print April 2022

Yao Qingmei

We watch a woman sitting in a small, sterile room, alone amid a bank of monitors and random office equipment. Fluorescent tubes radiate an even glow of artificial light around her. Time creeps by. There is no progression; the only movements in the scene are occasional glitches on the screens, a printer spitting out reports, the air setting the leaves of a potted plant aquiver, and the woman readjusting herself in her chair from time to time. These minor events, transpiring at the security control room of an unnamed Chinese seaside resort community, constitute the central component of Yao Qingmei’s

previews September 2019

SOCIETY GUIDANCE II

Curated by Bian Ka

This second installment of the research-driven exhibition “Society Guidance” shifts its focus from the profound effects of China’s post-1978 social transformation on its artistic and intellectual elite to the emerging voices of ordinary people during the 1990s, purportedly the time of the rise and liberation of the individual. One example: The show will feature photographer Xu Yong, who extensively documented Beijing’s hutongs—the small, endangered alleyways found in historic parts of the city—and later launched a business providing hutong tours to foreign visitors, a practice

print April 2017

Gu Dexin

The exhibition “Gu Dexin 1994-02-04” at Beijing’s Diplomatic Residence Compound excavated and assembled a more than twenty-year-old artwork by Gu Dexin, a radical, self-taught artist and founding member of Beijing’s New Measurement Group in 1988. An installation made of metal pipes, models of human body parts, and light fixtures, the work actually had never before been realized. When assembled, the apparatus condenses steam: Droplets of liquid drip from the pipes into a model of an open mouth placed on the floor. After thoroughly searching Gu’s archive for more information about this piece, the

Li Jia