A Conversation with Chicago: Contemporary Sculptures from China
In recent years, contemporary Chinese art has emerged from a domestic avant-garde movement into one of the fastest growing and most dynamic components of the international art scene. Representing the current stage of contemporary Chinese art, the four large sculptures, never before seen in the United States, brought the global conversation into one of Chicago’s most popular public spaces.
Coming from different regions and educational backgrounds, the artists, Shen Shao Min, Chen Wenling, Sui Jianguo and Zhan Wang, use varied materials and visual styles, but show commonalities as well. Each work is intensely engaged with important contemporary issues such as the energy crisis, materialism, and globalization. They also share inspiration from traditional Chinese art, commercial culture, folk art, and industrial machinery as they explore ways to react to a public space.
The exhibition was curated in partnership between Wu Hung, University of Chicago Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History and a Consulting Curator for the Smart Museum of Art, and by Senior Curator of Exhibits, Lucas Cowan of Millennium Park.
Windy City Dinosaur, Sui Jianguo
Professor and head of the Department of Sculpture ar the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Sui Jianguo emerged as one of the leading Chinese experimental artists in the early 1990’s. His sculptures often respond to China’s social and political transformation, and reflect on cultural clashes in the process of globalization. With ‘Made in China’ engraved on their chests, his larger-than-life toy dinosaurs reference the cheap, mass-produced goods that have become a foundation of the booming Chinese export economy. Witty and incisive, such works question the source of China’s economic prowess as well as a stereotypical image of China in the West.
Jian Shan Shi No. 46, Zhan Wang
A graduate of Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, Zhan Wang has become world famous for his stainless steel copies of “scholars’ rocks” found in classical Chinese Gardens. By hammering a pliable sheet of steel over a scholar’s rock, he produces every minute undulation on the stone’s surface. To him, both the original rock and his stainless copy are materials created for people’s spiritual needs, but their different materiality reflects the cultural transformations in changing times. With their glittering surface and illusory appearance, his stainless rocks symbolize the adaptation of Chinese tradition to today’s conditions and new aesthetics.
Valiant Struggle No. 11I, Chen Wenling
The youngest of the four artists, Chen Wenling most acutely responds to the heightened commercialism and materialism that has seized Chinese society in recent years. Made of stainless steel and painted red and gold, his sculptures frequently consist of blissful, self-indulgent human and animal figures, who embrace one another in tight, three-dimensional clusters. Chen derives the pig motif—one of his signature images—from the folk art of his birthplace in Fuijan, turning this local symbol of wealth into an icon of contemporary Chinese society. Displaying a highly organic style, these images are at once fantastic, ironic, satiric, and comical.
Kowtow Pump, Shen Shaomin
An energetic sculptor, installation-artist, and filmmaker, Shen Shaomin has been pushing the boundaries of Chinese experimental art. “Kowtow Pump”—his contribution to this exhibition—is inspired by his childhood growing up near one of China’s major oil fields. Locals called the numerous machines standing among their schools, hospitals and residences ‘Kowtow’ for thier rhythmic, up-and-down movements. By refitting the mechanical transmission, Shen changes the pumps’ stable, uniform motions into twitching, convulsing gestures, struggling to complete the task. The work forges a contemporary allegory for the dangerous dependance of modern society on oil production.
