(C) Chi Peng

Chi Peng, "Sprinting Forward 2" (2004). C-print, 47¼ x 59¾ in.

November 2009 Field Guide

Oleg Kulik

Robin Rhode and Leif Ove Andsnes

James Turrell

Omer Fast

Bill Viola

Federico Fellini

Alfred Leslie

Francis Alys Luc Tuymans Ai Weiwei Wim Delvoye Chi Peng Thriving Arts Districts Threatened With Demolition in Beijing Ai Weiwei Won’t Appear at Frankfurt Book Fair Urban Studies

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In 1961, Queen Elisabeth of Belgium visited China, cementing a friendship between the small European country and the Asian behemoth. Since then, China has become a notable force in the art world — where works by artists like Ai Weiwei are coveted by collectors — and Belgium’s capital, Brussels, has turned into an important center for contemporary art, developing internationally renowned artists like Luc Tuymans. Throughout these changes, the countries have remained close cultural allies. One fruit of their relationship is the new show at the Center for Fine Arts in Brussels, "The State of Things: Brussels/Beijing." Curators Ai and Tuymans picked 50 artists from their home countries — including Francis Alÿs, Zhou Xiahu, Gert Verhoeven, and Wang Xingwei — to raise questions about the hype surrounding the ascendancy of Chinese contemporary art and Europe’s diminished preeminence in the art world. Although the show’s title suggests an inherent dichotomy between East and West, the struggle to construct (or deconstruct) national identities is a unifying thread. For photographer Chi Peng, China is exuberant and urban, eager to flee its past for a more capitalistic future, much as a group of naked Chinese youths run from an onslaught of small red planes on a busy street in his 2004 work Sprinting Forward 2. In Twisted Jezus 300 (2009), Wim Delvoye contorts a bronze sculpture of Jesus to the point of abstraction — playing with transfiguring the religious and realist traditions of Flemish medieval and Renaissance art and thus suggesting a modern worldview in which sanctity and profanity are one.

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"The State of Things: Brussels/Beijing / Center for Fine Arts" originally appeared in the November 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' November 2009 Table of Contents.