Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century

February 18, 1999 - April 18, 1999

This groundbreaking exhibition documented major trends in current Chinese experimental art (shiyan meishu), which is characterized by a strong desire to explore new territories in artistic expression. The twenty-one featured artists come from different parts of mainland China or are living abroad in Europe and the United States, and their styles and modes of expression vary. These artists work primarily for a domestic audience, and they respond directly to China’s complex, rapidly changing culture. Many of these artists derive materials, technique, and concepts from both western and traditional Chinese aesthetics. Their pathbreaking experiments thus address the relationship between regionality and globalization in contemporary art, and demonstrate convincingly how originality can be constituted by combining an Asian art tradition with artistic internationalism. Transience explored these issues through paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos, and installations presented in three thematically linked sections: “Demystification,” “Ruins,” and “Transience.”

Curator: Wu Hung, Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor in Chinese Art History, University of Chicago with assistance from Smart Associate Curator Courtenay Smith.

Catalogue: The exhibition was accompanied by a color catalogue written by Wu Hung, with contributions from Kris Ercums, Curatorial Intern and Ph.D. candidate in art history at the University of Chicago; available for purchase.

The exhibition was funded through the generosity of the Smart Family foundation, Inc., the Lannan Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation, with the support and encouragement of Mrs. Beatrice Cummings Mayer, Mary and Roy Cullen, and the John Nuveen Company. Following its presentation in Chicago, Transience traveled to the University of Oregon Museum of Art in Eugene, Oregon and the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.

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