Opening reception
Friday, September 14, 7 p.m. – 9 p.m.
*dual reception with Jarbas Lopes: Cicloviaérea
Public Programs:
Tuesday, October 2, 7pm
Screening of the Chinese film masterpiece, Spring in a Small Town (1948).
Yang Fudong draws inspiration for his videos from the style and content of early-twentieth-century Chinese films. Director Mu Fei made Spring in a Small Town as China was recovering from the long war with Japan (WWII) and moving into its Communist revolution. Mu’s film aroused some condemnation because of its concern with the individual and the personal. The film revolves around an isolated family group, relics of the class system, burdened by the past and trying to find their way into the future. The screening is introduced by ASU visiting professor Yu Zou, a specialist in Chinese film and civilization, who will address the history of the film’s reception in China and its relationship to Yang Fudong’s work.
Friday, November 9, noon
Another Cultural Revolution: Art in Today’s China
Brownbag lecture by ASU Art Museum Director Marilyn A. Zeitlin
Contemporary art from China expresses the new values in a country both rapidly changing and intensely aware of its past. How these artists have both absorbed art from the West and redefined tradition is reflected in painting, sculpture, and video that also tests the limits of the new permissiveness in expression.
BUSINESS AS USUAL:
New Video from China / Cao Fei and Yang Fudong
Business As Usual is an opportunity to examine two of the most prominent contemporary Chinese video artists. Both Cao Fei and Yang Fudong address the emergence of a new middle class in China. Contemporary artists in China employ a range of media to explore the experience of living in a rapidly changing urban environment. Globalization has brought them into contact with Western contemporary art, which explains the increasing visual similarity, but their concerns remain unique to present-day China.
In Whose Utopia, Cao Fei portrays workers who left their small hometowns to pursue life in the big city. They took with them dreams to be dancers and singers, and ended up in factories. Working with employees in a light bulb factory, Cao Fei has the workers dress in the garb of their dreams and perform within the environment of their actual lives, the factory.
Yang Fudong’s film and video work portrays his generation of people in their late 20s and 30s who are part of the emerging middle class in China and who hover between the past and present. Fudong’s work epitomizes how the recent and rapid modernization of China has overthrown traditional values and culture. He skillfully balances this dichotomy to create works endowed with classic beauty and timelessness.
The exhibition is co-curated by Marilyn A. Zeitlin, director and chief curator, and Heather S. Lineberry, Senior Curator, of the ASU Art Museum.
All works in the exhibition are drawn from the Haudenschild Collection, San Diego.
This exhibition available for tour.
About the Artists
Cao Fei
Select recent solo exhibitions include: 2006: SIEMENS Art Project 2006: What Are You Doing Here? Fu Shan OSRAM factory, Guangzhou; HIP HOP, Lombard-Freid Project, New York. 2005: Cosplayers, Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, New York and CourtYard Gallery, Beijing. Recent select group exhibitions include: 2006: 15th Sydney Biennale, Sydney. 2005: Art Basel Miami Beach Art Video Lounge: A Kind of a Portraiture Program, Miami; Joy, Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg.; Exchange Value of Pleasure, Busan Museum of Modern Art, Busan, Korea; The 2nd Guangzhou Triennial: BEYOND an Extraordinary Space of Experimentation for Modernization, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou (cat.); Tirana Biennale,National Gallery of Arts, Tirana, Albania; Trouble with Fantasy,Kunsthalle Nurnberg, Nurnberg, Germany; Out of Sight, De Appel Foundation of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Holland; The 3rd Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial 2005: Parallel Realities – Asian Art Now, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan; Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China,The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Follow Me! Contemporary Chinese Art at the Threshold of the Millennium, Mori Museum, Tokyo; China! China!! China!!!Grace Alexander Contemporary Art Gallery, Zurich; I Still Believe in Miracles Part II: Derrière I’ horizon, Musee d’ Art Moderne de la ville de Paris, Paris; Emergency Biennale in Chechnya: A suitcase from Paris to Grosny, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; The 1st Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art: Dialectics of Hope, Moscow, Russia (cat.); Water Event (as a part of Yoko Ono: Horizontal Memories), Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, Norway (cat.); London + China Film Festival 2005, SOAS (The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), London. 2004: Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia, San Diego Museum of Art, California (cat.); Die Chinesen: Fotografie und Video aus China (The Chinese: Photography and Video from China),Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (cat.); The 5th Shanghai Biennale: Techniques of the Visible, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai (cat <em>.); à I’ est du sud de I’ Ouest / à I’ ouest du sud de I’ Est (West of the South of the East / East of the South of the West), Sète / Villa Arson, Nice, France; Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video From China, International Center of Photography (ICP) and Asia Society, New York (cat.); China Now, MoMa Film at the Gramercy Theater, New York; Chine: Generation Video, Maison Européenne de la Photogrqaphie (MEP), Paris; Out the Window: Spaces of Distraction, The Japan Foundation Asia’ Center, Tokyo (cat.)
Yang Fudong
Select recent solo exhibitions of the work of Cao Fei include: 2005: Yang Fudong, Castello di Rivoli, Italy; Don’t worry, it will be better…, Kunsthalle Wien, Austria; Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris; Yang Fudong, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands. 2004: FACT Liverpool (Liverpool Biennial 2004), Great Britain; 5 Films, The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Recent Works, Redcat, Roy and Etna Disney Cal Arts Theater, Los Angeles; Breeze, Galerie Judin Belot, Zuerich, Switzerland; Drei Filme, Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, Germany; Galleria Raucci Santamaria, Napoli, Italy; Sketch the Gallery, London; Yang Fudong, Trans>Area, New York; BüroFriedrich, Berlin. 2003: Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo and Selected Works on Video, The Moore Space, Miami; Movie night at MK2, Paris, France. Recent select group exhibitions include: 2005: Internationale Sharjah Biennale 7,UAE; Fukuoka Triennial, Japan; The Wall-Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, University at Buffalo Art Galleries, Buffalo, New York and Millennium Art Museum, Beijing; Follow Me! Contemporary Chinese Art at the Threshold of the Millenium, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; The Forest: Politics, Poetics, and Practice, inaugural exhibition, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC; LE INVASIONI BARBARICHE, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy; First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow Biennale, Moskva, Russia; Shanghai Constructions, Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, China. 2004: Shanghai Surprise, lothringer dreizehn, München, Germany; Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego; Caméra, National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), Bucuresti, Romania; Dreaming of the Dragon’s Nation: Contemporary Art from China, IMMA Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland; Do You Believe in Reality? 2004 Taipei Biennial, Taipei Fine Arts Museum – Taipei Biennial, Taipei; Spread in Prato 2004, Dryphoto Arte Contemporanea, Prato, Italy; Shanghai Modern, Villa Stuck, Munchen, Germany; Die Chinesen: Fotografie und Video aus China, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany; Techniques of the Visible, 5th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; Time Zones:Recent Film and Video, Tate Modern, London; Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Conditional being, Metrònom, Barcelona, Spain; Encounters in the 21st Century : Polyphony – Emerging Resonances, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; Museum Inauguration, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; Light as Fuck! Shanghai Assemblage 2000-2004, The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway; Slow Rushes, SMC.CAC Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania; 62761232, BizArt Art Center, Shanghai, China; Busan Biennale 2004, Busan Metropolitan Art Museum, Busan, Korea.
ASU Art Museum Presentation
The exhibition is curated by Heather S. Lineberry, Senior Curator, Arizona State University Art Museum.
Duration
BUSINESS AS USUAL: New Video from China / Cao Fei and Yang Fudong (September 15 through December 9, 2007) is open at the ASU Art Museum: Tuesday 11 a.m. – 9 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday 1 p.m. – 5 p.m.; closed Monday.
Support
All works in the exhibition are drawn from the Haudenschild Collection, San Diego. Exhibition is available for tour.
Image credit: