Lot 113: Xing Danwen , B. 1967 Urban Fiction No. 13 chromogenic print

signed, titled in English, numbered 1/5 , and with a seal of the artist on a label affixed to the work chromogenic print

67 by 86 3/8 in. 170 by 219.5 cm.

Acquired by the present owner directly from the artist

Executed in 2005.Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.
Beijing-based artist Xing Danwen's Urban Fictions series (2004-ongoing) follows on her acclaimed disCONNECTION and Duplication series (2002-03), in which the refuse of consumer and technology culture was piled up in beautiful abstract compositions. In Urban Fictions, Xing takes the mushrooming of generic high-rises in urban China as her theme, inserting tiny characters, primarily the artist herself, playing out various dramas in otherwise unpopulated architectural models. As Xing states, "The architectural structures ... are all maquettes made to promote real-estate developments that are being planned in China today. Some of the buildings already exist, and others will soon begin construction. When you face these models showing such a variety of different spaces and think about the life-styles associated with them, you start to wonder: is this the picture of life today? Do we really live in this kind of space and environment?" In the works on offer, Xing imagines herself as a lover on a rooftop in image No. 13 (2005) and as a housewife or girlfriend quarrelling with her partner in No. 26 (2006). In the foreground of No. 13 just right of center, Xing receives the affections of a man in a gray t-shirt and jeans, pinned into the corner, her right arm raised in abandon and her right leg wrapped around him. He has offered her a single red rose, which lies on the rooftop, its petals strewn about, perhaps as a metaphor for their ecstatic pleasure as he pulls her body close. By No. 26, and the move from a low-rise development to a standard high rise, things seem to have gone awry: pots, pans and folding chairs have been hurled between the couple in their noisy public rage on the balcony. This single vignette appears just left of center in the middle of the image, and from the ninth floor of the building, the material evidence of the couple's frustration has spilled over to the ground below. As in her previous work, Xing's Urban Fictions detail the transformations of contemporary society, but in this turn from abstract compositions to narratives of possible selves, she deploys an engaging performative strategy that draws the viewer in to the myriad experiences of contemporary urban life. As one of the main photographers of the East Village community of performance artists in the early to mid-1990's, Xing also here returns to themes in her earliest work, revealing in the process how much China's development over a decade has transformed the character of its contemporary art.