Kleckern not located the bustling Art Manager Walter Smerling. With a show of strength, a team selected 120 artists from China headed Smerlings.
Nine museums in eight cities on the Rhine and Ruhr will present Chinese contemporary art from the middle of May. Three million euros has the Brost Foundation, whose chairman is the former publishing manager Bodo Hombach, for given “China 8″.
There is a museum Overview be that it had “never existed in this form” says Smerling, director of the museum Küppersmühle in Duisburg. Presented Art of Calligraphy about painting to video and installations, and each artist is represented by several works. At the opening of talks Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel (SPD), the Smerling had met a year ago in Beijing.
But what artists are doing? The world well-known Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei not anyway. It had “many conversations and meetings” given to him, but he had refused, says Smerling.
The choice of artists is viewed with suspicion by China experts. “I do not expect that there are high so good artistic positions in China at the moment 120, which are really worth seeing,” says the former Berlin gallery owner Alexander Ochs, who has been active for more than 20 years in the German-Chinese cultural exchange. Invited also were also artists who were already living in Germany long. Artist, “the trouble making”, were not even invited.
Smerling has speculation about censorship back chosen. Requirements of the policy did not give it. The customs authorities have – let through everything – albeit after some discussion. Ochs said, however, the problem is not the Chinese customs, but rather that the exports to China would have to be approved politically. In this context, Ochs sees the role of the Chinese curator of “China 8″ fan Di’an, skeptical. Fan was until recently director of the Chinese National Museum in Beijing and is now president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. One can not speak of a “free Kuratur” says Ochs
Smerling answers the question whether a fan Di’an was a kind of upper controller. “. That would be a completely wrong impression” The German curators had met in the studios a selection. With Fan Di’an you’ve talked about the list. “We were not always agree.” Smerling emphasized: “We are making this exhibition neither on behalf of the Chinese nor the German state.” Even Smerling knows the Chinese art scene of numerous trips in recent decades. And he says: “Of course, the artist is free in his studio, but only in his studio.”
For the museums in the battered by financial difficulties Ruhrgebiet cities is “China 8″ a chance nationally to gain attention. More surprising is that renowned museums such as the Kunstmuseum Bochum or the Josef Albers Museum in Bottrop is not vote.
“It is not a project of RuhrArtMuseums” says the Bochum Museum director Hans Günter Golinski. This fledgling network of 20 museums wanted to develop other exhibits from the region and the collection out. But China had already been seen in many other places. He hoped nevertheless that “China 8 is a good project”. For an exhibition in such a dimension throw light on the whole region. “I let myself be surprised if something is developed, what we have not seen in the West.”
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