"The Arts' Environment, Eighty Photographs Of Artists In Beijing 1992-95"
The theme of Xu Zhiwei's Photographs is an examination of the daily lives, the living and working environments of contemporary artists in Beijing. It looks at the flip side of a world often overshadowed by the glamour of grand exhibitions, glossy magazine coverage and notoriety. The world of studios, of cramped spaces, bare necessities and earning the daily bread is very real to the artists themselves who live and make their art within contemporary Chinese society. Its constraints and the possibilities it offers, like those of each and every culture in countries spanning the globe, are fundamental to the art that results. The importance of this context is often glossed over by those unfamiliar with either the circumstances of a contemporary artist in modern China, or the art historical background against which new art is made in its radically changing society. The romanticism often attributed to the artist's garret has never been associated with artists in China. However

the traditional metaphor of the creative genius rising like the lotus from the mud remains apt, and evidence in modern times.

Just as by looking at scribbles made in preparation for finished art work often reveals much about the way which an artist works and the way a concept or image develops, image of artists' working environments equally reveal much about individual outlook; social, aesthetic and economical. Clutter, artistic paraphernalia, works in progress, those completed or those abandoned, provide an insight into the individual creative processes often invisible in the finished work offered for public view. Within each process, struggle and failure is as important as success achieved; indeed without working the wrong path once or twice, no concern for finding the right one - a more succinct one - is possible. Documentation plays an important role for understanding both progress and change.

Photography is particuarly significant here with its emphasis on the moment, effecting images of instances that are not necessarily retained in the memory. Photographs become the memory, reminders of envirnments that especially in modern China, are subject to constant flux.

The majority of Xu Zhiwei's photographs were taken beteen 1992 - 1993 in numerous locations around Beijing. This includes a two-month period in the summer of 1992 when Xu lived in the midst of one artistic community, observing daily life at first hand. This afforded him the opportunity to capture moments that span domesticity to the creative sublime. During the years that have passed since that time, the circumstances of several of the artists photographed by Xu Zhiwei have changed dramatically. Thus his images also highlight the dramatic and meteoric swings in fortune and maturity attained in a brief span of two years. Beyond the insight they give to the general public, such images are a yardstick against which the artists themselves can look back and measure their own personal development. Reflecting working relationships, friendships, communal social and artistic activities of the period, these photographs indicate how each of these elements has shaped the trends and diversity in Beijing's current contemporary are scene.

As documentary evidence that captures the mood of the time and places which he visited, Xu Zhiwei's photographs offer a photo-journalistic impression of an art scene that, having established a broad base since the early eithties, more than ever demands recognition of the potential it has already begun to realize.
Karen Smith, March, 1995