26-30 November, 1994
Guangzhou, China

THE CHINA ART EXPO 1994

In November 1994 the second China Art Expo was held at the China
Export Commodities Fair Building in Guangzhou. Almost every art
fair claims to give a representative view of the developing
tendencies in the visual arts in its country or continent, and
the China Art Expo is no different in that respect. What does
differ, of course, is the fact that the fair was held in China,
which is only just opening up to the international art world and
is still in the process of trying to establish an artmarket. In
order to form 'an international grand gathering of the culture
exchange', the China Art Expo welcomed galleries from overseas,
creating both national and international sections in the fair
building. 

By Helga Lasschuyt and Roger Taylor

The international section consisted of a handful of galleries
from Australia, Hong Kong, France, and Canada and regional art
magazines like Asian Art News, Art and Asia Pacific, and
Orientations. It was completely isolated from the rest of the
fair and it was only on the third day of the fair, the announcer
began reminding the visitors of the existence of the
international section.  The works to been seen in the
international section were not up to the standard of other
international art fairs, so the few good works really stood out. 
One of the best works at the fair was by Shanghai-born artist, Li
Liang, featured on the stand of Australiažs Meridian Gallery. Li
Liang has spent the past eight years in Australia developing his
work with combinations of Chinese and Western techniques.
'Untitled - Calendar 1995 Series' was a work on paper, collaging
Eastern and Western calendars, through a haze of white pigment.
Exquisitely beautiful, the work integrated elements of the
existentialism of Abstract Expressionism with elements of Zen
Buddhism. 'Untitled - Calendar 1995 Series' was sophisticated yet
subtle. 
In fact, the only Western art of any real consequence was shown
by Meridian Gallery, which, not surprisingly, won the award for
the Best Stand. Established in 1992 to meet the demand for a
gallery capable of displaying sculpture, Meridian now pursues all
types of exciting contemporary art. Exhibiting art that was
predominantly abstract in style, Meridianžs stand at the fair
acknowledged the complementary nature of exhibiting painting and
sculpture together. Tony Scottžs elegant and evocative grid-like
bitumen painting, 'Altar Series, No 2' was sensitively juxtaposed
with Ron Robertson-Swannžs brightly painted minimalist  sculpture
'Dining with Sculptors'. Jayne Dyeržs installation of small
abstracted canvases, 'Trace', provided a delicate back-drop for
Greg Clarkžs 'found objects' sculptures. Meridian Gallery had
brought this work to Guangzhou following its highly successful
exhibition at the Song He Tang in Beijing. 

HANMO ART CENTRE
While the international section was mediocre, the national
section was even worse: over two hundred galleries and
institutions had their booths, all crammed with dozens of
scrolls. There was too little variation and walking down the
aisles was a fairly mundane experience, looking at mountains,
tigers, flowers, and birds over and over again. There were some
oil paintings, but most of them -- although technically often
superb -- lacked freshness and originality. It seems that Chinese
contemporary art is still suffering from lack of access to the
international art world: most information comes through
reproductions in (untranslated) magazines and books and the
result is art with the same lack of life as the reproductions. 
There were only three interesting Chinese galleries. The Shenzhen
Huayun Culture Art Company showed  some works by Wang Guangyi, in
the political pop style, which is very much appreciated and
commercially successful in Europe and North America. The Red Gate
Gallery from Beijing, run by Australian Brian Wallace, showed
some outstanding prints: beautiful soft coloured silk-screens
portraying scenes of Beijing by Zhou Jirong and the intriguing
black and white figures by Su Xinping. Some other excellent works
to be seen at Red Gate were by Mongolian artist Liu Qinghe. Using
ink and colour on paper, Liu Qinghe creates delicate paintings of
figures in black and white with touches of soft yellow, pink or
green. The compositions of the figures within their surroundings
are vaguely reminiscent of Japanese prints. 
But the real  surprise of the China Art Expo was  the recently
created  Hanmo Art Centre from Beijing.  Hanmo is a diversified
art centre that integrates creating and exhibiting art,
publishing, research, popularization, and sales into one unit.
The centre includes two exhibition halls, a computerized art
information centre and an editorial office for the newsletter,
Hanmo Art News. It also provides studios for the use of both
Chinese and foreign artists. Hanmo showed several oil paintings
by Wu Ye, a self-taught artist. She used to have her own business
and, after making a lot of money, decided to retire and dedicate
her life to the arts. Her work is reminiscent of naive
expressionist styles from the West, such as Cobra, but manages to
look fresh, enthusiastic, and full of spirit. Considering Wu Ye
has only started painting last year, she shows considerable
potential. 
Besides the booth with oil paintings, Hanmo showed six
installations in a separate hall. Two installations were by
American Michael Dougherty, the first foreign artist to use one
of the Hanmo studios. 'Simple Vehicle for Flight' consisted of a
simple brown wooden desk with ditto chair, surrounded by paper
aeroplanes. The attitude of the Chinese public, untainted as yet
with  the western holy respect for a work of art was interesting.
The first day Dougherty had placed some paper sheets on the desk.
People just grabbed the chair,  rested for a while, took one of
the empty sheets on the table and scribbled something on the
paper. Children took the aeroplanes and started to play with
them. Dougherty replaced the paper sheets with a book on Vietnam
on the second day. Even more amazing was what happened to 'Dream
Garden'. A big circle of brown rice with white organic objects
made of plaster. Dougherty made a great effort to arrange the
rice in a meticulously smooth circle. He left the hall for a
while and discovered on his return that people had drawn figures
in the rice with their fingers. The effect was wonderful: the
plaster organic forms lying on the rice, surrounded by
finger-drawn flowers and abstract images. Dougherty, although
somewhat bewildered in the beginning, enjoyed what was happening.

'Nursery Rhyme' was an installation consisting of a flower made
of Chinese money, with a rib bone as stem, in a glass filled with
blood. The work is by Zhao Bandi, already known in Europe through
his participation in the Chinese Avant-garde exhibition, which
has been traveling through Europe for the last few years. Zhao
Bandi was a painter by origin, but after a study trip to the
United States exchanged his palette for installations and
performances.

NO ROOM
Other installations at Hanmo were by the Guangzhou-based Big Tail
Elephant Group, consisting of Liang Ju Hui, Chen Shao Xiang, Lin
Yi Lin, and Xu Tan. In 1990 these artists joined forces to
exhibit together and attract more (international) attention. Very
cleverly they organized an extra-curricular exhibition, called
'No Room' in an old run down villa just east of the centre of
Guangzhou, attracting the foreign visitors who were in town for
the China Art Expo. It seemed the artists had saved their best
works for 'No Room'. In the villa, the visitors stumbled from
room to room in the dimly lit building. Upstairs, Chen Shao Xiang
explored past and present, reality and fiction in installations
with television sets. 'See-Saw' consisted of three televisions,
pieces of broken glass glued to the screens, a shotgun dangling
in front of them. The televisions showed video tapes of modern
life out on the streets, contrasting with the quiet run-down
colonial building in which the whole construction was set. On the
ground floor, walking through the corridor, the visitor was
suddenly overcome by vertigo, induced by a hole in the wall
through which one could see a bamboo construction. Because it was
dark and easy to forget this was the ground floor, it felt as if
one was on a construction site and could fall thirty storeys
through the hole if one was not careful. A second look however,
revealed that it was only a small, dark room, covered with
aluminum foil containing a bamboo construction. It was
immediately obvious that the artist, Liang Ju Hui, is playing
with space, physical as well as psychological. In this 'Paradise'
the perception of space as limited or unlimited depended on the
state of mind of the visitor, who could choose to be led by
either feeling or reason. 
It is rather exceptional to find such an interesting group in
Guangzhou, a very commercialized city, where almost everybody
with an art background turns to interior decorating or
advertising. Serious aspiring artists are usually attracted to
the well developed art atmosphere in Beijing, where a salon-type
situation is present. It is to Hanmožs credit that it patronizes
artists from outside of Beijing as well. 
Not many works were sold at the Expo. The works that were sold
were by already reasonably established artists. A Canadian art
gallery bought 'Red Wing Picture', a 6-panel painting by Shi Hu,
for a reportedly two million Hong Kong dollars. An art dealer
from France bought two works of Ding Yi of the Red Gate Gallery
and the work by Australian artist Tony Scott of Meridian Gallery.


CHINA ART EXPO 1995
The visiting art dealers, hunting for young, unknown talent,
found the fair less interesting than last year, many leaving
Guangzhou after a few days. Last year a Hong Kong Gallery bought
all the exhibited works of Zhu Wei, a young Chinese artist.
Within a year, the prices of Zhu Weižs works have rocketed. This
year dozens of artists came to the fair with photos, leaflets,
and catalogues of their work, hoping to be discovered by one of
the few foreign visitors. Sometimes their approach bordered on
harassment, but one had to admire the perseverance of these young
hopefuls. Maybe in the commercial sense, the fair was not what
the organization had hoped for, but a government representative
stressed that the China Art Expo was only in its second year, and
that exchange and communication were the most important thing for
the moment.  However, with the questionable standard of most of
the Western galleries, one hopes that next yearžs selection
process, under the new International Coordinator Brian Wallace,
will be far more selective. For positive interaction between
national and international art and artists, it is important not
only to bring more foreign exhibitions to China (and not just to
Beijing), but to send more Chinese exhibitions abroad. This would
do far more to give China a reputable position within the
international art world than does the China Art Expo in its
current guise. 
For a successful continuation of the Expo, it seems important to
ensure a stricter screening process of the galleries and works of
art to be shown, in order to create more variety and a higher
artistic standard. It is up to the organization of the 1995 China
Art Expo to meet the challenge and organize an interesting fair.
It has already made steps in the right direction by deciding to
relocate the fair to Beijing and rescheduling the date to
October. This should make transportation of art works easier and
draw a greater international public. This year the Expo almost
coincided with Art Asia in Hong Kong, but failed to attract many
visitors from that fair.

Helga Lasschuijt is a Dutch art historian specialized in
contemporary art and art theory. Roger Taylor is an art critic,
based in Melbourne, Australia.