Art Porn Magazine
Yue Wang
Art porn is an independent art magazine in propose of searching Chinese contemporary spirits and spreading the work of Chinese contemporary artists. The first issue of the Art Porn involves four artists (Yixin Tong, Wenxin Zhang, and a duo, Guoxi and Jianling Zhang). Art Porn is based on my depth perception of hyper growth, also known as the 80s generation. After Openness in China, various changes in politics, economics, and culture have shaped my mind and view. In an attempt to address the special group of people who were born in the 1980s, or to capture this movement in China, I have started this publication. At the beginning, my focus was on how graphic design can be sparked/ignited in a new light. I developed rule-based layout systems in documenting one artist, and ended up with a 158-page book. Later on I plan to continue to transform my process to a real publication. The focus is more about the concept and logic. The layout and editing are structured more richly than usual, shattering tradition and at the some time laying emphasis on the logical relationship between each column. I avoided personal judgments and tried to omit anything arbitrary. Although most of the contents are in Chinese, I tried to include some bits of interest to the Western, English-reading audience. Another thought that pervaded the process was how to keep the magazine alive in a rigid legal/regulatory environment. Independent publishing is illegal in China, but there are, nevertheless, myriad tiny publications that slip through the regulatory cracks. As a newcomer, my first inclination is toward a magazine in its original sense, with enormous printing and circulation, with focus on content, and worthy of being placed next to the toilet after reading. By porn, I don’t mean sexual content, but rather refer to an addiction to visual stimuli.