First published on ArtSlant China.
Text by Robin Peckham.
The History of Etiquette
ifa gallery
621 Changde Road, 200040 Shanghai, China
July 27, 2010 – July 27, 2010
The latest group exhibition at Ifa Gallery purports to explore the work of young Chinese artists as de facto social outsiders and critics of “etiquette,” here a rather nebulous concept that seems to actually present itself as a weak form of interpersonal politics. But even if it dare not speak its name, this theme sits rather nicely with the physical space of the gallery, located in a three-storey colonial-era residence that offers a winding maze of balconies and dimly lit corridors for the play of historical and cultural slippage. The selection of artists included draws on the gallery’s persistent relationship with emerging figures in the Hangzhou art circle, many of whom have begun to earn wider recognition beyond the region since last exhibiting in this space; as a result, this particular style of group show can appear rather uneven given the diversifying and internationalizing individual practices now emerging from what was once a more unitary field of work.
Work by Shao Yi includes “Plug In” (2009), his standout entry in the group exhibition Blackboard that asked each participating artist to work on the basis of a blackboard provided by the curators. Although it is somewhat out of place here, the piece does manage to transcend its specific narrative background with an impressive aesthetic treatment of discarded computer and circuit board components, all painted a uniform black that recalls a humorous updated take on Louise Nevelson as much as it does the silhouette of a centrally-planned Chinese city. Appropriately, the board is installed directly across from the series of paintings “Announcement of 54” (2008), which entails a number of portraits executed by Tong Yan Ru’nan. Although these small canvases are not particularly progressive in any way, their appearance as pixels perfectly complements Shao Yi’s sensibility of digital anti-humanism with a certain muddied quality that could easily be mistaken for the painterly.
Aside from several related conceptual tangents, the Hangzhou art scene has never been known as a bastion of forward-thinking painting, as evidenced here with disappointing work by both Li Qing and Wu Junyong. Neither artist seems particularly interested in the thematic orientation of the exhibition: Li Qing contributes an aesthetically uninteresting composition of young, female nurses in sexual poses that comes off as an irreverent if derivative take on Richard Prince, which is poorly justified in the curatorial statement with the question “What does it mean to be a nurse in China today?” Wu Junyong, known equally as an animator and painter, moves into more appropriate territory with his repetitive compositions of airplanes, hammers, clouds, and human figures wearing dunce caps, but the overall projects remains slightly too symbolically laden to truly engage with its actual social context.
Several independent rooms are dominated by works from three of the most successful artists to have emerged from the Hangzhou situation. Li Ming again exhibits his video “Comb” (2010), which depicts the demolition of a brick house and enacts a somewhat touching relationship between a seated young woman, viewed only from behind, and the backhoe that appears to comb her hair. Although the work has widely been interpreted in the context of the demolition that rages throughout semi-urban eastern China (or, alternatively, as a commentary on the relationship between the human and machine—one of the time-tested fixations of the Hangzhou “new media” circle), it may be more productive to view the video as one of the multiple choreographic works that Li Ming sets within abandoned properties. Here, social relationships are drawn out of the architecture itself, and the absurd games and situations acted out by his protagonists are made legible by the rawness of the visual environment.
Shao Yi also includes the series of photographic portraits “Greater than or Equal to 80mg/100mL” (2009), which pictures a number of Chinese males after having imbibed the titular amount of alcohol. The individuals depicted all wear different uniforms as markers of the “official,” ranging from security guards to military police. The project may be aesthetically lacking, but its conceptual ambiguity is perhaps the most successful exploration of the dynamic between etiquette and control that sits at the heart of the exhibition.
The true standout, however, is a single-channel video installation from Zhang Liaoyuan entitled “Stable Triangle” (2010). Here, a rectangular mask perforated with several intersecting triangular outlines is inserted between projector and screen, transforming the movie supposedly on display (a recent Oscar-winning title) into an abstract piece of physical cinema. Viewing conventions have been a recent subject of fascination for Zhang, most likely absorbed from his sometime mentor Zhang Peili, and the conceptual matter at play has propelled his work from the level of urban pranks into an entirely new domain. His characteristic humor remains, however—particularly evident in the accompanying wall text, in which he recounts a schoolboy joke that stands as a marked counterpoint to the pretentious ramblings on meditation and identity contributed by the other artists.
Sadly, such trends are not evident in new work by all members of this Hangzhou generation, and Wang Xiaofeng, represented here by more works than any other single artist, seems to have been left behind by his peers on both a conceptual and aesthetic level. His video installation “Distance of Safety” (2010), in which distance sensors are embedded on all sides of a jacket such that when the personal space of the wearer is invaded an alarm sounds with increasing volume, continues to operate in the range of student art that seems so enticing yet still immature when produced by younger artists. For an emerging artist of this stature and experience, something more is expected.
On a similar note, the exhibition as a whole seems to fall into a certain curatorial trap by which its organizers are seduced into blindly accepting the lead of a group of artists labeled as young and transgressive. Although much praise is due to the gallery for its support of an underrepresented style of art emerging from Hangzhou in this exhibition and in countless previous outings, the exhibition program could be much improved with a more definite stylistic and conceptual direction.