Deconstructing Asian-ness in New York
Asian art is ruled by four gods: Mao, Marilyn, Buddha and Andy Warhol.
While actor Hugh Grant portrait of Andy Warhol Liz Taylor was getting ready to be sold for 23.7 million at Christies yesterday, New york Pier 92 was living last weekend a debut of a full explosion of works by a front line of contemporary masters and a fascinating selection of work in varied media by emerging artists certainly setting tomorrow’s trends.
ACAF brings to New York a vibrant, international art market, attracting experienced collectors but accessible to those new to contemporary Asian art it is set to become a point of convergence between some of the most respected dealers of contemporary Asian art collectors and the general public.
Dominated by big names like Zhang Huan, Cai Guo-Qiang and Xu Bing, but by around 350 less familiar, younger artists from China, India, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam the 76 booths, are occupied by dealers from Asia, the United States and Europe It also includes a sharp 26-artist group exhibition “Simulasian: Refiguring ‘Asia’ for the 21st Century.”
organized by the independent curators Eric C. Shiner and Lilly Wei addressing the definition of “Asian-ness.”Fizzy and entertaining on the surface, the fair has a disquieting underside. There’s a certain amount of what might be called hotel art, but the general impression is one of sophisticatedly playful and wide-ranging ingenuity.
Labor-intensive technique prevails, and most artists work somewhere along an Asian-inflected line connecting Surrealism and Pop Art.But this is not another cult-of-youth art fair, like some of the satellite expos that will surround Art Basel-Miami next month.
Because it is an all-Asian fair, it has its own distinctive flavor. However much Asian artists may borrow from the West — which is a lot — their art collectively evokes geographically specific tensions and anxieties.Warhol’s image and works mimicking his paintings appear almost as frequently as depictions of Mao and Marliyn Monroe and are the most visible.
Six life-size statues of Mao made of shiny stainless steel by Guangci greet visitors at the exhibition’s entrance, among the paintings by Dong-Yoo Kim at Leehwaik Gallery, a portrait of Marilyn composed of gridded pixels — each a tiny image of John F. Kennedy. Both they reappears in works by numerous other artists inside.Mao is the comical pop culture icon whom Warhol painted, but he’s also the bad father whose image invokes real 20th-century political and social pain.
The vaguely mocking way he is so frequently represented in contemporary Chinese art hints at a deeper post-traumatic anxiety and, perhaps, an urge to exorcise him.What you see more often are works that conflate historical traditions and aesthetics with contemporary motifs, as in Li Lihong’s pedestal-size ceramic representations of the McDonald’s golden arches covered by antique-style patterned glazes (at Beatrice Chang of Gallery Zero ).
A more impressive version of antiquity-modernity interplay is a wall-size Cubist construction of mirrors designed by Jeong-Soon Oum to represent in a semi-abstract way an ancient scholar’s bookshelf (at Seomi & Tuus). In works like these you sense a concern about modern progress eroding traditional spiritual values. ( see images in Gallery below)
The Warholian perception that nature has been blotted out or replaced by consumer culture is embodied in works throughout the exhibition. In large set-up photographs by Zhan Wang at Interart Channel, hundreds of pieces of shiny stainless steel cookware are arranged to resemble vast cityscape.
Another complex cityscape, this time made of scraps from old denim pants by So-Young Choi, is at CAIS Gallery’s booth. (see images in Gallery below)Understanding the blossoming of a truly global art market, collectors and artists alike can look forward to an era of greater mutual appreciation where a fine blends of iconography and hedonism become at this point transcendental.
Joelle’s Picks:
Sources: It’s Asian Work, but abandon the Stereotypes before Entering the Boots by Ken Johnson, The New York Times November, 10
The Movie:
