Cultural evolution
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Ni Youyu: Big Draft, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 150x200cm The artist uses a broken-line technique to integrate the traditional genre of landscape painting and traditional motifs into a contemporary pictorial idiom. Dead tree trunks and stuffed reindeer heighten the impression of artificial nature. swissinfo.ch -
Lu Chunsheng: I Want to be a Gentleman, 2000, black and white photo, 77.5x64cm Lu Chunsheng's static images lie between documentation and fiction. Surreal situations are created without elaborate arrangements or resorting to Photoshop. In this image, the nine men are reminiscent of pillar saints or statues, but their promotion to gentlemen turns out to be absurd given the no-man's-land aspect of their surroundings. swissinfo.ch -
Shi Guorui: Shanghai, China, 15-16 October 2004, 2004, black and white photo, 129x430cm In order to take this panoramic view of Shanghai, the artist transformed a room on the 29th floor of a hotel into a huge camera obscura. Light came into a totally darkened room through a small opening int he window and fell ont hte more than five-square-metre sheet of photography paper over several hours. Shanghai looks more like a ghost town than a thriving metropolis. swissinfo.ch -
Ji Wenyu & Zhu Weibing: The Space with a Fine Spring Day, 2006, mixed media with sound, 45x32x32cm. The glass hood covering this perfect family idyll shuts their microcosm off from the world. This work is an ironic comment on China's one-child policy. swissinfo.ch -
Shi Yong: The New Image of Shanghai Today, 1999, three plaster figures, each one 28x10x5cm. This work prestns three identical miniature figures of the artist with dark glasses, a striking Andy Warhol hair-do and holding their right arm up, similar to the pose in which Mao is often depicted. They constitute a sort of cultural hypbrid of apparently incompatible elements. swissinfo.ch -
Shi Yong: You Cannot Clone It, But You Can Buy It, 2000, colour photo, 31x248cm. The artist duplicates his own image to an absurd degree, thereby commenting ironically on the various connotations of the "Made in China" label. swissinfo.ch -
Zhang Jian-Jun: Mirage Garden Part 1, 2006, silicone, 120x80x45cm This amorphous chunk of pink silicone is an updated version of the rocks collected by Chinese scholars more than 2,000 years ago and placed in gardens for contemplation. The lurid colour is the result of the artist going into a Shanghai clothes store and asking what colour was currently in. (swissinfo.ch) swissinfo.ch -
Xu Zhen: Untitled 1, 2002, colour photo, 115x175cm Xu Zhen is the enfant terrible of the Shanghai art scene and in his series of untitled photographs he engages in a subtle game with the still taboo subject in China of sexuality. From a distance the images appear pixelated, but on closer inspection they consist of tiny superimposed strips of pornographic texts taken from the internet. swissinfo.ch -
Xu Zhen: Close-up of Untitled 1, 2002, colour photo, 115x175cm swissinfo.ch -
Xu Zhen: Untitled 3, 2002, colour photo, 90x175cm swissinfo.ch -
Jin Feng: Chinese Cuisine - Rabbit, 2000, colour photo, 60x162cm Jin Feng is preoccupied with the problems in Chinese society, and in a series of photographs, Chinese Cuisine focuses on the law against eating the meat of wild animals.The contrast between the prepared dish and the unscathed animal - as well as the bloody preparation - shows viewers what they repress when eating meat. swissinfo.ch -
Jin Jiangbo: One of four colour photos, each 115x300cm, entitled The Great Economic Retreat: The Dongguan Scene, 2008 The artist captured the abrupt closure of a number of factories. The panorama views present stillness and emptiness where hustle and bustle used to prevail. They testify to the Chinese economy's dependence on exports and hence on foreign buying power. (swissinfo.ch) swissinfo.ch -
Jin Jiangbo: One of four colour photos, each 115x300cm, entitled The Great Economic Retreat: The Dongguan Scene, 2008 (swissinfo.ch) swissinfo.ch -
The Big Draft exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts Bern (swissinfo.ch) swissinfo.ch -
Ni Youyu (swissinfo.ch) swissinfo.ch -
Jin Feng: Flying Angels, 2002, mixed media Produced after the September 11 attacks on New York, the half-man-half-brick clay figures - attached to bombs and hovering above mirrors - are reminiscent of so-called human bombs, who are both victims and weapons of their political or religious convictions. They also evoke the figures of the Chinese Terracotta Army. (Keystone) Keystone -
Jin Jiangbo: Migrant Worker, 2004, video installation with sound This video work draws attention to the exploitation and social discrimination of Chinese migrant workers. When viewers stand on the screen, the migrant workers rises from the depths of a shaft with a loud scream. Viewers involuntarily find themselves looking down on another person and even trampling on him. (Keystone)
Chinese contemporary art comes to Bern.
This content was published on November 29, 2010 - 10:16"Big Draft – Shanghai Contemporary Art from the Sigg Collection" is on display at the Museum of Fine Arts Bern. Texts adapted from comments by curator Monika Schäfer.
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