BOOKS
Brand New Art from China: A Generation on the Rise
Author
Bloomsbury 2018
A unique and visionary generation of young Chinese artists are coming to prominence in the art world - just as China cements its place as the second largest art market on the planet. Building on the new frontiers opened up by the Chinese artists of the late 1980s and 1990s, artists such as Ai Wei Wei who came to the West and became household names, this new generation are provocative, exciting and bold. But what does it mean to be a Chinese artist today? And how can we better understand their work?
Here, renowned critic Barbara Pollack presents the first book to tell the story of how these Chinese millennials, fast becoming global art superstars, negotiate their cultural heritage, and what this means for China's impact on the future of global culture. Many young Chinese artists have declared they are "not Chinese, but global" - this book investigates just what that means for China, the art market, and the world.
Brand new Art from China is the first collection to showcase the dynamic new art coming from Chinese artists, and features full-colour photos and video stills throughout - with many works being published in book-form for the first time.
Reviews
Barbara Pollack on the Post-Passport Generation of Chinese Artists, Selina Ting, COBO Social, 2018
“Post-Passport, Post-Human: New Identities in Contemporary Art”, CAFA Art Info, Lecture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, 2018
Millennial artists in China – optimistic, globalist and revelling in freedom of the internet, Kate Whitehead, South China Morning Post, 2018
Brand New Art from China: A Generation on the Rise, Andrew
J. Nathan, Foreign Affairs, 2019
Vasari Diary: Barbara Pollack’s ‘Brand New Art from China’, Barbara MacAdam, ArtNews, 2018
Brand New Art From China, Review, Art in America, 2018
Barbara Pollack on the Post-Passport Generation of Chinese Artists, Selina Ting, Initia Art, 2018
Brand New Art from China, Mark Rifkin, TWI-NY, 2018
My Generation: Young Chinese Artists
Author
Giles, 2014
Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, a whole new generation of artists has emerged in mainland China. This striking new volume presents seventy-five artworks by twenty-seven of these young Chinese artists. Covering all media, works by artists and collectives such as Birdhead, Double Fly, Irrelevant Commission, Liu Di, and Ma Qiusha have opened a window onto a new China, a society that has undergone rapid industrialization and globalization in the past two decades.
The publication accompanies a major exhibit opening at both Tampa Museum of Art and St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts, FL in 2014 before traveling to Oklahoma City Museum of Art and Orange County Museum of Art in 2015.
The Wild, Wild East: An American Art Critic's Adventures in China
Author
Time Zone 8, 2010
A lively and opinionated romp through China's contemporary art scene, Wild, Wild East is based on firsthand encounters with the artists, dealers, collectors, curators and auction specialists who have made Chinese contemporary art the fastest growing sector of the international art market. This is the first book to take stock of China's commercial art boom, the rapid development of its institutions and the biographies of its major players. It conveys the thrill of the current gold-rush atmosphere, but also investigates the pitfalls of the scene: corruption, government censorship and conflicts of interest. The author, Barbara Pollack, is an experienced journalist and art critic who has been reporting on China's developing art scene since 1997. With unparalleled access to the major figures both in the country and elsewhere, she is unafraid to ask, “Is this the emperor's new clothes?” of this country once ruled by emperors, and now managed by post-Mao millionaires.
Reviews
A Book Review on The Wild, Wild East By Barbara Pollack, Anita Xu, One in a Billion, 2014
The Wild, Wild East, Philip Tinari, LEAP, 2010
ART TRIPPIN' THROUGH CHINATIME: CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF A MARKET, Robert C. Morgan, The Brooklyn Rail, 2010
2010 SUMMER READING LIST, Eileen Myles, The Brooklyn Rail, 2010
Adventures of Art Critic Barbara Pollack in ‘The Wild, Wild East’, PBS broadcast, 2010
Yangze Yenta, Charlie Finch, Artnet, 2010
Zeng Fanzhi
Contributor
Hauser and Wirth, 2023
This publication documents Zeng Fanzhi’s exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles in early 2023. Generously illustrated with plates, installation views, and life-size details of the paintings and drawings in the show, the book also presents new scholarship by Stephen Little, Barbara Pollack and Carter Ratcliff exploring the recent development of the artist’s practice, his ambitious approach to image-making and the significance of abstraction and the line within his oeuvre. The catalogue is written in English, with Chinese translations of the essays.
Jennie Jieun Lee: Rainbow 1 Hour Photo
Contributor
Pacific and Martos Gallery, 2018
Ceramicist Jennie Jieun Lee’s first hardcover publication, Rainbow 1 Hour Photo documents several years of the artist’s work divided into four distinct sections: Vessels & Larger Works, Busts & Pedestals, Paintings, and Masks. The diversity Lee brings when navigating ceramic art is highlighted in four texts addressing her practice as well as her complex and inspiring personal history.
Rainbow 1 Hour Photo was also the name of the photo business run by her parents when Lee was a child. A twelve-page facsimile insert of the photo books supplied by the business includes photos of Lee and her family in 1970s and 80s New Jersey and New York City.
Little North Road: Africa in China
Contributor
Kehrer Verlag, 2016
Little North Road is a photographic collaboration that looks at a pedestrian bridge in the middle of Guangzhou. . At the heart of this book is a selection of images collected from two Chinese itinerant portrait photographers, Wu Yong Fu and Zeng Xian Fang. Equipped with digital cameras, they have made a living making portraits for Africans who wanted a memento of their time in China. Daniel Traub’s photographs explore the broader dynamics of the area and provide a context through which to look at the work of Wu and Zeng.
As China’s power and reach have grown, it has become a new center of gravity pulling people from remote lands. Guangzhou has become a magnet for Africans and other groups who have come in search of opportunity and to trade in the goods produced in the Pearl River Delta. Recent developments, however, call into question whether this cosmopolitanism is an inevitable part of China’s future or a moment that has already passed.
Zhao Zhao:2006-2016
Contributor
Tang Contemporary Press, 2016
One of the leading artists emerging post-2000 in China and a protogee of Ai Weiwei, Zhao Zhao creates sculptures and installations that pay homage to and rebel against Chinese culture. This survey of his early works was published coinciding with his solo show at Tang Contemporary in Hong Kong, curated by Barbara Pollack.
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Nathalia Edenmont
Contributor
Arvinius + Orfeus Publishing, 2015
Nathalia Edenmont challenges art viewers by touching subjects that are often taboo in western society. With cogent references to historic oil paintings, religious symbols, as well as contemporary art and fashion photography, Nathalia Edenmont's artworks can be viewed as a modern expressions of traditional iconography. With poignant texts by authors Barbara Pollack, Ingela Lind and Jean Wainwright, this beautifully illustrated book provides a retrospective of Nathalia Edenmont's artworks throughout her career as an artist, from the beginning of 2002 up to today.
Wang Gongxin: Works 1995-2015
Contributor
OCAT Shanghai, 2015
Catalogue of key works by Beijing artist Wang Gongxin, a pioneer in the field of new media in China. Sky of Brooklyn (1995), one of his best known works was created upon his return to China from New York. Referencing the American phrase, “Digging a hole to China, Wang dug a three-meter-deep hole in the floor of his courtyard house in Beijing nd placed a video monitor at the bottom wiith footage of the sky over his home in Brooklyn.
Wang Gongxin makes all things seem real and possible, the result of growing up and living in a country where the fabulous became reality. It is his talent to make those changes come alive for viewers from different cultures. It is his insight that he knows that to do this best, he must remain rooted in his hometown of Beijing.
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The City: Lori Nix
Contributor
Decode Books, 2013
Catalogue of key works by Beijing artist Wang Gongxin, a pioneer in the field of new media in China. Sky of Brooklyn (1995), one of his best known works was created upon his return to China from New York. Referencing the American phrase, “Digging a hole to China, Wang dug a three-meter-deep hole in the floor of his courtyard house in Beijing nd placed a video monitor at the bottom wiith footage of the sky over his home in Brooklyn.
Wang Gongxin makes all things seem real and possible, the result of growing up and living in a country where the fabulous became reality. It is his talent to make those changes come alive for viewers from different cultures. It is his insight that he knows that to do this best, he must remain rooted in his hometown of Beijing.
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Ran Hwang: Transition
Author
Leila Heller Gallery, 2012
At first glance, simplicity may seem to define Korean artist Ran Hwang's work, but simplicity is merely a thin veil over an intricate and thoughtful process resulting in an alluring and seductive body of work. Her practice speaks to the meditative nature that a repetitive process inspires where the experience of the work cannot be separated from its materiality and how it is made. The strength of Hwang’s work is in its process and the resulting immediacy and resonance with the viewer.
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Li Songsong
Contributor
Pace, 2011
Li Songsong is renowned for his thickly layered paintings that animate the fragmentary nature of images and memory, paying particular attention to the people, events, and themes of modern and contemporary Chinese history. This catalog was published on the occasion of his groundbreaking show at Pace in New York in 2011.
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Dual Lives: Chinese Opera in New York City
Co-author
Publisher, 2011
Alan Govenar's life-sized photographs show members of the Qi Shu Fang Peking Opera Company costumed as characters from the epic story cycle, The Journey to the West. In full makeup and character specific poses, the actors portray general types (hangdang) as well as individual characters. Each portrait is presented side-by-side with a companion portrait of the same performer in casual dress.
Sock City
CRG Gallery, 2008
On the occasion of Lisa Sanditz’s show at CRG Gallery in New York City, Barbara Pollack contributed an essay on her paintings and experience in a southern city in China, a center of production and marketing.
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Joyce Kozloff: China is Near
Contributor
Charta, 2010
For almost 40 years, Joyce Kozloff has lived near New York's Chinatown and fantasized traveling the Silk Route in China. For this project, Kozloff pasted Chinese tissue paper cutouts against a contrast of Google Maps. She searched for the word "China" and images came from every part of the globe, from Beijing to Tanzania to Mott Street. Photographing local Chinatowns across the U.S.--all destinations on the twenty-first century global Silk Route. Eventually, in 2013, Kozloff followed the path of the Silk Road across China, accompanied by Barbara Pollack.
Leave Me in the Dark
Contributor
2009
Published on the occasion of the exhibition "Liu Ye: Leave Me in the Dark" presented at Sperone Westwater
Beyond the Line: The Art of Diana Cooper
Contributor
Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleavland, 2007
On the occasion of her 2007 show at MOCA Cleveland, Barbara Pollack. Mixed-media installations interviewed the installation artist Diana Cooper.
China Art Book
Contributor
Dumont, 2007
Chinese art has never been so prominent and ubiquitous as in recent years, and in China Art Book we have the definitive guide to the country's leading lights. Massive in size and thorough in its analysis, this essential volume disentangles the complexities of the Chinese art scene by focusing on the work of 80 contemporary artists. It includes both the famous and the currently less known.
Chi Peng’s Journey to the West
Contributor
Timezone 8, 2007
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Naked Lunch
Contributor
Chambers Fine Art Gallery, 2005
In this series, Chi Peng creates provocative images of contemporary China. In each one, Chi inserts images of himself naked running through the streets of Beijing or appearing in sterile office environments. Multiplying himself again and again, he often depicts sexual engagement with his Doppelganger.
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