Chinese contemporary art starts developing at the end of 1970s, in relate to the “Open door policy”, which began to release repression in cultural and social life since the Great Cultural

Chinese conceptualism

Chinese contemporary art starts developing at the end of 1970s, in relate to the “Open door policy”, which began to release repression in cultural and social life since the Great Cultural Revolution. In 1980s, through a huge bum of translation and publication of works in world art and philosophy artists in a short time got to know about method and theory of modern and contemporary art, and began to use it in expressing their own idea, which formed into the art movement called “85 new wave movement (1985-89)” with more than 2000 artist’ participation, 149 exhibitions, a great number of art forums, magazines and so on. This period of absorbing different ideas from other countries was effectively reflected In the work of Huang Yongping, when he kept books on “history of Chinese art” and ”history of western art” rolling in washing machine for 2 hours, then put the pulp in a box. Leaving behind official socialism-realism, artists experimented with the most different styles in western art in the past 100 years from impressionism, expressionism to Dadaism, surrealism, neo-expressionism…and so on. From all these styles, conceptualism was a very strong trend, in comparison with the representational art, such as expressionism and critical-realism.

Important conceptual artists in this period include Huang Yongping, Xu Bing, Zhang Peili, Geng Jianyi and new analyst group. Huang Yongping founded a artistic group “Xiamen Dada” together with other artists from his hometown, Xiamen. They burned all their works from first exhibition, declaring the death of art. Zhang Peili is the first video artist, in 1989 he shoot a 150 minutes’ video in which he kept break a glass and put the pieces together, warning people about the television as a media by making it boring. The work of new analyst group is built on lines, points on plain surface, like graphics for scientific research. They made experiments on pure geometrical form and expressing life in a standardized and objective way. Here we can really see the influence of western art theory, such as Dadaism and separatism. But the originality remains with the artists’ attempt to use these theories to deal with the actual problems in China.

Feeling, New anylist group, 1988

The greatest outcome of the 85 new wave movement is the Chinese contemporary art exhibition. At the opening of exhibition three artists, wearing huge white bags, walked up the steps to the exhibition hall in a row as if attending a funeral. Xiao Lu made 2 black telephone booths with a man and a woman inside back to the viewer, they are talking, maybe to each other. Yet between them there is another red telephone booth, with the phone hanged in the air. She made a suggestion of the relationships in modern world. To finish the work and express herself fully, she shot at the installation on exhibition, which lead to it’s close.

Dialogue, Xiao Lu, 1989

The close of the Chinese contemporary art exhibition and the Tiananmen square protest in the same year changed the political and social atmosphere in China and marked the end of 85 new wave movement. Contemporary art moved on to its next era of 1990s. Getting disappointed from the condition in China, most of the main contemporary artists moved aboard from the end of 1980s to 1990s, where they continue to work on Chinese theme.

But during this time there is a group around Beijing I would like to pay special attention to – the East village near Beijing. This is a small, poor village at the east suburb of Beijing, named after the east village in America. A group of artist worked there from 1992-1994, making many radical art experiments. From my point of view, they share many similarities with the Moscow conceptualists in terms of their low-cost life, group work, conceptual style, preference in performance, photography and videos and critical opinion on social life of their times.

In 21th century,

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