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Outside at 798

As winter approaches and autumn swiftly kicks the leaves off the trees and we put sweaters on our backs, the Beijing art scene settles down to a new season.

Not that the summer hadn't been productive with happenings dotted around the city, notably at Dashanzi 798. One such event occurred on May Day, bringing 400 foreigners   out in blue Chinese factory worker suits for the day to the former factory grounds for The Short Step.  Moving peacefully around the quarter en mass, the crowd was photographed by Ben McMillan and other international Beijing-based photographers as   part of the project. See the evidence and learn more at http://www.kilometerzero.org/info/article/79/.

Retrospectives are normally consigned to the summer months. Nevertheless, 20 years of the work of Guo Fengyi is now on show at the 25000 Cultural Transmission Center also known as the Long March Space at 798.

Complex and enduring, the exhibition draws powerfully upon the viewer's response to work that initially appears naive and disappointing. A sensitive but shaky take on patterns of human energy illuminated through the practice of Chinese Qigong, the work of Guo Fengyi is hard to fathom and far from easy to look at in the flesh. If it is anything, it is Outsider Art. Yet, while it might not hang easily on your sitting room wall, depending on your taste of course, it is the presence of the work in numbers here that allows the viewer to consider it rather than reject it out of hand.

Whatever you choose, the Guo Fengyi Retrospective runs until November 20, 2005 (Tuesday – Sunday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m): the 25000 Cultural Transmission Center - Long March Space, Jiuxianqiao Rd, Chaoyang District. For further details: +86 10 6438 7107.

Information on artists, exhibitions and galleries to Daragh Moller at daragh@btmbeijing.com.