Installation view of “Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2013–14. Back: QIU ZHIJIE’s triptych 30 Letters to Qiu Jiawa (2009); Above: YANG JIECHANG’s Crying Landscape(2002); Front: Stele with Buddha Dipankara from the Northern Wei dynasty (386–534 CE). Photo by HG Masters for ArtAsiaPacific.
Few exhibition subjects can be as treacherous, for viewers and organizers alike, as "Chinese contemporary art." During a decade of overexposure…