Beijing's art scene

Article by: George Dunford, July 2008

Factory 798 is a long way from the Forbidden City. The journey along the busy route out to the fourth ring road can take up to half an hour, so I'm hoping for an entertaining cab driver. Mine has an elaborate repertoire of grumbles, groans and head shakes that he directs at the snarled traffic, punctuated with a 'whoosh' - the way he'd like to be moving. Maybe he learnt this routine during the pre-Olympic English classes that were given to more than 90,000 cab drivers. But we have no problem finding our way to 798 - every cab driver knows it.

The first piece of art I spot is a large pair of breasts, its nipples discreetly covered by tea towels.

The much-hyped art precinct began life in the 1950s as an electronics factory built with East German architectural nous and Soviet cash. Components for China's first atomic bomb and early satellites were assembled here until the economic slowdown of the 1990s, when production was moved further out of the sprawling Chinese capital. That's when the artists arrived. The Central Academy of Fine Arts was the first major school to embrace the large workshop floors, industrial grunge ambience and cheap rents. It developed a reputation for cheeky art that toyed with Communist icons, and art buyers began to take the long taxi ride to scout for China's next big thing. As 798's popularity increased, so did the rents. Today many of the artists have been pushed out by galleries, who in turn are being squeezed by coffee shops, clubs and the odd advertising agency.

My taxi drops me on Jiuxianqiao Lu in front of the 798 sign. This big industrial complex looks like a lot of Beijing right now - stuck somewhere between the future and a building site. The main thoroughfare is being gutted. Workmen dig out clay-like soil and there are scraps of industrial machinery that could be installations. The first piece of art I spot is a large pair of breasts, its nipples discreetly covered by tea towels. It's 1.8m - taller than me. This is the Shu Yong piece from the How Big Do We Want Our Breasts To Be? exhibit, a wry crack at a country that's spending US$2.4 billion a year on plastic surgery. Judging by the concealed nipples, some of the art here still has the power to shock. After my visit, the artist installed a giant bra to spare the more delicate gallery goers.

Further on there are alternating cafes and galleries, including one of the more established galleries, Red Gate. Founder Brian Wallace agrees that many artists have shifted. 'Most artists have moved on to the other studio areas north and west of 798. Rents became too high and it was too hard to work as an artist with everyone banging on the studio door,' he says. The gallery's lipstick-red columns fit the slick style of the works it displays. Wallace reckons the gallery still offers challenging work by 'spicing it up with unusual exhibitions like the first Beijing exhibition of contemporary Tibetan art last year'.

Sugar Jar Records is the place to snaffle an album by Beijing pop-punks Carsick Cars.

By heading deeper into the back alleys, I find Sugar Jar Records, one of China's only indie record stores. This corridor-shaped store is the place to snaffle an album by Beijing pop-punks Carsick Cars. Not your thing? The shop has their whole collection loaded on a desktop so they can spin any disc you find on the shelves. Like most visitors, I leave with a pile of CDs. Maybe this is the new direction for 798: finding new audiences for other art forms.

Or perhaps 798 will be slowly replaced as Beijing's artistic epicentre. When the F2 gallery opened in the Chaoyang District, they set up a shuttle bus from 798 to draw people to their high-profile exhibit by Jean-Michel Basquiat. They knew taxi drivers wouldn't know where they were yet.

There are ambitious plans to create a new art district in Beijing. The Gaobeidian Art District (GBD) in Chaoyang is slated for completion in 2010 and has a lot of money behind it. Brian Wallace is skeptical of its chances. 'The general feeling is that GBD is off the beaten track and full of second-rate galleries. It does not have the pulling power of 798.' My taxi driver agrees in his own way when he collects me. I ask about the area and he wrinkles his nose until he sneezes.