Contemporary Chinese Art, Destination LA

Image credit: Lin Tianmiao, Day-Dreamer, 2000, white cotton threads, white fabric, digital photograph, courtesy of the artist, © Lin Tianmiao

LACMA continues its efforts towards becoming a center of Chinese contemporary art, putting on view exhibition that showcases some of the leading works of art coming from China today in one place.

Thirty-four works which will be on view in LACMA from June 2nd, acquaint american audience with past four decades of Chinese art. Although artists, united by The Allure of Matter exhibition, are well known in the Chinese contemporary art world, they are still little-known in the U.S. LACMA is on the mission to correct that. The exhibition features twenty of the most important and influential Chinese artists— from Ai Weiwei, Cai Guo-Qiang to Xu Bing, Zhang Huang and more., focusing on the conscious material choice and what kind of symbol it became in different works.

According to the press release, The Allure of Matter coins the term “material art” to denote this trend in contemporary Chinese artmaking. You’ll see how different artists reinterpret materials ranging from commonplace to the unconventional, continuing to explore and develop, with some developing decades to experiments with a single material.