Breaking Forecast
Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China
Comprising eight artists under 40, ‘Breaking Forecast’ – which has the helpful, if grammatically incorrect, subtitle, ‘8 Key Figures of China’s New Generation Artists’ – marks the second anniversary of the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing’s 798 district. While the UCCA’s inaugural exhibition in October 2008 (’85 New Wave’) looked back, seeking to both provide an overview of contemporary Chinese art and to pin down a starting-point, ‘Breaking Forecast’ looks to the future.
So, is the forecast bright? Well, yes and no. While the survey is, overall, frequently incoherent, it doesn’t aim for coherency – co-curator (and Ullens Director) Jérôme Sans claims that it is ‘a group exhibition of solo shows’. This is a reasonable aim given the non-profit art centre’s expansive 6,000-square-metre space, though an inconsistency in approach means that some weak work is afforded a lot of space and vice-versa.
Much of the work here favours large-scale technical trickery over modesty, pomposity over the most basic arguments for scale (it’s little surprise that around half of the artists shown have been collected by Charles Saatchi). ‘Breaking Forecast’ opens with husband-and-wife duo Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s A Moment of Clarity (2009), a screen and series of fans that blows an impressive two-metre-wide smoke ring along the long space towards the entrance. The billowing ring is finally dispersed by a mechanized, windmilling broom. A similar taste for one-liners is at work in Madeln’s Calm (2009), in which a neat, room-sized rectangle of rubble slowly undulates, as though it were breathing.
Sun and Peng also present Tomorrow (2006) which comprises four waxwork figures that resemble the complete (though seriously ageing) Beatles line-up. At the 2006 Liverpool Biennial these figures were dumped into the city’s harbour, before complaints led to them being quickly fished out. Video documentation of this earlier work is presented at the UCCA, alongside the figures, who lean in the corner. Despite their apparent disregard for subtlety, Sun and Peng certainly have a knack for audience-baiting work – I wonder what they will come up with for next year’s Sydney Biennial (let’s hope it doesn’t have anything to do with INXS).
Two of the other artists deal – fairly unconvincingly – with translations. There are several works from Liu Wei’s 2006 ‘As Long as I See It’ series (Liu is also represented here with the awful W-IOW, 2009, a composite of landmarks made entirely from stitched dog-chews), in which a sofa and an industrial work-surface are sliced through according to what can be seen in a closely cropped Polaroid of the objects. Close by, Madeln’s To See is an Obstacle is a 22-metre-long rainbow-hued spine of thin columns that represents an ‘unknown statistical chart’. (Madeln is the new pseudonym of Chu Yun, by which all of his post-November 2009 work will be made under.)
An earlier work of Chu’s (made under his own name), Global peace is the mission of this country (2009), is also included, and comprises the audio file of the title phrase – taken, apparently, from a clip of politicians discussing the Middle East – etched into rusted metal. Perhaps best known for Constellation (2006), a dark room of twinkling computers and household appliances shown at the 2009 Venice Biennale, Chu is an interesting artist, though is ill-served by a poor selection in ‘Breaking Forecast’. A similar issue – which was frustrating for a first-time visitor to Beijing, as I was – is apparent with Xu Zhen. I left wishing that both had been represented by stronger work.
Though unfortunately not showing for most of the time when I visited, much more impressive is a large presentation of Yang Fudong’s Dawn Mist, Separation Faith (2009), nine black and white 35mm films showing simultaneously – an installation that the artist has referred to as ‘peripheral cinema’.
The UCCA’s vast central space is dominated by All Those Whom I Have Forgotten (2009), a black waterfall falling from a series of pumps just below the ceiling, by Qiu Zhijie (who had a solo show here last spring). The deluge falls into a murky pool below, staining the back wall – on which the artist had hand-painted hundreds of lines of calligraphy – and eventually blacking out the text with 25 tonnes of inky water. Qiu is perhaps best-known for his early text-based pieces, such as Copying Lanting Qu One Thousand Times (1990–7) – that is, work that All Those Whom I Have Forgotten scales up without developing on. Is this what happens when studio spaces start to match museums in square footage?
Better is The Birth of RMB City by Cao Fei, the youngest artist here: inside a fibreglass mountain -– angled and cartoonish – pastoral electronica burbles, accompanying footage from Cao’s ongoing ‘RMB City’ project. In the Second Life-style game, the roaming viewpoint cuts between rusting versions of iconic buildings in Beijing – Rem Koolhaas’ still unfinished CCTV tower, the Bird’s Nest – placed higgledy-piggeldy on a small mountain.
Also engaging with China’s recent built history is Zheng Guogu’s Face of Empire (2009), a roofless white pavilion on a scrubby gravel garden of shrubs and boulders. The structure is a replica of his ongoing ‘Age of Empire’ project (2004–), a working village built on 20,000-square metres of land in the suburbs of his hometown of Yangjiang. ‘Empire’ is, in effect, a permanent settlement unsanctioned by the state, a satirical version of modern China that is being built by some 100 workers. (Zheng claims that the unfinished houses are actually skeletons; the village will ultimately be covered over to become an underground community.) Large sliding screens show photo-realistic rural scenes from the unfinished village. Both Cao and Zheng critically reflect – in very different ways – on present-day China as a work-in-progress. Most interesting, for me, is the way in which their ongoing projects are situated in the ungovernable margins: online or built in semi-secret.
Sam Thorne
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