Staff in Nanjing’s Baijia Lake Museum twiddle with their phones when there is a dearth of visitors. In lieu of wordy wall texts, all artwork labels have a QR code that users of WeChat, a Chinese social media platform, can scan for additional information.

Jan 18 2017

Highlights from the 3rd Nanjing International Art Festival

by Brady Ng

The 3rd Nanjing International Art Festival (NJIAF) kicked off on November 12, 2016, a day after the Shanghai Biennale opened. The timing, perhaps, was an uncoordinated attempt to synergize and share a pool of visitors flocking to East China for major art shows. Curated by Lu Peng, the third NJIAF carried the theme “Historicode: Scarcity and Supply.” In all, 315 artists and artist groups from 42 countries and territories were tapped to present their creations and fill the Baijia Lake Museum, which is a renovated shopping center that now houses modern and contemporary art.

The GAO BROTHERS’ iron sculptural installation The Parable of The Blind – Cross The River (2016) stands before HUANG MIN’s Black Bridge – Dump (2014), which depicts an old man who collects rubbish and is well-known among the artists who live in Beijing’s Heiqiao Artist Community.

A scroll over 47 meters long by JIN FENG, titled Inscribed Bamboo (2013), quietly ran down one hall, its sheer size declaring its status as one of the show’s centerpieces.

Several signs in one corner of the museum could have been mistaken as detritus or mementos from the 2016 American presidential election, but they are actually part of a mixed-media installation, The President’s Bedroom (2014–16), by WANG ZHENG, who staged a live performance on the opening day of “Historicode” and played the part of president Lilith—Adam’s first wife in the Garden of Eden, according to Jewish belief—receiving Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Donald J. Trump and Osama Bin Laden as guests in her private chambers.

A stainless steel pearl sculpture, Star Moving No. 1 (2016), by DING NAN reflects SEAN SE HWAN ROH’s plastic dishes on wooden pedestals, White Porcelain in a Chinese Restaurant (2014), and a series of embroideries on digital pigment prints by KIM JIN HEE.

Chongqing-born Surrealist painter ZHONG BIAO never pulls punches when depicting the faults and idiosyncrasies of the modern world. The title of his painting All in Vain (2016) says it all.

THOMAS ELLER quotes AI WEIWEI in The white male complex, No. 11 (endgames), May 25, 2014 (2015), and leaves viewers with the impression that a gun was fired in The Heart Out (2015).

Pantheon (2016), a mixed media installation by WENG FEN, fits
brusquely in Baijia Lake Museum, given the building’s former purpose.

Trivialism–5 (2014, left) and Trivialism–2 (2012, right) by YUE MINJUN mirror the congested arrangements of artwork in “Historicode,” and reminded this viewer of a line written by Philip K. Dick: “Kipple drives out nonkipple.”

Tokyo artist collective CHIM↑POM cheer 100 times in Fukushima in KI-AI 100 (2011). SHEN LIANG sets up an inaccessible library in Comic Book (2015).

When ArtAsiaPacific visited the Baijia Lake Museum for “Historicode” in mid-January, there were scant visitors. The situation mimicked the show’s theme—scarce in foot traffic, with a healthy supply of artworks of all sizes, mediums and roots.

A security guard gazes at his distorted reflection in MAO TONGQIANG’s Order (2015), which was perforated by bullets fired from a Type 92 pistol.

Korea’s BEAK JUNGKI searches for water in Pray for Rain: Mhamid (2008, left) and Pray for Rain: Cairo (2008, right).

In Parallel World Hands Across Time (2012), LEE CHANGWON plays with light by cutting out hands, animals and a tree from news photos, and then placing the images over mirrors that reflect the light onto dark walls. The result resembles cave paintings found all over the world.

Many of the news images sourced by LEE CHANGWON for Parallel World Hands Across Time (2012) were captured during moments of tension.

SONG CHEN’s depressing The Dissociation and Return of Soil [installation – 2] (2012) stands before HE LIANGFENG’s painting
The Roar Fading Away (2015).

A virtual reality video game by Beijing-born TIAN XIAOLEI gave participants the chance to play whack-a-mole over a naked man’s body and blast
flying palms from the sky.

Personal History (2009) by the ART EDUCATION GROUP, which consists of ZHANG BIN and YE HONGTU, was a standout participatory project. Fifty students born in 1989 were asked by the artists to write 50 poems on the walls of Baijia Lake Museum over seven years ago. Once the project took off, visitors added their own marks and memories on other walls and the floor, filling one corner of the museum with notes of reminiscence.

LIU DING points out what he saw as a lack of study in the West of Chinese contemporary art in Omission (2009). More than seven years later, is that still the case?

For over a decade, China has been described as a state that can churn out tip-top hardware, but trails far behind fellow developed nations in terms of software. In Nanjing, this showed. The concept of repurposing a structure—in this case, turning a shopping mall into an art museum—is admirable, but the unimaginative use of space with crowded artworks cluttering walls delivered a ho-hum encounter. In an ocean of information spewed forth by a range of creations that nominally follow a theme but fail to complect, this viewer was lost at sea, with no lifeboat in sight.

The Nanjing International Art Festival is on view at the Baijia Lake Museum until February 12, 2017.

Brady Ng is Hong Kong desk editor at ArtAsiaPacific.

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