South China Morning Post, May 14, 2006 Mainland mainstream Beijing's Dashanzi festival hopes for its best year yet. But, writes Benjamin Robertson, critics fear that it has already gone soft A HALF-NAKED WOMAN called Viola sitting under a tree, assorted Mao Zedongs, urban landscapes, raids by the censors, explorations of the human personality ... this year's Dashanzi International Art Festival shows that there's more to the mainland arts scene than what's on offer at the auction houses. Now in its third year, the annual Beijing festival is earning a reputation as one of the leading cultural events in East Asia. With growing numbers of artists and collectors from overseas, Dashanzi hopes this year to attract a record 500,000 visitors before it closes next Sunday. "The first year, we explored light and sound," says festival co-director Berenice Angremy. "It was very visual. Last year, the theme was the language of fables. This year, we're focusing on real issues - certainly ones more intense than fables." Angremy's co-director is artist Huang Rui, who, as a member of the Stars group in the late 1970s, helped launch the contemporary art movement on the mainland. The pair have chosen to focus this year's festival on Beijing's development in the countdown to the 2008 Olympic Games. Angremy says he hopes the festival will start "a three year dialogue on what is Beijing". It will focus on the city's ongoing redevelopment, which has often appeared to be uncoordinated and resulted in the destruction of many imperial-era buildings. The festival organisers want people to consider the capital's place in history. "As the city becomes a new metropolis and an object of world attention, we want to explore how Beijing in 2008 will relate to its past and its future," says Angremy. One exhibit exploring this theme is Metropolis Rise, a compilation of 60 photos and installations from London that examines a city's role as a cultural hub. A parallel exhibition, Beijing 1966, shows works by French photographer Solange Brand, who spent part of the Cultural Revolution in Beijing recording the architecture and inhabitants. The festival programme includes about 40 exhibitions, film screenings and performances, most of which will be held in the Dashanzi art district, in the city's north-east, and particularly the 798 Factory area. Among artists whose work is on show at 798 Space Gallery is Chengdu-based painter Yang Mian, who explores the media's obsession with beauty. His series of famous Chinese beauties, Standards, is instantly recognisable by the line of monochromatic red that runs across each one. As well as exhibitions, there will be impromptu performances by the likes of Viola. For one recent show, she reclined against a tree, her body partially swathed in white cloth. It wasn't immediately clear what her statement was. The ad hoc development of the 798 Factory area (formerly a military components assembly plant) into a centre of galleries, restaurants, bookshops and design studios met with initial disapproval from local authorities - but they have since come around. "798 is now a platform for contemporary art, and this gives government officials some direction to understand and develop art," says Huang. The area is now listed as one of six special cultural and creative centres by the city government, and is no longer under threat of demolition. But despite its role as a centre of city culture, it hasn't been given complete carte blanche. As many as 20 paintings were removed by the authorities before the festival - many of them dealing with Mao, who died 30 years ago. One of the works removed was by Sheng Qi and showed blood red tanks driving along the northern end of Tiananmen Square. Despite the growing number of visitors and the increasing prestige of the festival, some critics says it now lacks originality. "Dashanzi has become a tourist trap - a place for artistic tourists," says Fabrizio Zambuto, a part-time artist and photographer. "There's nothing interesting to see any more. The destruction and reconstruction of Beijing as an art subject is redundant. It has been discussed through art for the past two years already." Zambuto says Chinese art is riding a wave of hype that allows even mediocre artists to inflate their reputation and prices. During the past year, the prices of Chinese art at auction have hit new highs. At Sotherby's New York in March, a portrait piece by Zhang Xiaogang sold for about $8 million - a record for a living Chinese painter. Zambuto says Chinese contemporary art will be "a short-term fashion". A major concern is that there's not enough creativity with too much repetition of themes such as the Cultural Revolution. "I think we're seeing the golden age of Dashanzi," says Jonathan Watts, a British journalist whose office is near several 798 Factory galleries. "It's in between the 'are we going to survive?' stage and about to enter the more corporate, more touristy phase." Dashanzi International Arts Festival, go to www.diaf.org.
with kind regards,
Matthias Arnold (Art-Eastasia list)
http://www.chinaresource.org http://www.fluktor.de
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