Mijn levensgezel zegt altijd “als je ’t groot maakt of veel blijkt het ineens kunst te zijn”. Zet bijvoorbeeld één lege melkfles in een grote, lege fabriekshal, dan heeft iemand die fles gewoon vergeten. Maar zet je er 5000 van die flessen neer, dan ineens is het een installatie en dus kunst, als je er ten minste nog een ingewikkeld verhaal bij vertelt over de veranderende lichtinval in de loop van de dag en de invloed die de flessen hebben op de lichtweerkaatsing, bla, bla, bla, enz.
Maak je een goed lijkend beeld van een naakte zittende baby op ware grootte, dan zal men zeggen ‘leuk’. Maar maak je het zes meter hoog en staat ’t op de Biënnale van Venetië, dan ineens is iedereen onder de indruk en is het echte kunst. Persoonlijk denk ik daarbij eerder aan het verhaal van Andersen over de kleren van de keizer, vooral gezien de naaktheid van de baby.

Deze truc werd in de Westerse moderne kunstwereld al veelvuldig toegepast, dus is ’t logisch dat we ‘m ook hier tegen komen. Het leek me wel interessant daarvan een paar uitingen te tonen. De melkfles is dan wel vervangen door een bepaald beeldje maar lekker vaak te herhalen, de baby is vervangen door een zeer vergrootte metalen cilinder van het type medicijncapsule zoals dat over de hele wereld wordt geslikt, iemand heeft een grote pannenzaak volledig leeg gekocht en weer een ander is lekker gaan kleien met héééél grote klonten klei om er andere grote klonten klei van te maken. Je kunt natuurlijk ook een paar bloederige wc-potten neerzetten met portretten van Tweede Wereldoorlog-figuren of een rotstuin installeren met grote stukken glinsterend blik, precies nagemaakt naar echte rotsblokken. De moderne kunstwereld in Peking is dus druk bezig met een installatie-inhaalslag. En ach, hier hebben ze ook keizers gehad! Logisch dus dat de Duitse kunstgoeroe Joseph Beuys aan Mao de moderne kunst moet uitleggen (laatste foto).

Being in Beijing now means you absolutely have to visit the tourist obligation number one, the OLYMPIC AREA, the place where IT all is going to happen in August. It doesn’t matter how you think about all the publicity the Olympic Games get in all its forms, a bit too much in my eyes but who am I, you cannot just pass it here. If it’s not the big displays everywhere with the seconds countdown till The Day or the huge posters of sponsors of the games, it’s the image of the five rings on all the beer bottles here and there are many beer bottles.

So yesterday, Sunday, had to be the day. We planned to have a quiet walk around, and may be over the area with the different stadiums. This was a wrong idea! What we didn’t know was that just this weekend for the first time athletic games were organised in the big stadium and that this was a great opportunity for many Chinese families to admire their own spaghetti building from the in and outside for a reasonable price. Because the price for an Olympic ticket is a bit outrageous for a normal Chinese income. So it was sold out which in itself should already have been a good reason for an extreme bustle but the parking facilities and the Olympic subway line are not yet ready. Result? Traffic chaos! But nevertheless we could have some walks along the fences that stretched away for many kilometres with also a lot of military guards.

A few kilometre north of the central stadium, the blue building for the swimming (see photo) and this spectacular skyscraper in the form of the Olympic flame another area is found with for instance the tennis (see photo) and the hockey stadiums embedded in a lot of green and parks.. Here it was remarkably quiet.
The conclusion is that costs didn’t play a role, cheap labour is still abundantly present and finding ground so near to the centre of the town has not been seen as a serious problem by the government. In this way a spectacular concentration of sports facilities has been build. But I couldn’t get the idea out of my head that the months of June and July form a very precious supply of time that is very much needed to complete the picture.

Sunday, day of the Lord! But the real reason that there is no instalment today of this weblog, lies in the fact that we just came home now, about 11pm, from a barbecue with some of our neighbours, the Georgian sculptor Aleksandre and his Chinese wife, tapestry weaver Nino in the company of Australian, Spanish/Brazilian and Korean people in which from time to time also Russian was spoken.

Saturday evening is clearly a free evening. That was not so difficult to notice in ‘our’ hutong because of the lively atmosphere. So we feel it really after several weeks, ‘our’hutong. If we walk around in the ‘shopping mall’ it’s a mutually reconnaissance, friendly smiles and a lot of waving hands. Therefore this hutong deserves tonight the attention with a lot of pictures and a short text.

Today we had our Chinese lunch in the gallery because we had to celebrate a kind of opening amongst us. This of course sounds a bit strange after the official one of nearly two weeks ago, but as it always is, there is an explanation.

I have already mentioned a few times the name of my art companion here in the gallery, the Australian Hilary Pollock. We regularly go out for dinner or for visiting Beijing with Hilary and her husband Graem. Just as I had done Hilary took a big role of oil paintings with her from home and had them stretched here. She also had the intention to create a number of paintings on paper in the gallery because we have the facility to do so during our exhibition. We both do so but Hilary spends more time on that then I do. In the series of paintings she took with her, dedicated to the five senses, she already had worked with a variety of Chinese symbols. With this she continued in a series of four different Chinese pots on a real big format of paper. This series she just finished before the official opening.
But after that she started a new series about the four seasons and this she ended this morning. So now you know the explanation for our small celebration in the gallery in the form of a Chinese banquet.
To give an impression of her work I made the pictures you can see here.