The Beijinger Blog - Madeleine O'Dea

Sneak Peek 2010, Part II

thebeijinger — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:00:00 +0800

Here’s the second installment of our Beijing 2010 preview: what’s opening, who’s coming, when it’s happening, where to play and what lies ahead.

Sneak Peek 2010, Part I

thebeijinger — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 10:00:00 +0800

Harsher visa regulations. Eleventh-hour cancellations. Road closures. Not being able to look out the window. That’s what Shanghai can look forward to this year, as the world’s attention focuses on the 2010 Expo.

Meanwhile, up here in Beijing, we’re continuing to do what we do best: skipping out on the bill at the Xinjiang restaurant, smoking in swimming pools, falling asleep on the sofas at Ikea and complaining about everybody else.

Luckily, some are more ambitious. Here’s the word on what’s coming this year.

Beijing's Artistic Elite: Eight Portraits

thebeijinger — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:00:00 +0800

THE PATHFINDER
Huang Rui
In 1979, as one of the Stars group, Huang Rui staged the first-ever exhibition of Chinese contemporary art. Twenty years later, he put 798 on the map when he moved in, established his studio there and opened its first café. A born pioneer, he creates work that is never easy, as he marries a deep feeling for Chinese culture with sharp criticism of where it’s going.

Get out of the rain and into a gallery!

thebeijinger — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 10:00:00 +0800

A rainy weekend ahead means it’s nice to stay indoors, but may I suggest staying indoors at a gallery?

Iberia Center for Contemporary Art at 798 is holding a weekend of film in honor of the late dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch. Today brings two highlights – the 2001 video Dance with Farm Workers at 1.45pm and a 1975 film of Bausch’s superb version of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring at 2.50pm. The former is particularly inspiring. It tells the story of what happens when ten professional performers work together with 30 Sichuan farm workers to create a dance performance. This video has become a mini classic of the film festival circuit and it’s not hard to see why.

Out of the Galleries and Into the Streets

thebeijinger — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:00:00 +0800

One night, coming home late, I saw a strange sight. In an illuminated shop window in a hutong near the Confucius Temple, I saw a ping-pong ball hanging in the air. Without visible means of support it hung, mysteriously, above a cardboard ping-pong table. As the days went by, the neighbors and I had time to get used to the ping-pong ball hanging there in a shopfront between the pancake maker and the greengrocer before it was revealed – this was the first exhibition by the Arrow Factory, a pioneering project to take art to the streets.

“The model in Beijing is that galleries are on the outskirts of the city,” says artist Rania Ho, one of the founders of the Arrow Factory. “People have to make a pilgrimage outside the Fourth Ring Road, even the Fifth Ring Road, to ‘visit the art.’ And we thought, why do galleries have to be so far away?”

Gallery Crawl

thebeijinger — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:00:00 +0800

August hols are here and many of us are looking for things we can do to beat the heat. May I humbly suggest the cool spaces of 798, which are presently hosting a range of interesting shows, all of which can be seen in the full blast of air conditioning?

At UCCA, it’s both cool and dark at Feng Mengbo’s “Re-Start”, an interactive video game that has taken over the Center's nave and where you can battle it out with a range of sensors and digital projections. The culmination of Feng’s 15 year career as a video artist and a lot of fun too, this work is his take on China’s current condition.

Chinese Contemporary Shuts up Shop in 798

thebeijinger — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:00:00 +0800

News of yet another casualty of the financial crisis and 798’s soaring rents. Chinese Contemporary, one of Dashanzi’s landmark galleries, has closed its doors.

In its heyday Chinese Contemporary exhibited a range of top names from Zhang Xiaogang to Yue Minjun, but it has been a rather less starry place in recent years. Chinese Contemporary first opened its doors in London 13 years ago and went on to launch branches in 798 and in New York’s Chelsea. All three branches are now shuttered.

What turned out to be their swan song in Beijing was one of their best shows in a long time, Huang Rui’s “Comerchina”. Looked at in retrospect it seems a prescient choice, concerned as the show was with the dangers of commerce.

Gallery Crawl

thebeijinger — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:00:00 +0800

Confirmation this week that yet another important Beijing Gallery is setting up shop in the Caochangdi area. Marella Gallery, long a fixture of 798, has a new official address of Beigao, but its new location on the tree-lined airport side road puts it firmly in the orbit of 798’s great rival, Caochangdi.

So what’s the attraction that’s lead a raft of important galleries (and artists) to set up in dusty Caochangdi? Mostly the fact that it isn’t 798.

Pioneers of the area, the China Art and Archive Warehouse (CAAW) and Ai Weiwei, were originally attracted by the open spaces to build and spread out. Those who’ve come after, some to rent spaces designed by Ai Weiwei himself, have been attracted by the lower rents. 798’s rents have skyrocketed in recent years and even the onset of the great Global Financial Crisis has failed to put a brake on.

Polaroid Lives!

thebeijinger — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:00:00 +0800

So you thought the Polaroid was dead? Apparently not.

Platform China in Caochangdi, which prides itself on promoting the new and the emerging, have made the humble medium the focus of its current group show, running till July 19.

The curator, Qiu Xiaofei, is intrigued by the Polaroid’s uniqueness within photography, that once the image appears it becomes the only possible copy. Inevitably a Polaroid will look over-exposed or much too dark, but there is nothing you can do. This sets the Polaroid entirely apart from the work of a digital camera, or one developed in a darkroom, and gives it its own plucky integrity. A Polaroid is always simply itself.

Happy Birthday Three Shadows!

thebeijinger — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:00:00 +0800

The Three Shadows Photography Art Center in Caochangdi turns two this week, with perhaps the most remarkable thing about this birthday being how young they are!

In two years photographer couple RongRong and Inri have established a leading venue for contemporary photography in Beijing, complimenting a series of rewarding exhibitions with the provision of a publicly accessible library and dark room facilities. It is now hard to imagine Caochangdi without them.

Dedicated to traditional analogue photography and dark room techniques, they are nonetheless not doctrinaire, with their current photography prize exhibition, “Points of Impact”, showing a diversity of works from artists ranging in age from 14 to 40, with most of them utilizing digital technology.