Saatchi Gallery - The Revolution Continues: New Chinese Art

"He is the most voracious collector of contemporary art, the man who made a whole generation of Young British Artists rich and famous. Now, with an ambitious new website, a major show at the Royal Academy and a gallery opening in Chelsea, Charles Saatchi is back". (Stuart Jeffries for The Guardian) I visited the newly opened Saatchi Gallery in London to see the new Chinese Artists Exhibition. I realize that I like a lot of what Saatchi likes. I describe it as clean art in that it may dip into the current grunge feel, but never excessively. Liu Wei, Love It! Bite It! 2005-2007, made from edible dog chews, dimensions variable This piece was truly incredible to me. It was huge and made entirely from unrolled rawhide dog bones...you know the kind. I can see why it took 2 years to create. Cang Xin, Communication, 2006, Silica gel, Length: 172 cm This piece was fun. It looked as real a person in the gallery as it does in these photos. It is an identical likeness to the artist himself. A London friend told me she took her young son to the show and he lay down beside this one and kept licking the floor too. Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Angel (and 4 details), 2008, Life size sculpture in fibre-reinforced polymer and silica gel Another amazing silicone creation lying haphazardly in the middle of the floor. Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Old Persons Home, 2007, 13 x life size sculptures and 13 x dynamo electric wheel chairs, Dimensions variable. This one was great. There were at least 15 of these rolling slowly around the gallery bumping into things. You could walk amongst them. 

An excerpt from the Saatchi Gallery said: "Sun Yuan and Peng Yu are two of China's most controversial artists, renown for working with extreme materials such as human fat tissue, live animals, and baby cadavers to deal with issues of perception, death, and the human condition. In Old Person's Home Sun & Peng present a shocking scene of an even more grotesque kind. Hilariously wicked, their satirical models of decrepit OAPS look suspiciously familiar to world leaders, long crippled and impotent, left to battle it out in true geriatric style. Placed in electric wheelchairs, the withered, toothless, senile, and drooling, are set on a collision course for harmless ‘skirmish' as they roll about the gallery at snail's pace, crashing into each other at random in a grizzly parody of the U.N.dead." Li Qing, Wedding (There Are Six Differences In The Two Paintings), 2006, Oil on canvas 190 x 275 cm each panel. It was great seeing the young girl and several other children excitedly trying to find the 6 differences in these two pieces. I only found 5 myself. Zhang Dali, Chinese Offspring, 2003-2005, Mixed media: resin mixed with fibreglass, 15 life size cast figures, Average height 170 cm each. According to the artist, immigrant workers who have traveled from the rural areas all over China to earn a living in construction sites in Chinese cities, are the most important members of the Chinese race, who are shaping our physical reality. Yet, they are the faceless crowd who live at the bottom of our society. To cast them in resin is a way to recognize their existence and contribution as well as to capture a fast-changing point of time in the Chinese society. From 2003 to 2005, Zhang has portrayed 100 immigrant workers in life-size resin sculptures of various postures, with a designated number, the artist's signature and the work's title “Chinese Offspring” tattooed onto each of their bodies. They are often hung upside down, indicating the uncertainty of their life and their powerlessness in changing their own fates.