Telling the youth's story
By James Tiscione
Under silent grey skies, there was a feeling of isolation at the Image Base Arts Complex outside the East Fourth Ring Road last Thursday morning, an atmosphere that lent itself well to the themes surrounding Dandeli Gallery's latest exhibition, Youth Story.
Wrapping up on March 5, Youth Story is a group exhibition showing five selected 1980s generation artists—Li Jun, Liu Rui, Zhang Jiedong, Li Tingting and Zhang Shanshan—most of whom are still enrolled in master's programs at some of China's most prestigious art conservatories.
It's difficult to generalize a scene as varied as "Chinese Youth Art," but using a broad stroke to start at 1980 is not without its reason. With Youth Story, Dandeli is attempting to illustrate that the art produced from a generation of only children embraces a unique form of isolation.
"This is the first generation of artists coming out of the one child policy," said Han Jian, assistant director at Dandeli, "and their view of the world is much different than Chinese artists born a decade earlier."
"Their art is more of an individual expression affected by the rapid changes around them," he added.
The show opens with Time Sequence of Memories, a series by artist Liu Rui that employs textiles on canvas to create warm domestic snapshots, like depicting a lounging pet and its owner. With layers of fabric wrapping the subjects in a plush solitude, Liu's works evoke a lethargy and inertia found in modern living. Liu also incorporates mixed media like functioning electronic appliances to further emphasizing material comfort.
A subtext of disconnection is also apparent in a pointillism series, In A Daze, by Zhang Jiedong. Through thousands of acrylic dots on stretched muslin, the 26-year-old student from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute has produced images reminiscent of color blindness tests. Zhang depicts candid scenes of subjects on computers, sitting on beds or standing in fully furnished living space, his style's hazy effect making his subject barely discernible from their catalog-perfect surroundings.
Through a series entitled Lap Dogs, Li Jun employs black ink on canvas to depict an array of human emotion through the expressions of small pet dogs, which served as a substitute to siblings for many born in the 80s.
Li Tingting, already an internationally exhibited artist, takes advantage of a sense of depth and opacity for her watercolors seen in Still Life, which depicts cascades of clear plastic bottles on a three-meter hanging scroll. The effect hints at the consumerist momentum her generation has contributed to while being overwhelmed and buried by it.
The work of Zhang Shanshan, another product of the Central Academy, however, brings the show's momentum to halt. Although her works Germination I and II series pique interest as the artist feminizes images of tractors with light colors and thickly textured oils, but loses this juxtaposition in portraits of fashionably dressed young women painted in a similar style.
Overall, the exhibition is accessible and well crafted, but extremely safe and complacent. If this show set out to represent a generation, it would do well to make the case that Chinese art needs a return to the riskier realm of ideology and challenging social issues, rather than floundering in stylistic ennui.
Where: Dandeli Art Space, No. 3 Guangqu Road, Building No. 1
When: Until Friday, March 5
Contact: 6770-8966
www.dandeliarts.com
Source: Global Times
http://www.globaltimes.cn/www/english/metro-beijing/update/culture/2010-03/509527.html
