Between Past and Future:
New Photography and Video From China
Seattle Art Museum

One of the curators proclaimed while giving a tour, “I think everyone’s going to want to go right out and buy a plane ticket after seeing this show.” While the show works well as a sort of travelogue—both of China’s geography and its collective psyche—it’s hard to tell if all, or most, current Chinese artists are as concerned with historical context as this exhibit implies, or if that’s just the aspect the organizers chose to highlight.

For someone looking for a window into the mind of contemporary art in China, the show is somewhat frustrating, with so many viewpoints represented. The exhibition itself seems too epic for the space the SAM has allowed. Still, a number of works stand out—most notably, many of the video works on display, but you’ll need hours to absorb it.

Xu Zhen’s “Actually I Am Also Very Blurred,” made up of porn images from the web printed on Post-It notes, and Chen Shaoxiong’s multi-media piece both evince the kind of fresh approach one wishes there were more of. The photographs of Yang Yong and Cang Xia and some of the documentation of the performance pieces show a newer, more vigorous approach to looking at the world, but the show is too much of a cursory overview to be entirely cohesive. It’s worth a look though. Maybe you do need to fly to China to see what’s really going on.—Kristopher Monroe

Between Past and Future” runs through May 1 at Seattle Art Museum, 100 University St., 206.654.3100.

Worst Public Art of the Month Art Benches, Fart Benches Southeast Portland

The functional art benches at SE 21st and Tibbetts in Portland look like feet that will never wear Manolo Blahniks. In fact, they look like feet that have never worn shoes. (Hobbits anyone?) But they’re made of eco-friendly cobb and designed by a collective, so their PC status pulls rank on the jackass who pokes fun. Suffer in silence, aesthete. —Cielo Lutino