1989-2000 :Chinese Contemporary Art As Promoted By Curation

The study upon curation and its context in the development of Chinese Contemporary Art has come to constitute a crucial role in Chinese Contemporary Art history.Art exhibitions being a fundamental symbol of art modernity,modern art history may be considered as a parallel history of modern art exhibitions.Their establishment demarcated the self-revelatory function within the public field,whereas the act of curation has been raised in response to the system itself.The emergence of curation and curators have proven to be an important phenomenon within the field of Chinese Contemporary Art from the late 80’s of the last century,which marked the collective rise of a new generation of critics in China.Equally the evolution from new wave art movements within the official system of the 1980 s to that of an experimental avant-gardism beyond the parameters of the system came to occur,approaching a culturally constructed dualistic resistance that not only created a domestic space for discourse,yet had become a counter-culture juxtaposed against the predominant cultural conservatism.Simultaneously,while directed against international exhibitions which prioritized Eurocentric or western discourse,it further evolved as an indigenous mechanism in rivalry of post-colonial exhibition stratagem.This essay,in basis of a decades curatorial case studies from 1989 to 2000 as its central topic of objective research,combining modern and contemporary Chinese art history,art criticism and theory,and by employing new historicism research techniques in reference to the analysis of historical text.Through an analytical evaluation and description of curation and the curator’s thoughts and activities within a specific historical context,the essay indicates the altered cultural context and relative power dynamic accompanied by changing art concepts during the act of curation.The essay is divided into six chapters,investigating the original concept of curation,making a contrastive analysis between Chinese and Western independent curators,and the changing context of curation.Focusing on the cause and effect behind the transformation of contemporary Chinese art criticism to curatorial activity,a stratified discussion on institutional and independent curators’ influence upon the exhibition system with their different cultural identities is intended.Moreover,ten actual representative exhibition case studies of Chinese Contemporary Art of the last decade of the 20 th century have been enacted upon as an initiative for the textual research.An accurate analytical examination of the curators’ central idea with the contextual logic of mutual influence of that era,examining the changing cultural power relationships existent between representational exhibitions and the ideological discourse of curators and artists.Rendered distinct,the resolution of convergent influences and awareness contributing to the direction of Chinese Contemporary Art brought about by several distinct major exhibitions such as Chinese Modern Art Exhibition from a curatorial perspective arises.Thus,the research further confirms the core impetus of curation,as a cultural and ideological action,hence an active agent in promoting the development of Chinese art in the 21 st century.