798 art district

I completed a really long blog, detailing our entire day-long trip to this art district, then as I was finishing my computer died. In the last seconds before the battery failed, I tried saving the blog, but alas, was not fast enough. So this time I'm not going to say so much...





This was my favorite piece of the day. It was entirely sewn together, even the objects sewn onto the spread of collaged shirts, were made out of clothing. It was titled something like 'Dangerous things for Traveling' and those objects are scissors, a gun, shampoo, a machete, fire extinguisher, switchblade, grenade, and other things you are ordered not to bring on a plane.






Sebrina liked these last three a lot. She said they reminded her of fabric. I agree. They look a lot like tapestries.

Yesterday Sebrina, Madison and I went on a trip to the 798 art district, a former colony of factories remodeled into art galleries, studios, book stores, and cafes. It was incredibly difficult to navigate because we didn't find a map with labeled galleries until about 4 hours into our time there. Nevertheless it was an awesome day and we saw a lot of interesting art. The volume of art was incredible. China is spending more money on the contemporary art field, and Beijing is a major city, so we're able to benefit from those things and see free displays of an enormous amount of art here.

In another gallery we saw these two famous Chinese artists. This first is by Zhang XiaoGang. He paints figures that allude to communist comrades in their uniformity (usually a composition would have more than one figure) and his bleak color use.

The other was Yue MinJun, who always depicts himself in his work as multiple men with exaggeratedly wide mouths, laughing. This is a silkscreen print.

(sorry my reflection is in these photographs. It’s distracting, but the glass was shiny.)

Turns out Yayoi Kusama was also at 798, which was an awesome surprise for me. I looked at her art a lot over the last quarter at Western. She became one of my favorite artists. This picture is bad because of the angle and the glare, but I guess it still communicates what was at the show.

In another area there was a video installation I really enjoyed. It was called ‘Finding a Space.’ I took a series of photos trying to capture the action of this one figure in the video. I have no idea what happened to the colors in the photo...