Cutting edge art sharpens the eye
By Shan Shan (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-10-27 09:15

Birth photo/3D Grid Light Box by Hung Tung-Lu.

With more than 2,000 visitors per day during the seven-day National Day Holiday, the Fifth Shanghai Biennale is no doubt one of the most popular contemporary art events held in China this year.

"I made great effort to understand the works. I can largely do with the paintings, but the high-tech ones are really difficult," said Ge Longzhi, student with Tongji University in Shanghai on the Internet.

The Shanghai Biennale, which runs at the Shanghai Museum of Art until November 28, has become one of the most prestigious and best-known contemporary art exhibitions in the country since it was first held in 1996.

Part of the event, which included works by 92 artists from around the world, is organized under the artistic direction of a team of three Chinese curators and an Argentinean curator: Xu Jiang, Zheng Shengtian, Zhang Qing and Sebastien Lopez.

With "Techniques of the Visible" (Yingxiang Shengcun) as its theme, it focuses on the close relationship between art, science and technology, and in particular, how art has revealed the social and political forces that monopolize the development of technology and thus the development of human beings.

"Taken from the ancient Chinese terminology of ying (reflection) and xiang (image), the concept emerges from an interest in the visual products of modern technology," said Zhang Qing, one of the co-curators who is a researcher with the Shanghai Museum of Art.

Bringing film, photography, video, installation, interactive technologies and performance together, the curators intend to draw attention "on the diversity of contemporary art practice from Asia, South America, Africa, Europe and North America," said Zhang.

"The Biennale will draw crucial relations between contemporary art and historical precedents, revealing the interconnected and interdependent nature of art that engages technology," he added.

"It's a fascinating experience to get seated in a room where video artwork is displayed, where I can hear the low-voiced conversations and breathing of those seated by me," said visitor Zhang Yuxu, an employee of a multi-national company.

Artist Yoko Ono, widow of the late Beatle John Lennon, is the star of the biennale. Heated discussions were made on the Internet before the event kicked off on September 28, on whether she would arrive in Shanghai with her works.

Her film, "Bottom Film No 4" was shown at the opening ceremony, though her own absence disappointed many.

"Shanghai is becoming more and more of an international metropolis, as we can have fresh experience in the city of what's going on at the cutting edge of various fields, including art, in the world," said Li Jiang, a visitor to the show, on the Internet.

But he was immediately refuted on the Internet by He Jiajia, student with the Shanghai Foreign Studies University, that "many visited the biennale not because they love avant-garde art, but because they want to show themselves as those who always stand at the cutting edge of fashion."