Exhibit offers Western views of modern China

The exhibition is lush, but frustratingly nebulous, like walking through other people's dreams. And despite comprising only 21 works, it seems awkwardly sprawling. The exhibit follows a rash of shows of contemporary Chinese art in recent years, including, at Mass MoCA alone, exhibits by Cai Guo Qiang and Huang Yong Ping. Such retrospectives, and group shows along the lines of "On the Edge: Contemporary Chinese Artists Encounter the West" two years ago at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, examined how Chinese artists have been grappling with their changing culture, with the Western marketplace, and with the clash between Eastern and Western aesthetics. Those exhibits taught Western audiences something about China.

"Eastern Standard," organized by Mass MoCA curator Susan Cross, seeks to offer up an Alexis de Toqueville-style outsider's view of a culture - something that may ultimately be more useful or interesting to a Chinese audience seeking to gauge how Westerners see China than it is to Western viewers already stewing with these ideas. The exhibit tells us that Americans and Europeans worry about China's rapid industrialization and what harm it may do to the environment. They marvel at the speedy erection of luxury residential towers in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. They fret about human rights.

One reason "Eastern Standard" comes across as foggy is that 12 of the 21 works on view are video or film, often literal projections depicting ideas and feelings Westerners metaphorically project onto China. Video, film, and photographs capture real pictures of China, but they're shot through a lens of European or American interpretation.