The research we undertook to formulate this exhibition was an incredibly fascinating journey of discovery of artistic ambitions and an intriguing investigation into the formal and conceptual strength in art practice. This is part of an ongoing attempt to invigorate the discussion of the aesthetic and conceptual meanings of art. Such a discussion is particularly pertinent in China today considering the fact that the dominant art historic narratives and existing art systems tend to emphasize and recognize the more utilitarian assets of art practice, such as the social or political motivations, the shock value or commercial worth, and the anti-establishment or subversive nature of artworks. These concerns, although valid, tend to eclipse some of the more fundamental topics about art making and contribute little to the development of the language of art itself.In exhibitions of Chinese contemporary art inside and outside of China, most works are overridden by too strong a desire to address a variety of social, political and personal matters, while these reflections appear to be too simple, direct and formulaic translations of the reality itself. These interpretations of the reality, often without detailed investigation and thoughtful analysis and regulated by the limited experiences of human beings, are inevitably paled in comparison with the absurdity and intensity of the reality itself. As a result, the necessity of their existence can only be validated by the context of art, while such isolation makes their arguments seem even more superficial and disengaged. More often than not, the aspirations for moral discussions and narratives in art also help disguise an artist’s weaknesses, and a lack of sensitivity towards the magical potential of art to transform something mundane, something common, something out of an everyday context into the realm of art.In China, the decades from the 1940s to the end of the 1970s, a time when art was subordinated to political needs, shaped a deep-rooted functionalist approach to how art is produced and viewed, the residue of which can still be felt today. Art writers tend to focus on the interpretation, and sometimes over-interpretation of the ideological proposition of a work, while hardly attending to the artistic attributes and rhetoric of art. There is almost no critical engagement with the aesthetics and conceptuality of art. The full significance of the romantic, the sublime, the poetic, the emotional, and the ambient horizon in art is yet to be identified and acknowledged.The battle to regain the autonomy of art started as early as October 1980, when French-trained painter Wu Guanzhong, published his article “on Abstract Beauty” in Art Monthly (Issue no 10, 1980), arguing that abstract beauty is the core of formal beauty and people instinctively love abstract and formal beauty. His view sparked the first nation-wide debate among art circles about abstract art and, more significantly about the formal element of art after the end of the Cultural Revolution. The 80s saw an unstoppable wave of earnest experiments with styles and practices derivative from Western modern art movements, usually out of their original contexts yet adapted and enriched by the local background of their adopted home turf and the knowledge and experience of Chinese artists. In parallel with depictions of their immediate reality, religious themes, and expressions of pent-up frustrations with the former decade of intellectual suppression, in the hope of searching for new spiritual outlets and releasing their emotive potential, a number of artists quietly embraced conceptual art to reflect critically on questions concerning individual experientialism to the formation of a new social system and social orders. This conceptual movement of a minority of Chinese artists however was and remains today marginalized and overshadowed by social and cynical realist paintings and political pop art supported and consumed by international cultural tourists and art speculators all through the 1990s till the present. Sporadic attempts at revitalizing the exploration of the inherent elements of art making throughout the 1990s, such as the post-sense sensibility group, all eventually became a formality over content, overrun by their rebellious passion and deprived of any of the original spirit that motivated them as they all evolved into collective movements.The market boom and the immensity of resources that have become available in the art scene from the late 1990s to the present has curiously created an even larger bubble for art production. Some artists are concerned with filling up ever-expanding gallery spaces and meeting the orders of many collectors, allowing even lesser mental space to contemplate the primary concerns and mechanism of art.It’s high time to give weight and consideration to the artist’s sensibility and subjectivity that grant the artwork a life of its own, in whatever form. It’s the aesthetic and conceptual ideas that compel an artist to work, provide a work its structure, and to a certain extent, bring it into existence. This is just the beginning.The exhibition opens on December 3, 2007 – January 31, 2008 at The Red Mansion Foundation, 46 Portland Place, London,UK.