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URBAN YEARNINGS

Portraits of Contemporary China
by Liu Qinghe, Su Xinping and Zhang Yajie

The Chinese Culture Center, in collaboration with Red Gate Gallery in Beijing, presents an exhibition of contemporary Chinese art. Titled �Urban Yearnings: Portraits of Contemporary China by Liu Qinghe, Su Xinping and Zhang Yajie,� this exhibition of 24 paintings, oils and ink, focuses on the artists visions of cosmopolitan life in a rapidly changing society. The conflicts of a communist state ideology and an essentially capitalistic economy gave rise in the late eighties to art forms that became popular in the nineties, such as Political Pop and Cynical Realism, which were a parody and criticism of political ideas and the growing materialistic middle class.

The psyche of this emerging middle class is a prevalent subject found of the paintings of the three artists in our exhibition. Liu Qinghe, Su Xinping and Zhang Yajie capture the complex emotions experienced by the Chinese in urban areas. Their paintings convey a strong sense of the times by reveling mixed sentiments of alienation, hope, self-mockery, desire, indifference, cynicism, anxiety, and pleasure.

Su Xinping was born in 1960 in Inner Mongolia. He graduated from the Tianjin Institute of Fine Arts and received a Master s Degree in Printmaking from the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing. He is currently the Deputy Head of the Printmaking Department at CAFA. Su has had solo exhibits in China, Australia, the United States and England.

Su is well known for his lithographs. In recent years, he has translated from the print medium to oil his series Sea of Desire, a group of images that depict figures leaping out onto a sea of waving hands in a state of utter abandon or ecstasy. The surrealistic quality gives the images a heightened unreal feeling, hence disconnecting the subject from any contextual reference. Are these images a reflection of the disconnectedness felt by the Chinese in their own surroundings? Or are the images, in some of his prints, of masses of figures mimicking each other, a reflection of the mindlessness of modern man?

Liu Qinghe, born in Tianjin City in 1961, graduated in 1987 from the Folk Art Department of CAFA, where he also earned a Master s Degree in Chinese Painting in 1989. His works have been nominated for several prizes and he has participated in many group shows throughout China. In 1992, he completed a residence program at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, Spain. He is currently a Chinese Painting instructor at CAFA.

Using the traditional medium of ink and color on paper, Liu s works are far from being traditional. His figures possess a grotesque realism. Facial features are exaggerated yet they reveal few emotions. The men and women are depicted in mundane settings while their attire proclaims a comfortable middle class status. This false sense of security is betrayed be a disturbing emotional distance that the viewer can discern between the figures. Grim as it may sound, Liu�s paintings convey a sense of superficiality and banality in this class of people.

Zhang Yajie, born in 1963 in Beijing, graduated from the Department of Printmaking at CAFA in 1984 and currently teaches Photography and Art History at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute. Using merely blacks and grays and whites, he creates portraits of people with identifiable emotions. He manages to capture and express in his oils the idiosyncrasies of an individual�s gestures and facial expressions, some playful, some serious, and some neutral. The figures represent mostly young people one finds on the streets of Beijing. Underneath their casualness and unconventionality is a group of people one can relate to individuals with real problems, yearnings and hopes.

With the boundaries of the world becoming blurry with mass communication and media, Internet access, and a global economy, China strives to achieve balance between the state, the market, and international powers. All these developments have affected the lives of the common Chinese. Artists are looking into how this yet-to-be-reconfigured society affects their private lives and individual choices. Attention is now turned toward the individual, as the three artists in the exhibition have shown us. No doubt China will continue its economic reforms, and more changes will be seen in the coming years. It will be fascinating to observe how contemporary Chinese art develops during this period.

The Chinese Culture Center is across the bridge from Portsmouth Square in Chinatown at 750 Kearny St., Holiday Inn, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94108.

Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Sunday, 10 a.m.- 4 p.m. Admission is free.

(415) 986-1822

Fax: (415) 986-2825

http://www.c-c-c.org

Works by Su Xinping are also included in the Inside Out show now appearing at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art or at http://www.asiasociety.org/arts/insideout

Edited by Kerry Cohen

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