In a groundbreaking approach to avant-garde Chinese art, the 1999 exhibition "Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century" established a historical framework for current artistic production in China. Organized by the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, the show and its catalog highlighted the diverse responses of twenty-two artists to Chinas recent history and current social transformation.

These detailed essays on the artists and their works are now available in a revised edition of the exhibition catalog. Written by Wu Hung, a leading authority and the curator of the exhibit, Transience explores contemporary Chinese art through the themes of demystification, ruins, and transience, and represents an original perspective in the continuing discussion on Chinese experimental art.