Phoenix in the Desert Sand | Ordos Art Museum ( de )

artnet 2008-01-25

With the opening of the Ordos Art Museum in Inner Mongolia, the Ordos 100 urban development project is getting underway.

The speed that China shows in disposing of its historically invaluable architectonic testimonials has been discussed all over the world, in particular when considering the rather insensitive preparations to the Olympic Games that will take place in Beijing this summer. It is at a similar now-or-never pace that whole cities grow out of nowhere. During the next few months, this sort of thing can be watched happening at Ordos, a Mongolian desert town rich in natural resources, where up to one hundred international architects—under the patronage of Ai Weiwei—have been invited to hand in their proposals for the Ordos 100 urban planning project. A preliminary hurdle has just been cleared: the Ordos Art Museum opened on 26 August 2007. The current exhibition Arrogance and Romance there, organized by Berlin gallery owner Alexander Ochs and his partner Tian Yuan, will continue until 26 February 2008.

What was once just sand, now has a museum towering above the plains. We are in Ordos, the second-largest city of Inner Mongolia, two hours by plane from Beijing. Despite the bright sunlight and a clear blue sky an icy wind takes our breath away. The glass swing door of the Ordos Art Museum turns the wide dry grasslands into a natural backdrop. Inside, the big city inhabitants and art tourists meet them all again: the well-known Chinese favorites, names like Xu Bing, Fang Lijun, Wang Guangyi, Miao Xiaochun and Cai Guoqiang.

The wonderfully weightless rice paper wave by Zhu Jinshi gives us a cheerful feeling, and the several meters of flower frieze by Wang Yin is a compensation for the inhospitable wintry desert landscape that stretches around the path up to the museum. A narrow walkway leads down to the lower floor which is also bathed in daylight and houses the real surprises. Taking a turn to the left, you are in a rather low and relatively small side wing. Already on the upper floor, a few pieces by Western artists such as Andy Warhol, Jörg Immendorf or Stephan Balkenhol joined themselves to their Chinese contemporaries. The works in here, however, defy any national or regional attribution. The wood sculptures by the window are reminiscent of African art, the long frieze makes you think of Matisse, or even of Picasso’s Les Baigneuses—no no no, all wrong. And then there is this demoniac Jesus with a crown of thorns. Who is this artist that enthralls the viewer so completely? Get that catalogue, and—you don’t say!—it’s a Chinese name: Feng Guodong, born in Guangdong province in 1948 and—curiosity blends with sadness – deceased in 2005.

How we would have loved to talk to Feng Guodong, to find out who is behind such a global world of images. The sparse bio in the catalogue does away with the assumption that he might have been a well-traveled person—which would have been highly exotic anyway before China’s opening up at the end of the 1970s. One look at the dates of his pieces, they were all made in 1979, makes this a moot point. We learn that there has not been a single catalogue on Feng Guodong but that the museum keeps good relations with the artist’s son and he is the one who looks after the estate. Unfortunately the time is too short for a meeting this time, but it is the first New Year’s resolution for 2008.

Already the two-day trip to get here from Germany is worth it. But there is another surprise waiting in a white cube of about four square meters. Now Mongolia is no longer outside the huge panorama windows but the subject of the paintings by Tuo Musi (born in Tumotezuo, Inner Mongolia in 1932). What is shown in oils on canvas here is everyday life, as the direction of movement of the horses in Light up Cigarette (1981) indicates that these two male riders met in the desert by accident and now enjoy the relaxedness of a shared smoke. Scenery (1957) even takes us into pre-revolutionary China. But how did this selection of works come about?

The initiative for Arrogance and Romance stemmed from a Mongolian art lover—he expressly wishes to remain unnamed—who lent his collection for the exhibition. In his house, the works of a second Mongolian painter bear witness of his close ties to the nomad life which today is hardly seen any more in Mongolia. “Yes”, he indeed grew up in a yurt himself, though he won’t reveal any more of his inner world. “Right”, the powerful colors in the paintings by Bo Asibagen (born in 1961 in Xilinguole, Inner Mongolia), whether they show nature, animals or persons, are unique. All of them are painted from worm’s-eye view and show men, frequently mounted on strong horses, in an archaic dignity. The collector is reluctant to talk much about art but he takes us to a nearby restaurant that has more pieces by Bo Asibagen hanging on its walls. We learn that the artist is one of the collector’s friends. As the exhibition schedule of Ordos Art Museum for 2009 shows, they are planning a show of Mongolian art for January next year. Bo Asibagen will be among the artists on display.

“So far the Chinese contemporary art scene was a terrain entirely dominated by the Han ethnic majority. Now for the first time China’s minorities are coming into play as well. This also means that new geographical areas are being developed for the ‘map of art’”, as the renowned philosopher and art critic Wang Minan says in a Chinese art magazine on the importance of the privately funded but officially sponsored (by the city administration) Ordos Art Museum. In particular non-Chinese visitors see this as a valuable asset, as it shows that both in form and content contemporary Chinese art holds even more riches to discover.

Addendum: Back in Beijing, a visit at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art confirms our appraisal of Feng Guodong’s work as being an important contribution from an art history point of view: the documentary part of the exhibition 85 New Wave. The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art has a most noteworthy timeline on the historical evolution of recent Chinese art, reproducing a picture of the oil-on-canvas frieze People at Leisure . Commentary: „The series Comfortable People 1 of large paintings by Feng Guodong is the first time for abstract paintings to appear in official public art exhibition.”

1 This refers to the painting displayed at Ordos Art Museum under the title People at Leisure. There are merely two diverging translations of the Chinese title. (Author’s note.)

Translation: Werner Richter