work of He Duoling, who brings together his history of working with realism and his interest in Russian intellectuals. On another level of history that is generally unacknowleged, Qu Chang examines the exhibition of work by Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu, two painters whose work is not easy to categorize, but who are clearly part of contemporary Chinese art history.
Stephanie Bailey visits the exhibition Speech Acts: Reflection–Imagination– Repetition, which challenges the collecting practices of museums and complicates how they can be read. In conclusion, we acknowledge the passing of Cui Xiuwen, another artist whom we have followed closely over the years, with a tribute by Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky.
Image (top): Chen Anjian, Teahouse Series–Tian Bangbang Moves His Black Piece (detail), 2010, oil on canvas, 110 x 78 cm. Courtesy of Liao Liao Arts Dissemination Institute, Chengdu.
Keith Wallace
