Beijing International Art Biennale opens on Thursday, drawing artists from China and abroad, Lin Qi reports.

The exhibition Memory and Dream will highlight the sixth Beijing International Art Biennale that begins on Thursday.

Among the country's top cultural events since its inception in 2003, the biennale is held at the National Art Museum of China, displaying more than 700 works of mostly paintings and sculptures. Foreign artists from some 95 countries contribute to nearly three-fourths of the total display at the event.

This year, Canada, South Africa, Chile and three other countries will present their artists in a celebration of historical and cultural diversity. The biennale runs through Oct 15.

But the early days of the biennale weren't as encouraging as they are today.

Liu Dawei recalls a meeting with Italian art curator Vincenzo Sanfo from the spring of 2003, when the highly contagious SARS disease had caused widespread panic in Beijing.

Liu chairs the Beijing-based China Artists Association, the body behind the biennale. He had then invited Sanfo to advise on the inaugural exhibition, which was to open in late September that year.

"Sanfo said he and his wife were the only foreigners on a flight to Beijing. They were among the very few guests staying at Beijing Hotel," Liu tells China Daily. "Cafes in the hotel and outside were closed, so we drank coffee from a thermos that I brought from my office."

As the virus began to spread, the launch of the biennale looked increasingly tough, he says. The artists' body had prepared for the event for two years.

Their persistence paid off as SARS receded from China, and the first edition of the biennale was held, with some 400 paintings and sculptures of artists from more than 40 countries.

The Beijing biennale came at a time, when there were just a handful such events in the country: Shanghai Biennial, Chengdu Biennial and Guangzhou Triennial, among the major ones. But in the past decade, China witnessed a boom in its art market and an increase in art fairs and expos.

Liu says the trend is such that many art events in China today lack distinguishing features and "have fallen into a rut" as mere copies of overseas fairs, obsessed with so-called avant-garde and conceptual art that the organizers don't seem to truly understand much.

"They are repeating each other. Sometimes they even copy the curatorial ideas of the world's major exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale," he adds.

Some exhibitions have progressed to be more creative, but they haven't developed to the extent of being recognized as independent voices.

Although Beijing International Art Biennale was founded as a platform mainly dedicated to paintings and sculptures, it has displayed a few installations and video works in recent years.

Liu has always believed that "highly raising the flag of classical art" marks this show differently from others.

"I have never thought painting as out-of-date. It has found the soil of survival here in China," he says. "One can always present rich content and hail the spirit of modernity on a limited, flat surface. Why should people abandon such an amazing form of expression?"

Tao Qin, deputy secretary-general of the China Artists Association, says two works to be shown have enormously overwhelmed her.

One is a bronze sculpture titled Ghetto Child by Australian Anastasia Contoguris. It depicts a Jewish boy terrified by war and the winter.

Another is an ink painting on silk titled The Soul of the Takla Makan Desert - The Twelve Muqam. Its painter, Liu Xuanrang, pays tribute to the "mother of Uygur music" with a simple but powerful palette.

Tao, who is also the show's chief curator this year, says both works blend with the theme for the 2015 Beijing art biennale: memory and dream.

"Countries live with historical pasts based on which their artists aspire to create and dream."

She says participating artists share concerns of societies around the globe, such as the widening gap between cities and the countryside or strains in relationships among people.

"Foreign artists have innovated their approaches to continue the modernization of oil painting and sculpture. Their boldness, I believe, will enlighten Chinese artists.

"Their attendance at the biennale will also help them get a bigger picture of what is happening in China's art circles," Tao adds.

Beijing International Art Biennale takes pride in not being a commercial art fair. All pieces are returned to their creators after the show ends. But many have donated their artworks to the organizing artists' body, totally 313 so far.

Contact the writer at linqi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 09/22/2015 page22)