The history of Chinese contemporary art might be a matter of a couple of decades but is rooted in a progressive albeit uneven correspondence with the West. In Shanghai, in particular, the art scene’s development has been characterized by very peculiar social, cultural and economic circumstances.

“Artists of previous generation [pre-80’s] who had brought education in oil painting and modernism into China perfected their personal artistic tastes in their old age while artists of a new generation who emerged in the early 1980s, like Li Shan, Yu Youhan, Chen Zhen, Zhang Jianjun, Yang Hui, Song Haidong and Ding Yi, gradually established their reputation in a different social setting and with their artistic ideals. With China’s yearnings in the 1980s for science and modernization and led by the process of artistic history in the West, they formed the idea of opposing fake realism from the former Soviet Union and intended to synchronize modernization of Chinese arts with that in the West, ” states art critic Zhao Chuan in the introduction of his book “Shanghai Vanguard”.

In the middle of the 1980s, some of the local artists joined together in informal groups, in order to discuss the role of contemporary art in modern society, its relationship with the past and the so-called ‘old culture’, as well as their own positioning in the relatively more tolerant cultural climate of Deng’s China. These were not organized groups with an unequivocal artistic mission or statement, but more of a scattered group of intellectuals who have found an artistic context to which to adapt. Some of them, like Ding Yi, Song Haidong, Zhang Jiajun, Zhou Tiehai, Li Shan etc. were active in the cultural sphere not only as artists, but also as high schools or university teachers. The groups were very active throughout the end of the 1980s until the early 1990s, exploring Western modernity, philosophy, literature and traditional Chinese philosophy as well as challenging traditional forms of art-making in search for more conceptual directions.

Following the “No U-Turn/China/Avante-Garde” exhibition organized at the National Gallery in Beijing in 1989, with the participation of the above-mentioned artists’ collectives from around the country (about 186 artists in total), featuring all kind of media including performance, installation, Political Pop art, and experimental wash and ink, Shanghai artists responded with private happenings and exhibitions, using temporary spaces or casual venues. These events were rarely reaching the wider public, and responded more to a need of self-expression, than to an explicit desire to communicate with an audience.  Almost all artists were occasionally invited to take part to annual, officially sanctioned exhibitions such as those of young Chinese painters. Occasionally, they exhibited in more international contexts, at first in Asia, and eventually in America and Europe.

Although major international showcases of contemporary Chinese art such as in Berlin, Paris and Venice had attracted much attention, the situation in Shanghai did not change until 1996/97. Finally, Lorenz Helbling, a Swiss gallerist, started organizing exhibitions of avant-garde artists in Shanghai, first in his house and eventually at his gallery space in Fuxing Park. Shanghart was thus the first private gallery devoted entirely to the promotion of so-called 'avant-garde art,' which included Political Pop, Abstract Painting, and Kitsch art. Following his efforts, numerous other galleries flourished. Nowadays we can count more than 50 of them. All galleries and art spaces are on this map.

Meanwhile, a new generation of artists put the foundations to a renewed art scene. This group is still very influential and active. The participants are a group of artists who’ve grown around Bizart Art Center, a not-for-profit reality of Shanghai that nested and nursed many of the artists of this generation in Shanghai. Xu Zhen and Yang Zhenzhong together with a variable group of young artists created some of the most outstanding exhibitions and happenings of the last 10 years. With their curatorial kick-off with Art for Sale in 1999 in a shopping mall on Huaihai Road, this group continues to work in the spirit of experimentation: all exhibitions from Fang Mingzhen and Fang Mingzhu, organized as a satellite exhibition of Shanghai Biennale in 2002, to Dial 62761232 exhibition, displayed new forms of curatorial approaches and group exhibitions’ presentations. Fang Mingzhen and Fang Mingzhu for instance was built on two mirrored but identical gallery spaces, in which the audience needed to decide from which gallery start the visit discovering that the artists presented showed works based on a “conceptual mirror”: same space, same artworks with little differences and deviances. The most critical outcome could be seen in last exhibition organized by the same group of artists in 2006 called “Solo Exhibition”, a “hidden” group show of 38 artists, but presented and communicated as individual solo exhibitions. Each artist had a space for a solo presentation as a critical response to the mass presentations like Biennials and Art Fairs worldwide. Needless to say, there was also an earlier yet similar and significant response to the almost “internationalized” state of Shanghai art scene, thus the “FUCK OFF” exhibition, organized by Stars Group member Ai Weiwei, together with the critic Feng Boyi, in Shanghai in response to the 2000 Shanghai Biennial at Eastlink.

From the early 2000 on, artists and other people in creative industries connected in creative clusters, the most famous being M50 (Moganshan Road 50). Nowadays, there are also groupings of galleries at the Bund such as the Shanghai Gallery of Art with its ambitious projects and Contrasts Gallery with its flamboyant take on art and design, as well as venues in the French Concession including the most recent landing of New York-based James Cohan Gallery to the area, and at additional clusters such as Taicang Lu and further along the Suzhou Creek.

On the institutional front, the Shanghai Art Museum for many years served as the only museum platform for the presentation of contemporary art. The museum-backed Shanghai Biennial was founded in 1996 and became internationalized in 2000-- a time when video art and installations were first time allowed on the premises of the Museum. In recent years a number of art museums have rapidly increased in Shanghai, both of public and private kind. At the end of 2003, Duolun MoMA opened, first government-funded platform of its kind in Shanghai, and in 2005 two private institutions opened Zendai MoMA and Shanghai MoCA. The opening of these museums brought optimism and was a welcome sign of openness in the art scene here. Finally, Shanghai, with its international and futuristic promise, had an opportunity to become a competitive platform for the arts: still many questions are abound on the role of these organizations, their programmatic coordinates, their mission and visions, and means of financial sustainability.

These issues are too complicated to be detailed here. All the above-mentioned platforms, those on the map as well as new facilities at various universities continue to explore these issues, with the goal of making this city a sparkling, distinctive destination where new art is made, presented and discussed.

We believe that “Shanghai Detour 上海游艺图” is representative of what Shanghai is today and who we are, all of us or at least all of the people who think that sharing is the most valuable way to demonstrate trust in the future of the arts in Shanghai.