Shanghai accelerates: bringing together over 100 Chinese and international artists, the fifth Shanghai Biennale examined methods of visual representation, old and new, in the context of the PRC's most beguiling and progressive city

Art in America, Feb, 2005 by Richard Vine

that of doorman. Of the 10 esthetic culprits, only two have managed to sustain ongoing art careers. Li Shan, best known for his mid-1990s portraits of Mao with a flower in his teeth, has most recently produced calligraphy banners incorporating sketchy countryside scenes. Zhang Jian-Jun, reinstated in his previous museum job after eight months, rose to head the research department and then, in 1985, shocked the Chinese art world--and the general public--by selling one of his "'83 Painting Experiment" works to U.S. collector Frederick Weisman for $10,000, at a time when the average wage in China was less than $400 per year.

As if to confirm how thoroughly that economic lesson has been absorbed by Chinese artists in the last 20 years, Gu Zhenqing--formerly an extremely active independent curator, now chief curator at the new Duolun Museum of Modern Art--mounted a show called "Shanghai on Sale" at the Advance Art Center, located in the gritty Suzhou Creek complex of galleries and alternative spaces at 50 Moganshan Lu. Co-organized with the center's Gavin Jantjes, the show featured work by seven young artists and two groups seeking to break down the barriers between art and design, gallery display and merchandising. Objects intended to reach a wide public included Zhang Da's black T-shirts that can double as oval wall hangings; Liang Shuo's small toys attached to chopsticks protruding from a bicycle; and nude, life-size "human" stuffed dolls by the combined design teams Unmask and Mewe.

Shanghai's pioneer contemporary-art dealer Lorenz Helbling, whose delightfully jumbled Warehouse venue has long been one of the mainstays of 50 Moganshan Lu, initiated his raw and rambling new H-Space with a solo show by Shi Yong. The artist's work also appeared at Helbling's tiny ShanghART gallery next to the perpetually "hot" club-restaurant Park 97 on Fuxing Park. Shi--who, in digital prints and miniature sculptures, has repeatedly cloned a well-dressed, thickly coiffed male figure meant to represent the cosmopolitan New Chinese ideal--demonstrated great formal variety with installations ranging from a 24-foot-tall inflatable skyscraper to a flying-saucer-shaped audio chamber for reclining listeners to a photo series parodying family reactions to the country's latest social and economic leaps. Meanwhile, visitors to the Suzhou Creek compound could also take in works such as Nu Shu's beaded curtain installation in a multi-artist roundup at Eastlink Gallery or paintings of mixed quality in a group show at Elephant Art Loft.

New to the commercial scene is Studio Rouge, a small well-appointed venue, just off the Bund, that opened in August as a spin-off of the Red Gate Gallery in Beijing. During the Biennale, it presented a show of bright figurative paintings by Wang Yuping, drawn from his "Who Can Play With Me?" and "Peephole" series, along with his many stylized renderings of fish, a standard Chinese symbol for prosperity and freedom.

The most peculiar art event in town may have been the "Exhibition of Young Artists" at the Duolun Museum. Just 10 months after the municipal institution's launch, curator Jin Feng decided to assemble a show of new works by purportedly unknown "young artists" who were, in fact, more established (though still youthful) artists using pseudonyms--supposedly as a way of liberating themselves from their own and others' expectations. Among the more notable results were crouching soldier statues by Yu Shuangge (actually Xu Zhen), an autoerotic mechanical bed by Shao Junwei (Shao Yi), and a three-screen video of street scenes by Shui Baishi (Zhang Qing) that foregrounds a cop cruiser's red flashing light. Du Ming (Jin Feng) contributed Handshaking (2004), a male statue with one overly long extended arm, broken legs and face, and a dangling rope around its neck, dramatically positioned at the top of a spiral staircase over the atrium. Even more demanding of audience attention during the noisy, fun-house-like opening, Ma Guilin (Tang Maohong) orchestrated a performance, 100 Yaan per Hour, in which a succession of young men dressed in the white shirts and ties of office workers hung some six feet above the floor from a horizontal pole inserted through one pant leg and one shirtsleeve.