A record number of Chinese artists and art students have arrived in Berlin in recent years, lured by its rich mix of cultural life and conveniently low-priced studios and work facilities. In 2010, 70 Chinese art and music students attend Berlin's elite University of Fine Arts in Charlottenburg, whilst 772 Chinese students are registered at the nearby Technical University - an all- time record.
Yafeng Duan, the daughter of Xin Duan, 70, an artist famous for his traditional fine art paintings in China, is one among them. In Germany six years, she moved to Berlin in 2009 after being awarded a two year art scholarship at the Bauhaus University in Weimar.
"Here, l attempt to realise my own concepts in the contemporary art field," she says. "I don't draw my ideas from the classic Chinese art tradition." After periods spent in Bonn, Cologne and Duesseldorf, the artist is excited about being in the German capital. "I need a good working atmosphere in which to produce my work, and Berlin provides it," she says with a smile. "The city's so vibrant culturally."
She shrugs off mention of Chinese artists being among the world's best-selling artists, saying: "The fact that several of them sell their work on the western art markets for phenomenal amounts doesn't mean to say they are all world-class painters, but simply perhaps commercially-minded."
In Berlin, Yafeng Duan rents a handsome studio, with three other artists, two of them American, in a huge red-brick, early 20th century courtyard building, in the city's bustling Potsdamerstrasse. A few streets away, in Berlin-Schoenberg's Motzstrasse, Chinese curator-historian Zhu Ling, 28, has this year opened a gallery in Berlin "specialising in emerging young Chinese artists." She says her aim is "to promote individuality and independent spirit in contemporary Chinese art."
Currently, the curator is back in Beijing. But she says that while her gallery was not the only one in Berlin to feature the work of Chinese artists, it was probably the first to "deliberately turn away from the existing cliches about contemporary Chinese art."
Five Chinese-born contemporary artists - Zhang Hui, Lui Yan, Fu Rao, Wang Chu and Jiang Jun - show their work at the gallery's latest exhibition, with oil and acrylic canvas paintings, and bitumen works on paper, offered at prices up to 15,000 Euro.
"Such prices are moderate indeed, compared to those fetched by big name Chinese artists at Christies and Sotheby auctions," she points out, when noting that artist Liu Ye's "Bright Road" sold for 2.5 million US dollars earlier this year.
"Whether my artists prices will rise dramatically in today's art world will depend in large measure on the speculators," says Zhu Ling. "Quality is not the only factor."
The curator-historian feels the Chinese art scene today to be seriously undermined by problems of "plagiarism, commercialism and political exhibitionism. Almost everyone tries to be "Western", from techniques, mediums, right down to the final look of their works.
"If it were not for the Chinese faces or characters that appear in these art works you would never believe you were in China," she said, when observing she'd noticed no sign of improvement on her present trip home. Zhu Ling, who first arrived in Berlin in 2004, gained a Master's degree in art history and philosophy from the city's Free University, in 2008.
Berlin-born Dagmar Yu Dembski, 66, the child of German-Chinese parents, who in 2007 authored a 150-page book titled "Chinese in Berlin," praises the arrival of Chinese artists and art students in Berlin, saying "they enrich life in the city."
"Chinese people living here are scattered about in almost every part of Berlin," says Yu Dembski, who heads the Free University's Confucious Institute in Berlin. "Most who arrive these days tend to be young, well educated, and eager to get ahead." "Artists among them form networks, give lectures on Asian art, and occasionally sell their work in city underground galleries," she says. Last month Shanghai-born expressionist artist Huang Yuanquing arrived in Berlin for an exhibition of his paintings at the city's Gallery Albrecht, near the former Checkpoint Charlie crossing point in Berlin. An expert calligrapher who became a painter by chance after abandoning a career in science, Huang was paying his first visit to the German capital.
"Berlin's so tranquil and attractive compared to Shanghai and Beijing, where the streets are often choked with traffic. I'm impressed," he told dpa. German art dealer Alexander Ochsfeld, 57, who runs galleries in Berlin and Beijing, this summer staged an exhibition in Berlin of big name Chinese artists Yang Shaobin and Fang Lijun, and sculptors Wang Shugang and Chen Guangwu.
One of the first dealers in Europe to recognise the potential of the booming Chinese art market in the 1990s, he launched an "Alexander Ochs Gallery" in the Chaoyang district of Beijing in 1997. Now he's founded an "artist-in-residence" programme in a Studio House designed by Ai Wei Wei, one of China's most outspoken artists, in Caochangdi district. "It's open to European artists giving solo exhibitions at the Ochs Gallery in Beijing," notes the Bamberg-born art entrepeneur who, next month, (October 7 to November 20) plans a first-ever German solo show of Ai Wei Wei's work at his Sophienstrasse premises in Berlin.
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