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May 20, 2018

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Pioneers blazing a contemporary art trail

ULI Sigg, one of the leading owners of the world’s largest and most important collection of Chinese contemporary art, was among the first generation of Western collectors.

He came to China in 1979 as a representative of Schindler Co, one of the first major joint ventures. His first-hand knowledge of China led to his appointment as Swiss ambassador to China in the mid-1980s.

Sigg began his collection in 1985 and is said to be the only collector to have witnessed the development of Chinese contemporary art since its infancy.

He visited the studios of many Chinese artists around the country. For many of them, a visit by Sigg and his selection of their work almost became a special recognition of their status as contemporary artists.

Sigg’s collection contains the works of around 350 artists, including Ding Yi, Fang Lijun, Geng Jianyi, Gu Wenda, Huang Yongping, Liu Wei, Wang Guangyi, Xu Bing, Yang Shaobin, Yue Minjun, Yu Youhan, Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Peili and Zhang Xiaogang.

Sigg has donated 1,400 art pieces and sold another five of his artworks to the M+ Museum, which is under construction in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District. He says it will be the “perfect home for his collection.”

Q: How would you describe the contemporary art scene in China from 1995 to 2000?

A: Unique expression within global art, crazily creative.

Q: Do you feel any regret about missing out on some works during that period?

A: Of course. Every collector will miss out some works. You were not with the artist at the right time: You could not agree on a price or, worse, you did not recognize the importance of a piece. No collection on Earth can ever be complete.

Q: At a time when your personal preference might change an artist’s fate, what was the criteria for your selection?

A: I was considering if a specific work would have a place in a “document” as I used to call it in my mind: a document that mirrors the full spectra of the work of Chinese contemporary artists, that mirrors the issues that were of concern to the artists at that time — a document that is sadly missing in all Chinese institutions today.

Q: If you could have said something to yourself in 1995, what would you say?

A: Find someone to lend you 10 million yuan (US$1.5 million) a year: You could have bought up the whole art production of China at that time!

Lorenz Helbling came to Shanghai in 1985 to study Chinese history and film at Fudan University. It was an era when the “new wave” art movement was stirring, but he didn’t take much notice at the time.

It was not until 1992, while he was working at a gallery in Hong Kong, that he was introduced to Chinese art in the oil paintings of Chen Yifei and ink-wash works of Wu Guanzhong. In 1996, he opened ShanghART on the corridor of the then Portman Hotel on Nanjing Road W., which is today the Portman Ritz-Carlton. In 2000, ShanghART was China’s first gallery to participate in Art Basel, one of the most prestigious international art fairs. Today’s leading lights — Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Enli, Zhou Tiehai and Ding Yi — are all ShanghART artists.

Q: When you opened ShanghART at the then Portman Hotel in 1996, were you confident about the future of Chinese contemporary art?

A: Shanghai was a cultural hub with international influences for a big part of its history. When I got here in the mid-1990s, Shanghai didn’t have a gallery for contemporary art, so it only could get better. I didn’t think much more than that.

Q: At that time, everyone involved in the contemporary art circle was short of money, which might mean that most of them could fully focus on art without any outside disturbance. Do you think it was a golden age?

A: Money can have a bad influence, but no money is mostly worse. Looking back it is easy to get nostalgic, but the 1980s and 1990s were not good times for art. Many works got overpainted and even lost since the artists didn’t have money to buy new canvases. Works were thrown away because they could not afford storage, or works didn’t even get created since there was no money for paint. If a work got produced and survived, and is worth a fortune today, it could then only be sold for a penny, and artists emigrated or changed jobs. That is all not good, a loss. I prefer the time today, when artists have a fairer chance to create things and get recognition, although things are still hard enough.

Q: Can you remember the biggest challenge for you from 1995 to 2000 at ShanghART?

A: Paying the rent and other costs while showing challenging art. On a more abstract level it was to get people to look at the artworks. That is, making people forget what they know without getting lost. Contemporary art is always a challenge. Good works become masterpieces only after being around a long time. In the time they are created they are surrounded by doubts and naysayers. It needs open eyes, curiosity and courage to look at them.

Q: Today many top artists come from ShanghART. Some say that’s because of their talents, and some say because of the promotion of ShanghART. What’s your interpretation?

A: Without good art we cannot do anything, without talents all our efforts are useless. But also, I don’t think we have been really good at promoting. Our strength is rather to find good talents and then not to get desperate when things need time.

Q: What are the criteria for ShanghART to select its own artists? It is said that you usually would observe an artist for years. Is that true?

A: Yes, it needs time, courage and curiosity, and an understanding of the time we live in is also helpful.

In the early 1990s, experimental artist Xue Song would never have thought his day would come. At that time, most Chinese people’s tastes stopped at realism or impressionism.

Experimental art was rarely accepted or appreciated.

Xue’s inspiration came in an unusual way. Fire swept through his studio one day in 1990, destroying everything, melting the window glass and leaving only charred scraps of paper and fragments of calligraphy and other works. The scene was so shocking he suddenly realized that this was what painting could not reach and what he had been longing for. As he sat among the ashes, the debris of this life, he had an epiphany. So he picked up burnt fragments — the remains of books, picture albums, his own works and bits of paper — and tried to figure out how to make an image with them.

Xue had found his artistic language: collage made from burnt fragments of everything from pop and political icons to luxury brands and religious figures — all singed and blackened by fire and reassembled to take on new meanings.

Today the acclaimed mixed media artist is sometimes called the “barbecue collage” artist for his use of fire and its multiple meanings.

Q: Do you remember your first exhibition?

A: It was the “Xue Song Painting Exhibition” at the UK Embassy in Beijing in 1992.

Q: Use three adjectives to describe the contemporary art scene in China from 1995 to 2000.

A: Happy, pure and difficult.

Q: Do you agree that contemporary art at that time attracted more attention from the West than the East?

A: Yes, at that time, almost only Westerners were buying China’s contemporary artworks.

Q: Your work was inspired by fire, while in 2017 the Chinese artists at the Venice Biennale also encountered a big fire. Do you think there is a hidden connection between fire and China’s contemporary art?

A: True, it happened that fire came to my creations, and it was a purely personal experience, and I always treat it as a kind of fate.

Q: What message did you want to express through your works at that time?

A: At that time I was young, I wanted to try everything and dared to try. What I created had some uncertain attraction to me. I didn’t know what the final result was, and it was a stimulating yet exciting process.

For most people, traditional ink-wash paintings are stereotypical scenes of mountains, lakes, flowers and birds.

Shanghai-born Wu Yiming was one of the pioneers in changing conventional thinking about ink-wash and pushing its boundaries.

Unlike his peers, Wu didn’t change the traditional arrangement of the tableau of ink-wash paintings that has been followed for centuries, but broke the rules of the painting techniques taught by academic schools and drew inspiration from Western painting such as realism, abstractionism and expressionism.

In his eyes, ink-wash on rice paper is only a medium to convey what he wants to express. Apart from ink and wash he uses water color and acrylic paint together in layers.

His depiction of Chinese maids and officials aroused controversy because they have no facial features, which was very rare. Such controversy led to some people expelling him from ink-wash painting circles.

“I knew there must be some negative voices at the beginning, because they were not the familiar images that were pleasing to the eyes,” he said.

“But I didn’t care, because at least I was not repeating. And it reflects my new thoughts and ideas at the present era.”

Q: As one of the pioneers of experimental ink-wash paintings, did you feel you would be following a lonely path? Did you ever hesitate?

A: Every experimental practice leads to a lonely path, sometimes for someone’s entire life. Van Gogh, for example, whose achievements were only recognized after his death. But today we are surrounded by an explosion of information, and I think that a genius like Van Gogh could never be neglected. The risk in experiment lies in poor results, but sometimes you never know whether it might bring you to another “brighter world.”

Q: What was your life like from 1995 to 2000?

A: I was a teacher during that period, and I rented a studio in the Shanghai suburbs. At that time, there were some people who shared the same ideals and would create their artworks in a farmer’s house they could rent cheaply.

Q: At that time, contemporary art was not in the mainstream. How did you get your art known?

A: Yes, only a few friends in the art community knew that I was doing experimental ink-wash paintings. It was not until 1997 when I met Lorenz (Helbling) at ShanghART that I began to display my artworks at the Portman Hotel. At that time, there was no professional contemporary art gallery in the city, let alone any trade in the paintings.

Q: Can you describe the contemporary art scene then in three words?

A: Risky, ideal and pure.

Q: If you could turn the clock back two decades, what would you tell yourself?

A: It is not enough to have passion. You might learn more things with an open attitude.

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