Reading Paul’s blog posting on Holland Cotter’s recent New York Times review of the Walker oganized exhibition, House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective reminded me (once again) of the Walker tour guides’ experiences during our recent trip to China. In Shanghai as we visited the Bund area (Shanghai’s main banking and finance area) we immediately noticed one of the large colonial buildings lining the street.

We had all seen this building many times, entering and exciting the Walker during the run of the Huang Yong Ping show. However, the version we’d become so accustomed to was much smaller and made of…sand.

Bank of Sand, Sand of Bank was, as the artist described it, a detailed recreation of a bank “measuring 6 meters (19 feet and 8 1/4 inches) long, 4.3 meters (14 feet and 1 1/4 inches) wide, and 3.5 (11 feet and 5 3/4 inches) meters high, out of sand in the main hall of the entrance lobby of the museum. The model for this bank was the former British HSBC (Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) building, constructed in 1923. This “ bank of sand” was composed of four wooden molds, reinforced and fixed together with long screws. Then dry sand mixed with a small quantity of cement was poured into the molds. After that, water was sprayed on it, and it was pressed down with a wooden post to make it compact and solid. After this dried, the “ bank of sand” would maintain its basic appearance, which, however, was only temporary and extremely vulnerable, and could crumble at any time.”

As we all rushed to have our photos taken in front of this particular building, fraught with memories of guiding Walker visitors through this esoteric, yet beautiful show, I was reminded of what an experience it is to be a tour guide. For many visitors to Shanghai, the building was just more more example of, admittedly beautiful, colonialist architecture. But after the experience of working with Huang’s art we had our own experience of the building, our own memories, our own understanding of what the building might represent. As Cotter wrote about Huang Yong Ping’s art in his review: It has a complicated sense of newness: you have never seen anything quite like this art before, yet it feels musty and archaic, as if excavated from tombs. And unlike his earlier work, it carries a dense, particular content of stories, myths, esoteric lore and political commentary.

I’m always amazed at what delightfully quirky tidbits of info one can accumulate at The Artist’s Bookshelf. Last night I came away with a new-found understanding of the etymology of the word “berzerk,” an intriguing introduction to the post-modern postulating of Heideggerian philosophers, and a renewed appreciation of the power and beauty of an early spring thunderstorm.

And it’s all Joe Chvala’s fault.

Joe was our guest, and featured artist, who came specifically to share histhoughts about David Mitchell’s intriguing novel CLOUD ATLAS, and to examine some of the similarities between that work, and his own dance/theatre/music creation BETWEEN THE FIRE AND ICE which he staged at the Walker in December.

The similarities centered first around structure (both works were dense, highly structured and multi-layered), then theme (both works examined our concept of civilization as a human construct and had some critical things to say about issues ofpower and control) and finally, both pieces worked on a larger, mythical level by focusing on primal elements of nature.

All of this heady discussion transpired as we watched, through the windows of the ninth floor conference room,a thunderstorm roll majestically across the downtown skyline.

For a traveler to China, one of the most striking things about the country are the dramatic changes taking place everywhere. As you drive through the cities there are countless enormous cranes hovering overhead. As our Shanghai guide, David, said, “ the crane is the national bird of China”- ha! As we moved through contemporary art galleries, one of the themes that emerged from a lot of the work that we saw were artists who seemed to be grappling with these monumental changes to the Chinese culture and environment.

At the 1918 Gallery in Shanghai, photographer Michael Wolf, in his series “Architecture of Density” takes large-scale photographs of office buildings, skyscrapers, hotels (many from Hong Kong), etc. The images are cropped so that the facades of the building completely fill the image- creating abstract grids out of steel, glass, and concrete. As we drove around the city of Shanghai, we were continually bombarded by vistas that reminded us of Wolf’s photographs.

At ShangART gallery the work of Hu Yang, also a photographer, was captivating in its depiction of ordinary people struggling with the pressures of modern life. His work Shanghai Living which paired a photograph of a “ successful” person in their home with an image of someone struggling to find a job, a place to live, pay for school or just survive, were extremely poignant and arresting. For example, with this image, the caption reads:

Sheng Chaozhen (Shanghainese, Retired Worker)

An estate agent spotted this land and urged us to move. We have had this stalemate for more than two years and life is very inconvenient. We are surrounded by builders’ rubbish, dust, flies and mosquitoes. We hope the government can help us to solve this soon.

Many of these people were living in older homes which were being eyed for demolition in preparation for new building projects.

A group of around 15 Walker Art Center volunteer tour guides and three Education and Community Programs Department staff members recently travelled to Beijing and Shanghai for 10 days for a whirlwind foray into the traditional/contemporary art scene of China. The trip was enlightening, to say the least. Upon re-entry from such a voyage, it always seems difficult to hold on to the experience. Even after the first few minutes off the plane and back into so-called “real life”, the whole thing seems a little bit fleeting. I plan to use the blog format to reflect on the experience, and perhaps share a little bit about what we all learned/gained/experienced during our adventure.

Item 1: The past and the present converge into one. The Red Gate Gallery in Beijing is a perfect example of the merging of old and new that can be seen all over China. Located in the Dongbianmen Watchtower, a Ming Dynasty military tower, erected in 1436, the gallery showcases the work of Chinese contemporary artists and has an active artist in residency program.

Beijing, with the Forbidden City, Emperor’s Summer Palace, and Hutong traditional neighborhoods is fraught with history.

The contemporary art scene is growing, but even in the work the artists seem to address this duality (more on that in another post). One of the premier spaces for contemporary art is the Dashanzi Art District, a labyrinth of galleries and studios emerging out of the abandoned architecture of a 1950s Bauhaus style electronics factory.

Contrasts abound as well both between Beijing, the political capitol of China, and Shanghai, a city completely focused on business and capital, as well as within the city of Shanghai itself. Walker guides were astounded by both the number of skyscrapers not just dotting the Shanghai landscape, but completely filling it, as well as by the incredible lightshows displayed on their surfaces. These almost futuristic buildings provided a striking contrast against the colonial architecture across the Huanpu River.

A good deal of our trip was spent investigating the current art scene in China. Gallery owners and directors, as well as staff at the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art aided us in our exploration by provided unique insight into the art and artists of today’s China. However, our understanding of the work we saw, as well as the artists behind it, was enhanced by the richness of the traditional culture as well.