On the one hand, the Chinese art ecological environment has forced artists to experience a new self-consciousness, because of the intervention of the middle class. Science and capital, fanning the flames of disorder, further promote interaction among art varieties, between art and audiences, and integration of the global culture. In respect of the development of the Chinese contemporary art, previous ideological influences of the Cold War period, culture’s full reliance on ideologies, and cultural contexts unfolded by the realism and ultra-realism, either advocating or criticizing them, no longer serve as main cultural badges in the works of mature artists in contemporary China. The stress of global culture and consumption culture has provided, from a larger extent, a feasible space for the extension of art. And with this, it will break through the old cultural restraints.
On the other hand, Chinese contemporary cultures keep closer ties with the society, making culture growingly a part of people’s mode of life, in knowledge, skills and materials. Chinese contemporary art no longer appear in the gesture of making tiresome moral lectures, or in the self-righteous identity. Instead, it approaches the people in an intimate stance to effectively connect the past and present, man and technology, art and life. It applies open interpretation modes and expression carriers to alleviate ambiguity in reading the contemporary art. Therefore, metaphor symbolism, medium conversion, and philosophical oriented visual language are not witchery in people’s mind anymore. They start to intensify organic relations between ourselves and the social life, allowing more people concerned with the art to bid from the previous extreme experiences and reading modes, and turn the art into a journey they are to come through. Such a union of art and modes of life testifies the only way to generate a culture is to accept and transmit. Because of this, Chinese contemporary art will have greater avant-garde values and significance.
The “Collision” exhibition attempts to start with representative experimental cases of the art. It hopes to confront the overall changes in ideologies, expression modes, value judgment, cultural production, cultural transmission, and cultural collection, through exhibiting the actual situation of Chinese contemporary art. Although there might be some regrets in the exhibition, such as the absence of a few important artists, and the neglect of some equally vigorous artists because of our own limitations, I am fully convinced that in this challenging architecture, what is exhibited on the present situation of the art is exactly the in-depth experience and cultural reflections that Chinese artists could do in the current transformation period.
Editor: Wen Yi
Email to Friends
Print
Save