Contemporary Chinese Art?

Pretty funny. I went to an opening of Wenda Gu’s Exhibit (www.wendagu.com) at the Hood museum today. Basically this guy who calls himself one of the original contemporary artists to come out of China (was even banned by the Chinese government) took Tang poems and translated them to English, retranslated them into Chinese again except incorrectly so the strokes were backwards and extra radicals added etc. The point is that in the process of “bridging cultures” nothing can be precisely interpretted and authenticity is lost/created/recreated. Not particularly creative in my mind and not as interesting as actually talking to the artist who was pretty vague about modernity, postmodernity and culture but lucid about markets, which markets are more developed for art, who his leading competitors are and how many studios he had. He even compared himself to Walmart saying that his production base is in China (low cost and better craftsmanship) and his “creative center” in New York.

What was funny to me was that while his art was contemporary, the business of buying and selling is as ancient a tradition and as authentically Chinese as can be.