Artist Ai WeiWei with what looks like a nasty cut on his head - Courtesy AFP-Getty

The recent detention of Ai Weiwei has brought a lot of scrutiny from Western countries on the lack of tolerance for artistic expression in China, yet it has engendered very little domestic debate there from fellow Chinese artists who prefer to remain under the radar of the censorial authorities themselves.

China’s approach to the arts has vacillated from endorsements of Western artists exhibiting in China – given that this promotes positive media attention – to brutal repression of those that have spoken out critically against the government. (Read my recent interview with Wim Delvoye on exhibiting in China)

At the opening ceremony for the unveiling of the Zodiac statues at Grand Army Plaza near Central Park, Bloomberg said that he found it disturbing that no one yet knew of the artist’s whereabouts. He said, “Artists risk everything to create; they risk failure, rejection and public criticism, but artists like Ai Weiwei, who come from places that do not value and protect free speech, risk more than that. His willingness to take the risks and face the consequences speaks not only to his courage but to the indomitable desire for freedom that is inside every human being.”

Opening ceremony with the Mayor Bloomberg (fifth from right), and artists Julian Schnabel (second from left), Shirin Neshat (third from left)

I thought it was a testament of the dedication of those weathering the cold morning rain, who stood under umbrellas and awnings, to advocate free speech and show their support of the detained artist.

Amongst the twelve that spoke at the opening were Julian Schnabel, Shirin Neshat, who has also spoken up for Jafar Panahi, the arrested Iranian filmmaker, the painter Brice Marden, dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones and President Emerita of MoMA, Agnes Gund.

They read from quotations by the artist. Gund read, “Because it’s animals heads, I think it’s something that every body can have some understanding about, especially children and people not in the art world.”

Julian Schnabel read the following statement, “I think all the aesthetic judgments and all aesthetic choices we are making are moral choices. It cannot escape the moral dimension in the broader sense, it has to relate to the philosophical statements of who we are, and how art and culture function in today’s world.”

Shirin Neshat quoted the artist, “My work is always dealing with real or fake authenticity and what’s the value. It could be cultural, political or social, and also, it could be art; to put it in the circumstance to make people re-look at what we have done. It’s an original position to create new possibilities.”

Alexander Munro, curator at the Guggenheim read, “Without freedom of speech there is no modern world, just a barbaric one.”

“Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads” will be up in Manhattan’s Grand Army Plaza through July 15. The work will then go on a world tour.

Cloaca Professional: Media: Mixed Media Dimensions: L 710 x B 176 x H 285 cm Date: 2010 View: Monasism (22. 01.2011 – 19.07.2011) at MONA ,Tasmania, © Wim Delvoye

By Kiša Lala
Interview Wim Delvoye Part 2 ( Read Part 1)
The Shitting Machine: The Cloaca Project

Recently David Walsh had purchased one of his pooing machines for his MONA space in Tasmania where Delvoye is due to have a solo show this Fall. The subject brings out Delvoye’s science-nerd-enthusiasm: “I always wanted to do a shit machine…you know I saw the film Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as a little boy. It was like thinking about what it was like being a boy. Tracey Emin in every work from A to Z says she is a girl – there’s not much else in her work. I think it’s great, but what you read is, I’m a girl, I’m a bad girl, a funny girl… In the nineties [my] work was more about being a boy, now it is much more eclectic. The debates were coloured by identity, what subgroup you belonged to. It was about separation. The New Museum [exhibition of 2001], had been the temple for all these discussions; the debate about the Other.”

© Wim Delvoye

© Wim Delvoye Tour Paris 2010 700x700x 1200Laser-cut corten steel exhibition-at-Musee Rodin Paris France

So did these separate identities have the same shit in common?

“It stopped all the quarrels. Between male, female, class/gender issues, ethnic groups, the self-definition of people. Staring at the shit machine they were all relieved – communally relieved. It was wonderful.”

Delvoye received a different response to the work wherever he showed. In France they removed the shit immediately. In Germany they scolded him for betraying the starving people of Africa; some asked why it did not produce anything of practical value like vitamins, or energy. Delvoye chuckled at all the didactic consternation, “I am not taking myself that seriously. It is a Calvinist taboo – wasting food,” he continued, “Somehow in Germany it’s about never wasting a little potato. If you can’t eat it, you put it back in the fridge. Everyday is about suffering for the people who are hungry in the world.”

So does it actually smell like shit?

“Yes. And the consistency depends on the absorption of water. I am surprised Walsh [at MONA] is still feeding the machine…he may one day get tired of it. It goes through reactors and it is fully automatic like a fish tank. The bacteria in the colons take their time, I cannot tell the machine to do it faster, but it can make more shit than a human body; more timely…it’s like saying I need to shit everyday at 1:30pm – because museums have to be open…”

Car Tyres, Untitled (Car Tyre # 4) 2009, handcarved car tyre, Ø77 x 27 cm © Wim Delvoye

Delvoye had found Chinese galleries largely tolerant in exhibiting his works, and because we spoke before Ai Weiwei’s recent detention, our conversation was lighthearted about his friendship with the artist. “He is a dear friend of mine. I regard him as one of my best friends out of all the artists on this planet. Yes we disagree gently about China. I have a much more positive regard for it than him. He thinks I am a naïve little boy and I should shut up about my praise for his country.” Now, in light of recent events Delvoye’s next show on May 7th should add some heat to the discussions at Urs Meile Beijing, the same gallery as Ai WeiWei’s.

I say that just as he has his love-hate relationship with Belgium, Ai WeiWei has strongly split sentiments about his own country. “Yes he probably likes my country as a revenge. His first show was in Belgium,” says Delvoye impishly.

The two artists were filmed in a documentary, Into the Night, walking around Kassel together, in which Delvoye spends a good deal of time peeing off-camera, still microphoned, while the camera observes Ai Weiwei looking on mostly embarrassed – recounted Delvoye with glee. “When I see WeiWei I always kiss him, and on a certain day he said, oh I thought you were gay! The Chinese are not into kissing each other.”

Cement Truck - KVS Brussels: Media: Laser-cut corten steel Dimensions: H 408.5 x B 213.2 x L 980.3 cm (scale 1:1) Date: 2010 Weight: 5744.5 k, © Wim Delvoyeg

Delvoye is not impressed with sexuality. When he was in school he says, “there were lots of penises in the art world, lots of sexual organs – it was so fashionable. But sex was not so interesting in proportion to religion, shit, the market, the economy – these are actually much more taboo.”

He is wary of the traps and biases of art-world critiques. “If some journalist is coming – I am supposed to check that the table doesn’t have a Financial Times on it…if it was Playboy, that would be considered fine for an artist…” Looking inside the guts of the economy has, in fact, been a focus. Economics is more fundamental to our culture than the aspiration towards art as many ancient, ten thousand-year-old clay tablets tell us: They are usually invoices – love poems are a recent development. Charles Darwin borrowed the idea of Evolution as an analogy – a term mostly used in economics at his time, explained Delvoye.

To make light of art world economics, he created an art piece in which the buyer was given a money back guarantee: The bond is valid for fifteen years during which the artist was obligated to pay anyone back who regretted their purchase. With mock gloom, he tells me he can’t leave Belgium anytime soon for fear someone might want to collect.

Tour - Brussels: Media: Laser-cut corten steel Dimensions: H 1700 x 260 x 260 cm Date: 2010 View: Knockin’ on heaven’s door (20.10.2010 – 23.01.2011) at Bozar, Brussels, © Wim Delvoye

Delvoye’s Disneyland

Delvoye is dreaming up even larger projects. He would like to be commissioned to build museums. “I want to build castles, towers, staircases.” I am not cheap but I am less expensive than maybe other things – I mean we are not talking more than one Picasso to do a huge project!

His work his using more craftsmanship. The gothic trucks are beautifully ornate, and it doesn’t take art history to appreciate the intricacy of the filigreed work.

“Yes that’s so eternal. How do you judge archeological stuff. How do you judge sculpture…why does culture for thousands of years focus on craftsmanship and then all of a sudden in the 20th century it stops?! Of a sudden there is an expectation that we are completely other beings, like feminists, Communists, Socialists. The expectation is, if you are literate, you like abstract art, monochromes, conceptual art – the reasoning is that working class people are too stupid to understand modern art.”

His current project involves buying a castle to convert into an architectural project, a kind of museum. His recent Cor-Ten towers could be construed as pure architectural elements –and here again he is challenging the compartmentalizing of art in areas traditionally “off-limits.” His ironic art, and gothic dumptrucks are popular, but he feels the need to move on. “The market would want me to continue this work. But I see the conservative forces in the market.”

“For the 60s generation – Lichtenstein, for instance, was making variations of the same theme his whole life…an artist cannot be like that anymore, because now you need to react to what you see and hear in the media all the time… I cannot think of the earth without evolution”

“You need to be constantly flexible. What is art today? You can make an animation and put it on YouTube and it can be more important than a museum show! One can become an antiquarian very quickly believes Delvoye, it being impossible to predict what might be relevant three months from today. “I was thinking when I was a child if a genie came out of a bottle and offered a crystal ball into my future and said, you are going to have shows in China, and you will sell to people in Yemen or India…I wouldn’t believe it.”

One thing is certain, whatever the future, Delvoye will be poking at its frontiers and making the news.

Wim Delvoye will be showing in Galerie Urs Meile , Beijing, China – May 7 – July 31, 2011 Opening: May 7, 2011; 4 p.m. – 7 p.m

Tour - Brussels: Media: Laser-cut corten steel Dimensions: H 1700 x 260 x 260 cm Date: 2010 View: Knockin’ on heaven’s door (20.10.2010 – 23.01.2011) at Bozar, Brussels, © Wim Delvoye

Self described architect, prankster, farmer, megalomaniac: Wim Delvoye is an extreme artist, willing to chase an idea to its unsettling conclusion. To make his point Delvoye has mastered not only the skills of the traditional artisan – from weaving, tattooing, ceramics, stained glass and steel – he has also engineered the most perfect shit.

Delvoye often triggers controversy but he is a stealth artist, astutely exposing all the finger-wagging snobbism about his art. He was in New York recently during Armory week, noting the changes in the Meat Packing District where he once lived in the late 90s. In 2001 he showed his Cloaca machine at the New Museum. “I thought it was going to be a disaster during the anthrax scare. It was a bio-machine making shit,” says Delvoye, in a thick accent with a hint of mischief. During our conversation he frequently had me in titters over his escapades – he knows the common notions people have about his art and will happily play up his schoolboy antics. Settling down to chat, (with a coffee, after toilet and squeezing blackheads – he volunteers to add) he takes me on a journey into his cosmicomical universe – being on the run from the Louis Vuitton police, his plans for a Gothic wonderland and his friendship with Ai WeiWei. I listen, as though back at school again, squeamish and awed by the nerve of the schoolyard’s most notorious prankster.

Tattooed Pigskins, Untitled (Art Farm China), 2005, tattooed pigskin on oval stretcher, handcarved gilded frame, H 58 x 50 cm, © Wim Delvoye

Dump truck - Catanzaro: Media: Laser-cut corten steel Dimensions: B 270 x H 295 x L 820 cm (scale 1:1) Date: 2006 Weight: 3720 kg © Wim Delvoye

Tattooed Pigs and the Louis Vuitton Police

He sold his NY place soon after 9/11, and with an instinct for the next wave, moved to where it was more happening: he bought a pig farm in China. At his art farm Delvoye tattooed live pigs. Galleries were reluctant to show art that snorted and oinked, but Delvoye says, “I prefer showing them that way as a dead pig skin is a big compromise.” The few art-pigs he has left will be kept until they die of old age before being parted from their precious hides, which purchasing collectors have to wait for. More contentious though, was the piece of pork with the Louis Vuitton logo branded on its back. The corporation is very particular about the usage of its brand and hounded Delvoye all the way to Shanghai in an attempt to confiscate the hides.

“The museum was quite primitive – and meanwhile I had these expensive suits visiting, trying to get me, which was quite ridiculous,” he recalls. “For a while they had big folders with my name on them and they were trying to sue me. It was scary. So, we were once archenemies!”

I said I was surprised they didn’t appreciate the irony – and wasn’t Arnault a collector of art himself?

“The owner of LV is much more of a perfectionist, and a good manager, defending his products at all costs, than he is an art-lover – I mean loving art is just one of the many rings he has on his fingers” said Delvoye, candidly adding, “He is a mogul, and he has art to outsmart other moguls.”

Tour - Brussels: Media: Laser-cut corten steel Dimensions: H 1700 x 260 x 260 cm Date: 2010 View: Knockin’ on heaven’s door (20.10.2010 – 23.01.2011) at Bozar, Brussels, © Wim Delvoye

The brand’s value was based on a psychological notion of opulence, and they were sensitive to protecting this as they deemed fit. Still, an artist should have the right to comment on cultural icons, and Delvoye has used many other brands over the last 15 years, including signing his name with Disney letters, and playing off such ubiquitous cultural entities as Coca Cola and Procter & Gamble’s Mr. Clean.

Delvoye believes that our imagination has been co-opted by powerful images: You cannot read the original Pinnochio without visualizing it in colours tainted by Disney. Recently, an American company had even filed for the rights of the word Om, in use for thousands of years in India. “There should be a counter-attack,” he says, “for visual pollution. Big companies are paying taxes to the government: the rights to blow dirty air into the atmosphere. People on the way to work see all these brands, bags, shoes. Brands attacking their collective memory.”

“If it came to a litigation I would have intellectually found it enjoyable,” says Delvoye. “It would be in everybody’s interest whether I won or lost: it would make a case for all artists. The work I was doing never resulted in confusion between the two products. My second argument was that after a while, [a logo] becomes a part of collective [memory]. If you are so omnipresent in the city streets, then you have to take a joke,” says Delvoye. He was amused by all the fuss, but understood that pigs were not very respected animals in the world. It is a paradox that LV have hired artist Scott Campbell to create tattoo designs on their leather bags this season, and that their models prance around with branded necks.

LV pursued Delvoye to Art Basel where under Swiss law the pigs would have been taken into custody, so he had to leave the country, “It was such a nice pig, and I wanted to keep it…”

Craftier the Better

Delvoye has always been playing on ideas of luxury and poverty. Delvoye grew up with the stuff his father would bring home from trips to the Congo. Via low-culture he came to understand high-culture. He knew more about kitschy, crafty things before he ever saw a 17th century table. In arts school he quickly learned that showing skillful work was a taboo, and demoted you to the stature of a craftsman.

His early works with carpet weaving and tapestry shocked people because it overstepped convention and encroached the realm of the traditional arts, of folklore and artisanship. It was anti-modernist. It was high art vs. popular culture.

I suggested that the only legitimate use of traditional crafts these days was restricted to the domain of tourism. “It is the forces of democratization,” said Delvoye. “Everybody should have curtains in the house… machinery makes mass production possible; taste and quality get devalued.”

More on Wim Delvoye’s poo machine in part2 of this post.

Page 24 of "Empty Bottles" by WassinkLundgren

Dutch artists WassinkLundgren bring their “Empty Bottles” solo exhibit to the United Kingdom. The show compromises of 33 award winning contemporary photo books framed. Each book has been opened at a page that runs in numerical order, starting with the front cover and ending with the back. The works vary from, 24 full color documents of bottle collectors to the remaining images that are purely textual, including a ‘special thanks’ and the publishing information. Each frame walks through the artist’s journey, compiling together to form a fascinating contemporary look at a part of life in China.

Page 1 of "Empty Bottles" by WassinkLundgren

The series is comprised of the portraits of 24 scavengers who are attracted to the bottles which WassinkLundgren have put in front of their camera. Each time a bottle is picked up, the duo snaps a picture, letting the empty bottle act as a cable release and turning the work into a performance piece of every day life. The project captures and documents the real-life acts of recycling, which usually goes largely unnoticed but is an integral part of contemporary life in china.

Hans Moleman describes “Empty Bottles” as, “This is work in its most basic sense: a means of survival. China offers only a rudimentary package of social services; millions have to devise their own way of keeping their head above water, even in China’s economic miracle. But it’s not really about the deprivation. Many of the scavengers are far from pathetic. These are people with an aim, an objective in perfect harmony with the highly affluent society in which they scavenge for a living.”

For more information, visit DMBMedia.

Phillips de Pury's new location at 450 Park Avenue, Manhattan

Phillips de Pury & Company, the world’s third largest auction house, has been expanding their ventures worldwide – and this may not come as a surprise in view of recent auctions such as at Sotheby’s, which announced record sales, an indication that the art market isn’t softening in this recession, and that investors are willing to bypass the stagnant stock market for the safety of old masters and blue-chip moderns.

Apart from their recent Contemporary Art sale with record auctions of $50 million worth of art sold, Phillips de Pury had also begun a series of innovative and profitable “theme” sales titled BRIC, MUSIC and AFRICA. The highly successful BRIC auction in April in London focused on the so-called BRIC nations, Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Repackaging art around themes has had lucrative pay-offs, and now with the economic rise of Asian countries, Phillips de Pury and other auction houses are creating a new buying frenzy among these nations’ patriotic elite.

Phillips’ move uptown to the new 25,559 square feet space, at 450 Park Ave will attract buyers who may find their other Meatpacking District location a bit out of reach – and put them in closer proximity to midtown rivals Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

Phillips de Pury at 450 Park Avenue

The space will premiere in November with their show, “Carte Blanche,” directed by Philippe Segalot, the former international head of Christie’s Contemporary Art department, and be curated by other art world figures. Evening sales along with single-owner and jewelry sales will take place over three floors with skyboxes on offer for premium clients.

The Meatpacking District location will continue to showcase design and photography, and Chairman, Simon de Pury says, “Finally with 450 Park Avenue and 450 West 15th Street, Phillips de Pury will have the ultimate contemporary art spaces both uptown and downtown.” He added in the WSJ, “While downtown is a space where contemporary-art lovers frequent, there are still a lot of clients based uptown, so this will be a small convenience for them to have more access to us.”

The Brothers Gao with a Headless Chairman Mao

It’s not the kind of sculpture of Chairman Mao you typically see in China. He’s on his knees as a supplicant, confessing; his body language and facial expression indicate deep remorse. What’s more, the head of this life-size bronze statue, titled “Mao’s Guilt” and created by the artist brothers Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang, separates from the body—by design.

Exhibitions by the Gao brothers, whose work the authorities find politically challenging, have been shut down in the past, and their studio has been raided. So they keep the head of Mao hidden in a separate location, reuniting it with its body only on special occasions to show friends and colleagues. Normally, the body of the statue remains headless, unidentifiable and nonthreatening. ”It’s something I hope all Chinese people will one day be able to accept and understand,” Gao Zhen, 53, said of the work. “We wanted to portray him as a human being, a regular person confessing for the wrongs he’s committed.”

Removable heads and underground exhibitions are just two of the guerrilla tactics the Gao brothers have employed, often with the help of Melanie Ouyang, their broker, to enable fans and friends to view their work. The Gaos are part of a generation of avant-garde Chinese artists who are pushing the boundaries of artistic expression. In the increasingly open Chinese art world, nudity is commonplace where it used to be forbidden, and art parodying the Cultural Revolution has become so ubiquitous that it is passé. Still, the Gaos are a reminder that, especially as China celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Communist revolution, limits to expression remain: although artists are increasingly free to deal with social and political topics, works that explicitly criticize Chinese leaders or symbols of China are still out of bounds.

Mao like you've never seen him

“Ash Red,” a 2006 exhibition the Gao brothers openly advertised and held in their studio, was suppressed by authorities. Posters and catalogs for the show were banned, and interviews the brothers had lined up with local news media were canceled. For several weeks after “Ash Red” was shut down, two guards stood outside the doors of the Gao brothers’ home studio, discouraging people from coming inside.

For the Gao brothers, Mao holds a more personal meaning. During the Cultural Revolution their father was labeled a class enemy and dragged off to a place that was “not a prison, not a police station, but something else,” Gao Zhen said. After twenty-five days had passed, the family members were told he had committed suicide.

They think otherwise: “If someone didn’t like you at that time, they arbitrarily labeled you a class enemy,” Mr. Gao added. “We came to Beijing to petition our father’s death.” Eventually the family was given the equivalent of about $290 in compensation. “That was a very painful period of our life,” Mr. Gao continued. “We were six brothers and a single mother; we didn’t have a penny.”

Still, many Chinese who are critical of the Gaos’ work say it lacks subtlety. “I understand what they’re trying to say, but I think their pieces are sensationalist—they’re too direct and gaudy,” says Feng Ling, 23, an art student who recently came to the Gao brothers’ home studio and saw “The Execution of Christ,” in which a firing squad of Chairman Maos take aim at Jesus.

The Execution of Christ

“The Gao brothers’ work on Mao is provocative for many mainland Chinese,” said Kai Heinze, 33, director of the Faurschou Gallery. “Their work sets off a trigger, challenging people here to understand and tolerate a view of modern Chinese history that admits shortcoming,”

China Prophecy: Shanghai explores 21st-century skyscraper city of Shanghai and is the third in a cycle of three related exhibitions entitled FUTURE CITY: 20 | 21 that juxtaposes a retrospective of American visions of the skyscraper city of the future from the early 20th century with an exploration of Chinese cities today, pursuing the parallel conditions of rapid modernization and urbanization. The second exhibition of the cycle, Vertical Cities, focused on Hong Kong and New York.

From left: Oriental Pearl TV Tower, Tomorrow Square, Jin Mao, and SWFC (under construction); Jin Mao; SWFC

The second exhibition in the three part series, FUTURE CITY: 20|21, Vertical Cities, examined the parallels during two major development booms and defining moments in the vertical identity of New York in the 1920s and 1960s and Hong Kong in the mid-1980s-1990s and today. Today, as high-rises proliferate everywhere, Hong Kong holds the title with 7,200. Still ascending, though, Shanghai is surely China’s prophecy of the urban future.

China Prophecy documents this stupendous urban transformation through film and photographs of old and new Shanghai, including a 20–minute video odyssey traveling the city’s streets and highways filmed by resident photographer Jakob Montrasio. Evoking the speed and ambition of the city’s futuristic focus are projected computer animations by the Chinese company Crystal CG that create spectacular flyovers of the city before circling the major skyscrapers that are their subjects.

The installation features large models of the major towers that now define—or will soon enhance—the Shanghai skyline. These include an architectural and wind-tunnel testing model of Jin Mao (88 stories; 1999); a presentation model of Tomorrow Square (55 stories; 2003); a massing model and structural engineering model of the Shanghai World Financial Center (101 stories; 2008); and an architectural model and structural computer models of Shanghai Tower (128 stories; 2014), now in development. Other renderings, sections, and construction photographs illustrate a range of technical issues that distinguish these towers, which are all designs of American-and mostly New York based-architectural and engineering firms. Other major high-rise projects included in the exhibition are KPF’s Jing An complex and SOM’s White Magnolia Plaza, both in development. The issue of global design practice is explored in the exhibition and a related lecture series in fall 2009.

Sustainable skyscraper design seems an oxymoron to some, but as the exhibition argues, high-rises and high density-in conjunction with mass transit-is a logical strategy for greener cities. The city’s most advanced high-performance design planned to date is the double-glass curtain wall of the Shanghai Tower, which will encircle eight stacked 15-story segments with atrium spaces and sky gardens soaring the full height of the 128-story structure. “Better City, Better Life,” calls out Shanghai’s emphasis on sustainable design as the slogan for the 2010 Expo, which will open May 1, 2010. The exhibition illustrates the Expo in plans, photographs, and a Crystal CG animation of the site and pavilions that emphasizes Shanghai’s self-image as the city of the future.

Source: Skyscraper Museum of New York

The exhibition will be at the museum through March 2010