Cover feature: The Call of Home
Rural China has long been a place of both pining and endeavor for artists, intellectuals, and all other sorts, but our cover feature “The Call of Home” steps outside the aesthetics of nostalgia to probe this vast yellow land through the hard lens of artistic practice. Documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang discusses the implications of his “Folk Memory” oral history project; Ou Ning and Zuo Jing discover a disparity between utopian vision and expectations of economic prosperity in Anhui; He Wenzhao investigates how the village can create a stronger awareness of community; “Kunshan—Under Construction” focuses on the official “New Countryside” by way of research, workshops, exhibitions, and other activities; and the Urban-Rural Fringe Group seeks new imaginings and possibilities for that hazy area between city and countryside. Finally, artists Liang Shuo, Chen Yujun, and Duan Jianyu voice the intricacies of their working relationship with the spaces, places, and cultures of China outside its cities.
Other features
Following the cover story, and acting as an appendix to our August issue’s theme, is a powerful delineation of Beijing-based Taiwanese sound artist Lin Chi-Wei from Yu Wei. Anthony Yung investigates the beautiful impurity behind the thinking of Yang Jiechang, and researcher-collector Thomas Sauvin introduces the agenda of The Archive of Modern Conflict. Curator and gallerist Zhang Li, meanwhile, pens a touching memoir of one of the earliest champions of Chinese contemporary, the late Hans van Dijk.
Top
The top of LEAP 17, as usual, bounces around between a variety of people, places, and events. From pensive excerpts from the artist seminar “Pulse Reaction” at the Times Museum and a heart-to-heart with supercollector Budi Tek to a visit to Xinjiang with Liu Xiaodong and a survey of contemporary comic art in China, the variegated reader shall not be left wanting. Beyond, Karen Archey outlines the work of Ed Fornieles, Josh Kline, Ed Atkins, Ahmet Öğüt, and Cecile B. Evans; we peek into the operations of the independent archive Video Bureau; steal a glance at the agendas of this year’s SH Contemporary; and offer up a playful take on the practice of budding parodist-artiste Li Ran to round out the bulk of the section.
Bottom
The bountiful harvest of the autumn exhibition season is in our October issue pruned down to reviews of solo exhibitions from Liu Wei, He Xiangyu, Xie Molin, Li Dafang, Liu Ye, Hai Bo, Li Liao, and others. We also consider group gatherings in Beijing and Shanghai, as well as CAFAM’s inaugural Future exhibition, the 18th Biennale of Sydney, and the New Museum’s Ghosts in the Machine.
Excerpts from this issue
“The rural world is not the inverse of the urban world or the opposite of the rational world. But in many ways, the rural world is one realm that the powerful machine of the urban, rational world cannot touch.”
–The Urban-Rural Fringe Group (Cover Feature: What is the Urban-Rural Fringe, and Why is it the Urban-Rural Fringe?)
“When an exhibition uses words such as ‘social values’ and’ ‘ecology’ to describe itself, it has intentionally left the boundaries of the art industry system. But the system is precisely the question that we so urgently need to examine.”
–Su Wei (Review: CAFAM Future)
“We cannot face art except in the sense of cognitive social concept. If an individual is too attached to social reality, experience becomes a projection of social consciousness. The universality and integrity of the world remain closed.”
–Pu Hong (Review: Liu Wei)
“Our attitude towards art is overly premature—be it resistant, nostalgic, pacifist, or radical, attitude should never become the premise of artistic creation. In fact, I believe that only after the completion of an artwork can its true relationship with society emerge.”
–Zhu Yu (as quoted in Conference Room)
“The attempt to simulate daily ordinariness is to demonstrate the chasm between appearance and inner quality, empiricism and rationalism. The audience’s reason is dashed. Of course, this is the fountainhead of comedy…”
–Bao Dong (Review: He Xiangyu)
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