The Creative Ferment of New York in the 1980s Comes to Beijing

Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jenny Holzer, Robert Mapplethorpe but also Richard Prince, Julian Schnabel and Cindy Sherman were just some of the artists at the centre of the creative and cultural ferment in New York in the 1980s. During that decade, marked by social conservatism, New York saw the birth of talents whose innovative, direct and uninhibited approaches changed the course of contemporay art around the world. The galleries, museums, streets, nightclubs and new alternative spaces founded by the artists themselves were the ideal stage for a decade of radical experimentation, of dialogue and confrontation with the challenges of the times - from the AIDS crisis to the increasing gentrification of New York to the prevalence of mass consumerism. The exhibition looks at some of most important currents of the decade and offers the Zeitgeist of an era which made history for the synergy between artists and creative types as seen in one of the works on display - the refrigerator at the heart of Untitled (Fridge), a work by Jean-Michel Basquiat created along with Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Tseng Kwong Chi and Lady Pink, among others.