New Measurement Group

(Xin Kedu, 1989–95)

artist group in Beijing

Founded in 1988 and reorganized in late 1989, after a reshuffling of the original ‘New Analyst Group’ (Jie Xi), the ‘New Measurement Group’ (Xin Kedu) made its first appearance at the groundbreaking China Avant-Garde exhibition at the China Art Gallery in Beijing. Xin Kedu was formed by three of the artists belonging to the former group: Gu Dexin (b. 1962), Wang Luyan (b. 1956) and Chen Shaoping (b. 1947). They would continue in the spirit of artistic self-denial that brought together the New Analysts: meeting on a regular basis, the three would adopt rules agreed upon by majority with the goal of regulating every aspect of artistic creation, from the type of drawing tools to working procedures.

This resulted in erasure of all individual trace in the end product. Between 1990 and 1995, the group produced five books that bear witness to the process through which objects, human behaviours and situations are transformed in pure graphs. Entitled Analyst I–V (Jie Xi I–V), the five books were exhibited at various venues in and outside China, including the exhibition ‘China’s New Art Post 1989’ at the Hong Kong Arts Centre in 1993 and ‘Des del País del Centre’ at the Centre d’Art Santa Mónica in Barcelona in 1995. In the autumn of 1995, in view of the conflicts created between its radical founding principles—i.e. to deconstruct the legitimacy of the collective institutional system by creating an institution of its own—and the unavoidable sanctioning process of the artistic system, the group called its final meeting and decided to destroy all documents and drawings heretofore produced as a final ‘measurement’ required to terminate its mission.

Further reading

(1995). Des del País del Centre: avantguardes artístiques xineses (exhibition catalogue). Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament de Cultura 45.

Lü, Peng and Yi, Dan (1992). A History of Modern Art in China. Changsha: Hunan Fine Art Publishing, 346–69.

TANG DI