Gong Yan
GY: It should be a clearly-defined business relationship. They can be friends in private, but when doing business, they are business partners.
Hu Jieming
HJ: I cannot say gallery owners are the bosses. (Laugh…) I think it is a mutually exploitative relationship. (Laugh…)
Huang Kui
HK: It should be a relationship between the product and the dealer.
Liu Jianhua
LJ: Well, it’s just like the one between the wife and the husband. You may often have different sorts of conflicts. This is a graphic description.
LJ: Some will get divorced; some will continue living together after the fight, well, for the sake of art!
Li Shan
LS: It should be a relationshipt of collaboration. Gallerists should give artists freedom in terms of creation, while artists working for a certain gallery should be responsible and provide it with good artworks, not just making creations in a rough and slipshod way for money. The key to this relationship is trust. The two sides should trust each other,
Li Xiangyang
LX: In fact, many people are thinking about this problem. We may consider western culture and Asian culture to be two different cultures. We are not inferior. We are only different. If there really is cultural imperialism, then it is because there is a political agenda behind it. We should know how to cultivate our own race’s language, and rebuild our race’s own culture. Actually our teacher had already said that “we are together but we are different”. The first thing we need to do is to make ourselves fuse with international culture.
Wang Tiande
WT: A gallery could have sold this work for 13000 USD, but then tells you that they have sold it for 10000 USD only. I sure this happens all the time. But a very successful gallery will tell you that they have sold it for 13000 USD. They will not say it is 10000 USD. An artist does not really want to discuss with the gallery owner how much the work was sold for. If the work is collected by a museum or by a very famous collector, then he would certainly feel very satisfied.
Xiang Liqing
XL: Ha ha, the gallery owner. I cannot explain clearly for I don’t have a mind that can deal with economics.
XL: But what I want most is to be a free man that does not belong to any gallery.
DQ: Did you succeed? Are you free?
XL: I should be free.
Xue Song
XS: There should be mutual trust. They take what they each need, and then they together split it
Yu Xiaofu
YX: Hmmm… I think the relationship between the artist and the gallery or boss should be this: firstly they should be honest; secondly there should be clear allocation of responsibilities. Both sides show abide by this concept, right? They should collaborate with sincerity.
Zhang Ding
ZD: The curator performs for the artist what the artist needn’t do. The artist only needs to care about his works. This is relatively simple.
Zhang Peicheng
ZP: Friendship is a very fair relationship. If it is the relationship of the superior and the subordinate, the elder brother and the younger brother, then one is dominant and one is being dominated, or one is bigger and one is smaller. If I am a friend of the gallery owner, I do not wish he would use a lot of commercial issues to restrict my creativity.
