Art of Change: New Directions from China

Art of Change is the first catalogue to trace out a very particular seam of performative Chinese art from the late 1980s to the present, as manifested in the work of eight artists: Liang Shaoji, Wang Jianwei, Xu Zhen/MadeInCompany, Gu Dexin, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Chen Zhen and Yingmei Duan. Often working on a grand scale, they invite the audience to engage with overwhelming, theatrical, yet ephemeral experiences--works which transform over time, like Xu Zhen’s Actions of Consciousness, in which concealed assistants make colorful sculptures, and toss them into the air from inside a sealed white cube. Published to coincide with a major exhibition at London’s Hayward Gallery, this book explores the political, social and cultural conditions shaping contemporary Chinese sculpture.