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‘Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World’ opens at SFMOMA

Cao Fei, RMB City: A Second Life City Planning by China Tracy

Cao Fei, RMB City: A Second Life City Planning by China Tracy (aka: Cao Fei), 2007; color video, with sound, 6 min. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; © Cao Fei.

‘Art and China after 1989’ at SFMOMA ‘Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World’ presents an extensive survey of an historical period of Chinese contemporary art. SFMOMA, San Francisco, November 10, 2018–February 24, 2019.]]>

Source: SFMOMA

Featuring the work of more than 60 key artists and artist groups living in China and abroad during the onset of globalization, Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World presents over 100 works of photography, film, video, painting, sculpture, ink, performance, installations and participatory social projects. These works from private and public collections around the world are displayed in six thematic chapters that fill SFMOMA’s seventh-floor contemporary galleries.

Visitors have their first encounter with “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World” upon entering the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Atrium off the museum’s Third Street entrance. There, artist Chen Zhen’s dramatic “Precipitous Parturition” (2000), an 85-foot long writhing dragon sculpture created from found materials including bicycle inner tubes, bicycle parts and toy cars will be displayed suspended from the ceiling. The work offers a sly commentary on China’s dramatic transition from an analog nation of bicycles into a highly industrialized nation whose cars emerge from the belly of the dragon.

SFMOMA has a long history of presenting exhibitions of important contemporary Chinese artists. The museum organized “Inside Out: Chinese Art in 1999” — the first exhibition in the United States dedicated to featuring works created since 1986 by artists from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong as well as artists who emigrated from China. It has also presented “Half-Life of a Dream: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Logan Collection” (2008) and “Photography Now: China, Japan, Korea” (2009).

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Chinese art after 1989 at the Guggenheim (exhibition, 2017)

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‘Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World’ opens at SFMOMA