 he Universal Studio at Caochangdi in Beijing was founded in 2005 by Pi Li and his colleague Waling Boer. Even last summer, he had said ambitiously that it was a lab where they could realize all their crazy ideas. Then in the later half of that year, Pi Li started operating profitable projects in his studio. If the U studio was still in a state of mixed operations at that time, now Pi Li has decided to devotedly turn it into a professional commercial gallery.
In 2007, the art studio that was once sponsored by collectors and an overseas foundation lost supports from its patrons. The art market was so profitable that collectors wouldn’t wait several years to promote a new artist; the Dutch foundation believed they should support artists of their own country first and then withdrew its support for the project in China.
Pi Li once worked at the Courtyard Gallery, the earliest commercial gallery in Beijing. Later, he chose to be a curator. From 2003 to 2004, he not only co-curated many large exhibitions home and abroad, including the first exhibition of Chinese contemporary art in Pompidou in Paris and a large itinerant exhibition of Anthony Gormley in China. He also independently curated exhibitions like “Ke Ai” and “Out of Focus”. Last year, he involved in the planning of “China Power Station” exhibition at Battersea Station by Serpentine Gallery in London. He was also one of the curators for Seoul Biennale. Perhaps the recent exhibition “Aftershock” in Beijing, featuring works by British YBA generation, would end up to be the last exhibition he ever curated in recent years. At this point of his career, Pi Li begins to position himself as a gallery operator.
 Pi Li, born in 1974, has constantly changed his career direction in recent years. He was once the Art Director for the Chinese Contemporary Art Award sponsored by Uli Sigg. He also showed up in the Cannes International Film Festival as the producer of the Chinese movie Shanghai Dream.
After over one year of operation, the U Studio, founded in 2005, has also changed its direction. Now Pi Li decides to develop whole-heartedly the studio into a commercial gallery, and he has opened up a 100-square-meter affiliated exhibition area beside the main hall to promote the experimental solo exhibitions. The once mixed-orientated U Studio finally begins to transform into a professional gallery.
Profit or non-profit? Such a question has perplexed curators of a generation. When Chinese art market is growing in an extreme manner, are there any true professional galleries emerging in the prosperous gallery market? Have the artists who enjoy skyrocketing market prices also earned matching statuses and honors in international art scenes? Can non-profit projects grow to their full potential in China where both the system and the law environment for non-profit enterprises are defective? These are questions Pi Li raises and also the realities he has to face. Pi Li has cooperated with commercial galleries, government systems, overseas biennales and art expos. Maneuvering in different systems, he impressed people as a man of flexibility. The small exhibitions he independently curated have truly revealed his insight and enthusiasm. In 2003, he chose artists Yan Lei, Zhou Tiehai and Chen Wenbo to join the exhibition “Out of Focus”; in 2006, he was also curator for the debut solo exhibitions of young artists like Qiu Xiaofei, Song Kun and others. At that time Pi Li might not be a man socializing with various systems to achieve his goals, but a sober and acute thinker.
For Pi Li, is there anything he adheres to constantly behind his ever-changing identity?
Pi Li has tried to run a foundation, to set up a non-profit space, to work as an independent curator and an art critic. Behind every endeavor, what interested him the most remained to be the establishment of a certain system. Now he runs a gallery, introduces an agent system and keeps a collector record just for the introduction of a professional gallery system. “At first I talked about independent exhibition system, later I tried the foundation system and non-profit system –things I adhere to most constantly. I tried, but non-profit couldn’t work, so I try to build the gallery system. System is always what I’m most interested in.”
Pi Li isn’t a rebel of course. He chose to enter different systems and maneuver in his own way, trying to build his own reasonable system. Judging by current situations, it needs more time to prove if he could succeed in his experiment or not.
EO: You have curated quite many exhibitions home and abroad in recent years.
 Pi: I’ve done everything. After graduation in 1997, I worked at the Courtyard Gallery, a relatively mature gallery in Beijing. Then I went to study in Britain and got the notion of free curator, it was a very interesting idea. Then I worked as a curator till 2004 when I earned a master degree. Then, the whole environment at home changed, so I stayed in Central Academy of Fine Arts helping with those projects, such as the National Hall at Venus and Chinese contemporary art exhibitions at Pompidou Center. At that time we all believed it a lofty work to help bring contemporary art from “underground” to “above ground”; we believed only when contemporary art was brought to open space could it have access to more resources. With the exhibition in Pompidou Center in 2003, Lao Fan (Fan Di’an) and I worked hard to negotiate with a group of foreigners about what kind of artists we should bring to the exhibition. By the opening time of the exhibition, we seized one third of the space. some small sculptures, handkerchiefs, Mao Zedong badges and other things made in the Cultural Revolution period and collected by a French man were also exhibited there, but the exhibition earned a very poor result. Everybody was criticizing me, and I had no ways to explain. I began to seriously doubt the actual value of pulling art to official levels. I quitted the job and left.
EO: Then you went on to work as a producer, didn’t you?
Pi: I opened my own company. You found what you did in the last four or five years was all meaningless. Some artists were more utilitarian than what you could imagine. I believe art is free, and it does need a broader perspective on society. When it was halfway in the process of shooting the movie Shanghai Dream, director Wang Xiaoshuai was betrayed by the investor, then we two had to raise money together, that was the real reason I ended up a producer. Later when Shanghai Dream won an award in the Cannes, I planned to commit myself to movies, but the award disappointed me so much, for I began to realize what kind of China the world would like to see.
EO: Then you changed your direction again.
Pi: So I left again. Then art market began to turn better, and collectors were willing to pay for something. We asked if we could go without foreign support and found a non-profit studio. But there weren’t non-profit studios in China and collectors were all expecting return after they made an investment. And worse, market then was so prosperous that the prices of art works would increase several times after a very sort of time of collecting. I had worked with and brought up so many artists, only to see them commercialized so quickly. We were self-contained because we were non-profit. But soon the artists became famous and went to contract with other commercial galleries. Then, if you want to borrow the same works from those artists, you have to pay a big insurance fee or something like that. So I found it a hard thing indeed. I know a collector from Hong Kong who suggested we run it half for profit and half for non-profit. But at that time that’s also quite controversial–how should we divide it?
EO: It’s right that state of mixed operations.
Pi: But since there were no good commercial galleries in China, why don’t we develop a good and profitable commercial gallery? It must be fine if we could only do it well. But it’s a big challenge to me right at that time. I was doing independent art and I did it non-profit, but suddenly you said you would do it for profit, how could you manage it? It was also what Wailing Boers, my business partner, experienced. He was curator for two Berlin Biennales and now he is in his fifties. It’s not only a circumstance I met in China, he met it in Europe too, i.e. the government is turning to the right and governments around the globe are turning to the right.
EO: Then we can say you’re now down-to-earth and trying to make a professional commercial gallery.
 Pi: Yes. Eight exhibitions a year, and after we decide on the eight exhibitions in half a year’s time, we would do them one after another. In the rest of the time we would do other things such as collecting art works. Now the whole environment of art has changed; besides the government’s shift to the right and after the rise of this new economy, the total of the global economy grows bigger and money supply increases. It’s the first point. Previously, traditional galleries sold paintings in Berlin, in London; after Internet is developed, art is visually and rapidly spread to all places, and the trade volume of art begins to expand; with a larger volume the trade quickens its pace, and a fast trade leads to a situation where supply can’t t meet demand, and the price are constantly brought to higher levels. There’s another point. We talk about the system of curator, but this system has met serious challenges in recent years. What are curators in this country doing? Alas, curators are people who help galleries to get paintings!
EO: Why didn’t you have such a firm idea of running a commercial gallery three or four years ago?
Pi: I think there were several reasons. Actually I didn’t see there were any good galleries in China at that time, but there were in foreign countries, and I saw them when I worked as a curator. In Berlin and London, you could see the professional spirit that was absent in China – how to plan a good exhibition, or how to help an artist to grow. The whole Chinese art market was very defective. Art market is in fact a bit like the contracting system for various stars –profit comes only from monopoly. But this is very difficult in China, and we see none of the galleries in 798 District is an exclusive agent. So we would develop a professional gallery and extend the practice of agency; it’s much more important than how much money I could earn. In fact, though Chinese art market appears exceptionally hot, many first-rank foreign collectors didn’t get involved in it. Firstly, they were not clear of the edition number and the numbers of the works; secondly, the prices were not transparent; and thirdly, the future of those artists was not sure. Then who would like to buy those works? Now our studio is trying to sign up with some artists exclusively.
EO: But the problem now is there are fewer good artists but too many galleries. How would you persuade those artists to believe you?
Pi: So we mainly develop an academic gallery. An artist’s career, the price of his work and his reputation are all related to his academic depth. Now there are so many artists and the market is so huge; which artists enjoy good positions in international art academic scenes? The artists we represent are very cheap, and it’s one of our tactics. One of Liu’s (刘韡) oil paintings we sell only for 30 or 40 thousand US dollars. But we don’t sell to all who would like to buy it; we would distinguish between collectors; we have kept a record of every collector and we have specialized people responsible for collecting these data. We have a stricter control of collectors. This year we have carried out the plan of a great many solo exhibitions; every exhibition will last 5 to 6 weeks because it isn’t worthwhile to remove all of them after the exhibition; further, because we expect more people to come to see it. Another example is we now adopt a practice called pre-exhibition system: the opening ceremony to public is usually conducted on Saturday, but we may invite collectors to view the exhibition on Friday and it is called pre-exhibition. None of them is my invention; they’re all basic concepts well known to foreign galleries. We’re now just learning to do this. So I say we’re not making the gallery, we’re making the gallery system.
 EO: You were once a curator, a producer, and a critic; your identity keeps changing. Have you ever had a “never-change” idea when you were doing those things?
Pi: I believe it’s still all about the system. I have become increasingly clear that to plan an exhibition or to write an article are all very partial communicative work. At first I talked about independent exhibition system; then I tried the foundation system and non-profit system. And the system is what I adhere to most constantly. It’s very interesting to develop a system. Now there’s already a profession of curator and that’s enough, I think, and I have tried it. There’s also the foundation system now. I also tried non-profit system but then understood it couldn’t work, so I shifted to gallery system. System is the most important thing. Moreover, once a good system is developed, human characters and weaknesses won’t count much, because there’s the system in place. It goes like politics. The system is what I care about most.
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