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Vision in the Rain
Yang Wei
Opened amid the scorching summer, its sponsor gave the gallery a wettish name “The Rain”.I wonder if this name itself is a metaphor.Yet a recent rain in the city was a total delight indeed.The rain was a salubrious yet heart-warming experience and I felt as if I had been tra nsported back to the long-parted South. Giving in to an feverish and anxious atomosphere,few people can recall the tender and gentle romance in the drought of Beijing. I wonder whether it is due to the face that contemporians have estranged themselves from or the one that they have dissimalated to the Mother nature.Fortunately,this newly opened gallery lets us remember the good days when we become engergized after the hustle and bustle of a daily routine.It is like a window on the cityscape.The credit of course should go for its sponsor because it is she who has enabled the rest of us to enjoy some moments in the Rain.
The market of the contemporary art is unquestionably dynamic as never before here in China.However,it is not one free of bubbles.Some profits-seeking galleries press hard ahead with their production lines of “painting copies”,or commercial paintings.The consequence of their practice results in new market shield,the loser of which is nothing but artistic creativity.It is therefore all artists’ and collectors’ shared inspiration for the emergence of quality galleries.The Rain gallery happens to be an answer to the prayer.It does not follow,it leads in the artists and their works.
Yang Shaobing,one of the representatives of the Chinese contemporary art,depicts in his works a works a world of violence.It is an original language translated from the physical tensity to his own emotions,Yang not only gives us an awakening call about the insecure reality,but more significantly he offers an outlet for the pressing reality per se.
Qi Zhilong,another representative figure,traces the Cultural Revolution,a whole generation’s mutual memories of the times.Interestingly,Qi’s recollections,focuses more on its warmth and tenderness instead of being critical of the calamity.His historical reference serves as a compensation to the indifference of the modern society.
Xu Yihui, a representative of “gaudy art”,it a pioneer in using new materials.Making use of the traditional ceramic techniques into a visual symbol bearing greatly on contemporary arts.Beneath the agleam surfaces of his works is a thoughtful historical reflection.
Wang Qiang,a loner,is in favor of artists who have an experimental edge.His works are,however volatile,about a concern of daily living,an expression of the artist’s humanistic interest.
Yi Ling has always been an “maximalism artist”since the very beginning;his paintings about everything under the sun are very informative,He has transformed from maximalish to minimalism when he depicts in his paintings a large amount of information in simple lines.
Beginning with 123 and returning to 321,Black Moon(Hei Yue)boils everything down to its simplest form,revealing the law of life.It is a Zen persprctive on the world.
Liu Fei’s specious depiction of a neutral gender figure is about the perplevity of those caught in between the history and present and between affliction and happiness.
Pang Yongjie’s overstaffed signs delivers a certain fancy message of our times;the message is in the form of beauteousness and an allegory of pleasure.
In addition,the video section section dislays works by some other contempory artists including Ma Liuming,Dai Guangyu,Li Wei and Hei Yue.
Ma Liu Min has won international fame.In early 1990s he pioneered a new frontier of China’s performance art along with artist Zhang Huan,who gets across messages by means of his own body,Ma Liuming carries on his performance art in a “tness overcoming hardness”way .he copes with the most perplexing issue of idendity by means of gender displacement.
A-chang persistently interpretes a certain from of power,reverting to an immaterial myth through lumbersome body.
Dai Guangyu,a doyen of Chinese performance art,maintains to be artistically critical.His works are featured by a strong sense of “bodily politics”.
Li Wei reveals a certain absurdity of life,setting his comical effects in a context of awkwardness and bitterness.
Hei Yue continues his concept of 123 in his performance art,deriving fresh cultural symbolism from bodily reinterpretation…
These artists are the most influential and most talented in the contemporary art scence in China.It is the vision and the strength of the Rain gallery that all of them come under one roof.A gallery matures only as the general level of the art
rises.It also relies on the maintenance of artistic levels,which serves as a key factor in the market economy for creating one’s own cultural brands.It is therefore my hope for the Rain gallery to excel in the competition of the market while taking hold of this very key.One can only find its way safe and sound when he kowns his direction.Wishing the Rain a pleasant and fruitful journey.
June 1,2005
On a sunny day after the rain Translated by Wang Yan
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