Hou Hanru - Böcker

A leading female sculptor and figure in Chinese contemporary art, Yin Xiuzhen (b. 1963, Beijing, China) began her career in the early 1990s following her graduation from Capital Normal University in Beijing where she received a B.A. from the Fine Arts Department in 1989. Best known for her works that incorporate second-hand objects, Yin uses her artwork to explore modern issues of globalization and homogenization. By utilizing recycled materials such as sculptural documents of memory, she seeks to personalize objects and allude to the lives of specific individuals, which are often neglected in the drive toward excessive urbanization, rapid modern development and the growing global economy. The artist explains, "In a rapidly changing China, 'memory' seems to vanish more quickly than everything else. That's why preserving memory has become an alternative way of life."

Surveys experimental art in China between the years 1989 and 2008. Published on the occasion of the largest exhibition of contemporary art from China ever mounted in North America, organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World explores recent experimental art from what is arguably the most transformative period of modern Chinese and recent world history. Featuring over 150 iconic and lesser-known artworks by more than 70 artists and collectives, this catalogue offers an interpretative survey of Chinese experimental art framed by the geopolitical dynamics attending the end of the Cold War, the spread of globalization, and the rise of China. Critical essays explore how Chinese artists have been both agents and skeptics of China’s arrival as a global presence, while an extensive entry section offers detailed analysis on works made in a broad range of experimental mediums, including film and video, ink, installation, Land art, performance, as well as painting and photography. In addition, an appendix includes a selected history of contemporary art exhibitions in China, biographies of featured artists, and a bibliography.

The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative presents Tales of Our Time, an exhibition and accompanying catalogue of commissioned works by seven artists based in mainland China, Hong Kong or Taiwan. The exhibition’s title is inspired by Lu Xun’s Old Tales Retold, a 1930s collection of short stories that use narrative and myth to comment on times of political and social upheaval. Working in a range of mediums, including video, sculpture, installation, mixed media on paper and participatory performance, these artists are unified by their distinctive and independent practices that poetically balance politics and aesthetics. The exhibition offers a heterogeneous view of contemporary art from China and highlights tensions between individual narratives and the constructions of mainstream history. The catalogue serves as a key conceptual extension of the exhibition, functioning as a hybrid of a traditional art exhibition publication and a fiction collection. Featuring two scholarly essays, artwork descriptions and artist biographies, this volume presents an unconventional examination of the artists whose practices actively reposition and challenge current dialogues about Chinese art. In seven commissioned short stories, Chinese and American writers explore contemporary society through the art of storytelling.

Catalogues the third and final exhibition of the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative at the Solomon R. Guggenhem Museum, New York.The culmination of an ambitious multi-year commissioning and collection building initiative at the Guggenheim Museum, One Hand Clapping asks five artists from Greater China – Cao Fei, Duan Jianyu, Lin Yilin, Wong Ping and Samson Young – to investigate our changing relationships to visions of the future. From a film shot at the automated industrial facilities of mainland China to a virtual reality intervention into the Guggenheim’s iconic rotunda atrium and musical compositions for imaginary instruments that defy the laws of physics, their works identify the reflexive, poetic spaces that both escape and exist alongside the homogenizing logic of globalization.This bilingual catalogue is conceived as a critical component in the thinking and production of the exhibition. In addition to essays by the exhibition’s organizers, Xiaoyu Weng and Hou Hanru, it includes a theoretical text on technology and culture by the philosopher Yuk Hui, selected poems by millennial poets, and special sections presenting materials related to the commissioning process for each of the participating artists.