Half-Life of a Dream—Contemplation on Collective Hypnopompia

Another hit summer show at SFMOMA, Half-Life of a Dream: Contemporary Chinese Art From the Logan Collection, presenting a cohort of diverse artists of the last two decades, was selected and curated by Jeff Kelley, intimately familiar with the subject, who often visits artists in Beijing, and advises the Logans on their acquisitions. He described the show as a “meditation on jet leg and Mao’s dream of modern China that became a collective dream, a state dream.” After five millennia of highly developed traditional Chinese art, hardly drastically innovative from one ruling dynasty to the next, the world is now witnessing a surge of Made in China modernism—partly a reaction to recently omnipresent Socialist Realism, partly a rediscovery of Western iconoclasts of the 20th century. The nation’s transition from a deep hypnosis of Maoist Communist propaganda, disrupted by the nightmare of Tiananmen Square, to hypnopompia of the present-day global aspirations, is widely reflected in the exhibit. “Half-Life of a Dream” is on display through October 5 at 151 Third St., San Francisco. More information at: 415-357-4000, or http://www.sfmoma.org/