Art from China Displays Dreams and Doubts

China has undergone numerous social, cultural and economic changes in recent decades. With these changes, people have set their sights on different opportunities. With that reorientation, value systems have begun to shift and different doubts have arisen, bringing up new questions of identity.

Seventeen rising stars of the Chinese avant garde from different cities were invited to participate in the exhibit currently at the Rufino Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art in Mexico City. Curators Fan Dian, director of the Beijing Fine Arts Academy and Tobias Ostrander, curator of the Rufino Tamayo, chose artists whose works represent many of their culture's hopes and uncertainties.

Several of the pieces depict the transition from rural to urban life that countless Chinese people have experienced in recent years; a process which has changed the landscape of the country immensely. Other works express the mundane, everyday lives of the middle-class that continues to grow in China's urban centers. There also seems to be a focus on individualism, revealing the private lives and homes of the subjects, something relatively new to Chinese contemporary art.

The title of the exhibit, Felicidad indecible (Unspeakable Happiness), was taken from a photo-collage series by Chu Yun. Images of luxury items cut from magazines are lined up in rows, making them seem superfluous and unnecessary. The viewer wonders: Is the happiness unspeakable because there is so much abundance, or because it's not worth speaking about?

CITY STORIES

Self-taught photographer Xing Danwen said the inspiration for her series "Urban Fiction" came to her while she was travelling in Europe by train. She began to see all urban landscapes as having many similarities, irrespective of what country she was in. She saw this blurring between their borders and boundaries as a product of globalization.

In the large-scale works of her series, she has photographed "maquettes" originally made to promote real-estate projects in China. These bland, anonymous models are completely devoid of human drama. Upon closer inspection, the artist has placed a figure (actually, herself in different roles) in each of the photos. In one, we see her enthralled in a magazine on an apartment building's terrace, oblivious to the man reading in the chair just beyond the wall that separates them. In another, we see her in the window of a different high-rise building. The figures appear lonely and out of place in models that represent places that will be inhabited by thousands in the near future.

Guo Wei's "Blue Mosquitoes" series of oil paintings are portraits of friends and family members. Based on photographs, the paintings show everyday people in poses akin to those in fashion magazines or on the album covers of pop bands. Skinny shirtless kids insolently challenge the viewer's gaze.

MORE MIDDLE-CLASSNESS

As China has become more open to the west, products that were once unavailable are now commonplace to middleclass people. Chen Shaoxiong's installation "Homescapes" depicts an intimate result of this change. The artist invites us to peer into tiny dioramas depicting photograph cut-outs of people in their homes, all of which contain western appliances and furniture. As we are allowed this entry into miniature kitchens and living rooms to greet the inhabitants, we wonder if their frozen smiles are genuine.

Liu Qinghe, having studied folk art and Chinese painting, uses the conventional media of ink and colored washes on paper. Although he uses traditional materials and methods, his work is far from orthodox.

The painting "Early" shows a middle-aged and middle-class couple seated on lawn chairs in contemporary clothes. A child with a net catches dragonflies in the foreground. He has used the traditional Chinese style to paint the mountainscape behind the figures, but the standard stops there.

The faces of the family appear as distorted caricatures, yet give little in the way of feeling. All three appear bored and listless, perhaps a critique of the discontent that can be found in this rapidly-growing class of people.

The exhibit will be up until Sept. 4.