Cao Fei 「I. Mirror」, 「Whose Utopia」「CosPLAYER」
Song Dong 「Eating Landscape」 Zu Jia 「Lucust」
In the past few years, Chinese contemporary art has been overwhelming the international art world and become a critical element of contemporary art scene. Today Beijing gets many visits from art professionals over the globe. The boom of Chinese contemporary art is formed around oil paintings or 2-D works, and not so many artists use video or film as an art medium. In contrast to 2-D works, video and film works have a less potential to be commercially successful, which seems to bring out interesting art. For the exhibition held by MIACA as a part of O.V.L. 2., I've recommended 3 artists based in Beijing: Cao Fei, Song Dong and Zhu Jia. I hope the works by these 3 artists introduce a wide variety of video art from China.
Zhu Jia (1963) is a leading figure in Chinese media art. "Locust" is a newly completed work and hasn't been shown in public. It is a single frame step work that humorously portrays life of contemporary China.
The work of Song Dong (1966) may be still a fresh memory in the mind of Japanese audience from the exhibition, "The Elegance of Silence: Contemporary Art From East Asia," at Mori Art Museum, and the solo exhibition "Waste Not" at Tokyo Gallery + BTAP. His work mainly takes a form of installation that combines various art mediums. "Eating Landscape" presented in this exhibition is a work about Sansuiga made of food, which gets completely eaten. This work was also performed at an exhibition opening.
Cao Fei (1978) is one of the up-and-coming artists, whose works can be found in many international art festivals. She creates works in new media including photography and video. This is the second time for her to participate in O.V.L., and this time she introduces 3 works: "Cosplayers" in which young cosplayers dash across the city of Guangzhou, "Whose Utopia" made at Seamen's Art Project that explores the utopia of factory workers, and "i. Mirror" that presents encounters in the second life, in a documentary film manner. All these three works are staged in different locations, but share the same tone, in which people wonder between reality and imaginary. I believe viewing these 3 works in a row, viewers can feel the artist's viewpoint of contemporary society, where distinction between reality and imaginary are blurred.
