Works by Donald Judd and other renowned artists on display at the Pace Gallery

For the past three decades, China has made a new great leap forward, "catching the West," in terms of not only economic growth, but art: the various genres of Western abstract art, which took hundreds of years to develop, have been rapidly absorbed by the Chinese contemporary art world during this compacted period.

But now, many Chinese artists are turning to their own roots to find inspiration, valuing both Western-style abstract art and traditional Chinese elements. Finally, after 30 years of learning from, or imitating the West, Chinese artists are synthesizing international art styles with their own unique vision.

Abstract in form

"Beijing Voice: Leaving Realism Behind" is the quintessential expression of this movement toward greater authenticity. The exhibition, currently on display at The Pace Gallery, Beijing, the Chinese branch of the internationally renowned New York-based Pace Gallery, offers a glimpse into Chinese artists' use of surrealism, expressionism and minimalism, and how they struggle to explore their own ways of creating art.

Scheduled to run through February 12, the exhibition presents work by some of the hottest luminaries in the international art world, such as Donald Judd, Mark Rothko and Chuck Close, as well as a range of Chinese names like Sui Jianguo, Li Songsong, Ding Yi and Song Dong, who have all made their mark in China's contemporary art world.

By juxtaposing these abstract works with the aesthetics of the spacious Bauhaus-style hall, the exhibition "provides a very rare opportunity to enjoy a union of some of the best Western art and contemporary Chinese art...and to observe the inner relationships between them," said independent art critic Dong Yun.

Donald Judd's famous 1988 Untitled is included in the exhibition: 12 pieces of his trademark boxes are divided into six groups and hung in a simple, vertical arrangement on a wall of the exhibition hall.

Born in 1928 in America, Judd was famous for his installation works that tend to interpret the relationships between the work itself and its carefully selected environment. While Judd loathed being dubbed a minimalist artist, his works exemplify very simply that art pieces can be purely abstract.

The adjacent exhibition room features Beijing-based artist Song Dong's piece Tearing Books, which echoes Judd's work. The artist, in his mid-40s, believes that "life itself is art," as he told the Global Times. The installation comprises five books on a stark white table.

Like Judd, Song's work relies on simplicity. Before the early 1980s, when such a genre had never been adopted in China, no one here would have considered this to be an artistic work. Now Song's piece stands as proof of a transformed Chinese art aesthetics. "We were eager to learn anything from the West, whatever it was," recalled contemporary performance artist Zhang Huan, who went abroad in the 1990s.

 Turning to Chinese roots

A very large number of artists have been working in this genre in the last 30 years, and some of them, like Song Dong and Zhang Huan, have already been widely recognized in the international art world. "Making it abstract and obscure, this is what contemporary Chinese art is," an audience member joked.

Levity aside, what makes Tearing Books special is that, unlike Judd's installation in the next room, Song's work is more narrative: he cut pages of the five books into strips, destroying them so brutally and completely that the contents are illegible.

And through careful observation, one can detect works referring to the Communist Party, with their red covers and words such as "Party," "must abide to" and "principles" from the CPC lexicon.

In this way, contemporary Chinese artists differ from the West: they are "abstract" also, to some extent, but their art tells a story, no matter how abstract the works are, and the story is uniquely Chinese.

Untitled 111114, a painting by Wang Guangle, a much younger artist, exemplifies such a trend to the extreme. Wang's work has no figures or landscapes. He painted his canvas over and over, ultimately making it look like a mysterious, three-dimensional object that resembles a tunnel of time when seen from afar.

The work was inspired by a tradition in Wang's hometown, Songxi county of Fujian Province, a place renowned for its centuries-old method of creating fine lacquers. The local elders there, upon entering their sixties, apply lacquer onto their own coffins, once a year until their death.

Wang translates this coffin-painting tradition into his artistic creation, making abstract paintings that are sometimes difficult to interpret. But audiences that view the "time-tunnel" or the coffin-like image on the canvas will no doubt find themselves contemplating philosophic topics such as life and death.

Today, there are more and more artists turning to Chinese traditions for inspiration, and while their pieces are as abstract as those from the West in terms of form, they are endowed with the flavor of Chinese art, aesthetics and traditions.

"After 30 years of learning from the West, it's time to go back to our Chinese roots and create our own artistic genres," commented Leng Lin, director of the Pace Beijing gallery and curator of the exhibition.