Written by Donald Rubinstein Tuesday, 15 February 2011 22:23

Ai Weiwei's Cancels First Retrospective in China and Guy Ullens Says "Goodbye To China"

AKN NEWS - There's trouble at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. First, it was announced that Guy Ullens is divesting himself of the institution that he founded, and in fact getting out of Chinese art entirely, after having faced various roadblocks to realizing his vision in the Chinese capital. As an innovative and comprehensive art center, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) consistently demonstrates a compelling and unique way of engaging with the public. UCCA offers a complete artistic experience that combines exhibitions, programs, events, fine dining and shopping. As a non-profit art center, UCCA channels all earned revenue into supporting our exhibitions, art events and education programs. UCCA is a non-profit art center founded by collectors Guy and Myriam Ullens in November 2007. The Belgian foodstuffs baron Guy Ullens is to hand over the management of his contemporary art gallery in Beijing to “long-term partners” and divest himself of the institution.

Now, celebrated artist Ai Weiwei has canceled his upcoming retrospective at the UCCA after Chinese authorities pressured him to delay it. The show, which had been scheduled for March, was to be the politically outspoken artist's first major retrospective in mainland China.

Ai Weiwei (born 1957) is a Chinese artist, who is also active in architecture, curating, photography, film, and social and cultural criticism. Ai collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron as the artistic consultant on the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics. Besides showing his art he has been investigating in the corruption and cover-ups under the power of the government. He was particularly focused at exposing an alleged corruption scandal in the construction of Sichuan schools that collapsed during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. He intensively uses the internet to communicate with people all over China, especially the young generation

In October 2010, Ai Weiwei's "Sunflower Seeds" is installed at the Tate Modern Turbine Hall, the work consists of one hundred million porcelain "seeds," each individually hand-painted in the town of Jingdezhen by 1,600 Chinese artisans, and scattered over a large area of the exhibition hall. The artist was keen for visitors to walk across and roll in the work to experience and contemplate the essence of his comment on mass consumption, Chinese industry, famine and collective work

Like other activists and intellectuals, Ai was prevented from leaving China in late 2010. Ai suggested that the authorities wanted to prevent him from attending the ceremony in December 2010 to award the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to fellow dissident Liu Xiaobo. Ai said that he had not been invited to the ceremony, and was attempting to travel to Korea for a meeting when he was told that he could not leave for reasons of national security

"The timing is sensitive and politically they feel it is not suitable at the moment," Ai told AFP. UCCA communications director Vivienne Li was quoted in the same article as saying that the Beijing art institution did not want to upset authorities by exhibiting a such a "sensitive" artist at the wrong time.

The precise nature of the timing issues is not immediately clear, though it could well have to do with the current popular uprisings across the Middle East. Notoriously, the Chinese Communist Party has blocked searches for "Egypt" on various Web sites. In the past, authorities have subjected Ai — who is known for speaking out against abuses by the party — to various travel restrictions timed to correspond with world events, recently denying him the ability to travel to South Korea because the trip coincided with the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.However, the cancellation also coincides with another sensitive event — the news that Guy Ullens, founder of the Ullens Center, has decided to divest himself of the institution which he opened in 2007, apparently at least partly in frustration at the challenges of working in China. He is looking for private owners to take over.

"The Chinese have been nice, we've had very nice relationships, we've never had censorship," Ullens told the Art Newspaper, responding to a question about rumors that locals resented an art initiative spearheaded by a foreigner. "The problem is they have structures and you need to have Chinese partners to navigate the structures. So it's true, to some extent it's true."

He also said that while he had originally conceived of the Ullens Center to show his own holdings of Chinese art, "That idea was very quickly shot down." Ullens said that he had previously formed a partnership with the Minsheng Art Museum, run by Mingshen Bank, but now describes that collaboration as "dead."

Having failed to create a Chinese space for his collection, Ullens — widely credited with being the first Western collector to invest in Chinese contemporary art, jump-starting world-wide interest — now plans to sell off his entire collection of Chinese art in stages, starting with a 106-lot sale at Sotheby's Hong Kong on April 3. Most intriguingly, he says he will now focus on collecting young Indian artists, explaining "I don't want to keep going in the same area."

The Art Newspaper article mentions the delay of Ai Weiwei's solo exhibition, though Baron Guy Ullens simply commented, "Being on time in China is a problem."