Wednesday Talks

Artists and curators comment on the exhibition.

Uli Sigg, the former amassador of Switzerland in China owns the largest and most important collection of Chinese contemporary art.

On contemporary Chinese artists he writes: ‘One of the basic preconditions for understanding their art is the spiritual emptiness left behind by the decline in values following all the transformations this society has experienced [since the 1980s]. The question of the meaning of their activities, which are changing at the lightning speed both the seemingly fateful nature and the inevitability of each individual’s life and physical world, and doing away with all certainties – this question does not exist in this virulent manner in Western art.’

From “Zugang zu China. Uli Sigg im Gespräch mit Matthias Frehner’ in: Mahjong – Chinesische Gegenwartskunst aus der Sammlung Sigg, Hatje Cantz 2005