To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States, the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), together with Meridian International Center, has organized Metropolis Now! A Selection of Chinese Contemporary Art. This exhibition will be displayed in Meridian’s Cafritz Galleries and represents a new achievement in cultural exchange between our two countries. It is the first exhibit of its kind to reach Washington, DC.

For years, Meridian International Center has promoted cultural exchanges between China and the United States. Meridian worked with Chinese partners to create an exhibition of art from Western China sending this to numerous U.S. cities and permitting the American public to experience landscapes and life in the regions along the Silk Road. NAMOC later hosted a Meridian-organized exhibit of art from the American West in Beijing, also sending this to Urumqi, Xi’an, Shanghai, Qingdao, Guangzhou, and other centers, making it possible for Chinese audiences to better understand this vast and varied region and its inhabitants. When discussing ideas for a new cultural exchange, both NAMOC and Meridian felt it would be opportune to use visual art to represent the enormous changes in China since the reform and opening to the world in the late 1970s and the implementation of a market economy. This art vividly expresses the vitality of China as it experiences modernization and globalization. We have gathered a selection of the most recent contemporary art to tell a story of life in today’s China, but also to share the art itself. In creating Metropolis Now! both partners felt it was important to select works portraying themes that range from traditional to contemporary.

Because a single exhibition is limited in size, it was challenging to create a far-reaching presentation that would depict some of the most brilliant and significant features of Chinese contemporary art. I am grateful to Dr. Curtis Sandberg, Vice President for the Arts at Meridian International Center, and Terry K. Harvey, Meridian’s Director of Exhibitions, for their trip to China in 2008 to collaborate on this project. They visited many exhibitions, art galleries, and studios in Beijing and Shanghai and carried out their work with enthusiasm and care. As an old saying goes, “seeing is believing”. As first-time visitors to China, they made great efforts to experience contemporary art first-hand and to understand the motivation of Chinese artists by speaking with them at length. My colleagues and I were impressed by their perspective on Chinese contemporary art. What excited me most was that each of our organizations proposed a list of candidates for the exhibit and more than half of these selections coincided. This suggests that NAMOC’s ‘internal’ perspective and Meridian’s ‘external’ perspective on contemporary art in our country were the same. This artistic genre, increasingly known around the world, requires exactly this convergence of perspectives to be accepted and understood by audiences outside of China. It can be argued that this exhibition is the embodiment of our thorough exchange and in-depth cooperation.

Metropolis Now! is an effort to reflect the relationship between Chinese urbanization and contemporary art by focusing on the artistic philosophy and techniques of young artists in China. We believe that this approach to Chinese art is appropriate. With the advent of the 21st century there is no social change more obvious than the process of urbanization which not only brings about great alterations in city landscapes and people’s lives, but also impacts the human experience in both rural and urban areas. It results in new and complex interactions among people; it alters their dealings with society and the environment; and it strongly affects individuals. These changes provide artists with unprecedented opportunities to use their work to express new realities. Although their perspectives on art and their experiences may vary greatly, their visual topics and aesthetic preferences have much in common and are fresh and insightful. The advent of the information age, coupled with urbanization, offers limitless possibilities because Chinese artists are now creating their works with a cross-media approach never before imagined. Media has become a key vehicle for their expression of feelings and is their language of reality. Artists’ perceptual experiences of urbanization and the phenomenological description of the world are intertwined and visually integrate linguistic vitality and social imagination. The achievement of Chinese contemporary art is an unprecedented experience for China and for the rest of the world.

I would like to express my deep appreciation to China’s Ministry of Culture and the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the United States for their valuable support, to Meridian International Center for its careful and thorough organization of our shared exhibition, and to the participating artists for contributing their finest works of art. With the support of Beijing Beyond Art Space additional information about artists was added to the exhibition catalogue. This becomes an academic extension of the project and makes it possible for audiences to better understand the artists’ background and the context of these artworks. All of the friends who have given their support to Metropolis Now! share the same hope – the promotion of cultural exchange between China and the United States and the friendship between our two nations.

Fan Di’an
Director of the National Art Museum of China
March 2009