Let There Be Light

Per Johansson, who was born 1984 in Sweden, is a post-1980s artist. Different from many post-1980s artists with inhospitality and indifference, Per is a mild and modest person willing to think and communicate. Per is good at seeing the enchanting moments of the mysterious nature: the sun breaking out of a cloud, a tiny part of a lake, or some vaguely seen shadows. These parts of nature are all in some way related to light: in the ripples on the lake, in the fog, in the sky over an island, or in the twinkle below the eyelid when somebody just opens his eyes. Sometimes the light is clear and sometimes it’s vague. Different kinds of light finally become paintings: the phenomenon, the illusion and the vision of light. The phenomenon of light is Per’s observation on light and shadow in nature; the illusion of light is different pictures in his mind; and the vision of light is the spiritualized light Per experiences in prayer, within his soul.

Per has been passionate about light for many years. In the process of his observation and contemplation on light, Per transforms the light into abstract paintings on canvas. They are mainly in warm colors with an atmosphere as light as air, which brings a sense of rhythm into his paintings. Per’s depiction on light is inspired by William Turners (the forerunner of French impressionists) great accomplishments on picturing light. Different from Turner, Per omits the factors which are interrupting the natural atmosphere, such as forests, trains and bridges which often appear in Turner’s paintings. In addition, Per’s paintings are not so obviously connected to specific religious issues as Turner’s. Per focuses on the light and the reflection of light, creating a pure atmosphere of meditation for both the audiences and himself.

Per never received formal art education. He was born with his love and passion for painting. He paints by intuition and from his own experience, which makes his painting unadorned and simple. Normally Per uses black color as background and on top of this foundation he paints with warm colors to create different levels of light, which is very similar to the style of heavy color painting in Yunnan province. Due to his high ambitions, Per is still working on some technical issues, such as the grasping of drawing style and color, the building of the airy sense. All of these elements need more exquisite skills to make the pictures even more vivid.

I believe Per is a tenacious and persisting painter, very interested in the process of art creation. A metaphor can describe him: if he believes there is water underground, he will dig until water comes out. Per’s pursuit on light comes from the desire in his heart, and his natural inspiration is the dialogue between his soul and God. In this process, Per gets familiar with the phenomenon, illusion and the vision of light.

Among the so-called emerging human beings - the post 1980s people who are closer to consumption and popular culture - there are some persons who still has passion for life and enchanting scenery, which originates from the thinking on ultimate life existence. Regardless of time, human’s have always looked up gazing for the light, this search for an answer, for light and for spirit is urgent and inevitable. Therefore it’s very valuable that Per, who is such a young artist, already has reached such a high spiritual level.

Luo Fei,January 30, 2008

back to Per’s exhibition

搅一杯往事的下午茶

有一天的下午，我来到画室，打开电脑查看雷燕发过来的几张图片，是雷燕用迷彩布做的软雕塑，很有意思。一部电脑，一个相机，一台老式电话，一个茶壶，两个杯子……哦，这些元素似乎构成了一杯浓郁的下午的茶。我突然想起了作家董桥散文中的一句话：“下午的茶，是搅一杯往事,切一块乡愁,榨几滴希望的下午。”哦，雷燕总喜欢炮制一杯略带苦涩却又回味甘甜的“茶”来。雷燕不但自己茗“茶”，而且约上她的好朋友一起来分享，当然这“茶”是一种视觉的盛宴。

作版画、油画也作图片和装置的雷燕，游任有余的徜徉自己的艺术世界里，但并不是自娱，而是作为一种文化行为，其艺术传达出的理念总是让人们感动，让人感慨。比如雷燕的作品《冰冻》红色系列，一本红宝书，一副红袖章……向我们展示了曾经把红色作为时尚的文化身体的那个年代。雷燕的作品有很强的符号特征，冰与文物（红色的宝书、袖章等），所产生的符号学的意义，让每个经历过那个年代的人都难以释怀。雷燕试图打捞心底冰封的视觉记忆，有她自己的诉求与愿望：冰冻中的红色记忆，是一个有关信仰、思想与追求的红色身体的记忆。在这个变化莫测、物欲横留的时代，随着时间的慢慢的消融，是否能唤回红色身体的记忆？当记忆由时间（艺术的表述方式）与空间（艺术构成方式）固化为文化的身体，必须以质疑的眼光与手段去呵护它的存在。因为，追求欲望与淡化欲望的文化身体构成了历史发展的生物链。

雷燕的软雕塑迷彩系列从色系上讲应该是绿色，绿色充满生机但也平和温馨。如果说《冰冻》的红色系列是陈封已久的欲望的历史，那么迷彩系列作品的理念，将迷彩文化从新整合后的日常性的叙事，则是淡化欲望后的人性的回归。雷燕的迷彩系列有两个文化层面的意义。一，迷彩在军事上被定义为迷惑与伪装，在保护作战的人和物的同时，也掩饰战争的血腥。迷彩理念的转换与解构，是在还世界一个宁静与和平的宿愿。二，军人出身的雷燕已经离开了部队，但是心系着部队的岁月。迷彩花瓶的稚拙，老式电话的亲切，茶杯茶壶的温馨……寓言似的身份转换，伤感中的眷恋尽在迷彩系列的软雕塑中。

雷燕善于把个人的亲历转换为公共的记忆，在极为日常性的叙事中，总能找到现实与历史的交汇点。而她的敏感与智慧总让她与众不同，总让她去发现表达艺术理念的艺术介质。无论是“冰冻”红色系列，还是“迷彩”绿色系列，理性材料的感性的表达，凸显文化的内涵，彰显人文的意义。作为一个女艺术家，艺术的人文性的追求，让她始终保持着先锋艺术的姿态。雷燕早期的作品“假如”系列，记录了年青生命的丰碑是如何成为大地的肌理；记述了产业结构调整后废弃的厂房的萧疏与凄凉；记载了城市建设是以摧毁本土文化为代价的所谓繁荣的假说。特别是作品《假如他们是女人》，将女性的发式装饰在男性领袖人物身上细节的真实，使解构与建构为同一性的权利话语。雷燕的领袖文化身体，强烈的话语权的现实意义在于，让女性实现“躯体的最强者同时也就是这个空间的统治者”的政治宣言。雷燕通过自己的艺术实践建立起来的话语权，表明艺术身份是独立的，艺术视角是独特的，艺术的人文性是追求的终极目标。在流行文化铺天盖地泛滥成灾的时候，雷燕有“坐看云起时”的清醒与坦然，并以自己的艺术表述方式，成就自己的艺术事业。

已进入中年的雷燕，以她的才情和机敏为她带来了艺术的辉煌时期。董桥说中年是下午的茶，雷燕和她的艺术就是一杯香醇而又浓郁的、苦涩而又甘甜的下午茶。

文/佟玉洁
2007-10-24
西安美院

Memory

I have known Lei Yan for several decades, ever since the time we worked together in the Kunming Military Region in the 1970s. I still remember that we spent a lot of time preparing for the art exhibitions in the army then.

Lei Yan made a series of prints, titled “We Have Lei Feng Everywhere”. It has been cited by many forms of media and been very influential. I was new in the army at that time and I felt so fortunate to receive tremendous help from Lei Yan – she was such a good and experienced teacher. It is a great honor for me.

Lei Yan served in the army from as early as the age of 14. She worked in a military hospital, a school and later in a research institution - she has been a soldier, a nurse, a scholar and researcher and also a military officer in various places. Even though she has had a range of careers, Lei Yan had always been greatly interested in art and especially paintings, leading her to produce a lot of art work which has been seen in many military inter art exhibitions. Lei Yan and I have had numerous discussions about art ever since she graduated from the China Military Fine Art College. In 1994, Lei Yan and I were invited by the Military Political Department to work together for the media art work titled, “The Pictures of an Era”, from which I found that she was no longer a soldier who only liked painting but an artist who had her own ideas and views on art. Because of her experience in printmaking, Lei Yan was more interested in printed material and was able to do a fine job. In 2001, with the completion of her new Loft in Kunming, Lei Yan retired from the military where she had served for more than 30 years and set up a studio in her Loft. Since then, Lei Yan has had more opportunities to communicate with foreign artists, institutions and art studios. She has recently finished a series of good pictures and set works, in which I found the theme “Memory” to have become her main focus in art.

We can have memories of certain people, of certain things, of sadness and happiness, of the happenings in our daily life and also of the nightmares we face in our lives. Because of the different personalities and life experiences, the memories arising from different people can be a very special element. In her time as an artist, Lei Yan used her memories of military service to express a special history of her life in the army - a story of a certain group of soldiers, a reflection of our nation and also a short biography of that time. The personal experience based on a period of national history, in other words, the memory that was created from that particular period of national history, became the fountain of Lei Yan’s art work, where she focused more on a human being’s soul, imagination, history and the future that we look towards.

The theme of “Memory” in Lei Yan’s latest work is one of the most valuable series of art done by a person born in the 1950s. I wish Lei Yan’s personal exhibition to be a roaring success!

Zhigang Tang
Loft, Kunming, China
December 2nd 2006

An Archaeological Tour of Revolutionary Romanticism and the Metaphor of Camouflage

Before the interpretations of the two groups of recent works by Ms. Lei Yan - “Frozen Series” and “Camouflage Cloth-making”, we should know of two relevant background factors. One is that she has been a female soldier in the army for 30 years (1970-2001) and then joined the Kunming contemporary art community “Chuangku” to set up her own studio after retiring from army. Lei Yan has experienced the transformation from the traditional art practices on creation of military subjects into the use of pictures, equipment, videos and other media for the creation of contemporary art works, and each article and event could sufficiently constitute the main raw material for her current creation. Secondly, the retrospection and reflection on the Mao Zedong era (mainly during the last 1950s-1970s) by the Chinese contemporary artists have never ceased. In each period Mao and his era’s symbols and images will be appearing in these artists’ narrative methods, which not only is the historical fact of the” Passion Burning Years” that the artists can not shun away from during the time when belief was absent, but also a kind of inquiry about the future. After knowing about these backgrounds, we can proceed with the interpretations of the latest works by Lei Yan.

“Frozen Series”: An Archaeological Tour of Revolutionary Romanticism

Lei Yan’s “Frozen Series” have frozen some military articles and the typical items of the Mao era, such as sleeve emblems, leader badges, the Little Red Books, the Red Guards shoulder badges, military uniforms, red flags, and female soldiers’ photographs etc., which are photographed and can be seen dimly under the ice. By getting the typical symbols and items of the special years frozen and sealed, the artist is staring at the historical samples from a nebulous distance with a tinge of desolation, and arousing a reflection on that period of time.

As we can see, there are two clues in the “Frozen Series”, one is the “Frozen Reds”, which uses the typical items of Mao era and military articles as the narrating subjects that include sleeve emblems, leader badges, the Little Red Books, the Red Guards badges, military uniforms, red flags etc., they are not merely logos or decorations, but they also carry the spirit of that era. As a person who was filled with ideals and passions regarding the collective values under communism, each had to possess these materials and contents, which represent a miniature of the people’s political life in that period of time, and a miniature of the” Passion Burning Years”. They are also a miniature of Lei Yan’s 30 years of military life. However, since the factors of refraction, distance, and temperature, the items, which are put into the ice body by Lei Yan, display a much unacquainted historical texture and shape. The partial deforming and distortion, blurring and dimness, chilliness and out-of-touch feeling created by the isolation of the ice layer. They seem like keepsakes from a previous existence. The archaeological-like association of ideas inspired by the sealing under ice. All of these have built a sort of sadness for the time of revolutionary passions, and a reminiscence of the disappeared spirit and resplendency.

The other is “Frozen Youth”, whose narrative subjects are female soldiers’ photographs including personal portraits, busts. Some are Lei Yan herself, but most of them are her comrades in the army. These girls of youthful spirit, each with tenderness, some seem a little depressed, some only being lost, and some with a poise that is typical during that period of time with a bag on shoulder or a machine gun in hands, head high and standing erectly with a passionate face under the willows. Among these photographs are several of military groups, and in these the pure eyes are filled with the young girls’ ideals and longings, smiling with tenderness and without the slightest hesitation for the future which is the typical expression of revolutionary romanticism. However, all of these various expressions and spirit states, with the addition of the classic poise, have been frozen into the cold ice layer and forced to drop in temperature, cold as well as out-of-touch, the high enthusiasm and innocent ideals are suddenly disappearing far away in the cold ice, which is just like a group of archaeological samples from the Mao era displayed ifor all to see.

Most of the above mentioned frozen objects, which were collected during Lei Yan’s military career, are well preserved. To most of us, these items and photographs are merely conceptualized image memories of a certain period, but those specific faces and temperature, are more like the family belongings in some box underneath grandmother’s bed, which are kept by mother for her daughter. When these objects and photographs are seen through the frozen ice, they have been endowed with new concepts, which are the memory of the public images and history of a female soldier, her private memory and feelings, and the reminiscence of ultimate issues such as faith to the land, spirits and resplendency.

If political pop art is “using the shock waves made by the western consumption culture in China, and turning the ’sacred politics’ of the Mao era into a popular and ironic political idea” as suggested by Li Xianting, and with current political pop art walking down a dead end via commercial obsequiousness, then artists, including Lei Yan, are going back to the starting point for art and soul by using a personal and poetic narrate of the Mao era. Let the real impression be explained via personal language instead of following the established groups style, it is a response which surpasses current political pop art.

“Camouflage Cloth-making”: The Metaphors Related to Camouflage

If the “Frozen Series” is the reminiscence and sadness of the long gone Mao era and its spirit and resplendency, then the “Camouflage Cloth-making” is the specific intervention in the current daily situation. Just like before, Lei Yan keeps on using the military goods as subjects, which are very familiar to a person who has 30 years of military service. However, the use of military goods in this series is different from that in the “Frozen Series”. The military goods in the “Frozen Series” belong to the section of borrowing, directly getting the existing goods embedded into ice to make them bring about the changes of concept, context and visual texture, but the “Camouflage Cloth-making” is the conversion and extension of military camouflage uniforms and patterns.

In this series Lei Yan uses camouflage fabric to make some hand-sewn items and scenes, items such as: camera, computer, teapot, vase, cup, tray, telephone, high heels, five-pointed star etc., which are daily mundane items. Setting up the items’ basic outline shape, the sewed items have more plasticity and flexibility. This series of work cross the boundaries between handicraft and sculpture. What is more, the symbolic features owned by the camouflage patterns themselves, give the remodeled daily goods the feeling of being covered by the camouflage with aggression and delusion.

In one group, the metaphor relating to camouflage is more obvious. Lei Yan has sewn with camouflage material into an ordinary family scene: a square table, a bench, a vase, two blurring persons in the picture frame and a crouching dog. The other one is the scene of a dressing table. These two scenes are modeled like reliefs, which simply present any day in our ordinary life without any dramatic moment. Persons, goods and scenes are covered by camouflage, mixing into the background, and therefore they are endowed with the meaning and metaphor of camouflage itself, the edges of people, goods and scenes are disrupted and guided by the camouflage patterns and become indistinguishable, characterless and without personality. So a metaphor related to camouflage, related to women’s identity, family and self-pity, can start. How should women live out their own unique vitality in the trivia of various household affairs? How should women be more visible in society? This is the metaphor and reflection of “Camouflage Cloth-making” by Lei Yan.

As a strong symbol of the military patterns, camouflage has been absorbed into the conceptual art of the female artist, Lei Yan. She would never have had such a profound reflection if she hadn’t had her own deep experience of the military. It is precisely because of this experience that we can see the double metaphors generated from the modeled objects disappearing into the camouflage, in addition to the interference and thawing from external forces. It also points at the internal crisis of the modeled object: a person may be defensive of their own identity, but to some extent they also face the risk of assimilation, of losing their personality and unique vitality. Maybe this is Lei Yan’s thinking in this exhibition. However, as a female artist, Lei Yan has not been assimilated; on the contrary, she has gained the unique vision and creativity. During a conversation with Lei Yan she said: “wherever we are, we should leave a window for our soul, facing the most real place of the heart to talk with your own soul and hold onto the innocence and passion found there.” And with her experience of the years of revolutionary enthusiasm and the attention to other people’s needs during her military career, not only does this become the source material and concept of her art, but it also expands her life experience. She does not rest on the complexities of this material and the hand-sewing but creates a deeper experience.

Written by Luo Fei(TCG Nordica Gallery Curator)
Translated by Liu Weiqiang

About Lei Yan’s Solso Exhibition

Chinese Contemporary Art in a Transition Era

Chinese Contemporary Art in a Transitional Era
For the exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Art –
Identity and Transformation

Foreword
I felt a great pressure when I tried to write this essay. I’m sure that this pressure is common to anybody who attempts to characterize and describe Chinese contemporary art. None of us is able to define it with a couple of simple concepts or frameworks because of its rapid and stupendous development. Even though we only want to talk about art, we can hardly grasp its complicated development and the vast energy contained deep in its reality. The key point is that contemporary art is constantly growing. In addition, I still feel I lack sufficient accurate data and information to write anything like a definitive account. Thus, I can only contribute my own feelings about Chinese contemporary art, as seen from my own perspective.

Background
China, as a big country with a huge population, is undergoing an incredible change brought about by rapid economic development and internal investment. This seems to have given tremendous energy to Chinese contemporary art. Since 1993 when Chinese artists attended the 45th Venice Biennial for the first time, artists from this vast nation have participated frequently in some of the most important international art fairs and have developed into a remarkable group in the current worldwide art scene. All this was inconceivable for those who lived in the late 1980s.

Today, when we talk about Chinese contemporary art, we have to pay close attention to two characteristics. One is its interaction with social progress. How did it cultivate the freedom and significant individual consciousness in China during the course of modernization of China’s society? I will develop this point by reviewing the drama of Chinese art and the construction of an art community. The second characteristic we must note is the special role Chinese contemporary art has had during the course of globalization and the increased international attention China now receives. I am aware that these two points are not enough to describe all details of Chinese contemporary art; however, they offer two aspects that can lead to a greater understanding.

Arousal of individual consciousness
Before the later eighties, China was still suffering from poor material supplies, decadent mental amusement and insufficient knowledge resulting from the chaos caused by war and long-time political campaigns. Artists of that time only acted as advertisers for political propaganda. Free creation was a luxury for them. They were not allowed to have their own ideas; instead they had to follow the national will. The reforms, which started in 1979, opened the door of a closed nation and created new opportunities after the conflicts of the previous century. Along with the break-dancing that appeared on the streets, a modernism of thought started to be seen among young artists. Thereafter, the rise of a series of modern art groups and movements formed a conscious, or perhaps unconscious, departure from the restrictions of the past. This awakened the individual will and independent awareness in China for the first time. Throughout this time, which included the likes of ‘85 Thought’1 of the 1980s, ‘The New Generation’2 of the early 1990s, ‘The Cynical Realism’3 and the increasing use of new media and performance in the later 1990s, the one consistent factor has been that all the art movements and trends which have emerged look like fast-moving clouds driven by strong winds.

All of these trends have broken through the ideology of ‘greatness and unity’ and the aesthetic style of ‘red and bright’ which was promoted in the Cultural Revolution. They have stepped out of the psychological shadow, and have made a true move towards original thinking and an exploration of contemporary life in China. The 1980s can be regarded as an enlightening time for individual awareness of Chinese contemporary art and elementary experimentation in art styles. Some post-modern Western philosophical monographs were introduced into China during this period. These monographs became the idealistic support for artists and their desire for enlightened self-awareness. The key phrase of that era was ‘The Great Soul’. At the same time, poorly printed painting albums in the style of Western modernism started to spread silently among Chinese artists.

It is not very hard to imagine the uniform nature of the art scene at this time and the tremendous potential energy behind it, which was desperately trying to burst out as things gradually opened up. This potential energy was completely released in the late 90s. Artists changed their focus from national thinking to individual experience, from revolutionary aesthetics to daily aesthetics. Their mission also turned from carrying forward truth, kindness and beauty to addressing social problems, from singing the praise of political figures to gazing intently at ordinary people, from the ‘Public Square’ to the home, from a political event to an unintended yawn, from the vague and general cultural saying to a practical exploration of the possibilities of varied media.

Today, when we review the history of the past twenty years, we find that the spirit and ideas of art have developed from national ideology to individual experience, then to an illustration of styles, then to the searching for different media and materials, and this has mirrored the rapid economic development. Contemporary Chinese art has an ambiguous relationship with official aesthetic ideas. The official mainstream ideas still focused on eulogizing ideologies such as ‘beauty’ and ‘harmony’. The reality in the mid and late 1990s was that the rapid economic development was causing the whole of society to experience amazing change. During this period, artists’ hearts were stricken by a dramatic rise in materialism, a deficiency in human spirit, a demise of morality and a collapse of belief.

All of this created a sense of anxiety amongst intellectuals and artists, which was clearly reflected in the work created during this time. The spirituality of Chinese classical art came from a poetic pastoral mood; however, the spirituality of Chinese contemporary art is rooted in the anxiety of real life. This situation can be understood as a permanent conflict between the artist and reality. Chinese contemporary art has converted an evasive spirit of classical art into a worldly spirit of the present age, and in doing so has risked danger on the “edge of reality”. Reality is always an aggressive force behind us. It moves artists to step down into the boggy marsh of simplistic reality from the plateau of super-organic thinking and virgin style. The art historian Lu Peng once said: “The development of art history of this century was introduced by ‘thought’, ‘-ism’, ‘political event’, ‘governmental paper’, ‘instruction’, or ‘ideology’, but broke away from the matter of style.” In other words, the development of Chinese contemporary art in the past twenty years has totally rid itself of the impact of Cultural Revolution thinking. However, as a type of art formed from individual experience and experimenting with different media, Chinese contemporary art still can’t really break free from the morass of reality. It must respond to every occurrence in this land. It is not only a fact of China, but also a fact of Chinese artists.

This is one profile or collective portrait of Chinese contemporary art. The combination of repressed energy and the introduction of Western modernist thought, early in the opening of China, produced a freedom of thought and will among Chinese artists. ‘Vogue art’ and ‘pioneer art’ are common terms used to describe Chinese art from the late 1980s to the middle of the 1990s. Yet this did produce a definite distance from the general public.

Establishment of public surroundings
Since 1995, curators and artists have tended to utilize the neutral term ‘contemporary art’ to identify their exhibitions, instead of ‘pioneer art’ or ‘vogue art’. Of course, discussion and debate about modern art, post-modern art, pioneer art and contemporary art were also launched in the academies. Finally, we are mostly called or call ourselves exponents of ‘contemporary art’ or ‘Chinese new art’.

Since the mid 1990s, an artistic movement, which used new media and performance art, quickly developed, supported by the experimental spirit initiated from Chengdu, Kunming, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Beijing and Shanghai. Its impact has reached to the big and small cities, and continued to develop in the cities mentioned above. Thus the initial regional pattern of Chinese contemporary art was formed. Flourishing and active artistic movements emerged endlessly, but formal exhibition spaces were not sufficient, so most of these movements generally happened in an underground way. The audiences for exhibitions were limited to the artist circles. The official attitude toward contemporary art was suspicion while still watching from outside. This kind of attitude did not change until the Shanghai International Art Biennial in 2000. This event is now seen as the first official recognition of Chinese contemporary art.

In 2000, when LOFT, one of the very first art communities not only in Kunming, but also in China, was founded, only a few Chinese artists owned their independent studios. There was not enough normal exhibition space for young artists to exhibit their work, but the artistic thought and practice that had flourished really needed an exhibition platform to open them to a wider public. Then the artists started to construct and operate the art space themselves. In the beginning, it was a type of space in which artists could both create and show their work. Due to the characteristics of non-profit and cheap rent, this kind of space supported numerous young artists and experimental art groups and provided many opportunities to develop their practice. This type of art space suddenly emerged everywhere throughout China, resulting in endless experimental exhibitions. It was a rapidly growing stage for Chinese experimental art; the major methods for artistic exploration were performance, new media and installation. Until the establishment of the Chinese art market in 2005, more and more artists owned their self-supported art space and studio. But with new investment coming from increased national wealth and international capital, and with gallery practice now firmly established, extensive art communities grew up, in particular the Beijing 798 art space. With this change, the pattern for Chinese contemporary art communities was formed.

This new industry also drove economic development in other respects. It was a hard process, which began with nothing and integrated some other industries such as tourism, culture, real estate, recreation and food provision. After absorbing investment from many parties and various resources, these art communities contributed fresh blood and motivation to the Chinese contemporary art scene and the Chinese economy. On the other hand, this establishment also added some elements of simply following the latest fashion, entertainment and humanism into the city.

Nonetheless, students, art fans and “common people” all had a chance to enjoy art exhibitions in some art communities. They could learn more about Chinese contemporary art history of the past twenty years and international art trends. Press media, universities and civil organizations started to cooperate with art communities. This kind of cooperation even supported some social programs with marginal groups. Chinese art no longer praised itself as “emerging art”; it has entered into communities and become a necessary part of the city by keeping its characteristic of aesthetics and spiritual elite and criticism. Therefore, we can conclude that a city without any art communities is not a complete city.

Chinese contemporary art in an international perspective
As I have mentioned at the beginning, Chinese artists often appeared in many important international exhibitions since the 45th Venice Biennial in 1993. Some of them have been familiar with international Biennials, and Chinese contemporary art has become a notable force in the art world. There are many reasons that can be used to explain why Chinese contemporary art has won so much attention: it is in the largest developing country, this country maintains continuous high-speed economic development, the Olympic games are going to be held in the country, the price of Chinese art keeps rising, the label of Mao-style revolutionary romanticism, huge international investment, environmental issues, the so-called ‘workshop of the world’ among others. However, I want to summarize all of them into three main reasons. The first is people. Incredible hard work during the period from ‘85 thought’ to the middle of the 1990s enabled Chinese emerging art to accumulate a distinctive history and become noticeable. A number of excellent artists who are competent in using visual language have grown to be important components in international art. The second is geographical position. Since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, China is the last experiment in international communism and holds a unique position in the world. The third is international climate. Cultural diversity increasingly became fashionable in international art criticism and exhibitions, and post-colonial theory also came to an end, creating many more opportunities for Chinese contemporary art.

Today, the prosperity of the Chinese artwork market, its increasing percentage of international auction sales, and the establishment of art communities are escalating China to greater heights and increased dynamism in international art. The holding of international art biennials and festivals symbolizes the fact that Chinese contemporary art is no longer a representative of an exotic culture appearing on the international stage; it is directly participating in the creation, construction and development of international art.

Epilogue
The purpose of this description of the general characteristics of Chinese contemporary art and its development is to help generate a greater understanding of the art and artists of this country. It is by no means complete; this would not be possible with such a vast and fast-changing art scene. However, I highly recommend the exhibition of “Chinese Contemporary Art – Identity and Transformation”. This is a great opportunity to learn more and gain a greater understanding of Chinese contemporary art. The artists involved in this exhibition include some of those pioneers of the later 1980s as well as some other young and unsophisticated artists. The composition of artists in the exhibition is varied in age, use of media, and theme. Their art forms cover photography, painting, sculpture, video and Chinese ink painting. Their art themes relate to current social problems, individual life, the current situation of Chinese traditional culture and folk art, female art, body art, and simple exploration of style and materials. They are revealing their own mind and China’s reality in a sincere and intelligent way. With such abundant vigor, this exhibition can be seen as a living sample of Chinese contemporary art and well worth sharing with our Swedish friends.

Notes:
1 ‘85 Thought’ refers to a kind of Chinese artistic thought that arose in the mid 1980s. The young people of that time were not satisfied with the conservative art guidelines. They grew tired of Russian artistic patterns and some of the values of traditional culture. They tried to seek new elements from Western modern art and generated new artistic thinking in the whole country.
2 ‘The New Generation’ painting revealed an individual political narrative and a kind of hopeless counteractive political emotion which occurred in the political society of northern China in the early 90s. What the painting stated is a kind of mental description of vanity in a closed social space. The movement was committed to exploring the visual localization of realism, expressionism and modernism.
3 The ‘Cynical Realism’ has not yet acquired an exact definition. Commenting on this idea, Mr. Li Xianting, a Chinese art critic and an independent curator, once used the terms ‘rogue humor’ and ‘rascal culture’. When he analyzed the situation of these artists, Mr. Li said: ‘It is the artist’s sense of vacuity that led them to describe the familiar, tiresome, occasional, even ludicrous living scene with a self-mocking, ruffian, cynical and indifferent attitude. Finally it formed a kind of rogue but humorous art style.’

Luo Fei – curator at TCG Nordica Gallery and artist

July 1, 2007
In Liangyuan, Kunming

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