Exhibition examines changing existence

An exhibition at Tsinghua University Art Museum, The Realm of Existence, presents a sample of Chinese contemporary art over the past three decades.

The ongoing exhibition, which runs until Dec 12, shows ink-water shuimo works, oil paintings, sculptures, installations, photos, videos and performances by 13 noted figures in contemporary art circles. It charts the personal experiences, expressions and ways of thinking of the featured artists and also investigates the changes in culture and social circumstances since the 1990s.

Du Pengfei, executive director of Tsinghua University Art Museum, says that one can hear the distinctive voices of these individuals at the exhibition, and feel "their persistence in venturing into a completely new realm of art in the country, opening up a dialogue with the world on multiple levels".

The exhibition shows how artists have drawn on their diverse day-today experiences to reflect on dramatic social change throughout the decades, such as excessive consumption, a money culture, tensions in interpersonal relations and pop culture.

Among the widely known works to address these problems are paintings and prints by Fang Lijun and Yue Minjun on show, both featuring exaggerated smiling faces. The humorous styles of their art are loaded with a serious attitude toward the life issues that haunt people's minds.

The exhibition also shows a renewed employment of the forms of traditional Chinese art to render a contemporary touch, or to examine current problems.

Works by Fu Zhongwang reflect his long-term use of wooden blocks and exploration to present them in various manners. He adopts centuries-old mortise and tenon sunmao joinery structures from classical Chinese architecture as a signature of his work, while he discusses the encounter between traditional culture and modern civilization. When assembling those wood structures, he hints at the complexities of people's emotions and interpersonal relations.

In his oil paintings, Qi Haiping vividly presents the vibrant, layered texture of the ink strokes of calligraphy, overwhelming his audience with an eruption of energy. In between the dancing lines, he reinterprets the rhythmic sense of calligraphic writing, through which he has built a link between the Chinese and Western arts and a sense of abstraction.

Xu Hong the exhibition curator says that, in the displayed works, one will see the drive of artists' "preferences, impulses and wishes", as well as a mirror of their "confusion and doubts". One will also see in the artworks a close resemblance to everyday scenes, but they will be revealed to "the true core of art as a means to reflect on, sometimes rework, the collective material and spiritual life of people".

Since its opening five years ago, the university's art museum has held several exhibitions to show contemporary works by artists from both home and abroad. The Realm of Existence exhibition further broadens the museum's vision of showing Chinese contemporary art, according to Du.

One piece of work being exhibited by each of the 13 artists was donated to the museum at the exhibition's opening. Du says the donations made the exhibition the first of its kind at the museum, shining a spotlight on the institution's collection and research of Chinese modern and contemporary art.

"It is a good beginning. The exhibition shows our interest in contemporary art and our efforts in the study of it," he says.

"We see future possibilities to communicate our views, serious and unique, with aesthetic concerns and social contexts, to teachers, students and art lovers."