Announcing: Dai Hanzhi: 5000 Artists

Press Release Rotterdam, 18 April 2014

Program and Exhibitions Rediscovering the legacy of Dutch curator, scholar, and art dealer Hans van Dijk.

Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (Rotterdam) is pleased to announce a special cooperation with Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing) featuring a multidimensional program dedicated to the life and work of Dutch curator, scholar, teacher and art dealer Hans van Dijk (1946 - 2002). Van Dijk, a significant figure in contemporary Chinese art, is the inspiration behind two upcoming exhibitions to be hosted in Rotterdam and Beijing. The program will help increase understanding and appreciation of Van Dijk’s work with many Chinese artists as well as his international curatorial undertakings.

Providing a platform for research and history, this far-reaching program also includes a special publication; a conference; auxiliary events organized in collaboration with local and international partners; and the start-up of a foundation dedicated to the research of contemporary art in China as a homage to Van Dijk. The multiple components of the program aim to extend audience engagement beyond the exhibition, enabling a more dynamic appreciation and understanding of Van Dijk’s legacy and the recent history of contemporary art practices in China.

One part of the program is the exhibition at Witte de With entitled Dai Hanzhi: 5000 Artists, which tells the story of Van Dijk and the important role he played in early contemporary art in China, bringing to light the largely unknown history of artistic development in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Artists acknowledged to have been close to Van Dijk, including Liu Ding, Zheng Guogu, Zhang Peili, Wang Xingwei, and Ding Yi, are commissioned by Witte de With to create works for the exhibition, presented along with loans and archival materials. Van Dijk's work on Ming furniture will also be exhibited.

The first part of the program is the exhibition entitled Hans van Dijk: 5000 Names at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, opening on 24 May 2014 in Beijing. Both exhibitions are curated by Marianne Brouwer and developed with Defne Ayas (Director, Witte de With) and Philip Tinari (Director, UCCA), together with Venus Lau (Curator, UCCA), Samuel Saelemakers (Associate Curator, Witte de With), and Ian Yang (Curatorial Fellow, Witte de With). Curatorial assistance was provided by Andreas Schmid and Zhang Li. The exhibition is co-commissioned by the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam.

About the program Witte de With's Director Defne Ayas describes her motivation behind the upcoming program: “When living and working in China, it struck me how so many of my peers and colleagues - artists, curators, and gallerists alike- all spoke so fondly of Hans van Dijk, acknowledging him as a mentor and an important influence on their own respective practices.” Though Witte de With has worked with some important Chinese artists in the past 24 years, Ayas is pleased to now host the most comprehensive exhibition of Chinese contemporary art to date at the Center. “When noted Dutch curator Marianne Brouwer approached us with her research and exhibition plans around Hans van Dijk, we immediately said yes.”

Hans van Dijk: 5000 Names and Dai Hanzhi: 5000 Artists are two exhibitions aimed at archiving and presenting van Dijk’s curatorial oeuvre, which included over forty shows in and outside of China, that enabled the bridging between contemporary artists from both China and elsewhere, mainly in Europe.

For these presentations, his various activities in Beijing have been thoroughly researched, giving special attention to his ability of promoting and showcasing the works of emerging artists, many of whom thanks to Van Dijk found their first opportunity to become known to a larger cultural international public.

Both exhibitions feature a meticulously organized, staggeringly comprehensive lexicon of over 5000 Chinese artists born between 1880 and 1980, documenting the history of the country’s modern and contemporary art. The lexicon, discovered on Van Dijk’s computer, is a groundbreaking document, one that he spent decades compiling, and one that details the exhibition and publication history of virtually every influential Chinese artist of the twentieth century.

Exhibition curator Marianne Brouwer notes: “There has been a longstanding awareness of Hans van Dijk’s importance to the art scene in China—as a curator and a dealer, creating relations between art in China and the Western art system, particularly in the early nineties. Finding the lexicon has decisively changed the way in which we must consider his legacy. In this exhibition, we are showing a digital version that Hans created, though he also designed a book he meant to publish in print form. We are now well on our way to setting up a foundation to maintain his legacy, and one of our first concerns is to research and unpack the lexicon but also to see through the possibilities of having it published.”

As a result of the Van Dijk exhibition and in an extension to the program, Witte de With will enable the establishment of a foundation committed to the research of art in China, dedicated to the legacy of Hans van Dijk. “The foundation will provide an effective means of giving back, while creating a more meaningful and enduring connection with the program,” explains Ayas.

About the exhibitions Hans van Dijk: 5000 Names at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art 24 May – 10 August 2014 This exhibition comprises of three main elements grouped chronologically within significant periods in the scholar’s life. A collection of documentary material from the Netherlands, Germany, and the NAAC/CAAW archive, Beijing, includes catalogues, personal correspondence, and photographs, and provides an in-depth recording of van Dijk’s life and work within an emerging art scene.

Complementing these documents are works by Chinese artists with whom van Dijk worked closely.

Van Dijk’s contribution to the introduction of photography as contemporary art into the Chinese and international art worlds will be looked at closely, and several historical works by figures including Li Yongbin and the New Analysts (Xin Kedu), originally included in van Dijk’s exhibitions, will be recreated.

Dai Hanzhi: 5000 Artists at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art 4 September 2014 – 4 January 2015 The exhibition at Witte de With in Rotterdam is dedicated to the legacy of Hans van Dijk and his role in the historical development of contemporary art in China. Taking a documentary approach, the exhibition presents van Dijk’s life and work while highlighting artistic practices of the 1990s in China.

Dai Hanzhi: 5000 Artists at Witte de With will take place within the entire building and exhibition spaces, and will feature archival components, select diaries and correspondences of van Dijk, as well as his work on Ming furniture. The exhibition will also comprise of new commissions by artists who are known to have been very close to Hans van Dijk, including Liu Ding, Zheng Guogu, Zhang Peili, Wang Xingwei, and Ding Yi. Paying special attention to van Dijk’s substantial contribution to the emergence of contemporary art in China, the exhibition highlights his preference for conceptual and abstract art. Paying special attention to van Dijk’s substantial contribution to the emergence of contemporary art in China, the exhibition highlights his preference for conceptual and abstract art, as well as his interest in photography.

Vitamin Creative Space (Guangzhou) and BizArt (Shanghai), two contemporary art spaces that have been seminally influenced by Van Dijk’s model for a gallery and archive, will also be present with their own contributions to the exhibition. Information on the accompanying public program for this exhibition will be announced shortly.

Support The exhibition Dai Hanzhi: 5000 Artists at Witte de With is kindly supported by AMMODO.

About Hans van Dijk Long forgotten in the Netherlands, Hans van Dijk (1946-2002) began his career as an artist studying at the Arnhem Arts Academy and at the Eindhoven Design Academy. Gradually he broadened his interests to modern Chinese art and decided to study Chinese language and culture. In 1984 Van Dijk left the Netherlands for China, where he passionately devoted the rest of his life to documenting, archiving and promoting the work of Chinese contemporary artists, until his early passing in 2002.

Hans van Dijk acted as a teacher, curator, dealer, and scholar in a time when art infrastructure in China was virtually nonexistent. He taught artists how to manage themselves and the minutiae of the art world: how to curate and have their shows curated, pack artworks, fill out loan forms, and show to local and international collectors.

Critically, he was one of the first to view these artists within their larger context, both as a continuation of Chinese art history and as a part of international contemporary art practice. Van Dijk despised the label “Chinese contemporary art” and similarly post-colonial attitudes, encouraging Chinese artists to see themselves as equal contributors to a global cultural dialogue.

Hans van Dijk was instrumental in launching the careers of many important artists and in generating early international interest in Chinese contemporary art. He studied Mandarin in Nanjing from 1986 until 1989, during which time he traveled around China’s Jiangnan region visiting exhibitions and meeting artists. Once he returned to the Netherlands in 1989 , he began promoting Chinese artists to a continental audience, culminating in the seminal China Avantgarde exhibition at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Van Dijk returned to China in 1993 to immerse himself in the Beijing art scene, and in 1994 he founded the New Amsterdam Art Consultancy as an umbrella for his exhibitions, writing, and dealership.

The 1990s saw the scholar undertake many curatorial and business projects with mixed success. He organized several exhibitions of Chinese art in Europe, especially in Germany. Hans van Dijk was at the helm of the Central Academy of Fine Arts Gallery for a mere six months in 1996, managing to put on six of the greatest shows of his career at a breakneck pace. In 1998 he co-founded the profitable China Art Archive and Warehouse, van Dijk’s first commercial venture, with Ai Weiwei and Belgian collector Frank Uytterhaegen. The Archive contains detailed information on more than 450 Chinese contemporary artists and thousands of documents on the history of van Dijk's exhibitions both in China and abroad.

Yet these career triumphs were marred by frustration. Van Dijk was a mediocre businessman, more focused on what was vanguard than what was sellable. Official protest sank his landmark 1997 project Face to Face, a three-part collaboration with Siemens that would exhibit Chinese and German artists together.

During the late 1990s, several of van Dijk’s closest artist friends left his stewardship for more commercially successful dealers, while an influx of foreign curators diminished his role in Beijing. Yet despite this, Hans remained a beloved mentor and leading academic for a generation of Chinese artists up until his death in 2002. As artist Wang Guangyi posited, “If Hans were alive today, his space still running, I think he would be the most important figure in contemporary Chinese art. Not as a dealer, no, but as a scholar, able to influence the entire discourse of art.”

About Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art is an international public institution with Rotterdam as its home base. Established in 1990, Witte de With explores developments in contemporary art worldwide.

Witte de With has been commenting on the social and political predicament since its inception through the presentation of curated exhibitions, symposia, live events, educational programs, and a bold publishing arm.

About the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) is an independent, not-for-profit art center serving a global Beijing public. Located at the heart of Beijing's 798 Art District, it was founded by the Belgian collectors Guy and Myriam Ullens and opened in November 2007. Through a diverse array of exhibitions with artists Chinese and international, established and emerging, as well as a wide range of public programs, UCCA aims to promote the continued development of the Chinese art scene, foster international exchange, and showcase the latest in art and culture to hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

Contact Witte de With For press requests or for further information, please contact Josine Sibum Siderius via press@wdw.nl or call +31 10 411 01 44.