Yun-Fei Ji, participating artist
will present a slide lecture on his work
Thursday, November 11, 5:30 p.m.
An opening reception will follow the lecture

Wu Hung, The University of Chicago, will discuss "Contemporaniety in Contemporary Chinese Art"
Monday, November 15, 5:30 p.m.
Sponsored by Brown University's Departments of East Asian Studies and History of Art and Architecture

Following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, decades of isolation and strict cultural restrictions that greatly influenced the production and exhibition of art gave way to a period of remarkable and fast-paced development. Artists began to explore subjects and media that were not associated with communist ideologies and the style of Social Realism. Economic and social reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping opened China to capitalism and western culture, stimulating a rapid succession of non-traditional movements, unofficial and official exhibitions of this new work, and exposure to Western modern and contemporary art.

Regeneration focuses on recent works by twenty-six artists who currently live in China or who received their training and started their careers in China but currently reside in the US. While the work in this survey is diverse and wide-ranging, the artists share numerous thematic and stylistic concerns. Some employ or appropriate traditional Chinese art forms in new ways. Others investigate the significant recent social and cultural transformations occurring in China. All represent the vital and rapid regeneration of contemporary life and culture in China.

The artists included here have come of age over the past twenty-five years. Ai Weiwei, Wenda Gu, Xu Bing, and Zhang Xiaogang--the "elders" of contemporary Chinese art, now in their late 40s--have been prominent in the international scene since the late 1980s. Cai Jin, Hong Hao, Hu Jieming, Lin Tianmiao, Yu Hong, and Zhang Dali have received international attention for their work since the 1990s. Others, including Chen Lingyang, Yun-Fei Ji, Xu Zhen, and Zhou Xiaohu have emerged internationally in the last several years.

Today, in the early twenty-first century, contemporary Chinese artists are fully integrated into the international art scene. They travel and participate in exhibitions around the world and are informed by and contribute to global trends on a level playing field with artists from other countries.

Regeneration was organized by the Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University, and co-curated by Dan Mills and
Xiaoze Xie

The Speakers

Wu Hung is the Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Professor in Chinese Art History and director of the Center for the Art of East Asia at the University of Chicago. A prolific writer on traditional Chinese art, Wu Hung has also played a major role in introducing contemporary Chinese art to the West. He has organized several exhibitions on the topic at the Smart Museum of Art, where he is consulting curator, and was the chief curator of the first Guangzhou Triennial exhibition in 2002. His recent publications on contemporary art include "Chinese Art at the Crossroads: Between Past and Future, Between East and West"; "Rong Rong's East Village"; and with Christopher Phillips "Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China."   

Yun-Fei Ji was born in Beijing in 1963 and currently lives and works in New York. His paintings combine compositional and technical brilliance with expressions of sorrow and melancholy, while conveying an underlying political message. Signs of contemporary life - such as automobiles and stage sets - are mixed with mythological and real figures, and all are hidden within dense and complex landscapes. His work has been shown in one-person exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles and Antwerp. His first traveling solo exhibition, "The Empty City," is currently on view at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Boston. He was included in the Whitney Biennial 2002 and "Open House: Working in Brooklyn" at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (2004), as well as in numerous group exhibitions since 1990.