Huang Yong Ping opening at Ullens

I recently attended the opening for Huang Yong Ping, a Chinese born French artist based in Paris. His solo retrospective is also his first major exhibition in China. The exhibition, "House of Oracles" is a traveling show organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneaopolis, where the show opened in Oct 2005 (I published an interview with him in Yishu). From there it traveled to MASS MoCA and, eventually here to the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing. Huang is one of the founding members of Xiamen dada group that was active in the early 80s in Fujian province, and is widely recognized as one of the most innovative artists of his generation. As expected, the opening was a somewhat glamorous affair, though the sit-down dinner for 80 was termed "intimate" by a UCCA staffer (this is in comparison to their UCCA grand opening which featured 600 person dinner).

 
swank dinner catered by The Peninsula of all places

 
Releasing the animals in "Theatre of the World" at public opening. "Theatre of the World" houses several different kinds of cold-blooded animals (snakes, lizards, spiders, scorpions, beetles) in an turtle shaped container with a separate compartments and a central arena-like space. The idea is that over the length of the show the animals will fight and eat one another (leaving one victorious), thus mirroring the national struggles for power we witness daily on political and cultural levels.

 

Installation view