Made in China

The upcoming group exhibition, “Made in China,” presented by Loakal Gallery at Ian Ross Gallery, seeks to probe our society’s underlying assumptions regarding originality, intellectual property and the value of art. Curator Eddie Colla invited a group of established and emerging contemporary artists to create an original painting and send a photo of their work to a factory in China — a factory where reproductions of Monets and other masterworks are painted to be sold as kitschy home decorations in the West. The Chinese factory artists then reproduced the works based on the photographs and shipped them back to Ian Ross Gallery, where the original paintings and the Chinese “counterfeits” will be displayed side-by-side.

Our preoccupation with originality is filled with nuances and paradox. We assign market value to original art pieces for their scarcity, driven by the singular vision of the artist, yet we readily consume designer knock-offs from stores like Forever 21 and H&M, which make their profits from directly imitating the runway collections of Marc Jacobs, Donatella Versace and Alexander Wang. Is fine art something that, too, can be imitated? The rising popularity of giclees, art toys and limited edition sculptures seems to say that the answer is yes for many consumers.

China’s culture of copying is often discussed in the Western media by perplexed bloggers and journalists, who seem astounded by such advents as almost-iPhones brandishing pear logos or a version of London’s Tower Bridge in the city of Suzhou. It is difficult for us to wrap our heads around China’s collective-oriented society, where, art historians have pointed out, a well-made copy can be as highly prized as the original. Yet, China is not merely a country of imitators. Some of the world’s most high-profile artists sought after in private collections and museums world-over, such as Ai Wei Wei, Yue Minjun, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, hail from the country that Americans increasingly view as a rival.

What place do imitations hold in the art market? How do we measure the value of creativity? Viewers are invited to ask themselves these questions when viewing the original works and their imitations in “Made in China.

Participating artists: D Young V, Akira Beard, Ian Ross, Zoltron, Shark Toof, Jessica Hess, C Kirk, Ernesto Yerena, Eddie Colla, Peter Adamyan, Nite Owl and Robert Bowen.