25 October 2014-18 January 2015
“My Generation: Young Chinese Artists”
“My Generation: Young Chinese Artists” at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art is the first U.S. exhibition to focus solely on the post-Mao generation of Chinese artists.
“My Generation: Young Chinese Artists” is an extended look at a new generation of artists emerging in mainland China since 2000—the year China opened its doors to international artists and that Chinese artists began to command attention on the world’s stage. The exhibition examines contemporary China through the lens of five themes: gender roles and intimate relationships, family ties, the urbanized landscape, religion and reflections on Buddhism, and politics and gestures of rebellion. It includes works by Birdhead, Liu Chuang, Liu Di, Zhang Ding, Double Fly Art Center, Guo Hongwei, Irrelevant Commission, Cui Jie, Song Kun, Fang Lu, Chi Peng, Ma Qiusha, Huang Ran, Jin Shan, Chen Wei, Hu Xiangqian, Qiu Xiaofei, Hu Xiaoyuan, Yan Xing, Sun Xun, Lu Yang, Zhou Yilun, Liang Yuanwei, Xu Zhen/MadeIn, Zhao Zhao, and Shi Zhiying.
Collage is represented by Irrelevant Commission and Xu Zhen/Madeln. In Issue 10 of Kolaj Magazine, we featured an interview with artist Guo Hongwei, who is represented in “My Generation” by a watercolour painting with collage elements.
All 26 artists in this exhibition were born after 1976, at the end of the Cultural Revolution, and most are the products of China’s one-child policy. Growing up in a country with a high-powered market economy, they have been exposed to global art movements through the internet and from being educated in China’s art academies. They are ambitious, determined and technically sophisticated with much to say about their homeland—positive and negative—and they deftly navigate around the restrictions of censorship and cultural differences.
The exhibition was organized by the Tampa Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, and curated by Barbara Pollack.
(text adapted the gallery’s press materials)
INFORMATION
Oklahoma City Museum of Art
415 Couch Drive
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73102 USA
(405) 236-3100
Hours:
Tuesday-Wednesday & Friday-Saturday, 10AM-5PM
Thursday, 10AM-9PM
Sunday, Noon-5PM
Image (top):
Plant No. 12
by Guo Hongwei
watercolour on paper
2012
©Guo Hongwei, courtesy of Fondation Guy & Myriam Ullens, Geneva, Switzerland
Image (centre):
About Family
by Irrelevant Commission
mixed media
2011
©Irrelevant Commission, courtesy of the artists and Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing