accidental conceptualism by carol yinghua lu

8/7/2019 Accidental Conceptualism by Carol Yinghua Lu

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Carol Yinghua Lu

AccidentalConceptualism

In China, pragmatism has ruled society for a longtime and as a consequence anything conceptualor spiritual is deemed insignificant. It fits theprinciple of a totalitarian state to minimize thepower of individual intellectual and rationalthought, while at the same time promoting avalue system that measures everythingaccording to principles of functional application.Such a view spawns a dualistic and short-termed

outlook on the world by simply dividing thingsinto two categories: the useful and the useless.Though the Communist Party has been updatingits ideology in accordance with economic andtechnological developments and revolutions inmass media, the core of its intention to eliminatedifferences of opinion and positions remainsunyielding. Although there was a brief flirtationwith intellectual engagement in the 1980s, theattention of the general public was swiftlydiverted towards economic well-being andindividual advancement, which subsequently

became the foremost driving force for thecountry at the end of the decade. In the pursuitof absolute efficiency on the basis of time andcost, the mental space and aspiration forintellectual commitments are effectivelyeliminated.

Hu Xiangqian, The Sun, 2008.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn the cultural arena, the sameinstrumentalist mindset prevails, and the samesimplicity of judgment applies to both themaking and reading of works and the way artistselucidate and relate to what is happening aroundthem. There has been a tremendous amount ofvisual art that bases all of its strength innarrative content that represents, borrows from,mirrors, replicates, or offers superficial critiquesof fragments of a rapidly changing reality that isfar too complicated and profound to grasp. This

type of work has almost entirely dominated theChinese art market, which in turn stimulates

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more production. Collectors, foreign andChinese, buy Chinese artworks out of fascinationwith either ChinaÕs revolutionary past andsensational present, or for their profit prospect.This constitutes a vast demand. On the otherhand, trained in the socialist-realism systemadopted by all art academies in China, curators,art historians, and critics also rely on excavatingthe ideological, sociological, and psychological

potential of a work so as to be able to analyzeand interpret it, barely touching upon its artisticand conceptual dimensions. In the writing of arthistories, artworks and art movements havegenerally had too much emphasis placed on theexamination of their social parameters.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIt is not only important but necessary totake a closer look at the inner logic andalternative trajectories of artistic evolution inChina, irrespective of national, sociological,ideological, or financial attachments. To do this,one needs to dispense with the multitude of

baffling and deceiving forms of recognition inthis system that have become so dependent on aprimitive art market. As an art system thatdoesnÕt tolerate or support the nurturing of otherstructural alternatives, how can theestablishment of academic authorityacknowledge a greater variety of practices? Oneparticularly overlooked key to understandingChinese contemporary art is conceptuality,which has acted as an indispensableunderpinning for artistic thinking through theyears.

Hu Xiangqian, The Sun, 2008.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe evolution of contemporary art in Chinanever followed the linear logic of Western arthistory. Intellectual development was basicallystagnant while it was held hostage by politicalmovements throughout decades of communist

rule. This situation worsened with the launch ofthe Cultural Revolution in 1966 that severed not

only the countryÕs intellectual ties to the outsideworld, but also the bloodline that connected it toits own history and cultural traditions. Educationwas suspended and an official disregard forknowledge and ideas was established. When thecountry reopened and resumed an interest inculture at the end of the 1970s, there wasalready a great discrepancy between what wasgoing on in the heads of Chinese artists and

intellectuals and what had happened in the restof the world. Chinese artists rushed to shapetheir own methodology by adopting disjointedand sometimes misinterpreted information toadapt to the social, historical, and culturalspecificity of the country. Modernism, post-modernism, classical philosophy, eighteenth-century European Enlightenment, liberalism,colonialism, and other intellectual movementsfrom the Western world were all introduced toChina at the same time to become simultaneousinfluences on artistsÕ practices.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe 1989 China Avant-garde exhibition canbe considered a rather extensive and reliablerevelation of the mixture of styles and thinkingcontemporary Chinese artists were keenlyexploring during the 1980s. The exhibition,however, was charged by a great sense ofrandomness, which was telling of the intellectualstate in which the artists found themselves.Their system of knowledge was fragmented. Onthe one hand, the artists suffered from missededucational opportunities during the CulturalRevolution, and from having lost their ties totraditions that were wiped out by the Revolution.On the other hand, with a sudden shift away fromthe singular visual and cultural experience of theomnipresent revolutionary realism, artists weresuddenly exposed to a dazzling variety ofaesthetic and conceptual possibilities, whichpresented a question to artists with regard tohow they should use these new possibilities.Often the decision was made according toinstinct or attitude, and this would become thebasis on which artists would form their ownartistic strategy and language.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAlthough parallel practices continued to

exist from the 1990s to the present today,international and market interest have beenmostly focused on works favoring socially andpolitically charged subject matter over stylisticexperimentation and conceptual investigation.Artists who created cynical realist, social realist,or political pop works, which spoke to a kind ofcollective imagination of Chinese society, gainedso much recognition starting in the early 90s thatthey even believed in minimizing technologicaland formal complexity in order to divert theattention of the viewer towards the content of

their depiction. Their methods for referring tosocial content became the central theme running

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Liang Shuo, What Thing,2006Ð2008.

through their entire practice, leaving little roomfor anything else.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn the meantime, artists whose workquestions and critiques the formation of ourperceptions and our value system Ð in otherwords, artists who think about how we think Ðcan hardly compete on an individual level for thespotlight, though this way of thinking andworking has always been around, and has always

been equally important for the development ofcontemporary art in China. It would be too vagueand inaccurate, however, to simply label them asconceptual art or conceptualism.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWhile conceptualism emerged towards theend of modernism in partial response toGreenbergian formalism, Chinese artists neverwent through this particular stage, deemed theÒnervous breakdownÓ of modernism. Theemphasis on concept in the works of Chineseartists wasnÕt positioned in opposition to thematerials, colors, and formal characteristics of

their works, whereas the incompatibilitybetween meaning and material was taken forgranted by early conceptualism. Chinese artistsalso shared none of the social context that wasvital for the birth of conceptualism. Conceptualart, in its origin, came about not only to questionartistic authority, but also as a response to the

political crisis being experienced in the Westernworld throughout the late 1960s. In China, aspecific social context that was vital for the birthof conceptualism in the West was not present.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn the end, Chinese artists embracedconceptual strategies and influencesconsciously or unconsciously as a way tounderstand their own individual contexts. Often,artists combine both conceptual and aesthetic

strategies to conceive ambitious and challengingworks. Li Juchuan, an architect who has neverbuilt an actual building, made a work entitledMeasuring Wuhan Through a Straight Line Drawn

in 30 Minutes in 1994. In the city of Wuhan (wherehe is based) he drew a straight line on the groundthat ran through a busy district he randomlypicked out. The action lasted for thirty minutes,an arbitrary period of time. The result was anuneventful video that documented such aprocess. In a video by Beijing-based Li Yongbin in2007 (Sun, 2007), the artist ran through a section

of the city with a portable video camera in handfollowing the track of the setting sun, letting thecamera take in whatever came into its lensthroughout this journey. Due to the artistÕsthorough calculation, the sun sets and the citygoes completely dark exactly at the end of thetape. The video lasted for sixty minutes (the

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length of the tape) and captured a uniquelandscape of the city defined by the set ofconditions that the artist designed for himselfand the camera, as well as by the chanceelements of nature and the sun.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe sun and the passage of time alsofascinated a young artist named Hu Xiangqian,who is based in Guangzhou. Over the course oftwo months, he made it his daily routine to

sunbathe for a few hours until the sun wentdown. The termination of the project wasdetermined to be the point at which he became ablack-skinned man (The Sun, 2008). Sui Jianguo,a trained and established sculptor in his 50s,chose to communicate his experience of thepassing of time differently. Since December 25,2006, he has been dipping an iron string into apot of blue paint, an act he plans to repeat everyday until the day he dies. (The Shape of Time,2006Ð) Both actions can only be presentedthrough documentation, sketches, notes,

photographs, and videos.

Liang Shuo, What Thing, 2006Ð2008.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBeijing artist Zhu Jia also attempted toportray something as intangible as time in two ofhis early videos. In Closet (1994), he held a

running video camera as he dove into a bigcloset, rummaging around inside. The video

recorded both the noise of his action and thedarkness of the inside of the closet. In Shine

(1994), he attached a video camera to himselfand, playing a basketball with a friend, allowedthe video camera to observe his opponent from achance-determined perspective. Both workselucidated how he perceived his relationship tothe internal world by showing something that isextremely immaterial.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThinking about sculpture and the making ofsculpture resulted in a fascinating experiment byyoung artist Liang Shuo. Selecting a randomobject or sculpture, he immersed this object in apile of wet clay and removed it, leaving behind ahollow shape inside the clay. He then made amold of this hollow shape, which he termed Òthenegative spaceÓ and subsequently produced asculpture of this ÒnonexistenceÓ (What Thing,2006Ð2008).ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊExploring the potential of chance, LuZhengyuan, a young sculptor and a student of Sui

Jianguo in the Sculpture Department at theCentral Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, hired anuntrained farmer to make paintings based onprint images of highly recognizable artworks byfamous Chinese and international artists such asZhang Xiaogang and Damien Hirst, along withdescriptions of the styles of these artists by Luhimself.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis is a modest picture of howcontemporary Chinese artists are applyingconceptual strategies, though I would hesitate tocall them conceptual artists. More often thannot, these artists use such strategies onlyoccasionally or in a passing stage of theirpractice. While the idea is often the startingpoint of their consideration, the use of particularmaterials and aesthetic form plays an equallyimportant role. Most of these works requireexplanation and an understanding of the artistÕsidea and intention. They are not always instantlyreadable on a graphic level, using aesthetic cuesin a rather modest way. They assume meaningsthat reflect what constitutes and defines art, butdo not attempt to depict society at large. Attimes, the works speak to subjects pertinent in a

global context, while at others the artistsexamine subjects specific to their personalhistory. Some works require meticulous planningand preparation yet can also be charged withsentiment and guided by emotions. Theirconceptualism is, after all, accidental. It is,nonetheless, one to which Chinese artists willcontinue to refer in their practice so long as theydraw uninhibitedly from the pool of artisticmodels and strategies, and reorganize themunder the purview of their own law.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ×

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Carol Yinghua Lu is an independent curator and artwriter based in Beijing. She is the co-editor ofContemporary Art & Investment magazine and afrequent contributor to a number of international artmagazines such as Frieze, Contemporary , and Today

Art. Her texts on contemporary art have appeared inmany art catalogues, books and magazines. Agraduate of the Critical Studies program at the MalmšArt Academy, Lund University, Sweden, she was theChina researcher for Asia Art Archive from 2005 to2007. Her curatorial work includes ÒThe Temperament

of DetailÓ in Red Mansion Foundation, London,ÒForeign ObjectsÓ in the Project Space of KunsthalleWien in Vienna, ÒThe Weight of RealityÓ in MarellaGallery, Beijing, two curatorial projects in ARCO'06 andARCO'07, Madrid, ÒCommunity of TasteÓ at TheInaugural Exhibition of Iberia Center for ContemporaryArt, Beijing, and ÒThere is No Story to Tell: AnExhibition of International ArtistsÓ in TangContemporary, Beijing. She has co-taught the 2007summer course for BA and MA art and architecturestudents from the California College of Art, acted asthe art consultant for the Olympic Museum Lausanneon a major exhibition about China, and is on the juryfor Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council for selectingcultural projects for its "China 2008Ð2010" Program.

e-flux journal #1 Ñ december 2008 Ê Carol Yinghua Lu

Accidental Conceptualism

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accidental conceptualism by carol yinghua lu

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