Ni Haifeng 2011-07-15
Beijing
“‘Red, Black, White’ was an art group. The important point about the group was its concept, not the details of what we actually did. We wrote ‘cabbage’ in one of our works but we could have written ‘spinach’, it didn’t matter. The main concept of the group was an attitude towards ordinary language.
We had been discussing this for almost half a year before the group was established. We finally decided to establish a group and do an exhibition while we were taking a train to Beijing, to see Rauschenberg’s show. We started to prepare for the exhibition right after we returned from Beijing. Our exhibition was held at the exact same time as our graduation show.
I think the most radical thing that our group did in 1985, was to declare that individual authorship was not important, and we refused to sign our works. It was particularly radical because Chinese contemporary art at that time was dominated by Expressionism. Later, what the New Measurement Group did was similar to this; to remove authorship and any possible personal quality in an artwork.”
Biography:
Ni Haifeng (b.1964, Zhoushan, Jiezhang Province) is an artist based in Amsterdam.
Ni Haifeng graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now the China Academy of Art) in 1986. In the same year, he formed a group with his classmates and organized the exhibition ‘75% Red, 20% Black, 5% White’ at the Academy. The exhibition showcased experimental works the group had made using industrial materials, found objects and text.
After his graduation, Ni returned to his hometown of Zhoushan where he became an art teacher at a high school. During this period, he started his ‘Zero Degree writing’–where he wrote and drew numbers and symbols in outdoor and abandoned spaces.
Ni participated in the 'Garage' exhibition (Shanghai, 1991), ‘China’s New Art, Post-1989’ (Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1993) and the ‘China Avant-Garde Exhibition’ (Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Denmark, 1993). In 1994, he moved to the Netherlands. The artist continues to live and work in Amsterdam.
