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their unorthodox approaches, and in fact brought negative attention from government officials who
were wary of the escalating interest in ‘experimental’ art forms. Viewed as subversive elements,
experimental artists and exhibitions featuring experimental art were largely forced underground
or abroad during the 1990s. Self-organized exhibitions – lasting anywhere from a few hours to two
weeks, staged in out of the way, rented locations with little or no publicity – became popular but
many of these more closely resembled events than affairs of static display. The clandestine nature of
these shows fostered an insider audience of like-minded individuals, most of whomcarried personal
connections to organizers or participating artists. In the climate of heightened political sensitivity
and under the watchful eyes of censors these underground ‘shows’ were entirely divorced from
a public context. Wu Hung has characterized this period as a ‘domestic turn’ in contemporary art
whereby artists turned inward and focused on issues of self and identity, but it would be just as
easy to characterize this period as the moment when Chinese artists took the international stage
and set their sights on grand concerns of nationhood and global politics. Communities of Chinese
artists and intellectuals living overseas who were not bound by the same limitations as those living
inside China were taken in by international exhibitions and biennial circuit and celebrated widely
by mainstream art media. The paradox of Chinese artists being embraced globally while persecuted
domestically is one that plays out specifically through the channels of display and the politics of
space. Metaphors of accessibility, admission and entrance are common themes found in artworks of
this period – speaking to the delimitations of censorship at home and colonialist attitudes abroad.
Light from Light
artist Wang Peng staged a short-lived show
93: Wang Peng’s Installation Exhibition
,
at the Contemporary Art Gallery at 123 Longfusi Street in Beijing, which spoke precisely to these
concerns. The Beijing artist exhibited only one work, entitled Wall, which consisted of a brick wall
sealing off the entrance of the gallery. The exhibition opened on November 20, 1993 and continued
until noon the following day. Visitors who attended could only see the obstructed gallery entrance,
which was in fact the work itself. Finally the gallery owner asked Wang to tear Wall down and open
up the sealed entrance, inadvertently giving Wang the chance to complete the work via an act of
destruction.
The rapid influx of the art market, combined with exponential growth in private wealth made for
a new set of circumstances in the early 2000s. Christening the Shanghai Biennial in 2000 with
the appointment of its first international curator (Hou Hanru) and relaxing controls to allow for
commercial galleries and private ventures sparked an influx of foreign buyers, wealthy patrons,
and record-breaking auction figures. If artists of the 1980s and 1990s faced pressures from the
central authorities and/or local law enforcement, in the 2000s they enjoyed relatively freedom
and immunity from restrictive controls. Recognizing contemporary art’s more profitable side and
potential for market development meant that experimental art forms were no longer something
to condemn but rather something to cultivate and potentially capitalize upon. The wholehearted
embrace of the art market evident to today has brought few novel developments to exhibition
making however, as solo shows in commercial spaces or overblown installations in privately funded
museums continue to cater to a well-heeled crowd of collectors and buyers instead of a broad-
based public. Of particular note is this period’s unhindered development of specially allocated art
districts and designated art zones, areas that contain art and impose a sort of ‘container aesthetics’
that favors the display of (easily commodifiable) art objects housed in pristine gallery spaces.
The rapid territorial expansion of contemporary art occurring in Beijing in particular, has all
but eradicated hard-nosed experimentation from experimental art, favoring object oriented and
studio bound artistic processes and a pre-packaged, branded image of ‘contemporary Chinese art’.
The phenomenon of self-contained ‘art zones’ such as Beijing’s 798 Art Zone are symptomatic of
both a desire to segregate art from regular life and efforts to enhance art’s marketability by self-
referencing its own legacy of success.
