By Justin Lowe
Over the past two decades, both society and art on mainland China and abroad have changed dramatically, shifting from an insular viewpoint to a newer, global perspective. A relatively relaxed political climate as well as economic expansion have contributed to the proliferation of artistic activity within the country. Other artists, meanwhile, have chosen to study or emigrate overseas, combining their Chinese traditions with a more international approach.

Inside Out: New Chinese Art, jointly presented at the Asian Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) through June 1, is the first major international exhibition of contemporary works from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Chinese artists living abroad.

Presented in a variety of media, including ink, acrylics, oils, photography, and installation and performance art, the exhibit represents a multitude of expressive styles and schools, from nativism to cynical realism, from minimalism to apartment art. The works, selected from the past two decades of Chinese avant garde art, address issues ranging from the broadly cultural to the intensely personal.

While many pieces exude recognizably Chinese characteristics, the longstanding tradition of appropriation in artistic development assures that much of the artwork has some familiarity for non-Chinese audiences.

At SFMOMA, for instance, paintings from mainland China's "Political Pop" movement of the 1980s draw on Communist propaganda posters and American pop art to comment on the ironies of Chinese culture and society. Particularly in their de-construction and re-contextualization of Mao Tse-tung, works such as Li Shan's The Rouge Series: No. 8, which depicts a young, monochromatic Mao clasping a pale pink flower between his lips, ask us to reconsider Mao not only as an historical figure, but also as a pop icon and ultimately as an individual.

But the Chinese government's crackdowns on artistic expression, especially after the Tiananmen Square protests, is evident as artworks shied away from political themes, instead criticizing China's burgeoning consumer culture. For instance, Su Xinping's Tower of the Century portrays Chinese women, men and children, mostly in Western dress (and even Mao and Deng Xiaoping in their characteristic garb), rushing to the center of the canvas and colliding with a column of figures clambering toward the sky, seemingly in pursuit of their own selfish economic goals.

Although considerably outnumbered by artworks from China, those from Taiwan and Hong Kong display a broader range of themes and a distinctly more varied palette. At the Asian Art Museum, Wu Tien-chang's mixed-media works, A Dream on a Balcony and A Dream of a Spring Night, consist of oil paintings bordered by artificial flowers and lights. Depicting carefully posed, partially masked figures, they have a disturbing, alienating quality. In New Paradise, Hou Chun-ming has enlarged the traditional woodblock print style into colorful folding screens that present a disfigured couple in the violent throes of sexual desire, consummation and termination.

Gifts From China, by Hong Kong artist Danny Ning Tsun Yung, displays paper- or silk-covered "gift boxes" containing empty CD cases or clear plastic film canisters filled with fanciful or useless items-toys, water, old newspaper, etc.-as if questioning the value of Hong Kong's return to the motherland.

Inside Out also carries examples of performance art, which cover broad and provocative themes like gender (mis)identity and urban alienation. But these pieces tend to suffer from low-quality video presentations or static photographic facsimiles. However, a series of performances by some of these artists in conjunction with the exhibit will provide a first-hand opportunity to appreciate their works.

Installation art is a major component of Inside Out, even though gallery space proves to be problematic for these pieces. At SFMOMA, for instance, Taiwanese artist Chen Hui-chiao's Thoughts of Flowers Go Deeper Than Looking-which consists of hundreds of dried red rosebuds pierced by acupuncture needles and spilling onto the floor from atop a table-is crammed into a tiny space, making it impossible for the observer to walk around the piece to inhale the faint rose scents as the artist intended.

At the Asian Art Museum, however, one gallery has been entirely given over to a massive installation by overseas Chinese artist Wenda Gu. Perhaps one of the most accomplished and diverse talents in the exhibition, Gu is a performance artist, painter and installation artist. Her United Nations Series: Temple of Heaven, a room-sized pavilion created from panels of interwoven human hair collected from salons worldwide, displays on its walls nonsensical words and characters resembling Chinese, English and Arabic. At the center, a dining table is arranged with chairs that are inset with video monitors displaying images of drifting clouds. The universality of the artist's materials and images is striking-the ubiquity of human hair, the camaraderie suggested by the dining table, the familiarity of cloudscapes, and the artist's pseudo-language. But at the same time, such language is unintelligible to all observers.

The ambitious objectives of Inside Out: New Chinese Art occasionally arrive with mixed success, as the exhibit's grandest aspirations are sometimes undone by their very scope. For viewers with little opportunity or context in which to evaluate contemporary Chinese art, the show may be simultaneously exhilarating and bewildering. While some of the artwork may not rise to the caliber expected from an international exhibit, Inside Out does present a rare and significant opportunity for audiences to critically assess contemporary Chinese art. In addition, it gives artists themselves a chance to re-examine their own work in a broader global context.

Inside Out: New Chinese Art appears through June 1 at the Asian Art Museum, 415-379-8801, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 415-357-4000.