Since China Avant-garde, with its iconic German debut at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt in 1993, Chinese contemporary art has shown a completely new face to the contemporary art world. After 1979, when the first avant-garde art groups showed their work after the Cultural Revolution, Chinese art has undergone a transformation from demanding artistic freedoms to a more complex and nuanced response to both its domestic and global context. This year marks the 35-year anniversary of the beginning of this transformation.

Zhang Peili started his first experiments with video art in 1988, moving from painting to an engagement with the specific aesthetics and politics of new media. Video art in China today not only contributes to the mainstream of new media art and aesthetics, but has also rooted itself deeply in practical research into technological development as well as into the experience of daily life.

PANDAMONIUM, the title of this exhibition, suggests two conflicting ideas: the soft, cuddly, diplomatic, almost clichéd, image of the Panda, one of the great symbols of China to the outside world, and the wild, fertile, noisy disorder of Pandemonium, the place of all demons in Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’. The birth of this new word represents the chaotic energy of Chinese artists’ efforts and experiments in new media art over the past decade. Furthermore, it highlights the fact that Chinese contemporary art has not yet, other than through the art market, engaged globally during this time. This lack has been veiled by the speed of Chinese social and economic development and further masked by the impact of politics and the media.

DOUBLE FLY ART CENTER
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Double Fly Art Center is a 9-member art collective which was formed in 2008 after all its members graduated from the New Media Department of the China Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, having studied under Zhang Peili. Working across media as diverse as performance, video games, music videos, painting, and video art, they remain irreverent and anarchic in their critique of social norms in China, as well as of the international art market. Double Fly Art Center members now live predominantly in Hangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing and work collectively as well as individually. Recent exhibitions of their work include SEE/SAW: COLLECTIVE PRACTICE IN CHINA NOW (2012) and ON | OFF: CHINA’S YOUNG ARTISTS IN CONCEPT AND PRACTICE (2013) at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing and a solo-show at the Vanguard Gallery in Shanghai (2012). Their work has never before been shown in Berlin.

Contemporary Business, 2013

In Contemporary Business, the members of Double Fly Art Center, a Shanghai-based collective, parodies a catchy Mandarin pop song, Love Business (Ai Qing Mai Mai), singing and dancing before a handheld video camera. Contemporary Business is part music video and part low-budget YouTube clip, at times revealing carefully choreographed moves and at others a snapshot of informal and seemingly spontaneous moments. The members of Double Fly dance and sing their way across Shanghai, singing about penises, breasts, and sexual encounters in one verse while deriding the artistic and curatorial limitations placed on them by an unidentified authority in the next. The backdrops in Contemporary Business seem carefully chosen to reflect upon Shanghai’s and China’s complicated past, its rapid present transformations, and its undecided future, as the merry band of outsiders groove in front of a massive, drab communist style housing project, dance on the Bund along Shanghai’s Huangpu River, a vibrant promenade lined with handsome Neo-Classical, Beaux-Arts and Art-Deco buildings (former banks and financial houses from the 19th and early 20th centuries) that are beautiful relics of Shanghai’s colonial past and emblems of the city’s cosmopolitan present.

FENG BINGYI
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Feng Bingyi (b. 1991, Ningbo) is a young emerging talent in the Chinese art scene. Having studied under Yang Fudong at the China Academy of Art, she follows in his footsteps with her focus on cinematic traditions, while employing a poetic language. Distancing herself from the chains of external reality, she looks for inspiration within her internal impressions, which she expresses in the form of installations, photography, documentary and animation. After receiving both the Outstanding Graduation Work Award and the China Academy of Art Scholarship from the China Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou in 2013, Feng continued her studies at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts in London in 2014. Though she has been exhibited in China alongside well-established contemporary artists, she has never before been shown in Berlin. Feng is one of the artists undertaking the PANDAMONIUM Residency.

The Undertow, 2012

In this black and white split-screen video, the earthiness from the movement of mud as bare feet tamper at it and of the texture of a horse’s pelt as it breathes, contrast with the digitized sound-samples that are laid over the thick blacks and greys of the imagery. In Feng’s reposed, poetic style, The Undertow creates a liminal, ambiguous space, which the viewer is impelled to fill in.

HU WEIYI
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Hu Weiyi (b. 1990, Shanghai) is the son of Hu Jieming and now continuing his studies as a graduate student of Zhang Peili at the Media Department of the China Academy of Art, after having graduated from the Department of Public Art at the China Academy of Art in 2012. Hu is a multimedia artist and curator, whose work combines video, installation, sculpture, action, and sound. In 2012 he curated a young artists exhibition titled The Bad Land, in which the occupation of a public crossroad in Shanghai functioned to address the limits between art and life, public and private. Recent exhibitions include The Overlapping Reflection at the 2nd Zhujiajiao Contemporary Art Exhibition in Shanghai and The Summer Session at V2 in Rotterdam, both in 2013. His work will be shown in Berlin for the first time.

Keep Crawling, 2012

Video-performance Keep Crawling can be similarly seen as addressing a specific condition of contemporary life in China. Toy ‘crawling’ mechanic soldiers are dispatched on a crossroad, crawling their way between the wheels of moving cars passing by. Some ‘survive’ while others are mercilessly crushed by car tires. A few are actually salvaged by people passing or driving by. One again, it can be read as the pressure felt by Chinese today — you must keep crawling on, no matter what the circumstances, even though you know, you may be crushed at random, without any predictable logic or justification.

QIU ANXIONG
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Qiu Anxiong (b. 1972, Chengdu) was born in the capital of Sichuan province in the southwest of China. There, he studied under the progressive artistic practice of Ye Yongqing and Zhang Xiaogang. Qiu and his friends collectively founded a bar which became a hub for the blossoming underground music and art circles in Sichuan, and his colleagues included He Duoling, Zhou Chunya, and Shen Xiaotong. In his animated films, Qiu co-mingles the classical and the contemporary, using the traditional Chinese ink-and-wash style to transpose contemporary social and environmental issues onto traditional Chinese landscapes. Qiu has exhibited broadly internationally, having studied contemporary international art and traditional Chinese culture at the Kunsthochschule Kassel, Germany. In 2004 he began teaching at Shanghai Normal University and currently lives and works in Shanghai. Qiu received the Chinese Contemporary Art Award in 2006 and has exhibited widely, including a recent solo-show, titled Qiu Anxiong, The New Book of Mountains and Seas II at the Arken Museum of Modern Art in Ishøj, Denmark (2013) and group exhibition ‘Ink Art’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2013). He is one of the artists undertaking the PANDAMONIUM Residency, and will be producing new work for this show.

Cake, 2014

After working predominantly in oil painting during his studies in Kassel and having later turned to landscape painting in the tradition of the old Chinese masters, Qiu’s return to Shanghai in 2004 marked a shift in interest towards video art. Marked by the same quiet detachment and timelessness as his previous works, but now combining painting, drawing and clay in his animations, Cake offers an exquisitely crafted contemplation on the past, the present, and the relation¬ship between the two.

XU WENKAI
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Xu Wenkai (Aaajiao) (b. 1984, Xi’an) is one of China’s foremost media artists, bloggers and free culture developers. Having studied physics and computers, Xu Wenkai is self-taught as an artist and new media entrepreneur. In his works he focuses on the use of data and its various forms of display. In 2003 he established the sound art website cornersound.com and in 2006 he founded the Chinese take on the blog We Make Money Not Art: We Need Money Not Art. He is devoted to Processing, an open-source visual programming software, Dorkbot, a non-profit initiative for creative minds and Eventstructure, an interdisciplinary center for art, media, technology and academic research based in Shanghai and founded by Xu. In his works, Aaajiao focuses on the use of data and its various forms of display and on the processes of transforming content from reality to data and back again. His most significant contribution to the field of new media in China is a social one, as he act a as a vector for the interpretation and communication of international and local trends in the artistic use of software. Recent exhibitions include his solo-show titled The Screen generation, at C Space (2013) and chi K11 Art Space in Shanghai and at 9m2 Museum in Beijing (2014) and group-exhibition TRANSCIENCE – INTRACTABLE OBJECTS at Taikang Space in Beijing (2014). Xu is one of the artists undertaking the PANDAMONIUM Residency.

Hard, 2013

Sampling science-fiction author Isaac Asimov’s explanation of The Three Laws of Robotics (originally published in his 1942 short story Runaround), Xu applies profanity delay – a digital delay technique often used for live broadcasts to prevent unwanted profanity – to destroy or recycle the footage. The resulting inconsistencies in Asimov’s robot-theory are thereby generated through technological interferences.

YANG FUDONG
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Yang Fudong (b. 1971, Beijing) is considered to be one of China’s most well-known cinematographer and photographer and one of the brightest young stars in China and the greatest film writer ever to come out of China. When creating his narrative films, he portrays that anything is possible, including fantasies and dreams. There are different themes surrounding Yang’s films, but they all have a purpose, theological or literal. He is considered one of the deepest cinematographers in the world because of the time and passions he puts into each of his works. Yang Fudong’s most popular works include: Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forrest, The Fifth Night, the 17th Biennale of Sydney, East of Que Village, An Estranged Paradise, Backyard- Hey! Sun is Rising, and No Snow on the Broken Bridge. Yang continues to live and work on his films in Shanghai. As a successful filmmaker he is constantly traveling around, attending his premiers and other prestigious international art events. There are viewings of his movies in Europe, North America, and Asia. Yang Fudong does not show much interest in showing a strong political interest in his films, there are slight implications of his opinions but mostly he focuses on the interactions between different individuals.

City Light, 2000

Yang regularly makes use of traditional film genres and City Light is no exception. In a style that references detective- and slapstick-movies, a young, well-dressed office clerk and his doppelgänger move in unison along the street and around the office. Like pre-programmed robots they fit perfectly into their apparently ideally organised environment. The day is entirely dominated by work, but the evening provides space for dreams and creative thinking, causing a schizophrenic situation to arise. In their heroic conduct the two gentlemen sometimes develop into two gangsters who engage in a form of shadowboxing.

ZHANG DING
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Zhang Ding (b. 1980, Gansu) is a rising star of Chinese multimedia art. He first studied at the North West Minority University in the Oil Painting Department and went on to study under Zhang Peili in the New Media Arts Department at the China Academy of Fine Arts. Zhang works with large-scale mixed-media installations, incorporating video, performance and interactive components. He is influenced by the fantastical style of Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini and explores ethnic tensions, the plight of migrant workers, and the marginal urban cultures that lurk in the recesses of Chinese society. He has exhibited internationally at major institutions and has had international solo shows including Orbit at The Armony Show, Focus Section, in New York (2014) and Gold and Silver at Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna (2013), but has never before been shown in Berlin.

Buddha Jumps over the Wall, 2012

The culinary dish called Buddha Jumps over the Wall – a variety of shark fin soup – is regarded as a Chinese delicacy and so much so that it is said to even entice the vegetarian monks from their temples to partake in the meat-based dish, hence its name. In allusion to this dish, Zhang’s video features a group of animal plaster-sculptures that are individually shot at and finally exploded altogether, to shatter into pieces. Accompanied by a magnificent and solemn symphony and filmed by means of a high-speed camera lens that captures every detail, we see bloodlike liquid and shards of debris flying everywhere in a shocking and cruel, though undeniably aesthetic manner.

LI ZHENHUA

Li Zhenhua has been active in the artistic field since 1996, his practice mainly concerning curation, art creation and project management. Since 2010 he has been the nominator for the Summer Academy at the Zentrum Paul Klee Bern (Switzerland), as well as for The Prix Pictet (Switzerland). He is a member of the international advisory board for the exhibition “Digital Revolution” to be held at the Barbican Centre in the UK in 2014. Li Zhenhua has edited several artists’ publications, including “Yan Lei: What I Like to Do” (Documenta, 2012), “Hu Jieming: One Hundred Years in One Minute” (2010), “Feng Mengbo: Journey to the West” (2010), and “Yang Fudong: Dawn Mist, Separation Faith” (2009). A collection of his art reviews has been published under the title “Text” in 2013. http://www.bjartlab.com | http://www.msgproduction.com