While back-to-business-as-usual articles on the end of the recession and art market recovery are everywhere in the media, less column inches are being dedicated to making sense of the biggest shakeup the art world has experienced for a long time and what it means for the future. So it's refreshing to find an art journal addressing post-recession art practice.
In an editor's note to the current issue of Yishu|Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Keith Wallace says: "It has been repeatedly proclaimed that the economic crisis of the past year changed everything in the art world, yet Sotheby's October 2009 art auction in Hong Kong witnessed prices rebounding, and even on the increase, for contemporary Chinese art. In spite of that, the blip that did give rise to a much-needed reality check about what is genuinely important in contemporary art, resulting in artists and thinkers embarking on a journey in search of other realms of art that are less submissive to the market than they were in the past decade and more focused on exploring what it means to be making art in society today."
Each of the first four texts in issue 35 of Yishu address this historical moment relative to contemporary art in mainland China.
Image: Gao Shiqiang, Red, 2008 HDV, sourced from Yishu website
