A weekend in Beijing, my mission to check out the opening of the Christian Dior and Chinese Artists exhibition at the UCCA (Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art) in the 798 Art District.
See more of what our W* Director got up to in Beijing
Arriving Friday afternoon at the Foster and Partners designed Beijing airport, a very swift passage through immigration that would put most old world airports to shame was spoilt by the unwelcome news that my ‘priority’ tagged luggage was still in London. No panic I mistakenly thought, British Airways will deliver my luggage on Saturday, plenty of time to get dressed in black tie for the event (luckily my smoking was carry on, sadly the same could not be said for the shoes, bow tie, shirt and cufflinks).
As it turned out the news from customer services was not good, there was ‘no space available’ on the Friday night flight for my bag, so between racing though my must-do schedule (Herzog & de Meuron’s Olympic Stadium, PTW and Arups Water Cube, Paul Andreu’s National Grand Theatre, Steven Holl’s Linked Hybrid, Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren/OMA’s CCTV building and a tour of the newly completed Park Hyatt Beijing at the Yintai Centre ) I attempted to purchase the requisites for Saturday night’s gala dinner.
Downstairs from the Park Hyatt in the new Park Life Shops (designed by Tokyo’s Super Potato) Zegna provided me with a bow tie, but there was less success at Hermès as the largest size Pierre Hardy patent shoes they carried was 43 (in China they stop at a 9) and for some reason Jil Sander only take Chinese credit cards, visitors one assumes must just pay with cash. Luckily Dior Homme came up trumps and for the rest of the weekend I just made do with overnight express laundry.
Saturday night kicked off with a preview of the show. Although there was definitely a 'red carpet', thanks to Charlize Theron, Maggie Chueng, Eva Green, Mylène Jampanoï and Marion Cotillard and a host of local stars, by far the best carpet was by Paris-based artist Wang Du, whose ‘Image Making’ tapis at the entrance was the first exhibit you saw. Wang Du sat on my left at dinner and conversation was limited as I speak neither Cantonese nor French that well. Other highlights of the show for me were Li Song Song’s Light bag, a 3m high replica of the Lady Dior bag, its outline and cannage pattern a kind of scaffolding of florescent tubes, the heat generated caused some havoc but was welcome after the chills outside, Xu Zhongmin’s weird and wonderful U-walk, a disturbing motorised catwalk show in steel, fibre glass and Plexiglas, Wang Qingsongs ‘Nutrients’ as previewed in this issue of Wallpaper* and Wen Fangs broken wall ‘Hole in the wall, hope in the world’. Bricks from the wall were being sold like hot cakes in the store at the end of the dinner.
Just like at my table there was plenty of translating and switching between Mandarin (the rest of the artists, local clients and Chinese VIPs), French (LVMH’s Bernard Arnault, Christian Dior CEO Sidney Toledano, Guy and Myriam Ullens, UCCA Director Jerôme Sans and English (John Galliano with Charlize Theron).
Sunday we headed out of the city, to Commune by the Great Wall, a ‘village’ of houses designed by a group of 12 Asian architects that earnt the patron/developer Xhang Zin a special prize at the Venice Biennale of Architecture when it opened. After an early breakfast in Kengo Kuma’s Bamboo Wall 3 house we headed up to the wall (me in a coat borrowed from the staff) before heading back to the Airport for the trip home where I finally caught up with my luggage.
