Pingshan Art Museum | Shenzhen Contemporary Artists Series | Prelude
Making History and Making Endeavors
The development of contemporary art in Shenzhen can be traced back to as early as 85 New Wave period. At that time, as a burgeoning and imaginative city, Shenzhen gave birth to some sporadic art movements and individual practices. However, Shenzhen then was obligated to undertake the mission of conducting experiments and thereby working miracles in the economic and political fields. As a result, culture and art were emerging, with dramatic growth yet to come.
Until 1997, Shenzhen witnessed the building and opening of He Xiangning Art Museum and Guan Shanyue Art Museum in the same year. Contemporary art in Shenzhen has shown an increasingly clear academic positioning, while demonstrating the rise and vitality of Pearl River Delta in the contemporary art context. In 2005, OCAT, initiated by Huang Zhuan among others, was formally established in Shenzhen, marking the awakening of the subjective consciousness of contemporary art in Shenzhen. It can be concluded that Shenzhen position and its independent efforts concerning Chinese contemporary art have helped facilitate the academic research and value construction of Chinese contemporary art. At this stage, the contemporary art in Shenzhen has also witnessed the sprouting of non-indigenous and events-based art when a surprising number of biennales came out. Objectively speaking, the series of practices loosened and cultivated the soil for contemporary art in Shenzhen, while promoting and shaping the basic appearance of the development of contemporary art in Shenzhen today.
Against this backdrop, Pingshan Art Museum was established as the times demanded. Over the past two years of work, we have been emphasizing historical perspectives, contemporary pivots and prudent judgment, which should play a role in the construction of contemporary art scenes and local art. Based on the realistic situation and development stage of contemporary art in Shenzhen, the Shenzhen Contemporary Artists Series is expected to promote the major construction of contemporary art in Shenzhen by means of inspiring, assisting and inheriting acts. We hope to present the structure and texture of Shenzhen contemporary art through the analysis of individual cases. The richer the texture, the greater intellectual thickness and potential the city will have.
The contemporary art in Shenzhen presents a state of individual migration and frequent movement, which prompts the definition of “Shenzhen Contemporary Artists”. Among them are the artists Liang Quan and Zhou Li who have been involved into the field for 20 or 30 years, Jiang Zhi who went north after the momentous years of starting out a career as an artist in Shenzhen, as well as Li Liao born in 1980s. Besides, the said artists also include Xue Feng who has left school and moved to Shenzhen, and Shen Shaomin, who treats Shenzhen as a temporary place of lodging like a migratory bird. We categorize them as Shenzhen contemporary artists for inspection, sorting and exhibiting. Certainly, we are aware that the judgment itself will promote the infrastructure construction of the local art ecology on the one hand, which also means that this work will be full of challenges and hardships. However, we firmly believe that the shenzhen contemporary art today needs to be reviewed, sorted out and examined concerning its short yet rich history, thus resulting in observations of and judgments on the scene here and now. Should the contemporary art in Shenzhen advance, it needs some self-examination and adventure.
I recall that the late Huang Zhuan, an important promoter of contemporary art in Shenzhen and an art critic, said: “Not all times can go down in history. Only those times that have truly changed the value of our lives can make history; not everyone can go down in history. Only those who are genuinely able to produce creations can pass into history.” Pingshan Art Museum is looking for those “changes” and “creations”, while weaving them into the narrative of Shenzhen contemporary art. We hope to build some solid and time-honored “infrastructure” for Shenzhen and for the contemporary art ecology in southern China.
Liu Xiaodu, Director of Pingshan Art Museum
Zhong Gang, Editor of Readers of Shenzhen Contemporary Artists Series
Yan Shanchun: Fu Chun
The origin of “Fuchun” as a place name traces back to the Book of History. Although the geographical area it refers to has varied throughout time, in general, it covers the areas around Tonglu and Fuyang in Zhejiang Province. Since the Han Dynasty, “Fuchun” has also become a natural imagery, introduced by literati into poems or travelogues to represent a unique geographical space of Jiangnan – its lush hills and gentle waters are found neither in a water town nor a mountainous area. Meanwhile, it served as a major route to and from the capital city where recluse lived in isolation from the mundane life. Of course, “Fuchun” gained its notoriety from the legendary provenance of Yuan Dynasty painter, Huang Gongwang’s Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains. This masterpiece, regarded as a classic of Chinese painting, embodies the aesthetic spirit of the Chinese literati and the ultimate values they pursued, who aspired to a life in seclusion like fishermen and mountain dwellers, and internalized interpretation of “en-plein-air drawing”.
Although the concept of “en-plein-air drawing” originated from Western painting and is different from subjective creativity, it nevertheless projects the painters’ inherent nature, especially their perception of the world. Therefore, “en-plein-air drawings” are not naturalistic depictions; in fact, from the moment they are completed, they often declare independence from the objective world. For example, mountains, water, trees, rocks, and other natural landscapes transform with the seasons and time, forming the basic image under the artist’s brush, which are then rendered into myriads of imageries with the artist’s perceptual, intellectual, and spiritual interpretations. In this exhibition, contemporary artist Yan Shanchun presents intuitive and sensible artistic expressions, awakened from his immersive encounters with “Fuchun” on multiple occasions. His farming experience in this area as a young man led him to view the mountains and waters from a perspective other than those of the ancient literati. In recent years, he revisited Fuchun several times to study its majestic mountains and winding river banks, a practice that is similar to Huang Gongwang’s years-long experience in creating Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains on the one hand, while mirroring Cézanne’s repeated depictions of Mont Ste. Victoire on the other. Through “en-plein-air drawings”, Yan Shanchun continues to explore the possibilities of the contemporary art lexicon and applies the visual elements he observes to his paintings, conveying his interests in sensibility and formal structures through conversations with nature. At the Pingshan Art Museum, visitors will follow the artist’s works through the four seasons of “Fuchun”, from dawn to dusk, and between the “landscapes” of contemporary art, as they tune in with the serenity of eternal life force.
