who's next in chinese art?

Who's Next in Chinese Modern Art?

"X-Monkey-Dragon Dance" by Wang Xi at Opera Gallery Seoul.

/ Courtesy of Opera Gallery

By Cathy Rose A. Garcia
Staff Reporter

Interest in Chinese contemporary art has grown significantly in recent years. Works by Yue Minjun, Zang Xiaogang, Zhang Huang, Cai Guoxiang and other Chinese artists have fetched record-breaking prices at auctions.

However, the global financial crisis has affected the art market. The recent auction of Chinese contemporary art at Christie's Hong Kong proved to be disappointing, causing many to wonder if the Chinese art boom is over.

Opera Gallery founder Gilles Dyan remains optimistic, saying the only ones who will stay away from buying art are the speculators.

``The good thing (about the financial crisis) is this will stop the speculation that has been going on for the last three or four years. This will stop. But we will still have collectors and real art lovers who will buy the art. Only speculators will stop buying… I'm not very pessimistic about the future,''' Dyan said, during a press conference at Opera Gallery Seoul, Cheongdam-dong, Thursday.

The Opera Gallery Seoul had just opened its new exhibition ``Who's Next in China?'' featuring works of 14 Chinese artists from different generations such as Xue Song, Qin Fengling, Liu Daming, Liao Zhenwu, Sun Guanghua and Xiong Qin.

``I think right now, the art market is slowing down, but we expect it to pick up. So it is very important to be very selective about the artists. We picked the artists who we think will be the big artists of tomorrow. For this show, we chose Chinese contemporary artists, especially Xue Song, a very important artist who I have known for a very long time. His works have been collected by Charles Saatchi and many major museums around the world,'' Dyan said.

Xue Song, who was born in Anhui in 1965, is known for trademark collages using hundreds of pieces of printed paper. He incorporates different Chinese cultural aspects such as calligraphy, folk art, old photographs, traditional paintings and icons such as Mao Zedong in his artwork.

In Xue Song's collages, the pieces of paper often have burnt edges. This ``burnt'' feature emerged in his work after a big fire broke out in the dormitory where he lived in 1990, destroying many of his books, photographs, newspapers and magazines. At that time, he collected the burnt fragments and made them into a collage.

``I started to break up again the concepts which had been taken as fixed, to capture the new possibilities to be emerged from between decomposition and restructuring and put them into collages made of small pieces of burnt paper,'' Xue Song said, in the exhibition catalogue.

On display at the exhibit are Xue Song's works ``Coca-Cola,'' ``Victory''' and ``Flying,'' as well as Li Tianbing's ``Sportive Children,'' Wu Tinghua's ``Jeux Olympiques V'' and Shi Liru's ``Superman in China.''

Dyan said Opera Gallery only selects unique artists with universal appeal. The selection process is very tough, and this year, the gallery only chose three new artists from over 2,500 who submitted their portfolios.

``When we select new artists, we choose someone who has a unique style. We try to choose artists with a universal feeling. Even if they are Chinese, Korean, American, French, we try to find artists who are `collectible' around the world,'' he said.

The ``Who's Next in China?'' exhibit runs through January. Opera Gallery is located on the first floor of the Naturepoem Building, Cheongdam-dong. Visit www.operagallery.com or call (02) 3446-0061.

cathy@koreatimes.co.kr