Exhibition View of “Reply, Chinese Contemporary Art of the 1980s & 1990s”
On March 30, 2025, Taikang Art Museum unveiled “Unfinished Time: Chinese Contemporary Art of the 1980s & 1990s” in Beijing. As one of the pioneers of non-profit contemporary Chinese art institutions founded in 2003, Taikang Space was the predecessor of Taikang Art Museum. It focuses on modern Chinese fine arts since the 20th century, contemporary art, and emerging art forms leading into the future, emphasizing a historical approach to viewing, studying, and collecting contemporary art. Organized by Taikang Art Museum and supported by Taikang Insurance Group’s collection, the show features 42 treasured works from the Taikang Collection. It presents the landscape of Chinese contemporary art in the 1980s and 1990s, paying tribute to the pioneers of artistic transformation and, through art, honouring innovators across oil painting, comic strips, photography, video, sculpture, installation, performance, and rare historical books since the beginning of China’s reform and opening-up era.
Exhibition View of “Reply, Chinese Contemporary Art of the 1980s & 1990s”
The exhibition hall of “Unfinished Time: Chinese Contemporary Art of the 1980s & 1990s” is unfolded from the newsstand, retro photo studio, 28-inch bicycle, sewing machine, fake scenery of the Summer Palace, to the posters printed with various retro lifestyle elements on the wall, which feels like returning to a specific era. The exhibition intends to lead us to travel back in time, back to 40 years ago, which was not only the beginning of China’s vigorous economic development in the early days of reform and opening-up, but also the beginning of Chinese contemporary art, with various bold experiments and creativity bursting out in an endless stream.
This exhibition brings together a distinguished group of artists who hold significant positions in the history of Chinese contemporary art: An Ge, Cai Guoqiang, Chen Baosheng, Chen Ren, Chen Shaoxiong, Ding Fang, Duan Jianwei, Geng Jianyi, Haibo, Han Lei, He Duoling, Jiang Zhi, Li Tianyuan, Liu Xiaodong, Liu Ye, Ma Liuming, Shu Qun, Sui Jianguo, Wang Guangyi, Wang Keping, Wang Xingwei, Wei Qimei, Xie Deqing, Xin Dongwang, Xu Jin, Yang Feiyun, Yang Jiecang, Yao Jingcai, You Jindong, Yuan Qingyi, Yuan Yunsheng, Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Haier, Zhang Huan, Zhang Peili, Zhang Xiaogang, Zheng Guogu, and Zhou Chunya, fully reflecting the diversity of artistic expression in Chinese contemporary art during the 1980s and 1990s.
Exhibition View of “Reply, Chinese Contemporary Art of the 1980s & 1990s”
Paying tribute to the cross-time-and-space of art reformers at the turning point of Chinese history, the exhibition did not adopt the traditional narrative unfolding in linear time, but it sought to resonate with the current audience by perceiving and capturing the various subtle emotions lurking in the folds of time. From the moment visitors step into the entrance, a series of emotional keywords on the ground begin to hint them. Since “soothing” at the entrance, the keywords go through the process of being “deep, fluid, joyful, romantic, serene, profound, energetic, warm, tense, solemn, passionate, lyrical”. Each section and arrangement of works revolve around a specific emotion, guiding the audience to follow the ups and downs of the emotional rhythm and attain a more intuitive and emotional understanding of history and the epoch through visual art.
Exhibition View of “Reply, Chinese Contemporary Art of the 1980s & 1990s”
You Jindong, At Middle Age, 1981. Lianhuanhua Manuscript, a set of 73 illustrations on 74 sheets,© TAIKANG COLLECTION
“At Middle Age”, a set of comic strips manuscripts by You Jindong can be found everywhere throughout this exhibition, which shows how the exhibition breaks through the linear historical framework in a specific way. It was adapted from novel of the same name by Chen Rong in 1980, which vividly portrays a couple of intellectuals, who experienced the real survival dilemma and spiritual crisis during the social transformation, thus triggering a deep emotional resonance of that generation. With the changes of emotions in different exhibition halls, the experiences and fates of the two protagonists who are microcosms of ordinary people, also fluctuate.
Auguste Rodin, Small Model of The Thinker (Le Penseur, petit modèle), 1903.
Bronze Sculpture, 30.48 × 43.18 × 45.72 cm
© TAIKANG COLLECTION
The exhibition features two highly symbolic special exhibits: “The Thinker” Miniature by Auguste Rodin and the first edition of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. The former can be taken as a symbol of the ideological enlightenment trend in the 1980s while the latter indicates the specific background of China’s transformation from a planned economy to a market economy and the profound impact this historical process has brought to China’s economy, culture, thought, and even to the art market and creations. It is in the internal tension caused by ideological enlightenment and market vitality that Chinese contemporary art has gone through the 1980s and 1990s.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776. Rare Ancient Edition, 28.7 × 22 cm × 2, © TAIKANG COLLECTION
During those twenty years with both hopes and challenges, the market economy has profoundly changed the Chinese people’s lifestyle and values. The exploration and practices of modernity by artists have also become diversified in the constant tug-of-war between tradition and avant-garde, ideal and reality. Through a “soothing” prelude, a “deep” prologue follows, Yuan Qingyi’s “Spring Has Come” caused a sensation when it was exhibited at the “Exhibition of Chinese Youth Artworks on the Road” in 1985: a young people stands in a simple room with the characteristics of the 1980s, he quietly gazes at the sunlight coming in from the window, and the apples and open books on the table symbolically show the abundant inner world of this poor young man and his hope for the future. “Spring Has Come” does not only indicate the season depicted in the painting, but it is also a concise allegory on the eve of the advent of a new era.
Yuan Qingyi, Spring Has Come, 1984. Oil on Canvas, 170 × 189 cm. © TAIKANG COLLECTION
Xu Jin, Zero Hour, 1985. Oil on Canvas, 200 × 180 cm. © TAIKANG COLLECTION
The “joyful” atmosphere brought by hope is magnified in Yao Jingcai’s hand-colored photography “Longing” and Wei Qimei’s energetic “Morning in the City”. As the creator of the standard photo of Premier Zhou Enlai, Yao Jingcai used silver gelatin print and hand-colored way to present a colored portrait of a woman in ethnic costume. The sincere smile on her face has not lost its appeal to this day. This is an idealistic smile from the past, which is full of longing for a better life in the future. Wei Qimei’s “Morning in the City” presents the enthusiasm and beauty of modernization construction in a simple modern art form.
Yao Jingcai, Longing, 1983. Silver Gelatin Print with Hand Colouring, 29 × 23 cm. © TAIKANG COLLECTION
Wei Qimei, Morning in the City, 1987. Oil on Canvas, 39.5 × 54.5 cm. © TAIKANG COLLECTION
In the chapter of “Fluid”, Chen Shaoxiong’s installation and performance “72.5 Hours of Electricity Consumption” (1992) is a playful set of anthropomorphic metal structures with fluorescent lights linked to electricity meters recording their energy consumption over the allotted time. When the work is lit, the electric meter will continue to record the amount of electricity consumed by the work. With the process of urbanization, new social life and consumption methods are sweeping in, and what disappears and flows in the process may also include the subjectivity that people once believed in. Similar modern myths, appear as a kind of existence wandering on the wasteland in Yuan Yunsheng’s representative work “Loneliness” at the turning point of his oeuvre, as if it has just gone through a fierce self-struggle which becomes difficult to distinguish.
Chen Shaoxiong, 72.5 Hours of Electricity ConsumptionExhibition View of “Reply, Chinese Contemporary Art of the 1980s & 1990s”
In the midst of the drastic changes, there is still no lack of quiet, romantic, joyful and warm daily moments. In 1990, Liu Xiaodong painted his friends in “Proposal” with a sense of movie lens. In this work themed on “love”, the artist applies a simple and natural approach to freeze an important moment in life, and the elusive and thoughtful expressions of the characters in the painting, together with the beams of light that transcend reality in the painting, add a certain symbolic and allegorical meaning to the image. The daily life that was processed by Zhang Xiaogang such as “Big Family” series has become one of the representative creations of Chinese contemporary art. The yellow spots on the faces of the family characters do not only symbolize a past time, but also a collective trauma from the hands of memory.
Liu Xiaodong, Proposal, 1990. Oil on Canvas, 130 × 97 cm. © TAIKANG COLLECTION
An Ge, A Couple by Liuhua Road, Guangzhou, 1986. Silver Gelatin Print, 60.8 × 50.5 cm, © TAIKANG COLLECTION
The “tense” emotion, in the works of these artists, such as Sui Jianguo’s “Structure Series (Marble)”, is manifested as the inevitable complex choices that the creators have to make at various crossroads between the new and the old, the individual and the rules, and the tradition and the future. Here, the artist tries to embed “marble”, a traditional Chinese stone material such as Taihu stone and ornamental stones, into a metal frame that symbolizes modern industry. When these two “irrelevant” materials squeeze and collide with each other in the same work, it is like the collision between tradition and modernity involved by the market economy.
Sui Jianguo, Structure Series (Marble), Exhibition View of “Reply, Chinese Contemporary Art of the 1980s & 1990s”
Like time capsules, the 42 works in this exhibition record the social emotions and cultural atmosphere of the 1980s and 1990s, among which the role of visual media may be more direct. At the end of the exhibition, Jiang Zhi’s “Fly, Fly”(1997) with a black-and-white grainy texture of “home video”, brings the audience back to a simple apartment, following a pair of hands imitating a flying bird, transcending the messy living room, kitchen, bedroom, balcony and the depressing reality, with a firm belief in hope.
Yang Feiyun, Back When We Were Young, 1991. Oil on Canvas, 125 × 115 cm, © TAIKANG COLLECTION
Witnessing the practice of modernity by these artists in the development of China’s market economy, these works are also regarded as emotional media that can awaken visitors’ memory and resonance, providing a perspective to review how people lived, observed, created and thought in that context, and how they thought and imagined the future in complex emotions such as enthusiasm, vitality, tranquility, romance, etc., and this future is exactly where we are now. Based on this, the exhibition does not just reflect some “retro” sentiment, as a matter of fact the exploration of modernity is still ongoing. Many of the questions raised and triggered by Chinese contemporary art practice in the 1980s and 1990s have not yet been answered, which also means that it has not yet reached its end.
Text (CN) by Mengxi, edited (EN) by Sue/CAFA ART INFO.
About the Exhibition
Exhibition Period: March 30 – June 15, 2025
Venue: Taikang Art Museum,
Address: 1st & 2nd Floors, Taikang Group Building, No. 1, Yard 16, Jinghui Street, Chaoyang District, Beijing
Organizer: Taikang Art Museum
Image Courtesy of Taikang Art Museum.
