Sud Gold

shill 吃了两个冰激凌 寒意

bloom 6100朵花给妈妈 盛开

kangaroo 抗个肉进洞 袋鼠

Text by Robin Peckham

Exhibition runs through 28 November 2009

Taikang Space (Red No. 1 Block B2, Caochangdi, Beijing)

Taikang Space, recently relocated to Caochangdi, has reserved a small space to showcase rising art world talents in a series called “51 Square Meters.” The second such exhibition finds Su Wenxiang, an emerging artist born in 1979 in Anhui, exploring his interests in media and machines. Although it successfully avoids the stigmatic label of new media art, the body of work on view here formally manipulates the structural attributes of the devices we commonly use to mediate visual experience by taking the image as the most basic point of contact with the domain of machinic production.

In one landmark piece, “The oneness of the five colors blinds the eyes,” (2009), a number of sheets of Polaroid film are removed from the camera before a single shot is taken, producing nominally white images of a process of automatic exposure. This process is analytical in spirit, but the resulting work is courageously poetic in a way that its progenitors–critical media artists like Liu Wei and Zhang Peili–would generally avoid. This compelling work points towards a direction of intellectual exploration that pushes rigorous concepts to their formal extremities as a way to both define the matter at stake and reframe the language that circulate around such questions within the narrow field of contemporary art in China.

Similarly, “Goodbye to an Old Man” (2008) records the process of the disappearance of former politician Hua Guofeng as the artist repeatedly prints his portrait until there is no ink left, while “M100, Y100″ (2009-ongoing) requires the artist to print a single sheet of paper covered purely with red ink on a monthly basis. Although the former work implicates the political through its allusion to a particularly uncontroversial state leader, it serves largely as a foil for the conceptual abstraction of the latter, giving way to an account of duration as a technical move divorced from the greater forces of history, memory, and symbolic imagery.

“Limited TV Channel” (2008) pushes these same questions into more ambiguous territory. The installation consists of a set of television monitors and a chart of TV channels; both record the technical changes in the image as the viewer shifts between channels. This piece maintains the gravity of the works mentioned above without providing a goal or endpoint to the process of exploration, transferring conceptual energy from the object to the action of intervention.

This exhibition allows for a moment of mature reflection in Su Wenxiang’s blossoming career. The works included belong to a strain of systematic inquiry into networks of mediation and production that nevertheless often gives way to well-conceived objects imbued with poetic import, a strain that also includes much of the artist’s previous work. Several pieces involve digital cameras, like “A Camera’s Fate” (2007), in which a video camera records its own fall from a highrise building, “Beijing Time” (2009), a sculpture consisting of a camera body attached to a monitor presenting images taken with the lens cap on. In another vein, “The Disappearing 2RMB” (2007), is a performance in which small amount of money is transferred endlessly between accounts until it is consumed by glitches and fees.

At its strongest, Su Wenxiang’s practice functions in the liminal zones of the contemporary technological mindset, mapping the spaces within which digital memory and imaging processes begin to break down. Although his past work also includes a number of bodily gags rightfully left out of the present exhibition, this apparent redoubled focus on the failures of media situates Su Wenxiang within a well-developed narrative of alternative but poignant media art in China. There can be no doubt that this exhibition marks the full-fledged emergence of a new voice in this conversation.

In what way does the artist work? This is a topic discussed by art researchers and even by the most basic art lovers. It has been approached by art historians in essays and books, by artists themselves in their autobiographies, and by art institutions like museums and galleries in their education and promotion programs. Whatever the purpose is, they are trying to do the same thing: reveal the creative way in which the artist works and survives. Such a mysterious subject like art, altogether with artists, continues to provoke people’s curiosity. In fact, people are more interested in how things become “art” in the hand of this special group (artists), than they are in the way in which artists work. To see the world from one single perspective results in insufficient understanding. It would be the same if we look at art in this way.
However, in our experience of approaching art, especially when we go to see an exhibition, what we can rely on in the exploration into the production of the artworks is only the exhibition catalogue, which is more like a report about the result of the artists’ practice than anything else. You hardly gain any knowledge simply from looking at the catalogue.
What is the way the artist work? I have to admit, the current institution of the art exhibition can hardly reveal the answer. It has possibly even become an obstacle preventing people from understanding how the artist works. Most exhibitions show only the result of an artist’s work; giving no hint as to how the result is achieved. There has even been a common recognition art circles
that the best the way to understand an artist is to see his or her solo exhibition. Group exhibitions then are highly underestimated as what viewers are supposed to see. There are only intersections, or fragments of the each artist’s work. This is, of course, partly due to the curating method of contemporary art that has lagged behind.
Most group exhibitions look like expositions which are nothing but a hybrid of unrelated works, though better ones try to focus on one theme. There could be more discussions about the peculiarity of culture, absence of initiative from the organizers, and influence from commercial concerns, etc., which are all reasons of this consequence.
When we examine this question from the viewpoint of an artist, we find the way of their work is the process in which they conceive an idea, develop it, and finally present it as artwork. As far as I’m concerned, to find the consistency or the changes in the topics of the artist’s work, is the biggest concern of this exhibition. This is like a chronological research method: the imperative is not to arrive at a presumed result, but to collect proofs for them. When the proofs are put together, they show an apparent result in themselves, which may diverge from or transcend our presumptions. A decision is seldom made all at a sudden and in the decision-making process, even trivial things can lead to totally different result. The final decision is nothing but a choice made at certain moment, maybe it is just accidental. That is also why we say that history is the result of both necessity and contingency. Such analysis can be seen in the biographies of the artists or monographs of art history. Ourknowledge about an artist from his or her solo exhibition, therefore, is also based on his past works or our impressions about his or her personality. All this will finally lead to our overall understanding of the work presented in front of us.
I need to point out that this exhibition is not the same as the progress of those popular conceptual art practices, which tries to fix a concept first and then searches for the evidence to prove the concept and display them to the audience as a work. The most important thing is to show to the audience through the exhibition and the catalogue how the works of an artist achieve consistency, which, in turn influences the ideas of the artist and finally help him or her to arrive at what his or her art is now.
It is known to all that we are experiencing a “crisis”. I think this crisis has properly let people realize that rather than focusing simply on the commercial part of art, they should also try to know more about the other side of art: the artist, and the way they work and carry on their work. Perhaps all are trying to change this boring situation. I, myself, also an artist, am particularly looking forward to this
change.
November, 2009

痛苦中。鄙视自己。鄙视别人。

昨天是农历满三十的日子。爸爸妈妈妹妹都都以电话短信等不同形式表示问候，从具体的形式来说他们还从来没有这么温情过。他们也成长了。在匆忙中度过，吃的是工作性质的晚饭。就这么过了。
上午妹妹急促地电话过来，说灏榇已经可以独自走路！其实昨天就可以了，晚上好一点，眼光所见的东西少不怕，白天不敢单独走。现在好了，可以完全自己去走了！小东西竟以这样的方式来呼应我。
我们都好好的走。