Review: Our Future, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art

Despite the bloody fistfight that marred its opening, UCCA’s (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art) new exhibition, Our Future (which runs until October 12), is well deserving of the spotlight. The show is a testament to the massive size of the UCCA exhibition hall – there is probably nowhere else in 798 that can display more than 90 works at once – and attests to the impressive diversity of the Guy and Myriam Ullens collection, which includes Chinese contemporary art works from the last few decades, ranging from the late oil painter Chen Yifei’s works to emerging female artist Cao Fei’s Second Life project.

Wire No.2 by Taiwan artist (and Arts Mundi candidate) Wu-Chi Tsung is one of the most engrossing pieces in the show: Light is projected on wire mesh and then shone through a moving lens onto a wall – a simple mechanism that creates a minimalist landscape devoid of presupposed aesthetic concepts (in other words, it’s simply cool to look at).

After fascinating audiences in Venice Biennale with her Second Life persona “China Tracy,” Cao Fei constructs her Second Life venue called RMB: City. Though it’s hard to say if the piece with its floating Chinese icons is just another example of stereotypical symbols arranged in an artsy way, it’s fun to look at nevertheless.

Apart from paintings and the aforementioned video/digital media works, installations are highlights of the show, if only just for their sheer scale. Two examples are Yin Xiuzhen’s Introspective Cavity, a tent like structure made of pink old clothing, and Wang Du’s Space-Time Tunnel, a tunnel that nestles a staircase and slide inside that allows viewers to slide into the gallery’s main hall. Yin’s work purportedly has Freudian overtones (i.e. illustrating the desire to go back into the uterus), but in the humble opinion of your correspondent (sans psychology degree), the piece looks more suitable for a nightclub.

Since opening last fall, the center has consistently claimed that they are a “non-profit” organization, perhaps due to its regular schedule of academic seminars and educational programs. But considering this particular exhibition’s title, it’s hard not to posit the gallery’s future – a recent report in the UK-based publication The Art Newspaper alleges that UCCA has changed its financial plan and moved its original goal to break-even by 2013 to the more ambitious target date of 2010, which means the center now has to make 6-million euros in each of the next two years to recoup their investment.

This shift of financial focus was perhaps the reason why four out of its five high-ranking employees (Fei Dawei, Colin Chinnery, Julien Chandet and Virginia Ibbott) left, and time will tell if the center can manage to sell enough pieces (not to mention the RMB 45,000 plastic dinosaurs for sale in their souvenir shop) to reach that target.

Links and Sources
Shanghaieye: Our Future - a preview of the major new show at UCCA in Beijing
http://www.shanghaieye.net/english/?p=1558
UCCA homepage
http://ucca.org.cn/portal/home/index.798?lang=en and menuId=0
RMB City, A Second Life City Planning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MhfATPZA0g
Press Release for “Our Future” http://ucca.org.cn/portal/exhibition/view.798?id=5〈=en&menuId=20
The Art Newspaper: What is going on at the Ullens Center in Beijing?
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article.asp?id=7990
Image source: ucca.org.net
http://ucca.org.cn/portal/home/index.798?lang=en&menuId=0