About Other Shore Arts
Since as early as 1988, Other Shore Arts has been collaborating with artists – presenting their work both internationally and in China . Chinese contemporary art is pivotal in our endeavors, although it's not our exclusive focus. We have brought Chinese artists to America or Europe; we have also supported European, American, and other Asian artists coming to China . We organize and curate art exhibitions. We also produce documentary films. We often collaborate with international organizations; at certain junctures, we set up local studios or (as now) launch a gallery. We've also been involved with music and theatre, dance and philosophy . . . many such things. We are attentive to the new and contemporary,; we also value the classical and ancient. While our specific activities take various forms, the content of all these forms involves a fructifying interplay of differing cultures. (This theme is suggested in the name of our organization.) A life-affirming interplay of cultures in the realm of art – this is the central thread of Other Shore Arts . It's a thread running through all our projects over the span of years.
Past experience fuels new activity. Other Shore Arts operates on several fronts in the artistic field. We play a role in (so to speak) a drama unfolding. What drama? Chinese contemporary art. If compared to a theatrical work, this is sure to prove a play in many acts. China itself (as everybody knows) is lately stepping onto the world stage. Meanwhile, Chinese contemporary art has been evolving a sort of counter-narrative: a collective spectacle running in parallel with what's happening in the culture's big tent. If this side drama is now (say) in its second or third act, the narrative energy propelling its action, though shifting, is far from exhausted. As the world-drama unfolds in its loud, astounding ways, the art-drama moves along in its quiet, peculiar manner. An audience for the latter is still gathering from various quarters. Actors wait in the wings; ideas jostle one another backstage. Music wells up, a curtain rises. The show – whatever it is – proceeds.
But where stands our story so far? And what role might Other Shore Arts play in the tale? The present web-page – this text – aims to bring the reader up to speed on these particular points.
Story and context
T he situation of contemporary art in China over the past 20 years has undergone tremendous changes. Other Shore Arts has made its mark in the past through working with and presenting artists. Working with and presenting artists constitute what we do now – but needs of today may differ from measures called for in a bygone era. The times seem ripe for fresh initiatives. This website represents one step.
Here, we introduce Other Shore Arts to the reader – familiarizing you with things we've done so far, acquainting you with current activities. As new projects emerge, news of them will appear here.
Each step has antecedent; every story implies a context. Our activities find context amid an arc of developments in recent cultural history. That context – that unfolding background – synchs and interlinks with what Other Shore Arts is up to. So we've got two tasks in this essay: to sketch a brief history of Chinese contemporary art; and to describe our own activities and collaborations in that context.
Visitors at our Beijing gallery encounter select works by contemporary artists. Material we'll present on this website should support appreciation for works on view. We are beginning to develop our ARTFILE online [in other forms, ARTFILE dates to year 2000] – an informational resource that will expand here in upcoming seasons. The Other Shore Artfile will include extensive background info on artists whose work we present. From time to time, we will also publish, through this channel, reports, critiques, and interesting materials of various kinds.
Chinese contemporary art
The new art in China emerged outside any existing system or established structure. It started in the mid-1980s, ten years after the close of the Cultural Revolution, as a move toward self-expression: self-defined (and thus self-defining) artistic expression – amid a milieu where the individualistic voice found little public scope. In the way of art, the artist's voice articulates personally-perceived experience, privately-imagined reality. There hadn't been much room for such a voice, for art like this. There was no open space, no scope for such phenomena. The culture of the People's Republic of China at that historical juncture might be compared to a solid block. The block hadn't yet opened. At a certain point, a handful of artists stepped forward. They began the work of opening.
This development in art's symbol-realm (in the semi-public sphere) runs in parallel with wide, collective processes unfolding in Chinese society. A general opening occurred (a gradual opening of thought, that began with Deng Xiaoping's “Reforms and Openness” policy of the late 1970s). In advance of China 's subsequent, thunderously consequential commercial and cultural opening to the wide world, a handful of artists began quietly opening their own hearts. These bright-eyed, young individuals were open, as well, to many artistic influences from afar.
It had been a long century of rough changes in China . The Cultural Revolution had been a latest devastation; it took some years for its aftermath to settle. By the latter 1980s, like-minded creative types started appearing in Beijing (for instance), eager to make art. Naturally, there existed little chance for exhibition. There were no galleries anywhere, no known market for their wares. As always in such underground movements, artists shared their work with artists. Drawn by the promise of creative self-expression, thoughtful souls convened, opening the field of experimental art. Regardless of dim material prospects, some necessity of life pulled them. This took the form of a desire to make a mark – some inscription – on the wide, blank wall of their era.
What prompted this small brood of artists to gamble with fate, and what established the avant-garde movement that would pave the way for a burgeoning art phenomenon in today's China – what animated lives of artists and journeys of the paintbrush, was an imperative to release the long-suppressed stream of feeling. The world presented a silence seeking voice. It posed a question to which artists began to frame replies. (The questions and answers still continue.) Words emerging from the heart possess power. As marks on canvas, as gestures in performance, as moves to locate one's own truth, to wrest from shadow (amid a world awash in propaganda, amid a surfeit of slogans) some credible thought, some reliable emotion – in these forms, a push toward artistic self-realization became a sharp factor, an adamantine factor, that broke open cultural ground, planting the seedlings for contemporary art. Similar things have happened elsewhere – in different eras, in other lands. This was the turn for a fresh art phenomenon in mainland China .
The situation today
Today, when you visit Song Zhuang or wander through the 798 Art Zone in Beijing , you'll observe a cornucopia of artistic efforts and gestures coming at you from all sides. It can be a paradoxical experience, if considered in light of the above-noted brief history. Today, there's an international market for China 's new art; one finds hundreds of contemporary galleries in Beijing , scores of them in Hong Kong . There's now a biennial exhibition in Shanghai , a triennial in Guangzhou . There's a lot of art to be seen, and there's something of a scene supporting Still, the question could emerge, are artists leading, or being led? In what directions are they heading? Who's calling the shots? Some who've managed to get wide recognition, feel pressure to repeat themselves. The undiscovered scramble to be heard amid sudden cacophony. There's sound, but what sense? Proliferation, but what impact? If in 1988, there was a vital need to sponsor shoestring-budget art careers, to mount under-the-radar exhibitions, to produce seat-of-your-pants independent films, in 2008, a need remains, but of a different sort. Something beckons. What?
We observe there to be scope for – and we see potential value in – establishing a somewhat different manner of gallery in Beijing now. It can share some characteristics with what used to be called “an alternative space” (though this seems too rough an approximation). Regardless of the rubric; here's what we have in mind: to create an art space for the current cultural moment, aiming not so much for commerce as for comment. It should open cultural space for reassessment, selectivity, fresh focus, and some clarifying of ideas. A modest move alters the scenario. A small word changes the sentence. Even, perhaps, at the nether end of this helter-skelter decade. Or so we blithely reckon, as we set out down this road.
Welcome to our gallery
These thoughts animate our launching – in October 2008 – a distinctive space amid Beijing 's arts-rife Dashanzi (a northeast neighborhood which includes the 798 Art Zone ).
Other Shore Arts Institute & Gallery presents noteworthy works of art – foregrounding projects of interest for Beijing's cognoscenti, bringing some Chinese artists to wider attention ( e.g. , via collaboration with institutions abroad). Sometimes, we'll introduce distant discoveries – like messages in a bottle, floating in from other shores – things worth glimpsing here in Beijing .
As the world digs a bit deeper into its latest millennium, we're setting up shop, hanging lights, readying the room. Art-luminaries can set afloat some new ideas here. Certain under-publicized geniuses we will introduced here. Installations and videos, sculptures, paintings . . . art in many guises will find place here (sometimes perhaps as works-in-progress).
We'll sift through art's ocean, presenting our select catch. Amid the ocean, you pick out a needle. Wielding a needle, you could thread a string of pearls.
Welcome to our gallery – near the lotus pond bordering Power Square , in D PARK (“design park”), built on the site of former Factory 751. It's easterly adjacent former Factory 798 (lately famed as the 798 Art Zone ). D PARK is getting populated with art establishments this year; perhaps it will be next year's happening hub. Be as this may – come visit when you're in Beijing .
The story so far
A bit of further review may prove useful. As remarked above, contemporary art in China has undergone a big shift over the past two decades – two decades that comprise its full history to date. Contemporary art in Europe and America reaches back through several layers of 20th century modernism toward antecedents in the 19th century and earlier. Contemporary art in China , as a coherent movement, isn't rooted in a corresponding, native modernist background. (At the time American modernism was in its abstract expressionist heyday, China was recovering from after-effects of prolonged civil war.) Chinese art academies taught (and teach) techniques from old European tradition, but such traditions and techniques hadn't hit a nerve nor sparked much of a fire. When (in the ‘80s) artists began breaking rules of the academic style – finding their own ways to paint, their own subjects to explore – things began to get more interesting. As for Chinese contemporary art's relationship vis-à-vis China 's own, millennia-long art traditions, the relation seems generally muffled, obscure, complex, or subterranean. Each artist strikes his or hew own negotiation with the shadow of that art history. (With a few, its influence is felt directly; with others, more indirectly – in short.) As for the erstwhile-pervasive Socialist realist tradition (source of propaganda posters in bygone eras), if some practitioners of contemporary art appropriate elements of this style (with ironic intent), the distinction remains evident. If exposure to Western 20th century art sparked the development of contemporary art in China , the spark hit kindling with its own, native character. Consequences are still unfolding in various directions. Amid dramatic shifts of collective life, Chinese society has struck its own path into 21st century reality. The same is true of Chinese contemporary art – which (on one level) offers creative response to the impact of life experienced in that changeful society.
So: shoots of new art emerged in the mid-1980s – a decade after China 's Cultural Revolution period (1966-1976). During the Cultural Revolution, art-making as self-expression was anathema. (Artists, musicians, writers, academics, and intellectuals were relocated to work farms for “reeducation.”) Amid this mass convulsion of society (with overt devaluation of the thinking individual as locus of meaning), permissible art (following doctrinaire canons of Socialist Realism) amounted to art steeped in ideology. Art with personal intention, art seeking its own routes of refinement and sources of authenticity, art expressive of individual sensibility and its many shadings – such art arose from (so to speak) the ashes, in wake of the Cultural Revolution.
While initially, contemporary art in China enjoyed no official sanction, an avant-garde art movement – which became self-aware from 1985 – began creating channels to show its signs of life. It developed diverse voices over the next decade. Finally – near the turn of the millennium, after gaining international recognition, Chinese contemporary artists started gaining fuller acceptance in their own homeland. Developments in the past decade now (emergence of museums devoted to contemporary art in some Chinese cities, establishing of major biennial and triennial art exhibitions, etc.) have shifted the balance. The story seems perhaps to have entered a phase of expansion and confusion. Indeed, it may be wise to view China 's crystallized art world as yet in flux, still relatively nascent. Every artist (anyway) faces fundamental questions afresh, regardless of shifts or drifts of name and fortune. Art is the friend of trial and error; critics and viewers draw varied conclusions. At any rate, an awareness of the aforesaid recent history – running from banned art to art boom – weaves itself into the background fabric. Other Shore Arts has participated in the saga of this societal evolution at some of its formative stages – periodically organizing and curating exhibitions, variously instigating art activities in several places.
Lin Xiaodong and Other Shore Arts – early work
In the late 1980s, aspiring artists from outlying parts of China migrated to Beijing , where they sought to cultivate self-expression. Wu Wenguang – recognized internationally as China 's first independent filmmaker – documented this new generation of young artists in Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers (shot 1988-89). Other Shore Arts founding director Lin Xiaodong began his collaboration with Wu in 1988, serving as production assistant on this film (and later, also, on its sequel). Subsequently, Other Shore Arts promoted Wu's work to the Museum of Modern Art ( New York ), and MoMA screened Bumming in Beijing in a series devoted to China 's New Documentary Movement. Back in 1988, Lin Xiaodong also sponsored a solo exhibition at the Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing , showing paintings by Zhang Xiaping – one of the artists seen in Wu's film.
1988 was also the year of the seminal Huang Shan Conference (a.k.a. the Modern Art Symposium of China , as noted in margins of history). Lin Xiaodong sponsored several Kunming artists' travel to join this meeting – out of which emerged the First Chinese Avant-Garde Art Exhibition , held in Beijing in 1989 (a year of cultural ferment). Lin Xiaodong likewise sponsored these Kunming artists' participation in that historic Beijing happening.
In the 1990s, contemporary Chinese art began to be seen in European exhibitions – a development reflecting growing Western cultural curiosity about mainland China . When Other Shore Arts supported the excursion of five painters and their work from Kunming and Sichuan to New York City – for Sharing the Dream (1996) – this was the first time these artists' work had been seen in the United States . The group included, for instance, Zhang Xiaogang (now recognized as among the most noted and successful of China 's contemporary painters).
Whereas the 1980s brought outlying Chinese artists to Beijing , in the 1990s, many of those artists kept moving – now farther outward to an international world opening to them. Wu's sequel film, At Home in the World (1994), documented this transmigration of China 's artists into the wider world. Before the end of the decade, Other Shore Arts organized 1999 Art China , a landmark exhibition in San Francisco , showing 130 recent works by 29 significant artists. This critically and popularly successful show, open for five months, included work from artists who had emerged both in the 1980s and in the 1990s. (See Li Xianting's essay . [soon to be added to ARTFILE].) Back in 1990, Lin Xiaodong had relocated to the United States . He formally established Other Shore Arts as an organization in Washington , DC – aiming to promote work of Chinese artists and to instigate cultural exchange between China and the Western world.
After the better part of a decade of activities based in the US, Other Shore Arts returned to China in 1997, entering a phase marked by more exhibitions in China and more film activities – such as producing Du Peihua's film A Red Backdrop (2004) [soon to be added to ARTFILE]. This period also saw the establishment of Other Shore Arts Studios in Beijing and Kunming . At both our northern and southern location, we hosted a stream of international artist residencies for a number of years – a flip side of our global engagement in making connections. Many of these residencies flowed from Other Shore Arts' collaboration with international arts organizations. The studios were also host to a range of visiting writers, filmmakers, and other creative persons. They also hosted Chinese artists, including Zhang Xiaogang and Ye Yongqing, for example.
The unfolding story is never static: fresh discoveries await new eyes. New times require new measures. Today – with our Dashanzi / D PARK space in Beijing , with this retooled website, and in several other ways – Other Shore Arts is taking fresh steps to present trenchant work from our creative contemporaries. We will be instigating a sequence of projects, involving artists working in various media, in upcoming seasons.
Many collaborations
In addition to a voluminous roster of contemporary Chinese painters , sculptors and photographers (see primary artists list ), Other Shore Arts has also produced or internationally presented work from many filmmakers:
Our association with filmmakers started in 1988, when Other Shore Arts founding director Lin Xiaodong began working with Wu Wenguang, recognized as China 's first independent filmmaker. Other Shore Arts also subsequently worked extensively with director Du Peihua.
Other Shore Arts has collaborated with and been supported by notable writers and scholars, including:
Other Shore Arts has collaborated with, supported, presented, or produced work of diverse performing artists, including:
Other Shore Arts has offered support to visiting international artists working in China , including:
Other Shore Arts has collaborated with prestigious international arts organizations, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou (Paris), Asian Cultural Council (New York), Royal Academy of Arts (London), Royal College of Art (London), British Council, Arts Council England, Red Mansion Foundation (London), Gasworks (London), Horse Hospital Contemporary Art Centre (London), South of Cloud Film Festival (Kunming), Palazzo Medici Riccardi (Firenze), Festival de Popoli (Firenze), Viennale (Vienna), Nice International Photography Festival, and Beijing Royal Art Museum, among others. We have also collaborated with international art galleries.
Other Shore Arts has engaged in projects working with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), CTV (a production branch of China Central Television), KBS (Korea Broadcasting Service), and the Korean Cultural Department. Other Shore Arts has also collaborated with DK Publishers (UK), Solent Centre for Architecture + Design ( UK ), and Creative Partnerships (UK),
Other Shore Arts provides arts and public image consultancy services to China Television Cultural Center (TVCC) in connection with the China Central Television (CCTV) Headquarters (designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his firm OMA), a landmark project whose construction is currently being completed in Beijing .
Other Shore Arts Institute
October 2008