With the variety of contemporary Chinese art that is currently being offered to the world, it was time to show an exhibition that proves that “Chinese art” (if the concept is at all admissible) is not solely limited to the figurative or narrative realms.

I was able to collect this evidence for the “existence” of non-figurative artists’ person-

ally on site in Shanghai, accompanied by sponsors and Andreas Schmid：This was a great privilege.

The city was loud, full of a daunting gigantism and a sheer inexhaustible diversity of artistic activity (of all qualities!). Our small group was faced with a large task, and we ran out of breath more than once-physically and spiritually! But I was truly left breathless only three times: in the very different studios of Yu Youhan, Shen Fan,and Ding Yi.

The excess of optical stimuli with which the gleaming metropolis bombarded us was relativized in such still locations. The artistic oeuvres we saw also offered diversity, a variety in technique and material, but at the same time an emptiness, a limitation to the essential. Over the obligatory cup of tea, their works attested to the darkness of the canvas and the paper, or the artists’ them-selves would relate gripping stories of the color and darkness of their own lives.

From the depths of the metropolis, we were left to our own wits when faced with these works and the peace around us.

Returning to Germany, the courteous reticence of the artists, which caused a light sense of insecurity in some of us, was for-gotten in the hectic preparations for the exhibition.

Looking back at our experiences and with an eye on what was to come, one thing be-came clear:

“Art has the power to be an authority that is supra historical. It is something that claims immediacy and presence, and is capable of fulfilling this claim. It encompasses one, it stretches over times and peoples, over individual artists and their biographies. . .what is it that comes so close to us to make us say, ‘That is it’? It seems as if we cannot do without seeing a degree of truth in art. ”

And after the transportation of the works and the work materials, the artists came.

Yu Youhan, Shen Fan, and Ding Yi were in Otterndorf.

What in China was still polite hospitality and friendly curiosity here became what I would call a familial conviviality. It once again proved that language is not the sole bridge to understanding. Facial expressions, gestures, a hearty laugh, sharing a cigarette, or eating dinner together can provide so much more than words.

And the greatest of all is finally the self-evidence with which we can look at one another directly in the eye.

The artists had long been at home, their works were long since on the other continent. We regret very much that we could not succeed in finding writers from the con-temporary art world in Shanghai who could share something of the virulent field of the three artists and their position within it.

But the essential aspects of the artists and their works continue to resonate, and perhaps we can succeed in communicating something of what we were able to experience here with this catalog.

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Out of Shanghai

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