Chicago
Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video From China
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA Chicago)
220 East Chicago Avenue
October 2, 2004–January 16, 2005
Asia Society | New York
725 Park Avenue
June 11–September 5, 2004
Seattle Art Museum
1300 First Avenue
February 10–May 15, 2005
Curated by Wu Hung and Christopher Phillips
Contemporary art from China is the latest hot ticket, so it’s hard to see how this survey of Chinese photography and video from the past decade can miss. Given that most of its fifty artists are exhibiting in the US for the first time, talent pickers should be out in force. Since Chinese art photography was subject until recently to an officially sanctioned, academic aesthetic rooted in Pictorialism (filtered through the traditions of Chinese painting), the 125 works here, which smack of postmodernist cultural critique, are sure to come as a shock to American eyes.
Travels to the Smart Museum of Art and MCA, Chicago, Oct. 2–Jan. 16, 2005; Seattle Art Museum, Feb. 10, 2005–May 15, 2005; and other venues.