798

Finally made my way to Beijing's art district, called 798 or 798 Art Zone. One of my friends and I wandered rather aimlessly around, partly because I hadn't bothered to do any research on the area before hand. Somehow we still managed to find out way into two pretty well known galleries, the UCCA and the 798 Space gallery.

The UCCA gallery was very modern and simplistic; a few big white rooms sprinkled with unusual pieces of art. One of the exhibits was called Narrow Mist and featured elongated boxes with legs dressed in sweaters, a few random interactive miscellany, and photos of "1 minutes sculptures" aka people holding a collection of random objects. These included a guy in profile with boards in his arms and between his legs, and a woman pressing rolls of toilet paper with various joints and limbs against a wall. 


The 798 Space gallery had some (to me) random pieces of art on the walls. A painting of a crumbling Pinocchio's face, a series of photos of a girl that got more and more blurry and indistinct. Lots of things I didn't pay much attention to because I was too interested in the large red painted characters written across the ceiling, praising "Chairman Mao." ---oh wait, I guess I forgot to mention that 798 is an old factory zone (more info here) and this gallery even had a few old machines still bolted to the ground---  I was unsure at first if the slogans were left over from the factory's operational period because they were still so distinct, but later reflection let me to realize that the so called 'operational period' was really only a handful of decades ago.

This reads "Chairman Mao ten thousand years, ten thousand ten thousand years (pretty much, long live Chairman Mao). And yes, that is a model and a photographer.