Gao Shiming / 高士明 & Lilly Wei

Gao Shiming / 高士明 & Lilly Wei
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a 2007 ChinaSquare Publishing Inc.
" Xiang jing Qu Guangci " 2007 By Eric C. Shiner, Kristina Feliciano
All rights reserved
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US | THEM
On the art of Guangci and Xiangjing
Gao Shiming / 高士明
Associate professor, Department of Art History
Director, Centre of Visual Culture Research
China Academy of Art
US
“Who are We?”
The philosopher Richard Rorty asks us an extremely acute question. For Rorty, the question “Who are we?” is entirely distinct from the
question “What is a person?” The latter is a standard metaphysical question, where the former is an entirely political question. The basic
question of politics is indeed the difference between “us” and “them.” Of course we, living in poor times, do not need to divide people so
sharply as politicians do. And yet we cannot but utter the word: “We…”
For the iconoclastic modernists, “we” hides on all sides of “I.” It is both a space for the individual, and a way of burying the self in a crowd. For
Guangci, “we” actually exists in the space below the leaders waving their hands from the Tian’anmen rostrum. The group impulse felt by all
those on the square is precisely what cultural anthropologists refer to as “communitas.” “We” structures a complete body, and as an object of
desire it refers to a prescribed return to an imagined collective, and to the self-subordination of the subject (Foucault explained his concept of
the subject with reference to the linguistic undertones of subordination or subjection that the word carries), and the fervor amidst the failure in
the self’s move toward unity.
Guangci: Collective image – Monumentality - Immortality
There is a certain pathos of “collectivism” that runs through China’s art history between the 1950s and the late 1980s. Even if the artistic
practice of the 1980s was in reaction and reform to the ideology of the previous thirty years, still in the works and texts of this period, the aura
of totalitarianism shines throughout as overarching cultural narratives vie for greatness, and atop them floats the “specter of collectivism.” In
the epistemological structures of the artistic reforms of the 1980s, there still existed deeply held thought patterns pertaining to totality and
collectivity. Political movements, manifestos, and utopias are always the most moving of affairs. In the works of Guangci’s generation, the
ideology of collectivism has been thoroughly undone, or rather, transmogrified. As someone who entered the art world as a young artist in the
1980s, Guangci’s works have always been concerned with this central question of collective image. Over many years, his work can be seen
as creating an image for “us.” As carriers of revolution, class symbols, and emblems of the people, images of workers-peasants-soldiers had
long lost their power by the 1990s. For Guangci, these are but symbols of the collective that can be summarily used and consumed, a sort of
historical readymade (see “Sunbird.”)
In recent years, Guangci has repeatedly used images of monuments culled from modern Chinese history in his work. From standard heroic
sculptures of Mao to every sort of worker-peasant-soldier sculpture, all have offered Guangci a space for appropriation, distortion, and
subversion. In the middle of the twentieth century, these images were erected in public squares all across China, becoming an integral part
of Chinese revolutionary culture, a testimony to people’s memory and evidence of history. We must understand that Guangci’s own life was
not drastically influenced by the events of the Cultural Revolution, and so any connection between him and the vague history of the Cultural
Revolution exists only in these suspicious images and vestiges. As he was growing up, society began to develop, and these forms and traces
gradually grew more and more ambiguous. They still exist on public squares around the country, but the ideals behind them have long ceased
to exist. And yet the period of history which they carry and express is precisely that which people wish to delete from their memory. These
are bodies now devoid of life and power, still floating on the scene of contemporary urban life, like actors that have not retreated from a stage
even though their performance is long over. The next performance has already begun, and still they have not exited. They awkwardly sit in
every corner of the city (if they have not been torn down already) like tourists who have forgotten their destination, or suitcases resting forlorn
on a train platform. In the mid-1990s, Guangci turned his eye toward these public icons that have lost their public nature, these now-empty
historical trajectories, these remains that have since been obliterated from social life.
Speaking more accurately, what Guangci aims to create is a series of “anti-monuments.” In his work “2002 AD,” the image of Mao appears
not as a great, heroic monument, but rather, returned to ordinary life-size, and covered in plaster, it becomes vague and uncertain. This
handling makes Mao appear ever more ambiguous, almost mass-produced, becoming a quantifiably random product. The concept of the
“anti-monument” resonates with doubt and subversions of the “immortal.” In works such as “Democracy Box” and “Monument Column” and
in the large-scale installation, “Chinese Century Train,” Guangci uses translucent resin to produce a series of “Mao-style” crystal coffins, in
which he inserts human figures of different colors. This symbol of “immortality” becomes a cheap sitcom-style prop. Around 2004, Guangci
produced a series of massive revolutionary monuments, replacing the customary granite with shiny stainless steel. This work successfully plays
on the Chinese homophone “buxiu” which means both “immortality” and “stainless” as a way of ridiculing the unattainable ideal of immortality.
Stainless steel, as a commercial commodity that had not yet come into use during the Maoist era, has now become a staple of lowbrow
public art. Since the 1980s, public sculptures in stainless steel have been produced at surprising proportions, which have gradually swallowed
up the spaces formerly allotted to monuments. These new sculptures are replacements for the revolutionary monuments of the past, but like
their predecessors, they are also monuments to a sort of “pseudo-public.” When the forms of revolutionary monuments meet the materiality
of stainless steel, the resulting strange combination is ahistorical, and from a certain standpoint, this is the major strand of thinking behind
China’s “political pop” art. Importantly, the special characteristics of stainless steel as material transmute abstract ideas of class into a hollow
monument, bright and beautiful, as if forming a complex mirror which absorbs the everyday living environment whole cloth, mutating it to fit the
form of the revolutionary.
Guangci has taken readymade images from history and incorporated them into the fabric of contemporary everyday life. This is a kind of
dislocation, or to use Guangci’s own words, a “positioning.” Guangci has said: “Positioning can make the meaningful meaningless, and the
meaningless meaningful…the joys and tragedies encountered by monumental sculpture have largely to do with mistakes in positioning.” In this
process of “positioning,” historical readymades are “displaced,” and a new set of meanings and emotions is produced. This is a sort of dry,
multivalent humor.
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In Guangci’s work, a strategy that runs parallel to “displacement” is replication. Wu Shanzhuan has said that “Replication is Power,” and
Guangci has experienced this firsthand. Many of his works together form a replicated group, an array of commercial goods. For him, “replication”
speaks to the impossibility of the modernist “individual” in Chinese history, and yet in the current Chinese cultural climate, it has become a
consumer strategy. This consumerism is a strategy of shattered sublimation and absolutism, a perfect fusion of utopianism with commodity
fetishism.
THEM
For Xiangjing, “we” is simply the vague existence of a group of undefined individuals. As a woman, Xiangjing has never consciously styled
herself a feminist. She does not belong to the belligerent collective “we” of sexual politics. For her, those who constantly refer to “we” are in
fact a “they” comprised of infinite individual “shes.” This can all be seen as a resistance to the ill-intentioned ideological “we” amidst which
we live. “We” is a carrier of ideology, and any ideology places the creation of a like-minded “we” among its goals. The artist Xiangjing is like a
militiawoman harboring dark designs against ideology. For her, the “we” does not exist, and her works manifest a vivid, living individual, wherein
each individual is itself an absolute miracle. Miracles are by their nature singular, and the so-called “we” is in fact merely a Rubik’s cube waiting
to be disassembled, an expired check, a sublime specter in an ideological dreamscape.
Expressing the notion of “they” is a refusal of identity. Identity and difference are two sides of the same coin. Semantic meaning derives from
differentiation with other words in a linguistic system, just as numerical sequence implies a purely external structure of meanings. One is one
simply because it is not two or three, and its meaning is constructed entirely within such a system of differences. When we look at the other
side of the coin, we see a process at work in which such external differences are internalized, forming what we call “identity.” Identity includes
seemingly contradictory notions such as distinction and collectivity, and is actually directed at the indefinite collective protections faced by
the individual. Moreover, what appears on the surface as public, collective identity is actually the result of an unending project of drawing
boundaries. In our rapidly privatizing, individualizing, mediatizing, and globalizing world, as Jock Young says, “Precisely because the public has
dissolved, identity politics was created.”
In a moment of rampant “identity politics,” this notion of identity as “recognition” (rentong) carries a critical power that has long ago been
extinguished, transformed into a discursive tool of ideology. Sexual politics were long ago assimilated into a collective power struggle
encapsulated by words like “difference” and “otherness.” In this sense, to express “them” implies a resonance with and insistence on
“otherness.” But how to preserve the otherness of the other? How to maintain the other as other? This is a question being hotly debated right
now by intellectuals around the world.
Compared to “we,” “they” are a distant, estranged people. “They” are not a collective that Xiangjing is eager to identify. As Zygmunt Bauman
says, the notion of the public implies not only dependence, but also power. The sensibility conveyed in her work is neither cold nor critical, but
rather sort of warmly distant. She conveys a sentiment of partial knowing, sculpting a “they” comprised of familiar strangers, constantly present
all around us.
XIANGJING: “EVERYONE,” “EACH ONE,” “ANYONE”
Xiangjing’s sculptures are not based on certain individuals, and her practice is not based on specific objects, but rather it manifests the vague
existence of a group of uncertain individuals. Her works are about “them,” but this “them” is composed of infinite individuals hidden all around
us. It is at once “everyone,” “each one,” and “anyone.”
“Everyone” depends on the weakness of the individual. It is backed by the grand notion of a shared humanity which ensures the identity of
every individual as a person.
“Each one” refers to all possible people, the “certain person” that everyone believes him or herself to be.
“Anyone” is any individual at all, the negative reflection of the individualist affirmation of the self. However, anyone has the power to become
another, and the power to refuse to become himself.
“Everyone” is a totalitarian concept, while “each one” is the subject of democracy. A society in which “everyone” is happy is a society in which
“each one” is unhappy. “Anyone” intervenes between the two. “Anyone” refers to “everyone,” but also conveys a sense of “each one.” The
shared attributes of the three symbolize a kind of degradation, the survival of the concept of “das Man.”
“Das Man” or “ordinary man” is not a certain individual, but a site into which each person can disappear. Everyone is a collective entity, where
“das Man” is an ordinary person, or a mass of people. The concept of “das Man” refers to the ways in which each person is like each other
person, and in that way it is similar to “everyone” and “anyone.” This is called “uneigenlichkeit,” a kind of unreal existence. “Ordinary man”
involves the ordinary state of man, an existence one constantly tries to escape but can never shed off. In daily life, we and they often exist as
ordinary man, particularly in a world where “everyone,” “each one” and “anyone” coexist.
Xiangjing’s sculptures all depict individuals from everyday life. She devotes herself to creating situations, to sculpting vivid scenes and
psychological spaces. It is an archetypal group culled from the urban collective, like a group of shots taken from Xiangjing’s photography in
which mountains of photo albums serve to give physical form to scenes. Facing these silent, silenced sculptures, we suddenly find ourselves
outside during a hot noontime, a somber dusk, an anxious and sleepless midnight, the moment at which the ash drops, a lost moment before
a mirror…each sculpture carries the traces of its specific moment, and these moments give a specific shape to the black box of time. This
however does not imply some promise of eternal time—that is the desire of the monument—as Xiangjing’s sculptures are but certain “moments,”
and the moving flavors and circumstances that these moments imply.
Xiangjing’s sculptures work best in groups. Walking among a group of these sculptures is like entering into a world petrified in a single
moment. In that split second, no one is able to escape the glance or curse of Medusa. Rather, Xiangjing sculpts something that looks not like
the deathly solemn gray and white sculptures of one’s impressions, but rather something bright and colorful, happy and light, in a world that is
itself already tough and heavy.
Xiangjing’s sculptures are light, and this aspect is owed to the scene-settings behind them, as well as their intentional and controlled
exaggeration. However, this graceful quality exists in a state of undeclared passion, an almost theatrical happiness. Milan Kundera first raised
this notion of “lightness.” For Kundera, the heaviness of life lies in coercion, the sorts of ideologies that bind us and symptomatic sorts of
resistance to these ideologies. The Unbearable Lightness of Being tells us that happiness can be shattered in a single moment, showing
suddenly its unbearably heavy state. For Xiangjing, heaviness comes first from the hardness and irrefutability of the living world. The world
functions like a wall that forces its way in front of us, creating not only a logistical obstacle but spiritual damage. Therefore Xiangjing uses
sculpture, the heaviest method by which to capture the happiness of daily life, those moments which appear a bit absurd but become a
relaxed sociological portrait. Those laughing, bored, unoccupied, careless images, those crying women and smoking men all appear as still
photos taken from a boring soap opera.
No matter when or where, she, he, and they are the uncertain “everyone,” “anyone,” or “each one.” Among the crowds of people, these
nameless, healthy puppets appear as forgotten materials, living anonymously together. People come and go, bustling with activity. In the
anxious vessel that is time, shadows of memory and illusion accumulate, but each is nothing more than a mistaken brushstroke in a painting, a
scar on a pink hand, a blind spot on a sheet of broken glass.
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US | THEM
On the art of Guangci and Xiangjing
Lilly Wei
Lilly Wei is a New York-based independent curator, essayist and critic who writes regularly for Art in America and is a contributing editor at
ARTnews and Art Asia Pacific.
Guangci and Xiangjing are two remarkable Chinese sculptors from Beijing who now live and work in Shanghai. Married to each other, they
have shown together in the past to much acclaim. Their subject matter is grounded in the empirical and local, derived from the multiple points
of view that comprise current Chinese cultural discourse and production, including the reverberations created by a pervasive globalization.
Although they often exhibit abroad, their enterprise is not haunted by a sense of diaspora, a sense that shapes the imagination of so many
transnational artists who claim multiple locations as home. Guangci and Xiangjing belong to a generation of artists who can stay home,
contributing their specific view to the international dialogue, making the local global. They came of age during the tumultuous era of the
1990s, one that has had to confront, assess and adjust to the enormous changes that engulfed China as it transformed itself from an insular,
agrarian, communist regime to a more open, market-driven society and world power. As artists, they share a preference for the figurative and
the dramatic—as do many of their peers—as well as for contemporary, industrial-strength, synthetic materials such as lightweight fiberglass.
Their approximately life-sized figures are painted and often presented in groups and as installations. That said, they are nonetheless two very
distinct artists with quite different aesthetic and conceptual responses and resolutions.
Guangci’s sculpture is more objective, more overtly political and critical, directly addressing China’s historical and cultural shifts. His arresting
images of workers, soldiers and Mao are a pop parody of social realism and official art, sometimes executed in the sleek, adamant material of
stainless steel. Both his materials and his practice are pointed commentaries on the decline and devaluation of the mystique of revolutionary
imagery, of the iconographical breakdown of its ideology and slogans, questioning the nature and uses of contemporary art as public
monument and propaganda in an age of post-Cultural Revolution consumerism. New Mao (2003) is a show stopper, a stainless steel cadre
of six robust, iconic Mao statues in the garb of a statesman, each placed on its own rostrum, each a replica of the other, standing imposingly
erect with one arm authoritatively--or benevolently--raised in a salute or benediction, scaled larger than life. Its shimmered surfaces, however,
destabilize the familiar image as it reflects and deflects the gaze of the viewer but does not absorb it. New Mao becomes a distorted,
metaphoric mirror of the environment, dissolving into its own form, which has lost some of its charisma with the loss of its substantiality and
its clarity of feature, undermined by its own brilliant surfaces. It is a reprise of the slightly smaller No Mao (2002), a group of six that is the
color of plaster, looser, more expressionistically fabricated, as if made of clay shaped by hand except that it is fiberglass, a fake material for a
fake tribute and one that turns the once sacred image of Mao into a kind of toy, a logo and brand for consumption and export, one system
of signifiers replaced by another. A third work in this exhibition is called The Disappearance of Soldiers (2003), a group of three helmeted,
compact troops who, head down, legs astride, are indistinguishable from each other and similar in material to No Mao, the fiberglass painted
to resemble crusty unfired clay, the surfaces gouged, roughened, these soldiers far from the zealous, idealized image of the first revolutionaries,
the actuality of what is the world’s largest standing army pushed into the background by a capitalist economy. The Disappearance of Workers,
Peasants, Soldiers (2003), also made of fiberglass, is colored a sugary hot pink in one version and a paler, bubblegum pink in another, and,
with its sticky looking, translucent slickness, recalls the big rock candy mountain of an American children’s song. It is an ironic monument
dedicated to the essential triumvirate of Communist China’s social and political order in which all three sectors must work together for the
common welfare, one of its deeply held beliefs, at least on the level of rhetoric. Guangci’s work indicates that there is nothing of that left to
commemorate. China has moved on. The system and values that generated these figures are no longer in place and the people that were its
bedrock, in a succinct and powerful image, have been reclaimed by it, swallowed up.
Xiangjing’s sculptures, on the other hand, are more personal, but in a way that recalls the slogan that the personal is political, the rallying cry of
American feminists of the 1960s and 970s. Her subjects are most often, but not always, women from pre-adolescence onward although the
emphasis seems to be on the youthful and newly urbanized who have adapted to a modernized, globalized China, who have little memory of
any other way of life. Her figures, also conceived as a version of pop realism that is somewhere between the reportorial trompe-l’oeil of Duane
Hansen, say, and the extreme perversity of Paul McCarthy, are often presented in elaborate, mixed-media installations with a narrative. The
statuary is extraordinarily lustrous, made of painted fiberglass with a hard, high-gloss, slippery-smooth surface, as if it could be wiped clean like
any good industrially made object. Close attention is paid to details of dress and faces are fashioned into a variety of expressions which rest on
the surface, the eyes withdrawn or blank, hard to read, stock types for a new human comedy from the brazenly self-confident, hip, knowing
or opportunistic to the innocent, frightened and disappointed. If some seem to reflect a different kind of anomie, that, too, is blunted by a lack
of consciousness. The shallowness is disconcerting and, ultimately, sad, disheartening. There is a subtle shock to Xiangjing’s caricatures
that is hard to pinpoint, a tiny deformation or grotesquerie that is almost overlooked, an asexuality that makes them a little off-putting but also
curiously attractive; you want to look at them again to locate the source of the attraction, the reason for the repulsion. Xiangjing’s sharp-eyed
renditions are critical of what she sees but not censorious. She is satiric, even comic at times, but not caustic or cynical. More speculative
than otherwise, her sense of social satire is anchored in the commonplace, in the daily exigencies and social exchanges of an ordinary woman’
s life, in the small vanities, frauds and violations that are emblematic of urban survival, anxiety and pleasure, such as it is.
Xiangjing’s people—of which there are multitudes, it seems--are not perfect physically or intellectually but they are vivid, sentient—and
enigmatic. The Woman in the Mirror series, several of which are present in this exhibition, represent a number of contemporary female types
as concise, visual biographies. Xiangjing depicts them in bust format, places them on a stand and together, they form a disparate group of
unblinking, uncanny, sometimes neurotic visages. Woman in the Mirror – Night Life (2002) is the most unsettling to look at. It shows a young
woman wearing a tightly fitted, low-necked top, head slightly tilted, lolling, whose injured, defiant face seems to be in motion, split apart,
stretched, the mouth in two places, a cigarette dangling from each, the nose also doubled, the eyes elongated, the skin bruised, punctured,
as if seen from the point of view of a drunk (herself) or as if one face was her present face and the other what it would become, after years of
dissipation. Another in the series is Woman in the Mirror-Tears (2002) which portrays a thin woman with short, cropped hair and enormous
eyes, vulnerable in her nakedness, one hand covering a breast, the other touching her nose, fingers outspread, as a tear wells over, about
to slide down her cheek. Another version was made in 2005, which interprets the subject less compassionately, squeezing a plump young
woman with bobbed hair and bangs into a too-snug top; she hugs herself protectively as mascara mixed with tears runs down her face. A
fourth presents a bespectacled student with a very long thick neck, lips pursed, eyes swerved to the side, in a disapproving expression. She
holds onto a drooping stuffed rabbit like a talisman or saint’s attribute. It’s called Woman in the Mirror - Rabbit doesn’t Belong to Beuys (2002),
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referring to Joseph Beuys’ legendary action from 1965, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare. Others are full-sized, such as The End (2000),
twins in demure white dresses and pumps, their pose a mirror-image of each other, their heads touching; This Woman! (2001), a young mother
in black leotard and tights bent over in a stretch while her baby, strapped to a stroller, screams; Secret in a Twinkling (2005), a heavy, slightly
bent, bundled up old woman.
Bang! (2002) is also full-sized, consisting of two figures with bald heads, one in a striped skinny top, leaning hunched against the wall, braced
to ward off harm, hands and teeth clenched, grimacing, while the other, more robust, wearing a garishly red ruffled blouse and platform shoes,
is smiling broadly as if enjoying herself immensely, her finger aimed at the head of her victim like a gun, one girl’s fear another’s game. Bang! is
ominous, mocking violence with a cheerful sadism at the same time it suggests how the situation might disintegrate into evil, that the taunting,
cruelly playful might slide into the tragically, brutally real in a blink of an eye, a metaphor?
Guangci and Xiangjing are master craftsmen and master narrators, each in their own way. . Between them, they tell us something about the
world today.
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Xiang Jing
1968, was born in Beijing. Now lives and works in Shanghai
Education
1984-1988
Student of the attached middle school of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing.
1990-1995
Attained a Bachelor Degree from the Sculpture Department, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing.
Employment
1995-1999
Art Editor, "Popular Cinema" Magazine, China Film Association, China.
1999-2007
Teaches in sculpture studio of Fine Arts College, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai.
2007-now
Artist of X+Q Sculpture Studio
Solo Exhibitions
2006
"Your Body – Xiang Jing 2000 - 2005", Shanghai Art museum, Shanghai China.
2005
"Keep In Silence", China Art Seasons Gallery, Beijing, China.
2003
"Women In The Mirror", Chinese European Art Center, Xiamen, China.
"Art of Xiang Jing", Tuan Cheng Gallery, Beijing, China.
2001
"Day Dream – Solo Exhibition", IVY bookstore, Shanghai, China.
Exhibitions
2007
“What’s Next?-Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition”, Hong Kong City Hall, Hong Kong
“Drift-2007 Huadong Districts invited Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition”, Art Space of Fine Arts college of Shanghai University, Shanghai
“Art Lan Asia”, ZAIM Yokohama, Japan
“Top 10 Chinese Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition”, Asia Art Center, Beijing
"Tanah Air: Seni Patung dan Lingkungan", Pakuwon City Complex – Surabaya, Indonesian
2006
"Women in a society of double-sexuality", Bangkok, Tang Contemporary Art Center
"Soliloquy – China-Indonesia contemporary Sculpture exhibition", Jakarta, Indonesian National Gallery
"Art in Motion", MoCA Shanghai, Shanghai
"China Now", the ESSL Collection of contemporary Art, Vienna, Austria
"Entry Gate: Chinese Aesthetics of Heterogeneity", MoCA Shanghai, Shanghai
"Between River and Lake", Jack Tilton Gallery, New York, USA.
2005
"Extravagant Age: Sculpture Prognostication - Chinese Contemporary Outdoors Sculpture Art Exhibition", Hai Yi Chang Zhou Storied Building locale, Tian Jin,
China
"Sculpture a Century", Shanghai Sculpture Space, Shanghai
"In the Deep of Reality: A Case of Chinese Contemporary Art, Liu He Underground Carbarn, Hangzhou, China
"Multiple Definition/Imaginary Community Contemporary Art Exhibition", the compound center of WanKe crystal City, Tianjin, China
2004
"Dreams of the Dragon’s Nation - Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition", Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland.
"MMAC Art College Performance Festival 2004", Aizu-Mishima / Tokyo, Japan.
"Witness - Sculptures by Xiang Jing and Guangci”, He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China.
"Take a Walk" series show, Doland Art museum, Shanghai, China.
"China · Imagination: Chinese Contemporary Sculptural Art Exhibition", Jardin de Tuileries, Paris, France.
2003
"New Zone - Chinese Art", Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warzaw, Poland.
"Sculptures by Xiang Jing and Guangci", Casas-Museu da Taipa, Macau, China.
"XII Inner Spaces" multimedia festival, CCA Inner Spaces, Poznan, Poland.
"Different choices - born in the 60s", Peninsula Gallery, Shanghai, China.
The third "Shanghai Young Sculptors Invitation Exhibition", Century Plaza, Nanjing Road, Shanghai, China.
"Exoteric Era - The 50th Anniversary of Chinese National Art Gallery ", Chinese National Art Gallery, Beijing
2002
"Xiang Jing·Guang Ci 2002 - Mirror Image" , Invisible Gallery, Shanghai, China.
2001
Confinement was exhibited in "The Standards of Chinese Contemporary Sculptures", Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, China.
A Glass of Iced Water and Intrusion were exhibited in "The Patter of Pearls on Jade Plate - Sculptures Invitation Show", Invisible Gallery, Shanghai, China.
2 pieces of sculptures, including Bath Tub, were exhibited in the "Chinese Myths - Contemporary Art Exhibition", Yidian Gallery, Shanghai, China.
4 pieces of sculptures, including Light, were exhibited in "The First Jingwen Art Exhibition", Jingwen Art Centrality, Shanghai, China.
My Doll was exhibited in the "2001 Salon d’ automne", Espace Auteuil, Paris, France.
Confinement and This Woman! were exhibited in "The 32nd Grosse Kunst Ausstellung Dusseldorf", Eingang Nord, Dusseldorf, Germany.
Cold Water and Baby Baby were exhibited in the "Framed Samples - The 1st Chengdu Art Biennale", Chengdu Contemporary Art Museum, Chengdu, China.
2000
Yawn was exhibited in the "Chinese Contemporary Sculptures Invitation Exhibition", Tsingtao Sculptural Art Gallery, Tsingtao, China.
3 pieces of work, including Daydream III, were exhibited in "Shanghai Youth Art Exhibition”, Liu-Haisu Art Gallery, Shanghai, China.
TOY - swimmers was exhibited in the second "Youth Sculptor Invitation Exhibition", co-organized by the West Lake Art Gallery, Shengzhen College of Sculpture
and Tsingtao Sculpture Gallery, China.
9 pieces of sculptures, including My Doll, were exhibited in "Sea Level - Paintings & Sculptures Invitation Exhibition 2000", Liu-Haisu Art Museum, Shanghai,
China.
Confinement was exhibited in "Conversations with Henry Moore - Sculptures Invitation Exhibition" in Guangdong Art Gallery, Guangzhou, China.
1999
5 pieces of sculptures, including Daydream and Angel Unable to Fly, were exhibited in "Journey to the End of Century – The 2nd Exhibition", New Space-ART
Express, Beijing, China.
The Empty Room was awarded the third prize in "The Ninth National Art Exhibition", National Art Gallery, Beijing, China.
The End was exhibited in the second "Chinese Sculptures Annual Exhibition", He Xiang-ning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China.
3 pieces of sculptures, including Angel’s Face, were exhibited in "Oil Paintings & Sculptures by Teachers from the Fine Art college, Shanghai Normal University",
Gallery of Fine Art college, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China.
5 pieces of sculptures, including A Glass of Iced Water and Intrusion, were exhibited in "The Century Gate - Invitation Exhibition of Chinese Art from 1979 -
1999", Chengdu Modern Art Gallery, Chengdu, China.
1998
4 pieces of sculptures, including Waltz and The Sleepless Cat, were exhibited in "Century •Female", Chinese National Art Gallery, Beijing, China.
4 pieces of sculptures, including Xiao Lu and Cigarette, were exhibited in "Connotation", Pearl Gallery, Beijing, China.
Angel’s Face was exhibited in "October Exhibition for Beijing Youth Sculptors", Gallery of Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China.
The Empty Room was exhibited in the first "Contemporary Sculptural Art Annual Exhibition", He Xiangning Art Gallery, Shenzhen, China.
The Empty Room and Talk to Wine were exhibited in the "Chinese Artists Exhibition", Zurichsee-Auktionen Gallery, Switzerland.
Waltz and The Sleepless Cat were exhibited in "Platform for Both Genders", Taida Contemporary Art Museum, Tianjin, China.
1995
7 pieces of sculptures, including Grape Wine and Skirt•Doll, were exhibited in "The Four-Girl Show in March", Modern Art Gallery, Beijing, China.
Bath Tub was awarded the first prize in "Graduate Show of Central Academy of Fine Arts 1995"; and the first prize of "The Oka-matsu Family Fund, Japan". It
was exhibited in the gallery of Central Academy of Fine Arts in the same year.
"Chinese Women Artists Invitation Exhibition", Chinese National Art Gallery, Beijing, China.
Institution Collection:
Shanghai Art Museum
Nasher Art Museum of Duke University
The Saatchi Gallery
Central Academy of Fine Arts
Etc.

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Secret in A Twinkling Fibre glass, painted 70×90×171cm 2005

The Woman in The Mirror - Night Life Fibre glass, painted 65×55×75cm 2002
The Woman in The Mirror - Rabbit Doesn't Belong to Beuys Fibre glass, painted 55×28×82cm 2002
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The Woman in The Mirror - Tears II Fibre glass, painted 40×51×88cm 2004

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The Woman in The Mirror - Tears Fibre glass, painted 45×35×102cm 2002

022
Secret in A Twinkling Fibre glass, painted 70×90×171cm 2005

Baby Baby Fibre glass, acrylic, mirror, three-cornered basin, and etc. 85×85×156cm 2001
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The End painted Fibre glass 65×55×165cm 2 pieces in one set 2000

This Woman! Fibre glass, painted, pram, etc. 160x200x170 cm 2001
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Qu Guangci
Education
1969 Born in Shanghai
1989 Graduated from the senior high school of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts
1994 Graduated from the Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, B. A.
1997 Graduated from the Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, M.A.
Working Experience
1997-1999 Researcher of sculptural art, Central Academy of Fine Arts
1999-2007 Professor of the sculpture workshop of the Fine Art College, Shanghai Normal University Director of “the Invisible Gallery” at Shanghai Normal
University
2007-now Artist of X+Q Sculpture Studio
Solo Exhibition
2007 “Last Supper—solo exhibition by Qu Guangci”, Aura Gallery, Hong Kong
1998 “Sculptures by Guangci”, Hallway Gallery, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China.
Group Exhibition
2007
“Escape by Crafty Scheme_salvation from traditional and revolutional language”, Nanjing Square Gallery Of Contemporary Art, Nanjing
“Drift-2007 Huadong Districts invited Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition”, Art Space of Fine Arts college of Shanghai University, Shanghai
"Tanah Air: Seni Patung dan Lingkungan", Pakuwon City Complex – Surabaya, Indonesian
2006
“soliloquy: China-Indonesia contemporary sculpture exhibition”, National Art Museum, Jakarta, Indonesia
“Fiction @ Love”, Museum of Contemporary Art/Bund 18 Creative Center, Shanghai
2005
“Sculpture a Century”, Shanghai Sculpture Space, Shanghai
2004
“Witness——Sculpture of Xiang Jing and Guangci”, He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China
“China · Imagination: Chinese Contemporary Sculptural Art”, Jardin de Tuileries, Paris, France.
“MMAC Art College / Performance Festival 2004”, Aizu-Mishima / Tokyo, Japan
2003
“XII Inner Spaces” multimedia festival, CCA Inner Spaces, Poznan, Poland.
“Different Choices —— born in the 60s”, Peninsula Gallery, Shanghai, China.
“Sculpture by Xiang Jing and Guangci”, Casas-Museu da Taipa, Macau
The third “Shanghai Young Sculptors Invitation Exhibition”, Century Plaza, Nanjing Road, Shanghai, China.
The First “Beijing Art Biennale”, Chinese National Art Gallery, Beijing, China.
2002
Attended the exhibition “Rotate 180°”. Oriental Arts Gallery, Shanghai, China.
“Guang Ci Xiang Jing 2002 — Box of Democracy”, Invisible Gallery, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China.
2001
Road to Heaven was exhibited in “2001 Salon d’ Autumn”, Paris, France.
“Chinese Myths – Contemporary Art Exhibition”, Yidian Gallery, Shanghai, China.
Dancing Machines was exhibited in the “32nd Grosse Kunst Ausstellung Dusseldorf", Eingang Nord, Dusseldorf, Germany
Repeat and Repeat and Repeat was exhibited in “People’s Gala – Venice Biennial Exhibition”, Invisible Gallery, Shanghai, China.
2000
Sound Amidst Thunder and Clouds won the 3rd prize in “The 50th Anniversary of Shanghai Arts”, Shanghai, China
Qingkejiu was exhibited in Shanghai Youth Art Exhibition”, Liu-Haisu Art Gallery, Shanghai, China.
Dancing Machines was exhibited in the second “Youth Sculptor Invitation Exhibition", co-organized by the West Lake Art Gallery, Shengzhen College of
Sculpture and Tsingtao Sculpture Gallery, China.
Drowner series was exhibited in “Sea Level - Paintings & Sculptures Invitation Exhibition 2000", Liu-Haisu Art Museum, Shanghai, China.
Drowner – Guide to Fortune was exhibited in "Conversations with Henry Moore - Sculptures Invitation Exhibition" in Guangdong Art Gallery, Guangzhou, China.
1999
Road to Heaven won the 3rd prize in the 9th “Exhibition of National Fine Arts”, and became the collection of Chinese National Art Gallery, Beijing, China.
Specimen of the Fittest was exhibited in the second "Chinese Sculptures Annual Exhibition", He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China.
Sound Amidst Thunder and Clouds, and Dusk, were exhibited in "Oil Paintings & Sculptures by Teachers from the Fine Art college, Shanghai Normal University",
Gallery of Fine Art college, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China.
1998
Portrait of Y was exhibited in “October Exhibition for Beijing Youth Sculptors", Gallery of Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China.
1997
Sculpture Set of Tibet won the 2nd prize in the “Graduate Show of Central Academy of Fine Arts 1997”, and 2nd prize of “Okamatsu Family Fund, Japan”. It
later became the collection of Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China.
1995
Dusk and Posture participated in “Exhibition for Young Artists across the World 1995”, Contemporary Art Museum, Beijing, China.
1994
Streets won the 2nd prize in the “Graduate Show of Central Academy of Fine Arts 1994”. It later became the collection of Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing,
China.
Wangfujing won the Gold Medal in the 8th “Exhibition of National Fine Arts”, National Fine Art Gallery, Beijing, China.
1993
Mother received the honour of distinction in the “65th Anniversary of Comrade Mao Zedong’s Speech at Yan‘an Art and Literature Seminar” cum art exhibition,
Chinese National Fine Arts Gallery, Beijing, China.
Other Events
Organized “The Standards of Chinese Contemporary Sculptures”, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China.
Organized with Liu-Haisu Art Museum, the sculpture section of “The Patter of Pearls on Jade Plate”, Shanghai Youth Exhibition Serials, Invisible Gallery,
Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China.
Host of “Sino-German New Media Arts Week”, organized by Peking University and The Goethe Institut Peking.
031

New Mao stainless steel 75×103×240cm 6pc 2003
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New Mao stainless steel 75×103×240cm 6pc 2003

No Mao Fibre glass painted 70×103×208cm 6piece 2002
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038
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No Labor dumb million II Fibre glass painted 306×104×165cm 2003-2007

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No Labor dumb million II Fibre glass painted 306×104×165cm 2003-2007
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The Disappearance of Soldier Fibre glass painted 90×65×172cm 2003
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048
Publisher: Alex Cao
Directors: KoKo-Shen Li, Ai Dan, Carrie Clyne
Authors: Gao Shiming / 高士明 & Lilly Wei
Designer: Lava-lase Design
Typeset in Monotype Centaur and Monotype Bembo
Publishing: ChinaSquare Publishing Inc.
545 W. 25th Street 8th fl. Chelsea Arts Tower New York, NY 10001
212.255.8886
info@ChinaSquareNY.com
www.ChinaSquareNY.com
Publishing Date: July 2007
ISBN 978-0-9795785-1-9
Price $45.00