China Underground > Events > Waves and Echoes

Waves and Echoes

Date/Time
Date(s) - 14/11/2020 - 09/05/2021
All Day

Location
Inside-Out Art Museum

Location Address No.50 Xingshikou Road, Haidian District, Beijing

City Beijing

Country/State

Categories


A Process of Re-contemporization in Chinese Art Circa 1987 Revisited

Participating Artists and Groups:

Chen Shaoping, Chen Wenji, Chen Zhen, Pond Society (Zhang Peili, Geng Jianyi, Song Ling, Bao Jianfei, Wang Qiang, Guan Ying), Ding Fang, Ding Yi, Feng Guodong, Fu Zhongwang, Gu Dexin, Gu Wenda, Robert Rauschenberg, Li Bangyao, Li Laoshi, Li Luming, Li Qingping, Li Shan, Li Xiaobin, Li Xiushi, Lin Chun, Lin Dachuan, Lin Gang, Liu Haisu, Lü Shengzhong, M Art Group (Yang Hui, Song Haidong, Zhao Chuan, Hu Yuelong, Li Zuming, Gong Jianqing, Shen Fan, Tang Guangming, Yang Xu, Wang Guqing, Weng Liping, Fu Yuehui, Qin Yifeng, Yang Dongbai, Zhou Tiehai), Mao Xuhui, Meng Luding, Min Xiwen, Southern Artists’ Salon (Wang Du, Chen Shaoxiong, Lin Yilin, Huang Xiaopeng, Liang Juhui etc.), Pang Tao, Qin Yifeng, Sha Qi, Shang Yang, Shu Qun, Song Haidong, Song Ling, Sun Liang, Wang Rizhang, Wang Guangyi, Wang Hao, Wang Luyan, Wang Youshen, Wei Qimei, Wen Pulin, WR Group (Datong Dazhang, Zhu Yanguang, Ren Xiaoying etc.), Wu Guanzhong, Xiamen Dada (Huang Yongping, Lin Jiahua, Jiao Yaoming, Yu Xiaogang, Lin Chun, Ji Tairan, Cai Lixiong, Chen Chengzong, Li Yuenian, Li Xiang, Wu Yanping, Huang Ping, Liu Yiling, Shen Yuan, Xu Chengdou, Huang Ming), Xu Bing, Xu Lei, Yang Jiechang, Yang Zhilin, Ye Qianyu, Yu Youhan, Zhang Guoliang, Zhang Jianjun, Zhang Peili, Zhang Wei, Zhang Xiaogang, Zhao Wenliang, Zhuang Huayue

Curators: Liu Ding, Carol Yinghua Lu
Assistant Curators: Huang Wenlong, Sun Gaorui
Visiting Curators: Liu Yusi, Zhang Ligeng
Exhibition Coordinator: Liu Lei
Exhibition dates: 14 November 2020 – 9 May 2021
Venue: Inside-Out Art Museum, No.50 Xingshikou Road, Haidian District, Beijing

Inside-Out Art Museum proudly presents Waves and Echoes: A Process of Re-contemporization in Chinese Art Circa 1987 Revisited, a major research exhibition. Waves and Echoes is the latest project in the research series “The Echoes of Socialist Realism,” after Salon, Salon: Fine Art Practices from 1972 to 1982 in Profile –A Beijing Perspective, which was held at IOAM in 2017. Initiated collaboratively by artist Liu Ding and art historian Carol Yinghua Lu, this research series aims to critically analyze and reflect on the historical narratives and constructs about contemporary art in China.

Regarding the 1980s, there has existed a considerable amount of narratives, including documentations and memories, summaries, and reflections. Since then, a plethora of historical writings has come to promote certain viewpoints. All of these narratives around New Wave Art (xinchao meishu) of 1985 and 1986, tend to define the feeling, consciousness, and understandings of the whole period of the 1980s. Through them, historical writings about art of the 1980s have enforced homogeneity. In art history, the 1980s thus has become a generalized and unvaried historical canon. As a result, it’s impossible to grasp and comprehend the multiple and complex turns throughout this historical period.

Driven by the Intellectual Emancipation Movement (sixiang jiefang) as well as Reform and Opening-up (gaige kaifang), the Cultural Fever (wenhuare) went up in heat as it unfolded through the 1980s. Its accretion by 1985 and 1986 led to the emergence of New Wave Art as a highlight. This period was animated by dynamic artistic works and discourses in the art world. However, by the end of 1986, the art world rapidly experienced an ebbing of the tide. The New Waveperiod’s surge and crest rapidly fell to a nadir. Although the voices of reflection persisted during the movement, they were only further developed after the Anti-Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign (fanzichan jieji ziyouhua) in 1987.

In 1987, the art world became stagnant, but the theorization and historicization of the New Wave Art quietly began. Some theories and practices began to get ossified, slowly deviating from actual artistic practices. Artists no longer appeared in the form of groups. Instead, the work of individual artists gradually came to the forefront. Many individual artists, having undertaken varied artistic turns through the 1980s, henceforth showed distinctive choices of direction from their standpoints. The stance and orientation of their artistic practices became increasingly crystalized from this point on.

Artistic practices before 1987 can be described as heteroglossic, while later ones can be considered as gradually smoothing out and moving closer to the contracted reality. Though the ideological spaces of the society were subject to restrictions, possible spaces for cultural activities diversified. Thus, artists and their practices grew more connected with social spaces in every way.

This research project considers the year 1987 as a framing point for further scrutinization. One aspect to consider is that 1987 can be regarded as a time marker distinguishing the mid-1980s from the late 1980s. To a definite degree, 1987 initiated a change in the mindset of Chinese society from short-lived pluralism towards institutionalization. Another aspect to consider and investigate is the ideological motivation for changes in artists’ works; one can reconsider how the empirical experiences and intellectual resources of the early-to-mid 1980s were complicated, absorbed, diluted, and even constructed by an intricate reality, thus forming various forms of artistic expressions from this point on.

This exhibition proposes “re-contemporization” as a theoretical model for interrogating history and grasping the post-1949 transformation of Chinese art and thought. Though suppressions of differing trends and opinions by mainstream art have long existed during different periods, in a broader view of history, one can fall into the trap of generating an exclusive and fractured historical narrative if only suppressed elements of history are highlighted in efforts of historical re-examination. If certain points of time since Reform and Opening-up are taken as a starting point for evaluating contemporary Chinese art, it’s easy to be trapped by a Western, neoliberal perspective that places itself as a universal model for comparison. The adaptation of modernism by Chinese artists in the 1980s does not entirely reflect on a process of the latecomers learning the path of the Western forerunners, but to a large degree, a process of knowledge renewal of the Chinese art field dated back to the 1920s-1930s when it first started to introduce and criticize Western modern art.

This research considers those drastic reforms of art since 1949 and the sculpting, regulating, and interfering of artistic forms, discourses, and viewpoints as part of the contemporization process of Chinese art. This kind of historical perspective may allow a closer examination of artistic discourses and practices that have always been entangled into mainstream ideologies. This is also the context and premise on which all practitioners act today.

In Waves and Echoes, the curators engage in a dialogue with existing historical narratives and researches based on recognizing their value. Through careful refining of theory and praxis situated in historical contexts, horizons of understanding can be widened. They put the 1980s in a broader historical context and reconstruct the historical relationships between the category of the 1980s and the artistic and literary developments from 1949 to Reform and Opening-up. As such, the historical thread of thoughts in the art of the 1980s becomes much clearer. This research not only holistically takes hold of the 1980s, but also avoids making simple distinctions based upon existing ideologies. Through 1987 as a time marker, the curators demonstrate both the ruptures and continuities between contemporary art and contemporary mainstream culture, thus breaking through the constraints of the “contemporary model“ set by Western/North American intellectual circles. To approach the present by critically looking into the past, this pioneering research continuously integrates deliberation of current issues and reflections into the revisit of the 1980s.

“巨浪与余音”展即将于中间美术馆拉开帷幕

北京中间美术馆即将呈现大型研究展览 “巨浪与余音——重访1987年前后中国艺术的再当代过程”。展览从属于“社会主义现实主义的回响”系列研究。该研究由艺术家刘鼎与艺术史家卢迎华共同发起,旨在辨析与反思中国有关“当代艺术”的历史叙述与建构。

巨浪与余音——重访1987年前后中国艺术的再当代过程

2020年11月14日至2021年5月9日
中间美术馆,北京海淀区杏石口路50号

展览将于11月18日举办开幕式;11月16日至17日,美术馆正常闭馆;11月14日至15日为预约观展,请邮件至[email protected]提前预约,以邮件回复为准。

参展艺术家与艺术团体(按姓氏拼音排序)
陈少平,陈文骥,陈箴,池社(张培力、耿建翌、宋陵、包剑斐、王强、关颖),丁方,丁乙,冯国东(曾用名冯国栋),傅中望,顾德新,谷文达,罗伯特·劳森伯格,李邦耀,李老十,李路明,李青萍,李山,李晓斌,李秀实,林春,林达川,林岗,刘海粟,吕胜中,M 艺术群体(杨晖、宋海东、赵川、胡曰龙、李祖明、龚建庆、申凡、汤光明、杨旭、汪谷清、翁立平、付跃慧、秦一峰、杨冬白、周铁海),毛旭辉,孟禄丁,闵希文,南方艺术家沙龙(王度、陈劭雄、林一林、黄小鹏、梁钜辉等),厐壔,秦一峰,沙耆,尚扬,舒群,宋海东,宋陵,孙良,汪日章,王广义,王浩,王鲁炎,王友身,韦启美,温普林,WR 小组(大同大张、朱雁光、任小颖等),吴冠中,厦门达达(黄永砯、林嘉华、焦耀明、俞晓刚、林春、纪泰然、蔡立雄、陈承宗、李跃年、李翔、吴燕萍、黄平、刘一菱、沈远、许成斗、黄明),徐冰,徐累,杨诘苍,杨志麟,叶浅予,余友涵,张国梁,张健君,张培力,张伟,张晓刚,赵文量,庄华岳

在“思想解放”运动和“改革开放”的背景下,“文化热”在1980年代的展开过程中持续升温。热度积累至1985-1986年,造就了“新潮美术”的最强音。这一时期的艺术界创作活跃,话语激荡。但到了1986年底,却迅速出现“退潮”迹象。“新潮”期间风起云涌的思潮与交锋就此尘埃落定。虽然反思的声音一直如影随形,可更进一步的沉淀还是要等1987年“反资产阶级自由化”运动开始后方才显影。

此项研究将1987年作为一个可以被问题化的时间节点。一方面,1987年可被视为一个对1980年代中后期进行分期的时间标识。它在一定程度上启动了中国社会的思想状态由短暂的多元并存转向体制化的变迁。另一方面,循此入手考察艺术家创作上的转向及其背后的思想动力,旨在重新检视1980年代中早期累积的实践经验和思想资源如何被庞杂的现实所转化、吸收、稀释,甚至建构,形成各种艺术的表达方式。

1987年的艺术界是平静的,但将“新潮美术”理论化和历史化的行动却在悄然进行。一些话语实践正是从该年开始固化,逐渐偏离创作。艺术发表也不再以团体宣言的形式亮相,艺术家的个体表达日益走向台前。众多个体艺术家,经过了1980年代的数次转身,此时出现了明显的价值转向。他们创作的立足点明晰起来,此后的方向也由是确立。艺术实践在1987年以前可谓“众声喧哗”,之后与紧缩的现实接轨,日渐平滑。尽管整个社会的思想空间受到制约,但文化活动空间却多样起来。这使得艺术家的创作轨迹又一次全方位地与社会空间对接。

“巨浪与余音”以1987年为切入点,重访激荡的“1980年代”,并将其放置于有机的历史链条之中,重新辨析“中国当代艺术”的渊源与叙述。在历史钩沉中,如若单独凸显被压制的因素,很容易形成一种排他性和断裂性的叙述。此项研究将以整体性把握“1980年代”,重建作为范畴的“1980年代”与1949年以来至“改革开放”之前的文艺发展进程的历史关联和参照关系,使其背后的历史脉络清楚显现。展览将从实践的具体语境出发,来理解几代艺术家们的转变及其动力。

展览将展出59位艺术家(团体)的80余件作品。

我们感谢所有参展艺术家对于展览的支持与帮助,我们也对在备展中给予我们慷慨帮助的个人与机构表示由衷的感谢:
常青画廊,蜂巢当代艺术中心,谷文达工作室 ,墨斋画廊 ,清华美术学院 ,余德耀美术馆,SPURS Gallery,势象艺术中心 ,香格纳画廊 ,徐冰工作室 ,亚洲艺术文献库 ,中央美术学院 ,中央美术学院美术馆 ,陈婧,陈玺安,杜柏贞,段建宇 ,丰静帆,冯宇,冯兮,封帆,付一凡,管艺,何嘉秋,洪子诚,胡斌,胡建平,华田子,蒋杰,冷林,李大钧,李抗,李墨雪,李睦,李荣蔚,李洋,李垚辰,李浴洋,李知遥,梁勤,梁长胜,林延,刘钢,刘燕,吕智强,彭翔飞,秦剑君夫妇,曲珊璞,沈远,施金乐,施振萍,蓝庆伟,谭骊,田霏宇,凌敏,王俊艺,翁子健,吴洪亮,夏季风,小麦,萧韵之,谢晓泽,邢轺,徐来,许梦辰,杨继栋,于非,余宇,臧红花,张光华,张骥,张兰生,张离,张蔷,张雅秋,张玉,张佐,赵小萌,赵友厚,周大为,朱海娅,朱丽,朱琳,贾伟

 

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