Castello di Rivoli



The artists and the worksMarcella Beccariaaaajiao (Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, China, 1984. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany, and Shanghai, China)aaajiao is the virtual alter ego of Xu Wenkai, a multimedia artist who defines himself as a “blogger, activist and programmer.” He often points out the correspondence between his date of birth – 1984 – and the title of George Orwell’s famous novel that brought us the character of Big Brother, while at the same time recalling that he was born in Xi’an, one of China’s oldest cities. The artist’s multifaceted work includes investigating the impact of the internet on today’s culture and society, along with new forms of communication, identities, and communities that are constantly developing online, altering the experience of our everyday lives. His projects, spanning architecture, topography, and design, have to date dealt with controversial issues such as data processing, the blogosphere, and the Great Chinese Firewall, the huge digital filter that separates China off from the rest of the world and has led to the development of a parallel internet, characterized by a Chinese counterpart for each Western service and platform. The installation Bits of Information No. 1–16 (2015) might be read as a landscape representing the contemporary. aaajiao produced the work using a digital program for building 3D models. Subverting its original purpose, the artist (in collaboration with Xu Cong) used the program to break down images of three-dimensional models and reduce them to two-dimensional information. The result is a sort of cloud whose indeterminate forms maintain the impetus of the information flow that continuously invades our present. The work is made out of copper, a material used for electrical cabling and data transfer. Ai Weiwei(Beijing, China, 1957. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany, and Beijing, China)Ai Weiwei says that his path was greatly influenced by his father, poet Ai Qing, who along with his family was confined to a work camp in the remote region of Xinjiang until 1976. Architect, artist, and curator, Ai’s practice is guided by social activism, support for democracy, and freedom of expression. On several occasions, the Chinese government has applied severely restrictive measures upon him. China’s socio-political system is one of Ai’s main subjects of enquiry. In several of his works, he draws on ancient artifacts found on his return to China in 1993 after spending twelve years in the United States. His interest in the material remains of tradition dovetails with his study of the roots of contemporary culture, in opposition to the strict revolutionary dogma he was taught during his youth, according to which everything that was ancient—or just apparently old—should be destroyed. Fragments (2005) is an installation made from wooden pillars and beams recovered from temples demolished during the accelerated political, social, and cultural upheavals that China has undergone. Originally from Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) temples in Guangdong Province, these elements were assembled along with bits of chairs and tables from various eras—a painstaking job that kept the artist’s studio busy for months. The resulting complex system is in balance solely because of how its pieces are fitted together. The looming structure seems to outline a claustrophobic cage, while in fact delineating in profile a map of China. Fragments is one of the c. 1,500 works that Uli Sigg has donated to the M+ museum in Hong Kong, which is scheduled to open this year. The work is on loan to Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea until the inauguration thanks to a cultural exchange program between Castello and M+.Ai Weiwei is one of the best-represented artists in the Sigg Collection. His friendship with Sigg is clearly outlined in his work Uli Sigg (Newspaper Reader) (2004), a work that portrays Sigg reading a newspaper with impressive realism. Formerly an economic journalist, every day Sigg devotes a significant amount of time to reading newspapers, believing them to be the best source for finding out ahead of time what may one day become history. Chen Danqing (Shanghai, China, 1953. Lives and works in Beijing, China) An artist and writer, Chen Danqing experienced the Cultural Revolution first-hand. In 1976, seeking a more genuine context, he traveled to Tibet, which in the following years would become a major source of inspiration. The resulting paintings, depicting the harsh lives of Tibetan farmers and shepherds, are today recognized as a milestone in Chinese art history. Portraying a specific social phenomenon in a realistic way, the series also reveals Chen’s study of Western historical artists such as Rembrandt, Corot, and Millet—specifically their ability to portray the truth of a rural landscape. In Portrait of Couple. Uli and Rita Sigg (2011), the two subjects are depicted sitting in a room where the corner divides the space into two symmetrical portions. The relaxed yet hieratic pose of the two subjects reveals the painter’s intention to evoke an atmosphere of composed harmony, something that is further underlined by the choice of restrained colors, with shades of beige and gray dominating the painting. Fang Lijun(Handan, Hebei Province, China, 1963. Lives and works in Beijing, China)Fang Lijun gained international attention in the 1990s as one of the pioneers of Cynical Realism. Coined by critic Li Xianting, the term refers to art by a group of young painters active in the years following the dramatic June 1989 events in Tiananmen Square, when insurgent protests in Beijing were severely put down by soldiers, leading to the deaths of hundreds of people (in China, the so-called “Tiananmen Square incident” is still subject to censorship). Works by artists belonging to this current expressed the disillusionment of an entire generation of Chinese who, buoyed by the climate of optimism and hope in the 1980s, entered the new decade with a spirit of irony and cold detachment. In Fang’s work, important issues such as human rights, morality, and the relationship between the individual and the masses are evident. His works stand apart for his use of bright colors and an almost obsessive repetition of shaven-headed human figures whose complexion is occasionally red. Sometimes painted while swimming, his characters often have exasperated facial expressions conveying multiple moods, almost as if they were making a laborious attempt to show their individuality, or seeking a possible point of equilibrium in an ever-changing context. Portrait of Uli Sigg (2005) follows the layout of other Fang works, juxtaposing red, which he uses in the complexion of the foreground figure, with the light blue of the background. The artist portrays Sigg with his back to the viewer as he contemplates an expanse of water on which many white swans float. The work can be interpreted in relation to rowing, a discipline that Sigg has practiced since he was a child, then joining the Swiss national team, with whom he has participated in numerous international competitions.Feng Mengbo(Beijing, China, 1966. Lives and works in Beijing, China)Feng Mengbo was among the first artists in China to turn his attention to the digital world, focusing on video-game culture and its many references to childhood heroes and war-related situations, with their typically violent clashes. In recent years, he has been exploring themes more closely associated with Chinese artistic traditions such as landscape painting, using digital programs that he instructs according to the rules of ancient traditions. Recalling his beginnings in painting in the mid-1990s, he says: “At that time, we didn’t have computers. They were still part of our imagination of a far-off future. Now that computers belong in our daily lives, I already consider them to be part of the past.” This is the reason why today, the artist focuses on painting.The major installation on display is part of his GB2312-80 series. The title comes from the computer code introduced in China in 1980 for Simplified Chinese, the standardized writing system adopted in 1956 by the Chinese government to encourage literacy in the country, and since then frequently updated. Of the more than 100,000 individual characters in traditional writing, the standard defined by GB has led to the use of approximately 4,000 characters or less. For Feng, this process, shifting characters away from their original meaning, has become an opportunity to poetically explore the art of calligraphy. This work is the result of a direct commission by Uli Sigg, who is interested in exploring how Chinese calligraphy is morphing as a consequence of digitalization.Fu Hong(Hanchuan, Hubei Province, China, 1968. Lives and works in Beijing, China)Fu Hong’s works focus on urban landscapes such as parks, streets, and buildings’ walls. Towering cranes suggest a Beijing under construction. Slightly out of focus, the images the artist paints seem to hover like long-range, filmic shots with a dreamlike atmosphere. Each work stands apart in its meticulous study of light, while isolated details and delicate shades of color adumbrate enigmatic fragments of possible stories. The poetics of the fragment also characterize One Day in the Life of Uli Sigg (2005). Arranged as two superimposed narrative strips, the work outlines the many commitments that fill Sigg’s day, from diplomatic and business meetings to official ceremonies, private moments of study and reading, visits to artists’ studios, and tours round art exhibitions. Arranged from a non-linear perspective, the various events all seem to be happening at the same time, underlining the collector’s multifarious interests. A quick, light painting style dominated by shades of gray conveys the energy of sketches made from life, as if documenting a typical Uli Sigg day in real time. He Xiangyu(Dandong, Liaoning Province, China, 1986. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany, and Beijing, China)Having grown up during the years when China was going through a process of rapid urbanization, He Xiangyu has focused his practice on the ways in which material changes can alter our perception of certain everyday objects or products. Among the themes the artist investigates are the rampant materialism and programmed obsolescence that define most of the goods produced in the world today. Coca-Cola Project is one of He’s best-known works. Intrigued by the presence of the image of Coca-Cola in many works by artists who came before him, he began to investigate the physical relationship between the well-known drink and the bodies of those who ingest it. In early 2009, he built a sort of “kitchen” in his studio in Beijing, where he carried out multiple experiments with Coca-Cola. Later, he decided to move the operations to his hometown Dandong, on the North Korean border. Here, he manufactured large iron tanks and, working non-stop for over a year and a half with a team of assistants, cooked up 127 tons of Coca-Cola from which he extracted 40 cubic meters of waste. Coca-Cola Project presents the result of this long process, whereby the drink is transformed into a black, earth-like substance. The resulting installation appears to delineate a primordial landscape with its own entropic magnetism, while at the same time arousing feelings of disgust. On a further level, the reduction of Coca-Cola to a bitumen-like material seems to reaffirm its role as the “black gold” of Western capitalism, a precious material that has dominated the market on a global scale for many years. The Death of Marat (2011) is a sculpture of the corpse of Ai Weiwei, one of the most famous Chinese artists today and a symbol of the struggle for human rights. Presenting the artist with extraordinarily realistic features, as if his passing had just taken place, He opens up multiple issues that include the persecution suffered by numerous intellectuals and artists, including Ai himself, who have been imprisoned or forced into silence. The title of the work refers to Jacques-Louis David’s famous 1793 painting of Jean-Paul Marat, the French revolutionary writer who was brutally stabbed to death in his own bathtub. Li Zhanyang(Changchun, Jilin Province, China, 1969. Lives and works in Chongqing and Beijing, China)Li Zhanyang is attracted to the energy of real life. Drawing on popular tradition, his installations cast a sharp lens on the folklore of the urban crowd, dwelling on the variety of characters that animate it. Often created by sculpting the scenes and places he has just seen solely from memory, the artist’s recent works capture the colorful vitality of markets, train stations, bus stops, gambling halls, and entertainment houses: “My works are created to tell stories.” Carved in the realistic style that characterizes his art, Uli Sigg’s Head (2007) is a bust depicting the collector. The focused expression and slightly lowered gaze suggest that Sigg is intent on a specific activity, perhaps observing a new work of art. Liu Ding (Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, China, 1976. Lives and works in Beijing, China)Liu Ding investigates the intellectual roots of contemporary Chinese culture and art by studying history and literature. Rather than basing his approach on a comparison with the history of Western art, he puts forward alternative narrative paths in order to understand the complex aesthetics behind art made in China today. Combining his artistic activity with curatorial practice, in a number of works and projects Liu explores recurring themes that include the legacy of Socialist Realism, processes of intellectual liberation triggered by the end of the Cultural Revolution, and the affirmation of a specifically Chinese artistic expression in the globalized world of the 1990s.Structured as a large-format painting, its tones reduced to black and white, Temporary Actor A (2015) depicts a parade of statuesque figures in hieratic poses. The figures may be of male and female gender, but without individual recognizable identities these characters intentionally replicate an ideal prototype, presumably multipliable to infinity. The work makes references to the monumental aesthetics of Socialist Realism, the only artistic language that artists could use during the Cultural Revolution imposed by Mao Zedong from 1966 onwards. The Orchid Room: Cerruti’s Attic and Earthly World (2019) welcomes visitors as they enter the exhibition. This work was created with reference to the Cerruti Collection, a body of works left to the safeguards of Castello di Rivoli, assembled by Francesco Federico Cerruti from the end of the 1960s until his death in 2016. Liu has come up with an installation made out of modular sculptural elements, whose decorations are inspired by the gates outside Cerruti’s offices and Cerruti’s love of orchids, which he always had in his home in Rivoli. Liu’s orchids also make an important reference to Chinese tradition: orchid gardens were the preferred place for intellectuals and poets to meet. The work is a gift from Uli Sigg to Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea.Liu Wei(Beijing, China, 1972. Lives and works in Beijing, China)Like other artists of his generation, Liu Wei grew up in a period of radical upheaval in China’s history, including its opening up to the West since the 1980s and the exponential growth of its metropolises. These themes recur in his work, along with investigations of the ways in which new digital technologies generate new visions and images that often have no real-world counterpart. To produce his paintings, the artist uses digital programs that, starting from drawings he makes, generate additional geometric patterns. The shapes obtained in this manner are then transferred onto canvas by studio assistants, who translate digital information using suitably mixed oil paints. According to the artist’s practice, the paintings Eastward (2010) and Westward (2010) were also made using computer-developed patterns. The result of a contemporary approach that nevertheless has a major root in the ancient Chinese tradition of landscape painting, they may be interpreted as a reflection on the commonly held idea of contrasting Eastern and Western cultures. The artist stated that these works come out of a simple idea: “to imagine being in the center and back to the origins.” The objects included in each painting are the same, but the scenes are conceived from two different points of view. Apparently, the two works should be seen as a contrasting dyad, even though—as Liu states—“in both, everything is the same.” Lou Shenyi(Shangyu, Zhejiang Province, China, 1973. Lives and works in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China)A keen observer of the world, Lou Shenyi is interested in investigating the essence of things. In his paintings, he sometimes depicts brightly colored scenes in which cartoon-like shapes seem to glide across the surface. Ambiguously suspended between upbeat atmospheres and references to hidden truths, or oscillating between details of an anthropomorphic nature and intricate drawings in which archetypal forms may be detected, his works eschew didactic narratives.In the two paintings Sigg Portrait (2018) and Portrait Rita Sigg (2019) the artist has adopted a different register for each one, portraying Uli in profile and his wife Rita from the front. While the first is characterized by a series of intricate black lines that lend the subject an absorbed expression, the second watercolor is made of minimal strokes that outline an open, smiling, and serene face. Mao Tongqiang(Yinchuan, Ningxia Province, China, 1960. Lives and works in Beijing and Yinchuan, Ningxia Province, China)Growing up during the years of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, Mao Tongqiang witnessed the radical changes that gave shape to contemporary China. History is a recurring theme in his works, which over the last decade have evolved into large environmental installations, often made using materials imbued with the lived experience of those who produced or used them. Archives (2011–13) immerses viewers in the heavy, claustrophobic atmosphere of an old office flooded with papers, which overflow from the furniture and invade the surrounding space. Evoking an uncomfortable past, characterized by assiduous police control over people’s private lives, as was the case for the artist’s own family during the Cultural Revolution, the installation encompasses more than 1,800 documents, including letters and notes, that recount people’s stories, with details of their habits and acquaintances. The artist collected archival documents pertaining to the crucial years of China’s history: from 1949, when the People’s Republic was founded, to 1976, the year that marked the end of the Cultural Revolution, with a particular attention to historical moments such as the Agrarian Reform Law in 1950–52 and the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957–59 . “In China,” he says, “archives were an instrument of control. What happened in private life could be reported to the investigating authorities.”Miao Ying(Shanghai, China, 1985. Lives and works in New York, USA, and Shanghai, China)The smartphone, internet and Chinternet—the Chinese internet defined by the presence of the Great Chinese Firewall, the barrier that blocks the use of foreign search engines, email services, and social networks in China—are what Miao Ying calls her “residence.” Her work investigates the nature of these places, including their power relationships, behavioral dynamics, and the evolution of aesthetic tastes that the digital world determines in contemporary life. With audacity and subtle irony, the artist tackles complex issues such as censorship by the GFW and the self-censorship exercised by many Chinese users, exploring the subject in relation to Stockholm Syndrome. In 2007, during her final year at university, Miao started searching for entries from the Chinese Mandarin dictionary on the (Google China) search engine. Forcing herself to stay at the computer for as many as ten hours a day for three months, she searched the words in alphabetical order. Each time she searched for one of the 2,000 words that were censored at that time in China (not just predictable terms associated with politics or religion, but others blocked for no obvious reason), a page was generated with the phrase: “According to local laws, some search results are not displayed” and the internet service would be blocked for about twenty minutes. Blind Spot–words censored by (2007) is the 1,869-page dictionary on which the artist manually annotated the results of this painstaking process, using correcting fluid to cancel the 2,000 words. According to Miao, “People don’t realize what censorship is; to them, it’s just a note at the bottom of the page.” Blind Spot documents a time of transition in the development of control practices that, particularly in recent years, have made search engines, email services, and social-media platforms inaccessible to Chinese users. The huge investment of time and manual labor that the artist put into the work also draws attention to the vast amount of human effort required for mechanisms that may at first appear to be automatic or purely digital, while emphasizing how the choices made by extremely limited groups of people modify the experience of many others. In Aphasia (2019), Miao deepens her analysis of the ways in which technology establishes continuous forms of control. In the installation, three screens project videos that focus respectively on sheepdogs, a flock of sheep, and a drone under construction. The three situations unfold over time. In the end, the drone takes on a dominant role, guiding the flock’s movements like a shepherd. The words of the song that accompanies the video were created by Artificial Intelligence based on lyrics referring to different ideologies. The work is among the most recent acquisitions made by Uli Sigg for his collection. Ni Youyu(Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, China, 1984. Lives and works in Shanghai, China)Ni Youyu belongs to a generation of young Chinese artists who have turned to studying ancient Chinese artistic tradition as a source of inspiration for developing new, highly contemporary ways of expressing themselves. For example, in some of his paintings he reinterprets views of nature that cite the classical genre while using a color filter on his smartphone. Sigg Ruler (2014) is a 167 cm long wooden ruler. Crafted by hand in a laborious process, it was conceived as a portrait of the collector based on his exact height. A tribute to Uli Sigg in thanks for support received, the work is part of a wider project by the artist dedicated to the concepts of measurement and standards. Ni challenges these notions by manually reproducing measuring instruments following self-imposed rules that sometimes draw simultaneously on measurement systems from different cultures. The rulers he makes include a certain number of errors, and their true length does not correspond to the figure indicated.Qi Zhilong (Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China, 1962. Lives and works in Beijing, China)Qi Zhilong rose to prominence in the 1990s, after his beginnings in what was known as “Gaudy Art,” a current characterized by kitsch, brightly colored images in a twisted reference to the bad taste that prevailed during a time in which a consumerist model imported from the West was forcibly being grafted onto Chinese socialist ideology. Untitled (portrait of a girl, green) (1998) exemplifies the main strand of Qi’s work, which focuses on an analysis of contemporary China in relation to the history and differing aesthetic of the previous fifty years, from the political propaganda of the Cultural Revolution to the advertising language of the market economy. The painting depicts a young woman with long black braids and a cap, wearing a shirt. If the style of her clothes is inspired by uniforms from Mao’s time, the lack of symbols such as a star, the subject’s smiling pose and hint of make-up that may be glimpsed on her pink lips place the image in a different chronological context, characterized by the emergence of contamination by consumer products imported into China from abroad. As in Qi’s other works, the painting presents the image of somebody who is serene and lives casually and in the moment. Like a blue screen in a film studio, the monochrome background—devoid of any particular details—seems ready to welcome further images and generate alternative narratives. Qiu Shi Hua (Zizhong, Sichuan Province, China, 1940. Lives and works in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China)During the years of the Cultural Revolution, Qiu Shi Hua painted film posters in the compulsory Socialist Realist style. Later, he was able to produce works of art that aligned with his deep spiritual principles. A practicing Taoist, Qiu recognizes the Tao (the Way) as the universal principle of all things, the energy that, with its ceaseless rotating movement, is intrinsic to the cosmos and nature. Created as part of a process of deep meditation, his works concern, he says, “the origin, the genesis of experience.” As a result, his practice is not about finding a subject or solving formal problems. Rather, each work concerns the possibilities of seeing beyond the visual world, in a suspension of time and space, freeing ourselves from the bonds of human passions.Like most of the artist’s works, also those part of the Sigg Collection, a selection of which is exhibited here, are untitled, and may be traced back to the maxim “action without action.” As open fields, Qiu’s works invite the viewer to enter a state of calm and introspection. At first, the canvases seem to be devoid of images and colors, but it gradually dawns on the viewer that they actually contain boundless landscapes painted in meticulous detail with unthinkable chromatic richness. When he creates them, Qiu starts from a base of dark colors, and then gradually covers them over with very thin layers of white oil paint, in a process through which the painting itself guides the artist. These works manifest a deep knowledge of ancient Shan Shui (literally Mountain and Water) Chinese painting. Regarded as one of the highest forms of artistic expression in traditional culture, Shan Shui painting is not based on existing landscapes, but on an artist’s mental image of nature, following a set of strict rules regarding composition and form. For Qiu, in a natural landscape people are clearly separated from nature, whereas in paintings the distinction between humanity and nature may be erased. “If the viewer”—he says—“is able to enter the painting, unconsciously he will relinquish his reality.”Manuel Salvisberg (Basel, Switzerland, 1978. Lives and works in Lucerne and Zurich, Switzerland)Manuel Salvisberg is financial investor, start-up entrepreneur, kick-boxer champion. Nephew of Uli Sigg, since 2000 Salvisberg has also been a collector of Chinese contemporary art. He is also an artist. In his practice, he often appropriates existing artworks, and, with a conceptual approach, references specific events or schools of thoughts. Fragments of History (2012) is a photographic triptych in black and white that depicts Uli Sigg smashing on the ground an old Chinese urn. The urn looks like Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo (1994) by Ai Weiwei, a work that is part of the Sigg Collection. Salvisberg’s triptych is an intentional quote of the famous Dropping a Han-Dynasty Urn (1995), where Ai Weiwei drops an ancient vase. By portraying Sigg through the double quote of Ai’s works, Salvisberg pays homage to the deep friendship that binds Uli Sigg and Ai Weiwei.Shao Fan (Beijing, China, 1964. Lives and works in Beijing, China)Raised in a family of artists, Shao Fan (Yu Han) is interested in the relationship between traditional culture and contemporary expression. Adopting multiple techniques that range from classical ink to oil painting, the artist draws on Chinese tradition to orient his practice: “My hope,” he says, “is to dig things up from the past that people need today, to create another contemporary art different from Western contemporary art.” The Sigg Collection features a number of works by Shao, some of which are on display in this exhibition to showcase his main themes and the variety of techniques he uses. In many cases, his subjects are animals that he paints with the intention of looking at the world from their point of view, seeking to achieve a harmonious relationship with nature according to its own values. This non-hierarchical approach, in which humans are not the rulers of the world but simply part of it, harks back to ancient Chinese culture. Painted in the reduced color palette typical of Shao’s work, Moon Rabbit / Hare on the Moon (2010) refers to the Buddhist fable about a hare willing to sacrifice its body to feed anyone who asks it on a sacred day dedicated to offerings. According to legend, the hare is an incarnation of the Buddha and its virtue is recognized by a drawing made on the surface of the Moon using sap from a mountain. Grandmother Rabbit (2012) further explores the idea of what human and animal have in common. The artist associates this work with Taoism and with the idea that humans should pursue a condition of humility in order to achieve integration with nature. No. 1 (2006) is part of a series the artist began in 1995 using old Ming-style (1368–1644) chairs. He has deconstructed the chair by separating it into its constituent parts in order to enable the remaining structure to release its power. This process is aimed at emphasizing inner strength by referencing the power of the aesthetics of Ming furniture. Commenting on this work, the artist quotes an ancient Chinese saying: “Symbolize the whole in an individual part of an object and all the components may be seen as one.”Sun Yuan & Peng Yu (Sun Yuan, Beijing, China, 1972. Peng Yu, Jiamusi, Heilongjiang Province, China, 1974. They live and work in Beijing, China)After beginning their careers exhibiting in underground and experimental venues in the late 1990s, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu started working together in 2000. Their works often arouse intense physical and psychological responses in those who encounter them. For the artists, the desire to provoke is channeled through a need to stir up attention in a context where fundamental human values seem to have been forgotten and our consciences anesthetized. Challenging social conventions and testing the ethical limits of what constitutes a work of art, they use organic materials in their installations, including live animals, human adipose tissue collected from beauty clinics in Beijing, and even fetuses and corpses. In more recent works, complex robotic machines make unexpected movements, offering a critical commentary on complex political and power relations. The human condition, expressed through the brutality of violence, the horror of old age, and the fear of death, are all recurrent themes in the works of Sun and Peng. One or All (Ash Column) (2007) looks like a fragment of a column, perhaps part of a destroyed or unfinished monument. The installation was made by collecting the remains of hundreds of people, ashes that were never claimed even by relatives of the deceased. According to the artists, this type of work emerges from their pessimistic and deterministic vision of today’s world and the need to exorcise their horror at the excesses of so-called “civilization.” “I don’t think people can choose anything. From the moment they’re born everything is limited, making the idea of choice false,” says Sun.Wang Keping (Beijing, China, 1949. Lives and works in Paris, France)Wang Keping is one of the founding members of the Xing Xing (Stars) group, the first movement in the history of contemporary Chinese art, which emerged during the optimistic period of the Beijing Spring, after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, when the Cultural Revolution was repudiated and it became possible to criticize the regime’s excesses. Consisting of twelve mostly self-taught artists, including Ai Weiwei, Huang Rui, and Ma Desheng, the Stars group owes its name to the idea that, despite the surrounding darkness, each of its members was a light that could shine individually and be seen from a great distance. The Stars began to play a leading role in promoting free expression in China after September 1979, when, not allowed to participate in an official exhibition, they decided to present their works independently at an impromptu outdoor exhibition, attaching them to the railings next to the Beijing National Museum of Fine Arts. On that occasion, Wang exhibited a wooden sculpture of the distorted face of a man. Causing a great stir, the work’s closed eye and pursed mouth were interpreted as expressing the condition of blindness and the inability to express oneself typical of the Cultural Revolution years. Ganbu (Cadre) (1979–80) belongs to this important phase of the artist’s career. Some of the works produced in these years may be interpreted against a backdrop of open criticism of the Cultural Revolution, showcasing references to external influences ranging from the Chinese modernist artists of the Xylographic Movement to the Western art of Pablo Picasso. Carved in wood, which remains Wang’s preferred medium, the work appears to be an expressionless mask with a large nose and no mouth. The title refers to a category of public officials (ganbu = functionaries) whose job was to monitor the implementation of government policies.Yu Youhan (Shanghai, China, 1943. Lives and works in Shanghai, China)Yu Youhan lived through the Cultural Revolution. He dedicates himself to painting “the Chinese social memory of the 1970s and 1980s.” Initially, his work was abstract in the main. Then, in the early 1990s, he appropriated the image of Mao Zedong, benefiting from the climate of freedom during the period of economic reforms promoted by Deng Xiaoping. Drawing on popular photographs of the leader, the artist made paintings that resemble silkscreen prints, covering the surface with repeated decorations, including the popular dragon and phoenix motifs. In these works, he combines citations from several Western artists, including Picasso, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Warhol. The “Political Pop” label sometimes applied to his art is, however, not something with which the artist fully concurs. Untitled (Chairman Mao) (1996) presents an image of the political leader portrayed in a relaxed pose, sitting in an interior and dressed in his usual uniform. Mao’s suit, the armchair, the walls, the floor, and every detail of the room in which he is portrayed are surfaces on which a multitude of colored flowers are draped. The artist says that in his works, the image of Mao can take on multiple meanings—an actual portrait of the leader, a symbolic image of China, a reference to the country’s culture and history—and even functions as a purely decorative surface. A further reading of the work ties in to the complex historical memory of the “Hundred Flowers” campaign (May 1956 – June 1957), which was launched by Mao based on a maxim from Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi (fourth–third century BC): “Let a hundred flowers bloom, and a hundred schools of thought contend.” The campaign invited citizens, especially intellectuals, to rethink the Revolution in a climate of collaboration between people and CCP cadres. The great wave of criticism that flooded in was immediately followed by extremely harsh repression meted out to hundreds of thousands of individuals who, branded “class enemies” and “right-wing bourgeoisie,” were exiled to the countryside for re-education.Zhang Wei (Beijing, China, 1952. Lives and works in Beijing, China)As one of the first Chinese artists to create abstract works, Zhang Wei is a crucial figure in the history of the Chinese avant-garde. In the early 1970s, he was one of the founders of Wuming (No Name), the country’s most significant group of underground artists. In 1979, Zhang began to experiment with the creation of small abstract works, and in the following years he developed a wholly abstract mode of expression. His commitment to subversive art forms led him to stage unofficial exhibitions, sometimes in his own apartment, some of which were closed down by the police. In 1986, the repressive climate induced the artist to move to New York. He returned to Beijing in 2005. AB9 (1983) belongs to the important period during which Zhang radicalized his artistic practice by producing purely abstract works. The painting is dominated by two large color fields, black and ochre, arranged like spots on the rough linen surface and leaving swathes of it empty. For the artist, the fields filled with paint and those left unpainted are of equal importance. If a Western observer detects references to Jackson Pollock’s Action Painting and dripping techniques, it is important to note that Zhang works with a knowledge of traditional Chinese ink calligraphy and a stylistic approach that conveys spiritual values. Zhang Xiaogang (Kunming, Yunnan Province, China, 1958. Lives and works in Beijing, China)In the 1990s, Zhang Xiaogang was one of the first Chinese artists to achieve international fame. His early works investigate traditions rooted in local culture, with a focus on human values. In his best-known cycle of works, the Bloodline Series, he explores the concept of family and the notion of identity. He traces the genesis of these works back to a day in 1993, when he was looking at old family photographs at his parents’ home. The images struck him as being both private documents and testimonies of Chinese society—which, for the artist, may in turn be interpreted as an extended family. The work in the Sigg Collection, Bloodline Series (1997), features a young woman with two children. Facing us, the three characters look like each other, and have very similar expressions on their faces, revealing close commonality. For the artist, the similarity is a way of demonstrating closeness in how they think. While the portrait of the youngest child is stained yellow, the other two figures are characterized by gray tones, with spots illuminating certain areas. Zhang removes most of the color from his paintings because he wants them to evoke a memory of a person or a scene rather than what we actually see. As the artist explains, “I add a stain of color to make the painting more dreamlike.” As in the other works in the series, a thin red line runs from one figure to the next. Extending out beyond the boundaries of the work, it implies that the characters portrayed are part of a network of relationships, linking them to the people who came before and will come after them. Zhao Bandi (Beijing, China, 1966. Lives and works in Beijing, China)Zhao Bandi’s works offer acute portraits of Chinese society and culture. In the 1990s, at the beginning of his career, the artist was part of the Cynical Realism current. Since 1998, he has adopted the figure of the panda as a symbol of China, referring to the politically charged way in which this rare creature has been used. In several of his series inspired by the language of commercial advertising, Zhao depicts himself with a toy panda, sometimes also including phrases inspired by the propaganda language of the Cultural Revolution. Playing different roles—for example, a single father or a partner to the animal, which speaks and communicates with him—the artist exposes the manipulation of reality that characterizes even the most common images. Many of Zhao’s works are in the Sigg Collection. He has donated two portraits to the collector, both of which are on display in the exhibition. In Portrait of Uli Sigg (2010), the subject is portrayed seated, legs crossed, wearing a black and white-striped suit, and with a panda hat on his head, consisting of a white cap and black ears. As part of Zhao’s broader artistic project on pandas and their symbolic value, the portrait can be interpreted in relation to Sigg’s political role in China, where he served as Swiss Ambassador from 1995 to 1998. A further reference to his diplomatic work and extensive network of relations in China may also be found in Pink Uli (2016). Here, the figure of the collector stands out against the background of the national flag that, since 1949, has officially represented the People’s Republic of China. Zhao faithfully reproduces the big star and the four smaller stars emblazoned on the flag—symbols of the common program of the Communist Party and the social classes it unites—but softens the vibrant red hue of the background associated with the Communist Revolution into a delicate pink tone. ................
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