BEIJING, September 30, 2011 (City Weekend) — Brian Wallace, as told to Mikala Reasbeck
From the outside, my five-year-old building doesn’t look like anything special. There are no ornate decorations or columns, no well-manicured landscaping or ponds.
My [apartment] door opens onto a photo piece by the artist Zhou Jun. The photo piece shows almost exactly the view from my west-facing windows. Both look out over the canal that runs under the Second Ring Road and onto the western part of Beijing. I bought the apartment in 2003 while the building was being constructed. It was all finished in 2006.
Before I bought it I probably brought a dozen friends over to look at it and make sure it was the best choice, even though I hadn’t looked at any other properties. In the time between signing my name and moving in, I spent weeks searching for the perfect parts to fill each detail, even down to the hinges.
My furniture is mostly from warehouses in the southern part of Beijing. Those places are full of ugly, over-stuffed pieces. Still, I managed to pick up a few gems, including an outer space-looking circular glass table with four red vinyl-upholstered chairs, a small magenta loveseat with many small circular cushions rather than one big cushion, and what may be the whitest porcelain bathtub in the city. Really, though, my furniture is utilitarian, and the art I have here is what really gives this space meaning and depth.
My window sills are shelves to display all kinds of things: glazed, iridescent porcelain pigs, Korean dessert sculptures under glass, Chinese grandpa slippers, vases. One window is practically obscured by a large horse cast painted with sunbursts, birds, horses, and an apple tree that some Mongolian children painted for the Mongolian Community Arts Project. Below this horse are parts of an installation the Island 6 did for Red Gate Gallery, wind-up toy frogs are lined up on an LED display of swimming fish that was meant to recreate a garden pond. I’ve also got a six-foot tall crane with light-up eyes that Zhou Jun made to outfit his installation of an homage to Nanjing’s city wall.
Regardless of what’s on the inside of my home, I mostly appreciate the view I have from my living room. I see railway tracks, the Dongbianmen Watchtower that houses my gallery, the entrance to the Forbidden City, and the CCTV Tower. In these structures I see the movement of a city that I’ve lived in and loved since I came here as a student in 1985. Luckily, no building can ever be constructed to block my view. The railroad tracks and Grand Canal (Tonghuihe) absolutely prevent anything getting in the way. No matter how much my decorations rotate or my walls shift, I’ll have my view of Beijing forever.
DETAILS Name: Brian Wallace Occupation: Director of Red Gate Gallery Interesting Fact: Brian keeps his extensive collection of contemporary art in a warehouse in Songzhuang art district. “It’s the same collection that supplies my office at the Red Gate Gallery with visual treats,” he says. “We happily rotate art in the office as much as in my home. I make a call to the gallery’s operations manager who lives [nearby] to tell him what I’d like and, often, it arrives later that day. Needless to say, this constant shifting leaves a lot of holes in my walls.”
It's Mikala! 