Yishu is pleased to announce the launch of the the Chinese-language edition of Yishu. Published in May, this inaugural issue includes a selection of articles published in the English-language version.

Selected texts featured in this issue include:

问道之水的轮回——论冰逸的新作《囦》
文：魏星

营造水墨: 郑重宾与祁珊立的对话
文：祁珊立（Lisa Claypool）
译：斯然畅畅、祁珊立、郑重宾

侯瀚如写给汉斯·尤利斯·奥布里斯特（Hans Ulrich Obrist）的 一封信
文：侯瀚如
译：林思嘉(Scarlett Lin)

亦悒亦乐：温哥华美术馆的林荫庭 (Ken Lum) 回顾展
文：杰米·希尔德 （Jamie Hilder)
译：周晓鸣 （Debra Zhou）

艺术介入社会：与王春辰的对话
文：米三（Marie Leduc）
译：郑晶晶

中国艺术的“空间”和“地点”
文：岳鸿飞 （Robin Peckham）
译：刘秀仪 （Venus Lau）

杭州座谈会
英文整理：余小蕙
译：张大军

image (top): 徐震 2007年 动物内脏、玻璃容器、甲醛、树脂、玻璃钢等 艺术家及北京长征空间提供

We would like to thank JNBY for their generous support of this project.

编辑手记

《Yishu：Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art》（典藏国际版）自2002年5月创刊以来，已出版了十年。作为第一本聚焦中国当代艺术的学术性英文刊物，《Yishu》受到国际艺术界和批评界的重视。为了让中文读者也能分享本刊的内容，我们于去年10 月推出了《典藏国际版文选》试刊号。从今年开始，《典藏国际版文选》将正式出版发行。每三个月出一期，每期约五万字。这样，我们可以陆续将《Yishu》每期约三分之一的文章介绍给大家，让许多作者对当代中国艺术的精辟见解能在更广大的语言范畴 中交流。

当代水墨艺术近年来越来越引起人们关注。这种来自中国传统的媒介在当代语境中如何保持生命力？是否能将它的受众扩展到文化边界以外？这一直是艺术家和学者们热衷讨论的话题。在本期介绍的艺术家中，冰逸和郑重宾两位有着很不相同的背景，但是他们对西方社会和当代文化的长期接触，显然有助于对这一传统艺术形式的阐释和创新。另一位华裔加拿大艺术家林荫庭虽然不以水墨创作，但他的独特身份与经验同样地为作品增加了不同凡响的深蕴和厚度。资深策展人侯瀚如与小汉斯（Hans Ulrich Obrist）在ARTiT 网站上一直以书信形式探讨艺术和社会议题。本期选载的一封信就国际局势的变幻及对当代艺坛的影响表示了深切的关注。另一位策展人王春辰的访谈则从国内的角度探讨艺术批评的社会责任。两位学者的观点都极富启发性。美国策展人岳鸿飞（Robin Peckham）曾在北京工作多年，现正在香港主持一家艺术空间, 他考察社会环境、历史、市场及其它外界因素对艺术创作不可忽视的影响，就内地与香港等地艺术家对空间的理解和掌控作了很有意思的比较。

十二年前，我曾安排过一次国际策展人到中港台的访问。参加者除以恩威佐（Okwui Enwezor）为首的文件展（Documenta）策展团队外，还有德孔（Chris Dercon）、库克（Lynne Cooke）等欧美重要美术馆的主持人。当时我们在许多城市中组织了策展人与艺术家的座谈，可说是东西方就当代艺术问题较早也较高端的一次直接对话。去年《艺术界》杂志主编田霏宇（Philip Tinari）曾撰文回顾这一历史性的活动。我们在本期翻译了《Yishu》创刊号刊载的《杭州座谈会》记录全文，以飨读者。本文是第一次以中文发表。希望以后能继续给大家介绍类似的文献资料。一份学术刊物的持续不是件容易的事。台湾典藏出版社和简秀枝社长对《Yishu》的支持十年如一日。江南布衣集团和李琳女士倡议出版中文版，并全力赞助和提供合作团队。在《典藏国际版文选》正式出版之际，我们要向她们致以衷心的感谢和敬意。

郑胜天

Fifth Night is a recent multi-channel video installation by Chinese artist Yang Fudong. One of the most important and influential artists to emerge in China since the late 1990s, Yang Fudong produces sophisticated film and video installations that engage the cinematic traditions of both Hollywood and experimental film while referencing the changing cultural conditions of contemporary China.

In Fifth Night, the artist captured a single scene from seven different vantage points; he then pieced this footage together to compose a fractured whole that plays out across seven screens. The result is a poetic, layered and disjunctive narrative that poses a sense of dislocation that is reflective of the new China, a position that hovers between traditional ideologies/values, and recent modernization. This will be the first presentation of this critically-acclaimed work in Canada.

Organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and curated by Daina Augaitis, chief curator/ associate director. In conjunction with Yellow Signal Vancouver, a metro Vancouverwide presentation of new media works by contemporary Chinese artists, initiated by Centre A.

Yang Fudong: Fifth Night is the thirteenth installment in NEXT: A Series of Artist Projects from the Pacific Rim, presented by TD Bank Group.

Curator Daina Augaitis’ interview with Yang Fudong is featured in the May/June 2012 issue of Yishu Journal: http://yishu-online.com/browse-articles/?614

photo (top): Yang Fudong, Fifth Night, 2010, 7-channel video installation, 10 mins., 37 secs. Courtesy of the artist, ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai, and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.

On View: May 12 – September 3, 2012

Venue: Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby Street, Vancouver, Canada

Members Opening: May 25, 2012, 8-10pm

Artist Talk: May 26, 3pm.

Visit: http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca

Yishu is pleased to announce its continued participation in the 5th edition of Art HK, which opens from May 17-20, 2012 (preview on May 16). Please come to say hello at MED09. See you there!

About Art HK

Back for its fifth year, ART HK 12 will take place 17-20 May 2012, preview 16 May, at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC). This year, ART HK 12 will showcase the very best in contemporary art from 266 galleries representing 39 International territories. Widely acknowledged as an important platform for networking in the international art community, ART HK brings together leading collectors, curators, artists and galleries from across Asia and the rest of the world.

The Fair is accompanied by an exciting VIP program of events showcasing the best that Hong Kong has to offer culturally as well as socially, and an extensive talks program featuring prominent speakers. Collectors are drawn by an opportunity to discover a quality and geographical diversity of art not presented anywhere else.

New enthusiasts will gain from the education opportunities offered, and learn first-hand from art world professionals. ART HK is the only fair in Asia bringing together such an exceptional scope of work, and as dynamic a gathering of people.

ART HK 12 is produced in collaboration with Art Basel.

Open to Public: May 17-20, 2012, Preview on May 16

Venue: Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre

http://www.hongkongartfair.com

Editor’s Note:

This edition of Yishu marks both the fiftieth and the last issue that celebrates our tenth anniversary. The staff at Yishu would like to thank all our supporters including our funders, subscribers, and writers. It is you who make this journal a success.

On this occasion we present a special issue devoted to the multi-gallery exhibition Yellow Signal: New Media in China, initiated and curated by Yishu Managing Editor Zheng Shengtian and a project of Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. The participating galleries include Centre A, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, Pacific Cinémathèque, Republic Gallery, Surrey Art Gallery, and Charles H. Scott Gallery.

The notion of “yellow signal” forms the thematic of this exhibition and implies entry into an intersection at a critical moment when there is the need to make a decision either to be cautious and hold back or to take a chance and proceed forward—a situation that Zheng Shengtian suggests exists for artists in mainland China as well as in many other regions. The rapid growth of new media and its impact, especially in the virtual world, makes the idea of “yellow signal” even more compelling.

Yishu 50 includes eleven essays and interviews by nine authors covering the early development of new media in mainland China through to the present. In mainland China, the idea of new media has a different resonance than in other parts of the world, including Hong Kong and Taiwan. For decades, art training was the purview of academies that concentrated on the traditions of painting, sculpture, and printmaking, and it is only recently that photography has earned a respected place within the field of fine art. In their introductory texts, both Zheng Shengtian and MoMA/NY Video and Media Curator Barbara London offer very personal perspectives; the first follows the fifteen-year history of presenting contemporary Chinese art in Vancouver, and the second tracks London’s encounters with new media during her early travels to mainland China.

The artists included in Yellow Signal are Cao Fei, Forget Art Collective, Ge Fei, Lin Zhen, Geng Jianyi, Huang Ran, Kan Xuan, Liu Xiaodong, Lu Yang, Remon Wang, RongRong & inri, Wang Jianwei, Yang Fudong, Zhang Lehua, and Zhang Peili. This extraordinary range of artists represents some of the pioneers of new media in China as well as a younger generation whose work ranges from photography to video to virtual reality.

Keith Wallace

image (top): Yang Fudong, Fifth Night, 2010 (detail), 7-channel video installation, 10 mins., 37 secs. Courtesy of the artist, ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai, and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.

The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery is pleased to present the work of Geng Jianyi, Huang Ran, and Zhang Peili as part of the city-wide project, Yellow Signal: New Media in China. Initiated by Centre A, this series of exhibitions and programs is the first comprehensive presentation of contemporary Chinese new media and video art in Canada. It showcases a selection of leading new media works by internationally acclaimed Chinese artists.

The project is compelling for its portrayal of current political circumstances faced by many artists in China. “Yellow Signal is a metaphor for the communal state of ambiguity in Asian countries,” explains Zheng Shengtian, BC-based artist, curator, and internationally recognized scholar and expert on contemporary Chinese art. He further explains, “Yellow Signal is about limitation and possibility, choice and chance, confusion and self-confidence—feelings that many Asian artists experience, but that artists everywhere may also relate to in their creative practice.”

Huang Ran

The Belkin Art Gallery’s exhibition features a video by Huang Ran titled Blithe Tragedy (2010), a work that questions the relationship between beauty and horror and the power of images. The video presents scenes of intense struggle, emotion, and violence. At the same time, the attention to detail in the footage creates highly aesthetic imagery that prompts the viewer to wonder about the power of the visual to obscure the underlying realities of the scenes and of contemporary society.

Huang Ran (b. 1982) is one of the most interesting young artists to emerge in China. He graduated from Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2007 and has participated in many international group and solo exhibitions. In 2011, Huang received the Credit Suisse Today Art Award from the Today Art Museum in Beijing.

Geng Jianyi

Installed at the Belkin Art Gallery and at Walter C. Koerner Library, Excessive Transition (2008) by Geng Jianyi is a series of large and small black-and-white photographs of everyday objects from the artist’s daily life. Geng uses techniques to create semi-transparent, abstract, and eerie subtle effects that have been equated with ideas about the withdrawal of the individual from society.

Geng Jianyi (b. 1962) is a foundational figure in contemporary Chinese art and was part of the artistic collective known as Chi She (Pool Association) and a major participant in the ’85 New Wave Movement. Using a wide range of media, his work is often known for its stark simplicity and concerns about personal identity and individuality.

Zhang Peili

Zhang Peili’s large-scale, multimedia installation A Gust of Wind (2008) is a meditation on the unpredictable forces that threaten ideas about stable, middle-class domestic life. We see a living room in ruin and the process of its destruction is seen from multiple perspectives on large video screens. It starts with a curtain that flutters in a breeze that steadily swells and tears apart the interior of the room until the roof collapses.

Considered the most important video artist in China, Zhang Peili (b. 1957) was a member of the ’85 New Wave Movement. He is known for the use of lengthy stationary shots that focus on mundane acts and repetitive human gestures that are often taken for granted. Recently, Zhang’s interest has been to reveal the absurdity of war and propaganda by editing found footage of dying communist heroes.

This exhibition is curated by Zheng Shengtian.

On View: April 27 – August 19, 2012

Opening Reception: Thursday, April 26, 8 to 10 pm

Artist’s talk by Zhang Peili with Curator Zheng Shengtian, Saturday, April 28, 1:30 to 3 pm

All welcome. Admission is free.

Works of art from this exhibition are also presented at: Walter C. Koerner Library, 1958 Main Mall, UBC

For more information visit belkin.ubc.ca

Caochangdi explores the relationship between the home and its inhabitants while documenting the evolution of a family through images of the artists with their children. The series continues an ongoing focus on the beauty of the human being in nature and the urban environment. RongRong and Inri are a husband and wife photography team native to China and Japan, respectively, and have been working together since 2000. Their work reflects the intimate world that they have created together, while pushing the boundaries of traditional black-and-white darkroom techniques.

The exhibition is guest-curated by Zheng Shengtian.

Photo credit: RongRong and Inri, Caochangdi, Beijing, 2004. Image courtesy of the artists.

On view: April 6 – May 5, 2012

Address: Republic Gallery, 732 Richards Street, Vancouver, BC, V6B 3A4, Canada

Free Admission

For more info, please visit: http://republicgallery.com/current.html

Incorporating elements of video game interactivity and cinematic viewing, gallery visitors will experience an uncanny parallel city that has been created through the virtual computing community known as Second Life. China’s dynamic new urban landscapes inform a future threatened by uncertain ecological transformation in Cao Fei’s re-imagined China.

This exhibition is curated by Jordan Strom.

On View: April 7 – June 10, 2012

Address: Surrey Art Gallery, 13750 – 88 Avenue, Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, V3W 3L1

Opening: April 14, 2012, 7:30 – 9:30pm. Formal Remarks: 7:45pm

Public Event: May 12, 2pm. Montreal-based art critic and curator, Alice Ming Wai Jim will discuss the work of Cao Fei in the context of contemporary new media art from China.

Free Admission

Photo credit: Cao Fei / China tracy, RMB CITY: A Second Life City Planning, 2007. Video, 6 min. Courtesy of Vitamin Creative Space.

As the first comprehensive presentation of contemporary Chinese new media and video art in Canada, Yellow Signal: New Media in China consists of six exhibitions and one film screening which will take place at various public and commercial art galleries as well as a cinema in Metro Vancouver. The list of venues include Centre A, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, Surrey Art Gallery, the Charles H. Scott Gallery at Emily Carr University, Republic Gallery, and Pacific Cinémathèque. Starting in March and continuing until September 2012, each gallery will present an exhibition and accompanying artist/curator talks. Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art will launch a special issue on Yellow Signal: New Media in China in May 2012.

For more info, please visit: http://www.surrey.ca/culture-recreation/1537.aspx

Presented by Yellow Signal: New Media in China and Pacific Cinémathèque. Taiwan 2011. Director: Yao Hung-I | With: Liu Xiaodong

Directed and shot by Yao Hung-I — a protégé of the great Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien — Hometown Boy profiles the acclaimed contemporary Chinese artist Liu Xiaodong, known for his paintings of ordinary people. In 1980, Liu left his hometown of Jincheng, a small factory town in Liaoning province, to study painting in Beijing. Hometown Boy, winner of Best Documentary honours at the 2011 Golden Horse Awards (Taiwan’s Oscars), follows Liu on a return visit to Jincheng, where he visits family and old friends, contemplates the changes he encounters, and sets out to capture it all on canvas. Liu’s work was previously the subject of Dong, a 2006 documentary by pre-eminent Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke. “Yao’s agile camera produces a visually arresting portrait of Liu, who freely gives his ideas about art and life, while adding an idyllic charm to the village and its working-class residents who, in the painter’s view, have been long overlooked and forgotten” (Taipei Times). “Every one of Liu’s paintings is a part of the whole, a frozen moment infused with his childhood memories and current existence. He confronts the objects in his painting from an honest, independent, and daring point of view. In these moments, he comes out of himself and his personality and expression penetrate the surface of the painting. Hometown Boy hopes to record this process” (Hou Hsiao-Hsien). Colour, HDCAM, in Mandarin with English subtitles. 72 mins.

Presented in conjunction with Yellow Signal: New Media in China, a city-wide exhibition of the best contemporary video and new media artwork made by Chinese artists in recent years. The project is initiated by Centre A — Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, with Shengtian Zheng, a Vancouver-based curator and internationally recognized expert on Chinese contemporary art. He is currently the managing editor of Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art.

Yellow Signal: New Media in China is a multi-event celebration of contemporary Chinese video and new media artwork running March to September 2012 at various venues in the Vancouver area, including Center A — Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at UBC, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Surrey Art Gallery, Republic Gallery, and the Charles H. Scott Gallery at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

For more information, visit http://www.centrea.org and http://www.cinematheque.bc.ca

SHOWTIMES – Friday, March 30, 2012 – 7:00pm

Centre A is pleased to lead the exhibition presentations with artists Wang Jianwei and Kan Xuan, guest curated by Shengtian Zheng. Based in Beijing, Wang Jianwei is an internationally acclaimed artist and pioneer of video and multimedia art. He is known for his conceptually complex, multi-faceted explorations of contemporary Chinese life. Kan Xuan is a mid-career woman artist working primarily with video, photography and installation. She uses simple, clear images to express her desire for a more direct and unique understanding of life. Her works are always characterized with humour, deep irony as well as lightness and grace.

At Centre A, Wang Jianwei presents “Go to the Conference Room on the 13th Floor for Free Films” – chapter four of his epic video work Yellow Signal, originally presented at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2011). For Centre A, the artist has re-conceived the original work as a four-channel. Using elements of theatre, philosophical inquiry, artistic methodology and “scripted accident”, the artist presents us with an obscure and complex world that simulates everyday life.

Kan Xuan presents two video works, One by One (2005) and Nothing! (2004). One by One is a single channel video work using a rotating camera to capture a group of security guards under the sun. The surrounding sounds are common and recognizable ambient sounds of the city. Nothing is another single channel video in which an unseen female protagonist responds to its surroundings in a gleeful voice. Using a camera lens as a stand-in for her acutely tuned eye, Kan is creating works with a precise attention to detail, inverting the significance of an object’s scale to give tiny things great attention.

Yellow Signal: New Media in China is the first presentation of these critically-acclaimed works by Wang Jianwei and Kan Xuan in Canada. Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art will launch a special issue on Yellow Signal in May 2012 featuring an in-depth interview with Wang Jianwei by Shengtian Zheng.

Artists: Wang Jianwei & Kan Xuan

Guest Curator: Shengtian Zheng

On View: March 17 – April 28, 2012

Opening: Friday, March 16, 2012 8:00 pm

Curator’s Talk: Saturday, March 17, 1:00- 3:00 pm at Centre A

With Shengtian Zheng

co-presented with the Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver

Lead Donor: Yu Yu, Urbanova Centre of Art & Design

Support Circle: Jack and Maryon Adelaar, Karen Coflin, Karen Gelmon, Roger Holland, Richard Mew, Michael O’Brian Family Foundation, Bernard Wolfe

For more information, please visit: http://centrea.org/

Editor’s Note:

The first three texts in Yishu 49 feature two artists, Lin Tianmiao and Ai Weiwei, who maintain extensive art careers in China and internationally. Both of them grew up during the Cultural Revolution and then spent time in New York City during the 1980s and early 1990s; thus their work has evolved from both regional and cosmopolitan perspectives. Each has produced a distinctive body of work that arises out of single-minded practices that elude easy categorization, and that follow no prevailing trend. Lin Tianmaio and her new work is subject of an interview with Peggy Wang and an essay by Patricia Karetzy, while Danielle Shang examines how he provokes questions about authenticity with the materials he employs in his art.

Edward Sanderson explores the increasingly blurred boundaries among curatorial practice, artistic practice, and institutions through the examples of two innovative exhibitions—Little Movements: Self-practice in Contemporary Art and A Museum That Is Not. Zhou Yan directly speaks to the institutions of art and criticism through a discussion comparing the idea of institutions in China with those in the US and how they fundamentally differ. The issue of blurred boundaries, especially with respect to curators and critics, is echoed in his text but in a way that takes them to task. Sophia Kidd also alludes to this matter in her review of the 2011 Chengdu Biennale in which she critiques its curatorial premise and the commercial and political agendas that seem to reside within this particular event.

The final two texts, reviews by Stephanie Bailey of the exhibition Structure and Absence and by Mandy Ginson of Lee Kit’s installation Henry (Have You Ever Been So Low?), exemplify very different kinds of exhibitions. The pairing of scholars’ rocks and contemporary art in Structure and Absence is not about one influencing the other—the subject of several recent exhibitions—but is more about how the meeting of these two unlikely aesthetics might redefine our understanding of them. Lee Kit’s exhibition, on the other hand, moves into an aesthetic of the psyche in which the objects and paintings in the installation create a narrative between us and the objects that populate our lives.

Keith Wallace

image (top): Lin Tianmiao, The same (The grey sameness) (detail), 2011, grey cashmere, linen cloth, silk thread, synthetic skeletons, copper, aluminum, electric wires, furfural, 161 x 478 x 45 cm. Courtesy of the artist.