The Exhibition “Yi Pai – Thinking of the Century”Opened at the Today Art Museum, - news

The Exhibition “Yi Pai – Thinking of the Century”Opened at the Today Art Museum,

“Yi Pai – Thinking of the Century,” curated by Professor Gao Minglu, sponsored by Today Art Museum in collaboration with Wall Art Museum, opened at Today Art Museum, Beijing, on May 31, 2009. Gao Minglu Contemporary Art Research Center of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, as the cooperative institution, participated the implementation of curatotial plan.

“Yi Pai” is an aesthetic concept created by Gao Minglu in 2007. It has been elaborated systematically in his book Yi Pai: A Synthetic Theory against Representation, published in May 2009 (available at Today Art Museum bookstore). Combination of visual work and theoretic text made the exhibition a unique incident with concentration on scholarly investigation and visual experiment. While the economic crisis has deepened on global level, contemporary art has stepped into a period of transition. This large-scale, research-oreinted show at Today Art Museum, hopefully, would lead Chinese contemporary art towards a direction of construction in terms of theretic research and visual creation.

Yi Pai is a theory against concept of representation. The “representation,” a principle of western art of twentieth century, has confined Chinese art for long time, and is still main barrier that creative Chinese contemporary artists have to surmount. The idea of representation is not from China’s tradition of aesthetics, which seeks the meaning not contained in the words, image and principle. To seek meaning outside words is also an approach that some western thinkers expect. The goal of Yi Pai is to find a new way of thinking that could transcend the realism, modernism and post-modern conceptualism, since these –isms are in fact the conception based on the principle of “representation.”

Globalization and urbanization are the most powerful ideologies in the end of twentieth century. They are the variants of post-modern conceptualism, representation of transnational capital and its discouse, and indicator of peak of industrilization of cultures. With the slogan of “Great Harmony of Human Beings,” it turned out that the heritage of regional cultures and historical logic of locality have been ignored, screened or even erased. The discourse of globalization and urbanization has not only dominated, potentally, the development of Chinese contemporary art, but also become a fashional ideology that would impede new art of the twenty-first century.

Chinese artists have created lots of visual and texual works with characteristics of Yi Pai in last three decades, and the exploration by young generation of artists on this direction continues. It is necessary and imperative to exhibit the result of their creation in thinking and practice, from which a logic of development is derived and can be studied. The curatorial idea of the exhibition of “Yi Pai: Thinking of the Century” rose from this background. Yi Pai tends to be a method by which artists and critics could voice their social commentaries, philosophic ideas and artistic criticism, bridge the gap between aesthetics and society. It is also a criticism to the concept and practice based on the “theory of reflection,” which claims that art is simply a reflection or representation of social reality.

Featured more than two hundred works by eighty artists from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, the media of exhibited works range from painting, sculpture, installation, architecture, photography to video art, displayed in three sections, Ren (Man), Wu (Thing) and Chang (Field). It will last till May 20, 2009, while some works will display at the museum permanently. The international conference, “China Conteporary Art Forum,” was held in Beijing during the preparation of the exhibition, which some participating scholars from China and overseas visited. The curatorial team wishes to provide a referential case for those who study Chinese contemporary art at home and abroad, so that it could move the practice and study of Chinese contemporary art towards a profounder realm.