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BAM has had a history of exhibits somewhere in the range of “eh” to “I guess that’d be kind of cool if I was high,” and of course, like all of Berkeley, subject to the occasional Keatsian infiltration.
So our expectations weren’t too high for their latest exhibit, Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection, whose Student Opening Party took place this past Wednesday. Nonetheless, we were pleasantly surprised by the eclectic breadth of works and the disturbing undertones that ran throughout the exhibit–pleasantly disturbed if you will.
The party itself was OK: an overabundance of overzealous volunteers all scurrying about trying to offer us free things like temporary tattoos, archaic wooden pencils, prize giveaway forms, and “commercial cookies,” (a phrase we invented to describe fortune cookies impregnated with an advertisement for said exhibit rather than a fortune) perhaps an ironic take on the issue of commercialism which was an underlying theme of the exhibit or an indication of the desperation of advertisers in our failing economy. Whatever, free food.
The exhibit itself spans nine out of the gallery’s ten rooms, making it one of the largest in the gallery’s history. Aptly named “Mahjong” after the Chinese game which revolves around collecting and reorganizing combinations of tiles, is a collection of more than 96 different Chinese artists’ works, ranging from the 1970’s to today. The works address such issues as Mao, the Cultural Revolution, consumerism, disparities between the cities and the countryside, the tensions between the individual and society, and the visual pleasure of spiders crawling in and out of human orifices. Needless to say, we are now arachnophobic, and still questioning the relevancy of a video of such atrocities in contemporary Chinese art.
Other notable works include a pseudo-landscape scene made of human body parts (we’ll let you interpret that as you will) and a metal desk set which also functions as a torture device. Don’t let us scare you off though, we were extremely impressed with the exhibit and encourage you all to go check it out for yourselves, spiders or not.
Image Source: Paul Keller under Creative Commons
Mahjong [Press Release]
Ouija Vote [BAM]
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