You can safely assume the Beijing Olympic Committee had nothing to do with "Avant-garde China: 20 years of Chinese Contemporary Art," an earnest attempt to present a bite-size overview of contemporary Chinese art. Due to the nature of China's tightly managed "re-opening," most recent Chinese art has been personal statements about an ongoing process of social change that is complex and often traumatic.
The curators of "Avant-garde China," showing at the National Art Center till Oct. 20, uses contemporary art's typical lack of decorum to recalibrate our image of China's recent past. The exhibition features 50-odd works by over a dozen artists and groups, presented as a 20-year overview that starts in the late 1980s. These are divided into sections, with brief explanations of the historical context of each period, punctuated with historical reference materials, such as artists' notes, manifestos and ephemera from the early years of Chinese contemporary art.
Big name painters such as Zhang Xiao Gang and Fang Li Jun — whose works now sell for millions of dollars — are well represented, no doubt providing the first chance for many to see the actual paintings behind their hype. Both established themselves in the mid-90s amid the sensitive post-Tiananmen Massacre atmosphere that put direct pressure on contemporary artists. Their ambiguous tableaux — the melancholy calm of Zhang's families and Fang's sardonic laughing man — reflect the precarious nature of personal histories when confronting new social values.