The Brooklyn Rail

The solidly researched and elegantly presented exhibition Metamorphosis: Chinese Imagination and Transformation at the China Institute in America downtown is composed of works by twenty-eight artists of Chinese descent—either associated with mainland China and Hong Kong or the diaspora art community in the United States, or both. Some are big stars especially on the Chinese scene (Xu Bing, Sun Xun, and Bingyi, each of whom contributed commissioned works) while others are noteworthy additions to the canon. We might assume that a contemporary art show, occurring in the highly heterogeneous atmosphere of our city, would lean in favor of abstraction in both painting and sculpture. But it is revealing to recognize the adherence of many artists to their own interpretations of classical Chinese aesthetics even as they explore offshoots of Western modernity (including not just abstraction but innovative media such as animation). It is clear that these exuberantly gifted artists have put out a fine show in which Chinese themes and materials mix with a late-modernist aesthetic. The eclectic insights offered in this dynamic group show announce for a New York audience that the Chinese art of today has gained in range and sensibility.

This fine exhibition moves gracefully between abstraction and the formal language of Chinese calligraphy and painting, a reflection of the bicultural complexities regularly evident in the art. Understanding it requires work; extensive notes and essays in the catalogue clear up awareness of the modes of working and historical context. As it stands, there is something scholarly about the show that supports generous amounts of information not easily accessible to untrained viewers.

In truth, the works are notable for their often-brilliant dualities incorporating, in a number of examples, the older cultural legacy of China, as well as the Western art influences of recent times. The combination is often stunning. There is a beautiful painting by Zheng Chongbin, Skylines (2014), blending marks of gray color, a colossal amalgam of layers of collaged tan paper. It can take its place as a post-Minimalist monolith within fairly constrained dimensions. I have been told that Zheng is popular among American collectors, and the affinity makes sense—there is more than a touch of Abstract Expressionism to the composition in this work of art.

And then there is a luminous dark gray wall relief by Su Xiaobai, titled Niao Niao – N.Y. (2024), made with a virtuoso touch in lacquer, each of its four sides mitred backward roughly an inch in width. This gives the work, which turns a centuries-old tradition of lacquer ware into a twenty-first century statement, a greater than usual depth than most flat pieces. Its relentless abstraction offers a conspicuous nod in agreement with the art made in Western Europe and the United States during the previous century. All too often, we expect mergers of influence to join art across distance, but we are better off describing rather than searching for deep thematic connections. The Chinese influences, such as the lacquer technique, the anomalous Buddhist figures in the mural by Sun Xun (made for the show, the first artist residency for the gallery) or the deft calligraphic hand, are wielded with both depth and style. They stay alive as examples of experience just as much as they are exemplary of a particular style.

Sometimes the classicism carries social suggestions. In a beautiful pastoral painting by Liu Xiaodong titled Wolf Smoke (Smoke Signals) (2006), a study of gray and blue mountainous ridges pushing up against a light sky, the ominous threat to such beauty arises in columns of black, plumed smoke. They dominate the center of the composition and fill the air with portents of a dark technological end to the Edenic ideal, the price of change.

There are two wonderful sculptures in the exhibition that bear devout description. One is an “imperial” yellow porcelain bust by Ah Xian, with closed, serious features and flattened eyes. This piece, titled China, China – Bust 57 (2002), seems deeply connected to the past, yet its classicism invoking ancient Greek and Roman portrait busts enables us to read it across time, to the present moment. We could say that certain kinds of classicism have a restraint that renders the artist's understanding free of time. To add a gratifyingly subtle note, the artist made the bust as a portrait of a friend, but does not divulge his subject’s name. The other piece, an ecstatic stainless-steel abstraction with amoeba-like projections into the air by Zheng Lu titled Water in Dripping - You (2016), is built up with individual characters from a lyrical poem by the great Tang dynasty master Bai Juyi woven together in a kind of open mesh. The organic forms lift into space, like the frozen arms of a splash of water, and build interest as they rise upward.

China Institute has done a wonderful job of bringing together many very strong artists. We need this exposure as too often we have been beguiled by our own cultural attributes. As time continues, it looks like the art world everywhere is merging to the point where cultural differences are disappearing. Or maybe not. Fine art has always been startlingly good at internalizing the experiences of other places and peoples, as Metamorphosis has shown. We can be thankful for the show's cohesion, its intelligence, and its ability to jump from one point to the next.