Huang Rui 黄锐

From ArtSpeak China (ASC) Wiki

Huang Rui (黄锐) is one of China’s most respected and controversial contemporary artists. Since co-founding The Stars Group in 1979, Huang has been involved in numerous debates over the need for free expression. Despite living in self-exile for close to twenty years, Huang Rui is considered one of the founding members of China’s contemporary art movement.

[edit] Date & Place of Birth

Huang Rui was born in Beijing in 1957

[edit] Education & Development

In 1968, at the age of 16, Huang Rui began working as a farmer in Inner Mongolia. After moving to Beijing in 1975, Huang took a position working in a local leather factory. (This job lasted until 1979.)

Beginning in 1978, Huang co-published the literary journal Today (今天) with writers and activists Bei Dao and Mang Ke. Although the influential magazine only lasted three years, the journal was considered one of the most radical publications in circulation after the Cultural Revolution.

Huang Rui received some formal art education at the Beijing Worker’s Cultural Center in 1979 before founding The Stars Group (Xingxing 星星画会), with Ma Desheng the same year. The Stars were one of the first publicly active art collectives to protest governmental censorship after the Cultural Revolution. Before taking part in the ground-breaking 1979 Stars exhibition outside the China Arts Gallery (now the National Art Museum of China), Huang participated in a number of secret art shows held at private homes. Often these impromptu exhibitions would spark considerable debate over issues such as artistic freedom and Western art trends. The artists who participated in these debates included Ai Weiwei, Bo Yun, Li Shuang, Ma Desheng, Mao Lizi, Qu Leilei, Shao Fei, Wang Keping, Yan Li, Yang Yiping, and Zhong Acheng.

Huang Rui left China in 1984 and relocated to Tokyo, Japan. While in Japan, Huang married and began working on a series of installation works. In 2001, Huang returned to China.

His works were featured in all the Stars group shows, The Stars: Ten Years, 1989 (Hanart Gallery, Hong-Hong and Taipei), Demand for Artistic Freedom, The Stars 20 Years, 2000 (Tokyo Gallery, Tokyo) and the retrospective exhibition in Beijing in 2007: Origin Point (Today Art Museum, Beijing).

Huang Rui, Chairman Mao 10,000 RMB (2006)

[edit] Art

Early in his career Huang Rui created works alluding to a number of Western derived artistic styles, such as Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism.

Throughout the 1990s, Huang created works of art using a variety of different mediums including photography, performance, installation, and works using language. In the piece Chairman Mao 10,000 RMB (2006) Huang created a wall sized communist party slogan out of single Mao-renminbi notes. (Bank notes stamped with Mao Zedong’s portrait.) Huang’s work simultaneously comments on the iconic status of Mao and what is pejoratively referred to today as the “Cult of Mao.” According to curator Berenice Angremy: "In Huang Rui's case, text is an environment that shapes our political outlook on a daily basis. His job is to position text to solicit reflection and provide viewers with elements of debate. Huang Rui has always focused on the essence of Mao, his ideas, the propaganda he implemented, and thus his texts and slogans."

Huang Rui, Shadow/Upholding (2009)

Beginning in the late 1980s, artists started appropriating images of the communist leader from Cultural Revolution era works of Social Realism. This act of appropriation is particularly popular in works associated with the Chinese Political Pop movement. In the mid to late 1990s, many of these works of Political Pop were sold to foreign buyers for considerable sums of money. This initiated a wave of similarly rendered works using Mao’s portrait as subject matter. Huang effectively points to the relationship that exists between the widespread use of Mao’s portrait as subject matter in contemporary works of Chinese art and the high prices these works fetch at auction.

In reference to his 2006 work, Chairman Mao 10,000 RMB, Huang created another monumental piece titled Shadow/Upholding (2009), which is one example in a three part series of monumental bank notes. In this work, 27 individual canvasses were silkscreened, stamped with the exhibition sponsor’s logo and hung in a grid formation. When viewed from afar, these canvasses form a gigantic 100 RMB note with two images of Mao Zedong. Across the watermark image of Mao is the Chinese character jianchi, which means, “to uphold” or “to persist”. When the characters from each of the three individual bank notes are placed together they read, “Uphold the dictatorship of the Proletariat." This maxim was one of Deng Xiaoping’s Four Cardinal Principles espoused during China's governmental reforms in the early 1980s.

[edit] Emergence & Reception

Huang’s first public art show is arguably his most famous. In 1979 Huang took part in the notorious Stars exhibition, a public display of avant garde art was organized by Huang and Ma Desheng. Although local officials swiftly closed the show, Huang and Ma became known as progenitors of radical Chinese art.

Huang Rui, Girl and flower (1981) oil on canvas Size 76 x 90 cm

[edit] Secondary Activities

Huang Rui, Red Flag (1984)

From 1978 to 1980, Huang Rui published the literary magazineToday (今天), which included both poetry and prose from writers such as Bei Dao, Jiang He, Gu Cheng, Mang Ke, Shu Ting, and Yang Lian.

After returning to Beijing in 2001, Huang Rui helped found the 798 Space Gallery with photographer Xu Yong (徐勇). The gallery space features lofted ceilings and covers an area of approximately 12 hundred m2. This gallery serves as the axis mundi of the Factory 798 Art Zone. In addition, Huang Rui has become the unofficial spokesman for the 798 Art District. In 2004 Huang directed the First Dashanxi International Art Festival at 798.

[edit] Exhibitions

Since 2006 Huang Rui has held major solo exhibitions at prominent venues including his 2006 Texts are the Legacy of Great Thought! at the Chinese Contemporary Gallery in New York City, Chinese History in Animal Time at the Museo delle Mura in Rome, and the 2009 ComerChina exhibition in Beijing

For a complete list of Huang Rui’s exhibitions and his CV click here.