Red Lining: Art in Beijing

In 15 short years, China’s ancient capital city has boomed into a thriving centre of contemporary art

By Jessica Gliddon

Zhang Dali’s “AK47” from the Chinese Contemporary Gallery

Under the glinting mid-afternoon sun, Beijing’s urban landscape is piled with the grey shapes of new developments. At its centre, the shining angular hulk of the nearly-finished CCTV building nudges against the imposing façades of old communist architecture. But beneath nearby railway tracks, a different kind of gleam emits from a cluster of deliriously grinning sculptures by the artist Yue Minjun; human forms washed in reflective silver. The sculpture guards the triangular entrance to one of Beijing’s newest art institutions, the Today Art Museum, a hatchery of a just-blooming museum scene in a commercially saturated city that has recently become a serious arts devotee.

Beijing may stuff 15 million people into one of the world’s megalopolises, but on its peripheries, its raging art scene remains a compact world. Beijing’s northwest corner is the home to the city’s interpretation of New York’s Chelsea district. A cluster of former Bauhaus factories, Beijing’s 798 district is something of a theme park for art. Built out of the need for cheap rent and studio space, 798 teems with a voracious art consuming public, which stumbles between galleries wide-eyed, pausing in cafés like the Timezone8 bookshop, perusing art books and munching green tea cakes. 798 is so developed that it walks the thin line of becoming as frivolous as the touristy boutiques sneaking in between galleries.

An illustrious Australian backpacker named Brian Wallace is widely credited with founding the contemporary art scene in China’s cultural capital. His gallery, the Red Gate Gallery, still stands in the same bewildering location – an imposing grey stone and red wood Ming Dynasty structure known as the Dongbianmen Watchtower. Within, thick red columns are interspersed with figurative and abstract works, a sight, Wallace claims, that was once the norm for Beijing’s art lovers. “When it started, all the galleries were in Ming buildings,” the Australian says. “The government didn’t know what to do with them.”

Brian, now a bespectacled man in his late 40s sporting a clipped goatee, was a pioneer for the swathes of international gallery owners now scrambling over one another for a piece of Beijing’s proverbial art pie. When Brian arrived in the late 1980s, the ingredients for a boom were already coagulating. Meg Maggio, owner of the Pékin Fine Arts Gallery in Caochangdi, credits the foreign-born Chinese with having the necessary combination of local knowledge and foreign expertise to bring about the arts revolution. “The people that grew this art scene were overseas Chinese, the ones that were here early on – from Indonesia, the USA. They were very committed,” she says.

In Beijing ever-shifting art world, the epicentre rolls perpetually northwards. With 798 now on every tourist map, Caochangdi was bound to be next. The area was constructed by arts personality Ai Weiwei, the Renaissance man of Chinese art, architecture, theory and design, who was the designer of Beijing’s new Olympic Bird’s Nest stadium. Maggio explains that the area’s narrow streets are meant to recall Beijing’s traditional hutongs – “It’s supposed to feel like an old Beijing neighbourhood,” she says. In these enclaves, artists enjoy affordable gallery spaces and the benefits of a heady concoction of artistic collaboration. “There’s a lot of cross- fertilisation happening,” says Maggio.

Wang Qingsong’s photographs are painterly in their composition. The well respected artist is represented by the Korean- owned P K M Gallery in Caochangdi. Qingsong composes elaborate sets with dozens of carefully posed subjects: a cluster of ladies look reverently at a floating bottle of Coca Cola; people wallpaper an immense space with hand-drawn brands. His works deal with a great discontent within the Chinese modern society – in Qingsong’s own words – “being a foreigner in my own culture.” Qingsong moved from his small town to Beijing, and its effect is something he’s being dealing with in his photographs for years, even though their resonance is undeniably global. His work is indicative of the emphasis on social issues in Chinese contemporary art. “There’s a huge Chinese population,” he says, suggesting that social issues are inevitable in such a populous country. “Reflection on social woes is part of traditional Chinese art.”

Qingsong has a patient demeanour, and lives in his airy Wei Wei built studio where his family members are giving an impromptu haircut. He laughs as he recalls what it was like to start out as an artist in Beijing 15 years ago. “From 1993 to around 2000, most people were afraid of artists,” he says. “They didn’t understand why I was at home, so I had to move frequently – [landlords] didn’t understand what I was doing. Now it’s all commercial and entirely different.”

With a ponytail down to his waist and the credentials of being one of the founding rebels of the Beijing art scene, Rong Rong is another of Beijing’s great social photographers. Rong Rong is most famous for his beautiful photographs of the East Village – a garbage strewn area of Beijing that became the epicentre of a cutting-edge performance art movement in the early 1990s.

Rong Rong’s pet project is the gorgeous Caochangdi Three Shadows Gallery, the city’s first gallery entirely devoted to photography. Until the end of April, the gallery is featuring an exhibition including the work of young artists such as Lu Yanpeng who composes eerily beautiful late night photographs and Adou, who was discovered selling his portraits of rural western China by the side of the road. In the gallery’s café, Rong Rong talks at length with a German art dealer, who is concerned about the market’s underdevelopment. “I want to work with the Chinese but I’m not seeing the return that we need,” he says. Rong Rong pours him another cup of tea.

Beijing’s art market has taken on the ungainly form of the many-headed beast that often results when an industry booms too quickly. Its different arms – the galleries, the museums, the auctions and the art fairs – are all operating to their own rhythm, dragged along by market interest both internally and internationally. Yu Ji works for Art Beijing, which is the city’s main Chinese-run contemporary art fair, and knows the damage oversaturation causes all too well. “The market is not mature enough,” she says. “Too much work is selling of low quality and low price.” Although much of the development of Beijing’s art market has been attributed to outside interest, the actual investment seems to still come internally. “Ninety percent of customers are Chinese,” she says. “This is partly due to the high taxes for taking art out of the country.”

Beijing has over 300 galleries with more opening almost daily. The international interest that Beijing is generating is so epic that some members of the Chinese diaspora are returning to the city simply to get noticed. “It has to do with China’s rise in the world – all of the media is looking to China,” explains Colin Chinnery, the chief curator for one of Beijing’s most exciting new institutions, The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art. “There is more buying power – ever since the 1999 Venice Bienniale, there has been a huge international interest in Chinese art. The benefit to society is just beginning.”

“In the 1980s, Beijing artists were catching up; there was an avant-garde explosion,” Colin continues. “In the 1990s, social realism was big. The directions here are no longer linear – now it’s everyone for themselves. Ultimately, Chinese and the West each have a unique cultural experience shaped by their environments.” The old hazard of collectors buying Chinese for Chinese’s sake lingers. Artist Wang Qingsong recalls exhibiting in the 1990s – “Eighty percent of the catalogues were red,” he laughs.

Yu Ji of Art Beijing likens the current scene in Beijing to New York in the 1950s – “At that time there were 250 galleries in New York and gradually it whittled itself down to maybe 50,” she says. Non profit gallery spaces such as the Ullens Center for Contemporary Arts in the 798 district offer shape and definition

The international interest that Beijing is generating is so epic that some members of the Chinese diaspora are returning to the city simply to get noticed through lectures, classes and period-defining exhibitions intended to mature the arts. The Today Art Museum is a non-profit currently exhibiting the works of Cang Xin in a show entitled “Cang Xin’s Mythology”. Unearthly bird men and strange creatures are perched on long trunks extending to high ceilings. Commercial galleries like Caochangdi’s Urs Meile keep the bigger picture in mind. “We look for quality,” says Nataline Colonnello, Urs Meile’s art director. “We work with artists who are not very well known and aim to build their careers internationally,” she explains. “If there is quality, sales follow – we keep the collection exclusive.” Urs Meile represents Ai Weiwei – the kind of artist that gives historical scope.

At the hazy sunset, the people working Caochangdi’s galleries swing shut heavy wooden gates and head off to enjoy the fruits of their efforts. Tonight, Korean artist Cody Choi is having an opening at the PKM gallery of his Pepto-Bismol and toilet paper sculptures. In the evening, gallery owners, art critics and curators wander PKM’s glassy, industrial spaces. The art world’s diversity emerges, as attendees from across the globe pay testament to the power of Beijing. Visiting Hong Kong artist Leung Chi Wo is testing the waters, and US artist Michael Zheng is scouting artists for an upcoming biennial in Vancouver.

New young artists are emerging like trendy nymph Li Shu Rui, who creates ethereal, out of focus paintings. She says she thinks artists like her are taking a new place definitive from the older generation. Some bear this with a caveat – “The young kids were raised in a pop culture environment, so that’s their frame of reference,” says Brian Wallace with some scepticism – but others think they’ve taken on a new stage. “The younger generation doesn’t necessarily have the same experience, so it’s exciting to be part of a distinctive new movement,” says Henri Benaim, director of P K M. As China booms, Beijing’s creative spirit can only grow stronger.

EXPERIENCE BEIJING

FOR HISTORY: The Forbidden City

It’s the must-see on any Beijing itinerary, but with good reason. The one million square metre ancient walled city that was shut off to foreigners during the Ming and Qing dynasties is admittedly daunting to circumnavigate. But strewn with ornate temples, gates, halls and museums, its romance is undeniable.

FOR EATING

Wangfujing Snack Street Snack Street runs right off the main shopping drag, Wangfujing Dajie, offering an array of small kebab bites on sticks and the perpetual Beijing favourite – caramel covered apples. The atmospheric alleyway is touristy, but also features some rather exciting informal opera in traditional buildings.

FOR CULTURE

Hutongs The mysterious passageways winding through Beijing’s backstreets, the hutongs, are a dying breed. Many of the historic city centres have succumbed to Beijing’s growing pains and been razed. Winding alongside the Forbidden City, the Pudusi Xixiang hutong has been restored with a fresh wash of grey paint and shining bright red doors, some ornately decorated with curling green and blue designs.

Etihad Inflight, April 2008