Installation art, refers to the artist in a particular time and space environment, will human daily life have consumption or consumption of material and cultural entities, to choose, use, modification, artistic quality, effective combination, to make it deduces the new display individual or group of rich cultural connotation of art forms. Simply speaking, installation art is the comprehensive display art of "site + material + emotion".

Installation art began in the 60s, also known as "environmental art". As an art, it is related to "pop art", "minimalism" and "concept art" in the sixties and seventies. In just a few decades, installation art has become the fashion of contemporary art, and many painters and sculptors have added the title of "installation artist" to themselves. In the west have special installation art gallery, art museum in London, England, for example, the capa street art center in San Francisco, from a building development in 1983 to 2000 in four buildings. New York's new center for contemporary art is almost an installation art exhibition hall, in its courtyard, built the special compartment of the outdoor installation art. Art schools also began to offer installation art courses. In the UK, the university has a bachelor's degree in installation art. Installation art also occupies an important position in the exhibition of western contemporary art museum. Take the museum of contemporary art in San Diego, for example, and held 67 installation art exhibitions between 1969 and 1996. Many of the master's students graduated from American academy of fine arts have become installation artists.

1. Installation art is firstly a "environment" that enables the audience to stay in the three degrees of space. This "environment" includes both indoor and outdoor, but mainly indoors.

2. Installation art is the artistic whole of the artist's design and creation according to the indoor and outdoor location of the specific exhibition site.

3. Just like in a movie field cannot show two films at the same time, the integrity of the device requires corresponding independent space, in such aspects as visual, auditory, not affected by other works and interference.

4. Audience involvement and participation is an integral part of the installation art. Installation art is an extension of people's life experience.

5. Installation art to create environment, it is used to tolerance, prompting viewers even forcing the audience within a defined space by passive viewing into active feeling, this feeling for the audience in addition to positive thinking and body involved, and use it all the senses, including sight, hearing, touch, smell, or taste.

6. The limitation of installation art from the arts, it is free to comprehensive use of painting, sculpture, architecture, music, drama, poetry, prose, movie, TV, audio, video, photography and other any means to be able to use. It can be said that installation art is an open art means.

7. In order to activate the audience, sometimes to disturb the habitual thought of the audience, the factors that stimulate the senses are often exaggerated, reinforced or alienated.

8. Generally speaking, installation art is for short-term exhibitions, not for collection.

9. Installation art is a variable art. The artist can either change the composition during the exhibition, or add, subtract or recombine in a different place.

Naturally, the installation art itself is changing. For example, contemporary installation art is no longer a rebellion against traditional museum exhibits, but rather has become a favorite of museums. The "environmental art "(also known as installation art), which initially opposed the museum's permanent collection, was also" recruited "into the museum's permanent collection. In the case of the museum of contemporary art in San Diego, 58 of its 67 installations were acquired by the museum as a permanent collection.

In art, the device is a challenge to the classification of traditional art. The art classification of each period is the product of a specific social and historical state. In the 19th century, artists tried to categorize art in a variety of ways, some of which were classified by the body's sensory organs such as the visual organ or the auditory organ. Some divide art into space art or time art, and some classify art into reproducing art or non-reproduction art. Such efforts to explore new ways of art classification, first description in 18 th-century French art historian abbe, mato classification principle of classification is not systematically the art has become increasingly complicated art phenomenon. People constantly explore art from a new Angle and the nature of the relationship between the various arts, like zhu DE pointed out in the contemporary western aesthetics, modern and contemporary art "crushed every kind of art is past has, for most people accepted the traditional scales and landmarks along the way. This change brought about by the first is that people no longer like the past, from the view of the traditional standard to classify all kinds of art, and had to go to the study of the characteristics of each art what exactly happened change, continue to a kind of art form the unique nature of the study, or on the basis of this to constitute the essence of the most common of all kinds of art research." The installation art is free to use all kinds of artistic means, which indicates that the artistic way of expressing the ideas of human beings cannot be defined by mechanical classification. Thanks to modern art expression means and dazzling material changes, rely on constantly updated art classification principle, impose regularize irregular change art phenomenon, not only to meet daily updates of art, in the end will only make people confused about what to do. It is the inevitable outcome of modern art's pursuit of performance breadth, depth and intensity.