University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: September 8, 2005

By KRISTIN E. M. RIEMER
Reporter Contributor

The most ambitious exhibition of contemporary Chinese art to travel beyond China will be presented this fall by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the UB Art Galleries after its debut in Beijing this summer at the Millennium Art Museum.

"The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art" is the first collaboration between U.S. art museums and a significant Chinese art museum to focus on contemporary Chinese art.

In "Ghosts Pounding the Wall" by Xu Bing, impressions on rice paper form a large scroll mourning China’s Great Wall. (Image courtesy of Xu Bing)

Because of its size and scope, "The Wall" will be installed in three venues: the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the UB Art Gallery in the Center for the Arts, North Campus, and the UB Anderson Gallery on Martha Jackson Place, near the South Campus in Buffalo. The exhibition will open to the public on Oct. 21 and remain on view through Jan. 29, 2006.

Gao Minglu organized "The Wall" during his tenure as assistant professor in the Department of Art History, College of Arts and Sciences.

A leading authority on 20th- and 21st-century Chinese art, Gao was curator of "Inside Out: New Chinese Art at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art" in 1998 and the Chinese section of the "Conceptual Art: Point of Origin 1950s-1980s" exhibition, sponsored by the Queens Museum in New York in 1999.

While the Great Wall certainly will come to the minds of visitors to the exhibition, Gao says there are several interpretations of walls in Chinese culture.

"'The Wall'" can be interpreted as a physical or architectural form such as the Great Wall or other various walls in a living space; as a modernization project that has posed a challenge in China, such as the Three Gorges Dam Project; or as a cultural and social boundary experienced by Chinese citizens," said Gao, now associate professor of East Asian modern and contemporary art in the History of Art and Architecture Department at the University of Pittsburgh. "These three interpretations provide the intellectual framework for the exhibition."

Zheng Lianjie's Binding the Lost Souls: Big Explosion '93 Series, 1993, documents a performance on the Great Wall. The photographs show bricks salvaged from where they had fallen over time, wrapped in red ribbon and placed randomly along the top of the wall as far as the eye can see. The performers have thus "rebuilt" the wall, but changed its physical character in the process.

In Xu Bing's Ghosts Pounding the Wall, 1992, the artist and a crew of assistants made ink impressions of the Great Wall on rice paper by using a technique traditionally used in the reproduction of fine calligraphy. The impressions form a large scroll that ends in a tomb-like pile of dirt mourning the historical icon. The work is both monumental and funereal, while conveying intellectual skepticism and ambivalence towards the traditional memory presented in the Great Wall.

"The Wall" also will survey how the current practice of art making, though embedded in the tradition of Chinese civilization, reflects the complicated and rapidly changing Chinese cultural landscape and China's transformation from an agricultural society to a modern, urbanized country. Most of the research and selection of works has been completed on-site in different regions of China. As a result, the organizers have discovered many talented, emerging artists.

In all, approximately 83 works by 47 artists will be on view in the three venues. Buffalo is the only North American venue for the exhibition, which comes as interest in Chinese contemporary art has begun to increase dramatically here and in Europe. Many of the works have never before been seen outside of China.

"The Wall" will be a significant, interdisciplinary, cultural event that will also include the publication of a 450-page bilingual catalogue, film screenings, educational programming for children and adults, and art performances.

In addition, a multidisciplinary, international research conference, "The Roles and Representations of Walls in the Reshaping of Chinese Modernity," is planned for Oct. 20-23 to coincide with the opening weekend of "The Wall" exhibition. Organized by UB, the conference will explore physical, social and other kinds of walls in the process of rethinking the nature of modernity with particular reference to 20th century China. The conference will involve approximately 25 presenters/participants from the People's Republic of China, Taiwan and North America.

"Presenting the conference in conjunction with 'The Wall' exhibition and its associated programming will provide rich and unique opportunities for scholarship," said President John B. Simpson. "The University at Buffalo is proud to provide a forum for this important and unprecedented conversation, which we believe represents a significant milestone in the increasing number of cultural and educational exchanges between East and West."

Arthur Waldron, author of the widely acclaimed "The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth," will deliver an opening keynote address, "The Great Wall of China: The Author's Reflections after 15 Years," on Oct. 20. The conference will close on Oct. 23 with an address by exhibition curator Gao. More information on the conference is available at http://cas.buffalo.edu/depts/asianstudies/conferences/index.shtml.

UB decided to collaborate with the Millennium Art Museum in Beijing and bring in the Albright-Knox as a partner after Gao approached Sandra H. Olsen, director of the UB Art Galleries.

"This international collaboration provides unprecedented opportunities for cross-cultural study and dialogue," Olsen said. "Dedicated to the university's mission for academic excellence, 'The Wall' affords the UB Art Galleries with the opportunity to support faculty research and an important bilingual publication that will provide Western and Chinese audiences with a thorough and culturally focused examination of contemporary Chinese art."

"The Wall" also is one of the most important art exhibitions ever to be presented in the binational Buffalo-Niagara region, said Albright-Knox director Louis Grachos. "The Albright-Knox joined this groundbreaking project with great enthusiasm because the exhibition helps us to fulfill our mission to exhibit the best and most significant contemporary art in the world," Grachos said.