Lot 118: Cui Xiuwen , B. 1970 Angel No. 7 chromogenic print

signed in Pinyin, titled in English, dated 2006 , and numbered 4/6 on the reverse chromogenic print

29 1/4 by 354 1/4 in. 74.5 by 900 cm.

Beijing, Asia Art Center, The Power of the Universe - The Frontier of Contemporary Chinese Art, Beijing, 2007, pp. 56-57, illustrated in Color
Bangkok, Tang Contemporary Art, Woman in a Society of Dual -Sexuality - The Exhibition of Contemporary Chinese Female Artists, 2006, pp. 68-69, illustrated in color
Madrid, Galerie Moriarty, China Lady, 2007

Karen Smith, Cui Xiuwen, Los Angeles & Beijing, 2006, pp. 31-35, illustrated in color
Tang Contemporary Art, After Angel, Beijing, 2007, pp. 32-33, illustrated in color

Cui Xiuwen's "angels" are apt to produce unrest: they are all based on the singular photographic portrait of a thirteen-year-old girl who, in some cases, is pregnant. In Western culture, we are by now inured to, even jaded by, such provocative material. In China, the standards are perhaps more stringent; Cui had to change models because the parents of the first girl selected as a model were uncomfortable with the artist's iconography. The second model lived with her family in Australia before returning to China?hence their greater openness to imagery of this kind.

Cui has worked with disturbing topics before; her video entitled Lady's Room (2000) was shot clandestinely from a handbag positioned before the mirror of a women's bathroom in a night club, the women caught on film unaware they were being recorded. Like a documentary, the video captured these women unselfconsciously primping before the mirror and in discussion with their friends and lovers. Some were likely sex workers, tarting up their allure for their clubbing customers. The film not only records the base under-life of high-velocity China, but also reveals the stark contrasts between private and public behavior: as the women prepare privately for self-presentation in a public space, their emotions and adjustments are recorded for public consumption.

In One Day in 2004 No. 2, Cui has created a group photograph like those documenting a school class, a camp, or a society. Consisting of five rows each of approximately 35 "angels" sitting on benches, the work has a numbing sameness as all of the girls are Cui's model. While there are notable differences from character to character?indeed there appears to be no repetition?the feeling of a single reiterated image nonetheless remains. In this sort of social document, difference and identity hardly emerge even when the photographed group includes different people; but in Cui's image, the repetition is mind-boggling.

In the triptych entitled One Day in 2004 No. 3, Cui has arranged three different scenes within a repeated architectural setting: beneath a blue sky punctuated by a single cloud and between two high red walls like those of the Forbidden City, a narrow corridor paved with stones plunges into a depth that is emphasized by the manipulated perspectival construction. In the image at left, Cui's model poses with her left leg playfully raised, her black hair standing out against the sky. In the center image, more than a dozen angels crowd the walkway in a variety of poses and a variety of sizes unrelated to their placement in the receding space. And in the right-hand image, the figure of the young girl stands on top of a red box, perhaps an element of the architecture itself, her gaze upward turned as though seeking deliverance from the heavens above. In all cases, the model is the same: a young girl wearing a white dress with a red scarf. Most striking about No. 3 is the fact that few of the girls appear physically well. For example, the single figure at left reaches toward a wound at her calf. And in the center image, bruises dot the legs of the seated central figure with prominent glasses who is flanked by standing angles with eye patches. Despite the profusion of figures, the overall tone is one of discomfort, anonymity and isolation that is most clearly signified by the single figure in the image at right.

Angel No. 7 (2006) is a long, indeed scroll-like image consisting of rhythmically-placed groups of pregnant models set against a low horizon. The background is made more affecting by the presence of cirrus clouds that stretch across the blue sky and range from stone gray to pink in other-worldly stripes of color. A long wall, again like the walls of the Forbidden City, runs along the entirety of the image in the far distance on the horizon. It is hard to say just what the scene represents, although it may remind some of classical travel scrolls, in which figures make their way across successive mountains and seas on a long journey. Here, though, the models sit, stand, recline or squat on the ground in clustered poses that suggest a resignation to stasis and waiting. The viewer sees the young girl's reiterated condition as a pregnant woman, her slender body always bulging no matter the position in which she has been posed. This enigmatic photographic scroll, like so many of Cui's works, offers an ambivalent even politicized vision of innocence that contrasts with the slick, virtuosic effects of the production. Cui's combination of naïveté and tough realism in her unusual imagery makes for striking works of art.

-Jonathan Goodman