For fans of contemporary art in Beijing, there are still 10 days left to catch the inaugural 798 Beijing Biennale 2009 happening at the city’s 798 Art District. Within the factory-turned-art-exhibition compound, there are 12 venues showing Biennale work from contemporary artists, Chinese and foreign.

I was especially drawn to 798’s Linda Gallery to check out one of China’s first all-Latin American art showings. The exhibition, “Turn on, Tune in, Drop out” features 25 Latin American artists from eight countries in a wide range of mediums. Curators Nicolás and Katiushka Arze, from Chile, have a good what-it-all-means blurb in the gallery’s information guide:

“The curatorial project for the Latin American part of the biennial does
not delineate a specific art movement or dialogue within art generations. It explores the risk of literally inventing Latin American art in China. This is only possible in a country like this, so unrelated and so far from Latin American art. We are not concerned with surveying the direction of contemporary Latin American art, but instead seek to produce cultural exchange and enrichment between artists whose backgrounds might clash…”

Entering the gallery, you’re faced with a set of five vibrant abstract
color compositions. Something feels familiar about these colors…and then you realize what you’re looking at: folded national flags. Ana Roldan’s (Mexico) “Colombia, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico and Brazil” is a nice introductory piece, acquainting visitors with the Latin American theme without telling them outright.

Not many of the works deal with “China” overtly. My favorite piece in the collection were graphite floor rubbings of “Private Property” signs from various locales around New York City. About her work “Property Lines,” artist Francisa Benitez (Chile) told Diariocrítico de México, “I am very happy to show in China how, in the US, private property is sacred, with signs that are sometimes very small…” What I enjoyed was studying the seemingly endless typefaces and styles, and imagining the past areas they belonged to.

A stronger sense of “China” comes from Nicolas Grum’s (Chile) use of a
common fuel source throughout the country: coal briquettes. Grum arranged 500 of them to spell out the words “Giants do not exist” in the middle of the gallery floor. I can’t be sure what kind of giants Grum had in mind, but from a giant’s perspective on the second floor looking down, the people looked smaller than much of the art.

The 2009 Beijing Biennale runs through September 12.