Small productions

Opening: December 23rd, 2008, Tuesday, 18:00
Exhibition dates: December 23rd,2008 to February 15th, 2009, 10:00 – 18:00 (Monday closed)

Shopping Gallery
1/F, Bldg 8, 50 Moganshan Road 200060 Shanghai
T: +86 21 62770903 / F: + 86 21 62771797
E-mail: shoppinggallery2008@gmail.com
www.shoppinggallery.cn

BLOG：http://blog.sina.com.cn/xiaozhizuo














ZHANG QING'S ACTION， some mouse ****











SHI YONG‘'s dander





















LIANG SHAOJI & HIS FAN

Don't stop
Zhang Liaoyuan

Compared with other places, Hangzhou is an enchanting city: humid climate, peaceful environment, sweet people, with three mountains at the back, a developed commercial area, and an easy access to Shanghai. If you live a long time in Hangzhou you will be easily influenced by its mild environment, which is also its default. With the influence of the commercial culture, Hangzhou lost its non-materialistic attitude and the spirit of bravery cannot be found in the historical vestiges anymore. The West lake’s water became the local specialty with food and alcohol, small mountains became huge mattresses and massive towers resembles to toys. Each spring and autumn, the ground feels soft, you can lie on it whenever you want.

If you live here too long you will get crasy, walking in the street you will have the illusion that bombs are falling all around, tearing apart all these delicate pictures. However after a long time, you will notice that this softness’ power is scary, you will soon loose temper. The art circle of Hangzhou is undoubtedly influenced by this, even artists from Shanghai feel awkward after a few days in Hangzhou, this city is too comfortable, if you stay too long problems will occur and you won’t dare to stay. Actually, the art atmosphere of Hangzhou is dense, in the 80s of the last century, Zhang Peili organized the “85 New space” and the “Pool society”, the art circle was well known then. 20 years after, many artists from Hangzhou live in Beijing and Shanghai, they are very influential. Nowadays, there aren’t less artists in Hangzhou than in Shanghai, they are divided into various groups and studios, the shame is that these artists lack of real communication, they hardly meet and don’t collaborate. Following the art market, everyone is only taking care of its own business, fleeing to Shanghai and Beijing, in fact this is not a real problem, but a need resulting from certain circumstances. Artists work with different galleries, therefore circles are different, as well as the environment and the nature of these circles, people don’t focus on the same things anymore, don’t understand each other, you can even distinguish the circles by the way people are dressed, some of them care more about cinema, while others are more interested in visual art, installations, animation films. Their conversation are limited, they talk about equipment, lighting, resources at the most, which is already precious.

There is something itchy in the air of Hangzhou, perhaps it is that people who have been separated too long should be together. In the end of year 2006, the artist Shao Yi came to see me during an exhibition (It’s All Right, contemporary art exhibiion), saying he would like to talk with me. I knew him for a long time already, and was perfectly familiar with his anxious temper, which concorded with my expectations. At that time, in this special atmosphere, there was a certain verve lifting Hangzhou towards the sky, but this kind of enthusiasm was very soon submerged in 2007 by all kind of unlucky experiences. Difficulties were coming from the gap between this impressive year beginning and a great lack of confidence, as well as a lack of imagination….

The conversation showed that what most people were focusing on was the breaking aspect of exhibitions, what would differentiate these activites from others and how to improve their form. Shao Yi proposed to use his studio to organize painting exhibitions. At the end of year 2007 he suggested to use a space of a governmental institution to make an event on June 1st 2008 where artists whould have to solve by themselves their own space and artworks’ presentation. In fact, one can easily guess that the director of an institution is not like a student, you cannot solve problems by sharing a cigarette. Afterwards, after the event Intrude in Shanghai, we progressively gave up this idea, at that time Shao Yi was overwhelmed with work, helpless, and had to deal with many issues. At the beginning the idea, including Couple Exhibition supposed to open at the Binjiang service station for waste trains, vanished in silence.

Also Shao Yi and I were facing a "production fees crisis" related to exhibitions, even though we already obtained support, we couldn't be continuously assisted, in 2007 Shao Yi had to give up many projects due to their expensive costs, and hardly produced any work, although the solo exhibition of 2008 was partly sponsored, it still wasn't enough. At the same time, everyone was talking about working habits issues, production fees became an obstacle and always constituted a headache before an exhibition. There were no working habits between exhibitions, time wasn't calculated according to days, but to exhibitions, a whole year could be reduced to 5 or 10 days, projects and ideas were stoped during period of inactivity, everyone wanted this and didn't want that, everything was said but nothing was done, many interesting ideas weren't realized or even tried to be realized because they were too big, events' past ideas weren't undertook either, the communication was always limited to a few people, cooperations with galleries were also in abeyance, one of the reasons was that most artists didn't really start to work, everyone was waiting because of financial problems. Projects didn't improve, which influenced the situation a lot as collaborations between artists and gallery are usually based on the unceasing improvement of the works, this is the only way of building a confidence relationship, production fees crisis wasn't due to the economy environment, but to a problem of confidence. In fact everyone knows this, artists have difficulties, everyone has its reason, the problem is who will pay the price. What is ridiculous here is: if there weren't galleries in this world, would all the artists stop to work?

During this same period, I met a few times young artists through the organization of the Pierre Huber Creative Prize Nomination Exhibitions, they are a very lively group, also calling themselves Shuangfei art center. They eat, live and play in the famous ‘garbage' district of Hangzhou – the small street of restaurants at Lianzhuang, playing billiards after dinner, they have a certain reputation, like F4, among them Lin Ke is the one who progressed the most. They all moved to Jingjiangyuan, where they live together. They seem free and disconnected but show a lot of enthusiasm in various kind of artistic creations, among them there are some people like Sun Huiyuan, Zhang Lehua who actively participated to the curating and the organization of exhibitions when studying in university, they participated a few times to exhibitions, they learned a lot on the eve of their graduation when attending to lessons given by Shanghai artists Xu Zhen, Yang Zhenzhong and four other teachers. Among them, Li Ming filmed many video in Bingjiang under the support of BizArt, and presented them in a solo exhibition in Shanghai. Lin Ke has been participating to the Shanghai E-Arts Festival since last year, he is also very prominent in technology. Shao Yi and I played a few times billiards with them, they are very “high”, in a noisy environment they can concentrate on playing billiards, Yang Junling even did two works related to billiards, it was shot in the place where we play: a few people covered with soap foam are playing billiards. They help each other to achieve works, being actors once in a while. We all share the same problems, waiting for more hot opportunities, and get more production fees to pay the rental.

One time, we were eating together and talked about past projects and ideas that failed, we agreed that we should organize more activities, the points were:
1. It’s not that there are no good exhibitions in Hangzhou, but there are no exhibition at all, even bad, there are even no activity that people could insult.
2. Everyone care to much about the result, no one is enthusiastic in organizing a common event, afraid of being ashamed, and lack of courage to realize small ideas. They think a lot but don’t do much.
3. There is too much focus on the exhibition itself and not enough on the communication, too much neglect on the possibilities and the energies that could come from this communication.
4. There is no need to choose good works, but have more people participating, give a presentation opportunity to the worst ideas.
5. We wanted smooth exhibitions that actively gather people, like playing billiards.

After dinner, we established a project, the first event "Small productions" was held in Shao Yi's studio, Small productions is a big theme, from the exhibition point of view, it is incomparably crappy, but this kind of "crap" make people feel relaxed, free, everyone is very happy. A crappy personal experience, a crappy confrontation with a fizzy taste which makes it different from a bad exhibition. Soon afterwards, some participants said too much content would reduce the quality of the event, but Shao Yi and I tacitly understood each other, this was the basis, what we wanted was that everyone communicate freely, we didn't want to curate an exhibition. Everyone showed its real mood and presented what they didn't want to show in other exhibitions, they submited it to everyone's eyes.

To make everyone feel comfortable, the second time, Shao Yi proposed xx + barbecue, this is one of the time where there were the biggest amount of people. When the third event "Sale" was organized, communication and experience started to show some results, activity evolved with efficiency, selection of the venue, name of the event, design of the poster, were all realized by Shuang Fei, that evening two other events were planned, "Video fan-tan" and "Self-service". Everyone was excited.

"Don't stop", this is our activities' main request, we force ourselves to produce, think, participate, communicate under pressure, maintining a creating attitude within the limits of the individual resources. There's no good or bad, participants express their ideas in a fast and direct way, without time for doubts.

The show is going on, just wait and see!