{"id":11650,"date":"2012-12-20T15:36:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-20T15:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/?p=11650"},"modified":"2023-04-26T15:37:53","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T15:37:53","slug":"collective-belief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/zh-hans\/collective-belief\/","title":{"rendered":"Collective Belief"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Project Without Space #6<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pekin Fine Arts<\/strong><\/a> (241,Caochangdi, Cuigezhuang,, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100015) Dec 8 2012 \u2013 9 Feb 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fresh though the current stir over collective practice by emerging artists might appear, Chen Shaoxiong and Liu Ding (born 1962 and 1976, respectively \u2013 outside the fevered \u201cyoung artist\u201d bracket) have been working together on their Project Without Space<\/em> for almost three years.  Chen Shaoxiong\u2019s practice has long enjoyed collaboration \u2013 he founded the Big Tail Elephant Group in 1991. His work unfolds with notes of insouciance filtering through situational imagination, a questioning attitude and socio-urban observation. Liu Ding\u2019s activity as an individual artist has an acutely theoretical bent, described by one critic as having \u201cstressed value to its breaking-point\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project Without Space<\/em> pivots around the shared aesthetic experiences of the two artists as they adopt different conceptual approaches, exploring a new idea each time, and always questioning it. Its iterations have thus far been variously complex and productive. It was last seen in autumn 2011 (#5), where the walls were papered with photographs of the Great Wall and an LED frieze of green text ran at ceiling level. The exhibition investigated the symbolic associations attached to the image of the Great Wall, and attempted to replicate it without them, asking sardonic questions such as \u201cIs the Great Wall made of steel and iron?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project Without Space #6<\/em>, now on show at Pekin Fine Arts, is a comparatively inviting display. First are two square paintings of the same dimensions in colourful acrylic. These employ a combination of elements or fragments \u2014 which might be compositional, stylistic or cut from the original painting itself \u2014 gleaned from Western Modernism. On their own, they are reasonable works of art; for one who recognizes all or some of their components (what fodder for John Berger\u2019s \u201cWays of Seeing\u201d these are), they make for a strangely weightless visual experience, as if certain strings had been cut, their ends left hanging loosely in the present moment. The first painting very obviously steals \u2014 or, in another way, retains as residue \u2014 some of the monochrome patches Henri Matisse used in 1953 to build his \u201cSnail\u201d collage. Part of the backdrop mimics Cy Twombly: a white wash with a few words scrawled with pencil and an irreverent cluster of punch-and-dribble paint markings in acid yellow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many possible directions one might pursue in viewing these works; seeing them simply as independent objects, or as forms of \u201ccopies\u201d haunted by phantoms of the originals; one might recall Chinese artists\u2019 eager consumption of Western art history (at first through its most obvious and famous products) as the country opened up in the late 70s. The subtraction or transposition of certain elements might lead alternatively to questions of value, and what it is truly attached to in a work of art. The paintings are accompanied by a droll, accelerated video of Chen and Liu in characteristic dialogue; they slurp drinks from plastic cups whilst talking about concepts and putting out questions and statements of this ilk: \u201cHow does one become an artist with belief?\u201d \u201cIf we put aside their sacredness, I believe that they can be appropriated again.\u201d \u201cCan we still find \u2018the impossible\u2019 when everything \u2018can\u2019 be art?\u201d They appear as friends united pleasantly by their investigations, and Chen does most of the talking. One desires to see more than just two of the paintings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second room is decorative at first sight. Affixed to the wall are replica Aboriginal works \u2014 naturally shaped pieces of wood adorned with multitudes of white dots, diamond shapes or globular patterns.  These are born of the artists\u2019 curiosity about Aboriginal art, a style of which they had no prior experience. The film shows them talking whilst painting simultaneously on a single wooden panel, filling in its dots and lines together, each from one end inwards. Chen says, \u201cI tried to understand \u2018aboriginal art\u2019 by exhausting all my experience of contemporary art.\u201d Untainted by contempt for primitivism they notice rhythm, repetition and texture \u2014 reactions transmitted in the exhibition by the simple relationship between work, video and viewer. Even though the casual visitor might not be steeped in the questions which inspired the works, one may hear them nonetheless, and at least understand that the artists\u2019 process, as is their basic aim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final room of the exhibition feels somewhat auxiliary. Here are works by the individual artists \u2014 fingerprint ink paintings from Chen\u2019s Collective Memory<\/em> series (2012), and nail varnish cartoons on gold acrylic-mirror by Liu \u2014 the 2007 The Remaining Landscape<\/em> series. In relation to the vocal, investigative urge pervading the other rooms, these paintings \u2014 though not without their own appeal \u2014 seem to break the thread of the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus concludes this sixth iteration of the Project Without Space<\/em> \u2014 perhaps its simplest and best. One is left with the memory of hybrid paintings and their potential for inquiry, woven with the texture \u2014 visual and physical \u2014 of white flecks on wood (\u201cWhat then was the \u2018subjectivity\u2019 of these works? Where were the artists? Where were \u2018styles\u2019?\u201d the artists asked). To borrow from Edwin Schlossberg, for whom \u201cThe skill of writing is to provide a context in which other people can think,\u201d  it is a major strength of the Project Without Space<\/em> that through each iteration it creates, again and again, a space where both artists and audience have choices about what to see and do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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