Description:
?WILL/WE MUST“ BY ZHOU TIEHAI (BORN 1966 IN SHANGHAI, CHINA)
Collage from ca. 90 single A4 pages of the movie script to the black and white silent movie “Will/We Must”, mostly on newsprint, created between 1996 and 1997. Drawing in pencil, felt and ball pen above the collage.
Will/We Must consists of a black-and-white soundless video that Zhou Tiehai created in 1996 and a group of works on paper and canvas that he made based on it. The characteristically humorous video dramatically exposes the strange phenomena of the Chinese art world at the time. Its imitation of the style of silent movies exaggerates the absurdity of the content to the point of becoming satire. During the nineties, Chinese artists frequently participated in exhibitions abroad. Reflecting on this period of prosperity, Zhou Tiehai satirizes the overseas curators and collectors, as well as the Chinese artists themselves, in this footnote to the history of contemporary Chinese art.
Provenance: From the collection of Andreas Krüger, Germany. Acquired directly from the artist ca. 1998 via his gallery Lorenz Helbling, Shanghart.
Exhibited: Kunstverein Museum Schloss Morsbroich e.V. Leverkusen, Germany, October 17th – November 12th, 2000.
Published: “Zhou Tiehai / Met in Shanghai”, catalogue to the exhibition at Museum Schloss Morsbroich e.V. Leverkusen, Germany, page 23, published in October 2000. Scans of the respective catalogue pages are accompanying this lot.
Condition: Good condition with intentional creases, minor wear and losses, one tear of ca. 25 cm.
Dimensions: 273 x 194 cm
The movie Will/We Must has 9 independent soundless scenes. The first is a mock military meeting that dramatizes an artist’s need to establish his own status independently from museum directors, critics, and gallery owners. The second scene demonstrates an artist’s wish to befriend critics and media in order to have his works exhibited. In the third scene, we see one patient after another queuing to be examined by a “foreign expert”; this is a parody of the need for Chinese artists to be “treated” by foreign critics before successfully exhibiting abroad. The fourth scene is a conversation between a collector who has traveled to China from afar and a guide taking him to an artist’s studio; we witness the guide’s taste and the collector’s list of artists to visit. In the fifth scene, we see an artist calling five curators to say only, “Whatever show you curate I am willing to participate in.” In the sixth scene, a Qing-dynasty official receives a foreign emissary, who denigrates China for having only traditional medicine and witchcraft but no art. The Qing official snaps, “Must our art suit your taste?” Here Zhou Tiehai articulates the prejudices held by foreign critics about the Chinese art world. Following all these absurd and bizarre situations, the last scene features 10 desperate artists on a raft, unable to move forwards or backwards, embodying the embarrassment and anger Chinese artists felt as they attempted to interface with the outside world in the nineties. This scene—and the video as a whole—ends with a line filled with pathos: “Goodbye, Art!”
The series Will/We Must includes works that recreate important scenes from the video. Some of these are on newsprint, others on white paper. Will/We Must expresses Zhou Tiehai’s artistic philosophy and documents his creative direction. Satirizing the art system itself has become an important topic in his subsequent works, including the renowned Placebo and Tonic series.
Zhou Tiehai is a contemporary Chinese artist. Trained as a painter in his native Shanghai, Zhou co-founded Shanghai’s first international art fair, SH Contemporary, in 2007, assumed the directorship of the Minsheng Art Museum in 2010, and founded West Bund Art & Design in 2014. Zhou’s art often attempts to satirize modern Chinese art. He does not paint his own works, though he earned a M.F.A. from the School of Fine Arts at Shanghai University in 1989. He was quick to perceive the subtle colonialism that undergirded the Chinese art world of the early 1990s. Zhou takes on the role of both artist and patron, as many of his airbrush paintings are rendered by assistants under his supervision. A typical process for Zhou Tiehai is to conceptualize a work, realize it on the computer, then rely upon the help of assistants to physically create it. He is mostly known for appropriating the Camel advertising character that he calls Joe Camel (playing on his family name “Zhou”) and making large paintings that reference famous western motifs from art history. Even though Zhou’s work is exhibited widely in China and abroad, he does not produce any new work.
Auction result comparison: Compare with a related lot at Sotheby’s Hong Kong on October 6th, 2014, in Asian Contemporary Art, lot 800.
周鐵海(1966年出生於上海)《必須》
來自諷刺短片《必須》中約90頁拼貼畫,大多是新聞紙,創作于1996 及1997年。拼貼畫上使用鉛筆畫,毛氈及圓珠筆。
來源:德國Andreas Krüger收藏;1998年直接通過Lorenz Helbling的香格納畫廊在藝術家処購得。
展覽: 2000年10月17日-11月12日德國Morsbroich 宮博物館藝術展
出版: 2000年10月上述展覽目錄 《Zhou Tiehai / Met in Shanghai》,第23頁,隨附該頁複印件
品相:品相良好,一些摺痕,輕微磨損和缺失,約25厘米的水漬
尺寸:273 x 194 厘米