Indigo Blues - Blue Oyster Art Project Space, Dunedin, NZ, May 2011
Beijing has undergone massive urban transformation over the last 100 years, emerging out of this transformation in recent decades is 798 Arts District, a suburb of Beijing which touts contemporary experimental spaces, commercial art galleries, studio spaces and factories all plying their trade in grandiose second hand factory spaces redolent with the echoes of the socialist industrial construction era and mass production.
Recent critique of the Chinese contemporary arts industry from within China is questioning the mass production of art works and artists selling to the relatively new and expanding arts market. The fine arts industry in China is burgeoning, artisans supply directly to the west alongside mass producers fine arts for export.
A clock-work exists within the 798 District, around 4pm the cleaners emerge whilst galleries are still open, staff start their repetitive rounds of mopping gallery floors, pausing occasionally to gaze at art works or out a window to the world beyond. Around the same time a change of tone resonates as factory production lines begin to wind down. By 6 pm the galleries and factories close disgorging the cleaners and factory workers out onto the already busy dusty streets beyond the 798 precinct walls. The workers meld into a surging sea of denim blue amongst bicycles and electric scooters. Art purveyors dressed in up-market clothes surface as if flotsam on top of this homogenous palette briefly before being reabsorbed into the architecture of the cafe and bar facades to sip gin slings and look on with disinterest.
Walter Benjamin in 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' talks about a loss of aura in mechanically reproduced art works. The current Beijing arts market appears dominated by dealers intent on promoting an ever growing overseas market through pushing works with content generic of old and contemporary masters.[1] This re-appropriated art appears empty, lacking aura, creating a disconnect between the viewer and the image in the gallery. We filled this gap with the observation of the gallery as factory with it's mechanisms of time and cleaning, the art work hangs mute on the wall, whilst the space generates a low hum of the workings of the gallery.
1. These are our impressions from a Western arts education perspective however, as pointed out by Karen Smith imitation can be read as a form of mastery. “Influences are never bad, but they must be controlled. In China, the idea that 'imitation is the greatest form of flattery' is prevalent and not a cause for undue criticism. The same is, after all, true of postmodernism which made a virtue of appropriation. However, problems occur when the success of another artist or photographer, in whatever form that takes, is adopted as a road map by those who come after. Of course that hardly needs saying and should not be misconstrued here as a criticism of more than a tiny minority of the finalists under discussion here. It is, however, in evidence.” Smith Karen. Confluence; The Exhibition of 2010 Three Shadows Photography Award. Ed: Weidong Mao. Pub 2010. Pg 13.
Beijing has undergone massive urban transformation over the last 100 years, emerging out of this transformation in recent decades is 798 Arts District, a suburb of Beijing which touts contemporary experimental spaces, commercial art galleries, studio spaces and factories all plying their trade in grandiose second hand factory spaces redolent with the echoes of the socialist industrial construction era and mass production.
Recent critique of the Chinese contemporary arts industry from within China is questioning the mass production of art works and artists selling to the relatively new and expanding arts market. The fine arts industry in China is burgeoning, artisans supply directly to the west alongside mass producers fine arts for export.
A clock-work exists within the 798 District, around 4pm the cleaners emerge whilst galleries are still open, staff start their repetitive rounds of mopping gallery floors, pausing occasionally to gaze at art works or out a window to the world beyond. Around the same time a change of tone resonates as factory production lines begin to wind down. By 6 pm the galleries and factories close disgorging the cleaners and factory workers out onto the already busy dusty streets beyond the 798 precinct walls. The workers meld into a surging sea of denim blue amongst bicycles and electric scooters. Art purveyors dressed in up-market clothes surface as if flotsam on top of this homogenous palette briefly before being reabsorbed into the architecture of the cafe and bar facades to sip gin slings and look on with disinterest.
Walter Benjamin in 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' talks about a loss of aura in mechanically reproduced art works. The current Beijing arts market appears dominated by dealers intent on promoting an ever growing overseas market through pushing works with content generic of old and contemporary masters.[1] This re-appropriated art appears empty, lacking aura, creating a disconnect between the viewer and the image in the gallery. We filled this gap with the observation of the gallery as factory with it's mechanisms of time and cleaning, the art work hangs mute on the wall, whilst the space generates a low hum of the workings of the gallery.
1. These are our impressions from a Western arts education perspective however, as pointed out by Karen Smith imitation can be read as a form of mastery. “Influences are never bad, but they must be controlled. In China, the idea that 'imitation is the greatest form of flattery' is prevalent and not a cause for undue criticism. The same is, after all, true of postmodernism which made a virtue of appropriation. However, problems occur when the success of another artist or photographer, in whatever form that takes, is adopted as a road map by those who come after. Of course that hardly needs saying and should not be misconstrued here as a criticism of more than a tiny minority of the finalists under discussion here. It is, however, in evidence.” Smith Karen. Confluence; The Exhibition of 2010 Three Shadows Photography Award. Ed: Weidong Mao. Pub 2010. Pg 13.