The China Project

183 Three Decades: The Contemporary Chinese Collection XU Zhen Since the late 1990s, Xu Zhen has emerged as a radical and innovative artist in the fields of photography, installation and video art. His projects often incorporate elements of performance and draw their inspiration from the history of conceptual art. His recent installation, ShanghART Supermarket (Australia) 2007–08, forms an incisive and humorous comment on the growth of an increasingly consumerist society, both in and outside China. The work explores themes of ongoing interest to Xu Zhen — progress, human desires and motivations, and the significance assigned to certain practices or items within a culture or society. For ShanghART Supermarket (Australia) , Xu Zhen has meticulously reconstructed a typical modern Chinese supermarket, complete with fluorescent lights, shelving so clean and white as to seem almost sterile under the bright lights, and equipped with refrigerators, cash registers and counters. An earlier edition of this work, ShanghART Supermarket 2007, was first exhibited at the Art Basel Miami Beach art fair in 2007 and then in a group exhibition at James Cohan Gallery, New York in 2008. Xu Zhen intends that seven editions of the installation will eventually exist, one for each continent — though he also imagines that not all will be realised, with little demand for the work in Antarctica. In each manifestation, products such as Lipton tea, cigarettes, sweets, Coca-Cola and bottles of beer are organised carefully on the shelves. However, in Xu Zhen’s shop each container or package is empty, containing nothing but air; yet each is for sale in this unusual economy. In the work’s earlier editions, local currency matched Chinese currency on a one-to-one basis — an item sold for one yuan in China was sold for one dollar in the United States, for example. Despite their literally transparent emptiness, customers purchased products by the bagful — condoms and cigarettes proved particularly popular. An essential component of the installation is the transition from being fully stocked to being almost empty. Xu Zhen’s 2007 installation also formed a clever and complex statement about the art world at Art Basel Miami Beach, hinting at both the inflated market prices of, and voracious demand for, contemporary Chinese art. More broadly, these works reflect on the wider notions of value, meaning, economic status and consumer-driven desire. As one commentator wrote: The project raises intriguing questions about the nature of representation, the ownership of image, and the process of production, distribution and audience reception. It addresses notions of authorship, authenticity, fiction and reality . . . While subtly alluding to China’s expanding powers, the store simultaneously reframes the codings of merchandise and artifacts — how objects are translated into cultural exempla, invested with value, and acknowledged by viewers and consumers. 1 endnote 1 Sine Bepler, ‘ShanghART Supermarket – Xu Zhen’, < http://www.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/ texts/id/794>, viewed 26 September 2008. opposite and above ShanghART Supermarket 2007 Installation views, James Cohan Gallery, New York, 2008 / Images courtesy: The artist and James Cohan Gallery, New York