Shanghai Residency

At Art021 (an international art fair at the NIB Building in Shanghai), Art Review Asia provided a counterpoint to the city library’s motif that “Knowledge is Power” – their posters loudly proclaimed: “Power Eats the Soul”. Although I don’t believe in souls, I think I understand what they are getting at – the urge to power fundamentally corrodes. OK. But what is such a statement doing here in the midst of what is, given the numbers of red dots everywhere, a highly commercially successful art fair? To whom is this statement addressed? Why is it in English? Is it a cheeky swipe at rich and powerful collectors? Is it sarcasm? Is it a call to arms? No. It’s just a lazy advert!

There are 5 floors of art in the NIB building. It is a shame that the 1940s architecture has been hidden away behind the usual white plasterboard and polite vinyl lettering – none of the work shown really has a chance to zing, but then this is a fair, the point is to sell work to people with big clean walls, not to impress scruffy foreign artists like me.

On the whole, the work is small-scale and safe (which makes sense for selling purposes). Painting is abundant. Much of the work is decorative or illustrative so doesn’t particularly command my attention. However, there are pieces here and there that are about more than the fact of their material presence: a porcelain sculpture from Beijing Commune artist Lu Jianhua; a horrible but compelling video of ducks yoked together in a push-me-pull-you configuration and the odd painting that is not merely pretty, such as Chen Liangjie’s Blue Box. There’s also a lovely Olafur Eliasson glass piece, but its presentation is a bit limp.

On my way out I bump into Lu Di who used to be at Rogue Studios a couple of years ago! I can’t believe that I have travelled to the other side of the world, to a city with 23 million people in it and I meet someone I know from Manchester. Meeting him makes me realise why I haven’t enjoyed the fair as much as I could have – I haven’t had anyone to talk it over with; just listening to my own thoughts has made me a bit irritable and so this happy coincidence puts a spring back in my step as I walk out into the hazy sunshine. Thank you big small world.

Are you a thinker or a dreamer?

Wandering around Shanghai Library with my camera this morning, I asked myself this question after finding two statues: the first was a life-sized, brooding and prominently placed version of Rodin’s “Thinker” and the second was a small, pale, unnamed carving, hidden in an alcove on an upper floor of the library. The latter piece was of a woman clutching a book, eyes closed, not asleep, but dreaming all the same.

Leaving aside issues of gender bias, the sculptures made me think about the relationship between thinking and dreaming – how the two combine to form imagination.

As I looked again at the “Knowledge is Power” inscriptions repeated across the library’s walls, I suddenly realized that I disagree.

Knowledge is important of course, but imagination is where the real power lies. There are limits to knowledge, but imagination has no limits whatsoever, which is perhaps why some cultures discourage it…