798 / MAP OFFICE

798 ART FACTORY ™

Summer or winter in Beijing, in aimless wandering or agitated study, persists the feeling of the city’s underlying unreality, stretching the experience between a fascination for the coming next and nostalgia of what it was. Beijing intrigues because it bears all the traces of modern history, especially that of the 20th century, from the end of the imperial era, to the Stalinist period, until recent capitalist wave celebrated through the coming Olympic Games. And all those different regimes imprinted the city with images and icons of their own power. Experiencing most of those various transformation, 798 is now part of a process in which the urban project is serving as a support for investment as well as a tool to define China’s new identity. An old military production complex, a centre of art for a growing community, it is foreseeable that the next step will swallow both former conditions into what we have named 798 ART FACTORY ™.

After New York and Berlin, Beijing is now becoming the new centre of the contemporary art. But what kind of artistic ground is provided? Remember New York in the 1960s and 1970s, when groups or artists in need for large, cheap, well lighted spaces of production appropriated an unattractive zone of city. SoHo was the result of a deep crisis and a poor economy of New York City during that time. The neighbourhood became world famous for its “hip” energy, until the 1990s when new market prices pushed the artists to leave galleries, boutiques and restaurants to young urban professionals – yuppies (early version of the “bobos”). That’s when Berlin suddenly resurfaced, after 40 years of separation and split identity. All of a sudden, the city reverted to the status of an open and attractive metropolis, yet precipitating Berlin into a crisis situation it was not prepared for. Heritage, memory and cultural references were transformed in singular iconic fragments, yet living space for an alternative scene to emerge in between.

Now, remember Beijing in the same period. Following economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping, the central government decided to disengage its support for state-owned factories. As the haste of liberalism swept aside the beneficial slow development imposed by preceding decades, large industrial complex became once more a temporary cheap option to be appropriated by the cultural groups. But major difference here is that Beijing’s hunger for spaces and development opportunities somehow obliged this new sector to grow along the same ascending line than the real estate market. Starting from the beginning, art production and property consumption shared the same desire of moving up together. Therefore 798 ART FACTORY ™ is an imposed product of this double success, in line with both China’s rapid economic growth and aspiration of global art market.

Established in the nineties by a collection of individuals, 798 was rapidly taken over by an art market spiralling upwards. A space under the spotlight, the former factory is now operating like a fast engine, well oiled – with both the complicity of the international auction houses and the private dealers. Now that culture is one of China’s official pillars of its global representation, the cynical or social realist painters became its best ambassadors. Easy to understand, easy to copy, printed on T-shirts and mugs, the “Made by Chinese” is served to the people. Everybody loves it, but will everybody get a piece of it? In line with Beijing real estate boom, it seems that art is now a key element of the package for nouveau riche: As clearly started in newest China Art Book, “After buying houses and cars the members of these new wealthy social classes are quite ready to spend their money on art both for refinement and as a cultural boost to their social status.” (1) That simple fact can explain recent competition between buyers, not only investing for the love of art but it using as guaranteed PR cover in the media. And this cultural snobbery now find its apex with more than a hundred plans to open private museums in the country. But when the first ones (houses and cars) are mass-produced, how can the art market satisfy an ever-increasing demand for Chinese icons?

In the absence of a sense of value, a sub-market recently started to catch the attention of the media. Obviously, 798 has a new competitor. Today, the most popular place in the South of China is Dafen village in Shenzhen. Promoting the inter-relation between the production of art (fabrication) and the artistic production (creation), this “village manufacturing art” became itself a well-known cultural brand. Everyday the art village is crowded with visitors, artists, curators, and museum directors from all over the world; and all have a good reason to visit this new phenomenon. Like the other successful industry in this region, the oil painting has been clearly divided in four categories: creation, imitation, collection and export. Basically, here you know what you get. With some 700 galleries and over 5.000 artists in the village, Dafen aims to develop a reputation and set up a merit system like a “star-making machines”. One can spot a slogan high up on a building: “Here art merges with market; talent brings wealth.” Recently, the local government even engaged painting competitions to win a hukou permit, if not wealthy yet, here at least the artist gets a status!

Although most of the work is done outside the village, visitors enjoy seeing the painting process and it is the major feature of the tour. Along the high-speed line of specialized activities, they discover mono-talented artists painting only skies or seas, animals or Mona Lisa’s smiles, doing the outline, filling up with colors, cutting fabric, and mounting it on wooden frame. Mixing original works and copies of masterpieces, Dafen operates like a giant factory for the mass reproduction of art. And this is just the visible part of an ever deeper iceberg. Producing and selling, China’s biggest oil painting supermarket is rapidly becoming the only serious response to the current art frenzy.

Back to Beijing, many noticed the development of a similar sub market. If you want to find out who is in the top 5 Chinese artist bandwagon, better to visit Pan Jia Yuan market and many art boutiques in 798. As a matter of fact, the demand for reproduction is experiencing a bubble on its own, and this goes along the theory of the fake in general (2). The fake is a symptom addressing some discrepancies of an ineluctable global order, and somehow a warning that something is wrong. While the auction room continues to command the system of value of the Chinese Art market (3), the replicas can offer us a counter value and fulfill our desire for art consumption. Since quite a while everybody accepted the idea that artists are the smallest fraction of this explosive phenomenon. And in this configuration, it is manifest that mass-produced contemporary art will grow along with the number of new cars and houses.

While commercial activities continue to flourish in 798, alternative invisible spaces have being recently engaged in another form of cultural production/promotion. Various kinds of collaboration are starting to emerge in different locations – mainly private homes or offices – involving a horizontal hierarchy between the initiator, the producer and the public. As an extension of Get it Louder 2007, main curator Ou Ning set up a series of “Homeshow” to promote the work of China’s young and underground artists and designers. Home, as an alternative exhibition space, is a strategy he already experienced at Map Office’s roof top in 2004, with the first screening of San Yuan Li in Hong Kong (4). Learning from this private exhibition/projection format, he was encouraged to set up an efficient counter platform to the fashionable market. In some way remembering the clandestine meetings of the old time, the young creative industry is now facing the censorship from new global standards and official public sphere. In the case of Get it Louder, the main design exhibitions were hosted in shopping malls or real estate clubhouses, while a non-commercial counterpart took the form of a guerrilla event space at home (5). By means of this principle, the conventions between the public and the private find new ways of appropriation and extension.

Temporary exhibitions and performances can happen with a maximum intensity and be realized practically without financial means. Also to bring the art at home includes that the show will last no longer than it is needed. Though to do this, the process becomes part of the experience: “Let’s cook a show together!”. First, erase art into the system. When no more transaction, reduce the distance between production and exhibition. Over the course, if you are in the right place at the right time, you can get pretty good food. So get ready to transform your home in a museum. 798 ART FACTORY ™ will become the heart of a new lifestyle: enjoy the meal, we will cook more for you…. Already combining property market and art market in the same location, the former weapon factory will reactivate production lines for the public. More art in your home and more industrially produced work to exhibit privately will make 798 ART FACTORY ™ again at the avant-garde of artistic development.

(1) Birgit Hopfener, “In the middle of the goldrush”, China Art Book, Koln, Dumont, 2007.
(2) Ackbar Abbas, “Theory of the fake” in HK LAB, Hong Kong, Map Book Publishers, 2002.
(3) Michael Hue-Williams, “The auction houses are distorting our understanding of Chinese art”, The Art Newspaper, Issue 187, 24.1.08.
(4) Cao Fei and Ou Ning, San Yuan Li, Screening and book launch, Map Office, Hong Kong, 2004.
(5) Ou Ning, Everyone is a curator, 2007 1