UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, 798 Art District, No.4 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China 100015

26 November, 2011 – 25 February, 2012

In what might be read as a change in direction for Zhan Wang, the new large-scale installation at UCCA broadens his works’ outlook from the establishment of monuments to the creation of the universe as creative material. In the process the artist addresses some big questions about our place in the universe, but ultimately manages to lose his sympathetic connection with the human body.

His long-running Artificial Rock series of scholars’ rocks recreated in stainless steel now dot the world, playing with the role of the monumental in public space. Critic Huang Du sees them as existing between tradition and modernity, and these contemporary versions of the traditional stones literally and symbolically reflect the appearance of whatever is around them in their polished forms. But this trope has now become ubiquitous, almost a cliché, so how does the artist progress?

My Personal Universe, the installation occupying UCCA’s “Big Space,” is perhaps his answer. Four huge screens (with two more serving as floor and ceiling) demarcate the space. On these are projected films of a large rock sitting on a scaffolding structure in a barren landscape; each screen presenting the face of the rock based on their orientation in the room. Every three minutes this rock explodes into fragments that fly out in all directions in super slow motion. This film is also reflected on the surfaces of some 5000 stainless steel rocks, created from the fragments of the explosion. The fragments hang on wires throughout the space as a forest of shiny forms that intermittently block the view of the film and which the audience must negotiate within the space.

This installation seems to be moving away from the nature of the rocks as coherent objects of contemplation in the tradition of these scholars’ rocks; the Artificial Rock now explodes into fragments that must be considered en masse. The final rocks, their destructive creation, and arrangement, come to represent the theoretical act of formation, encompassing the long-history of their making back to the Big Bang.

This installation looks beyond the cultural manifestations of the monument in space – which, in the artist’s use of polished steel, takes on attributes of its surroundings as relating to the society and culture around it. This also marks a distinct turning point of meaning of the works’ relation to the body. In the past they have referenced a healing aspect of the objects, at times related to religious beliefs. Several projects have served to fill gaps: New Plan to Fill the Sky 2001 in which the artist planned to return a stainless-steel copy of a meteor back to space; and, Project to Inlay the Great Wall 2001 which recreated a missing part of the Great Wall in steel bricks. In his major solo show at the National Art Museum of China in 2008, Zhan Wang also presented the installation Deity Medicine, in which large stainless-steel pills were propped around the room incorporating ATMs on which the audience could research various deities (ATM Deity Search Engine 2008).

However, technical issues with the installation at UCCA left me unimpressed with the results. For a start, the precision of the hanging stones was in jarring contrast with the fuzziness of the filmed footage. Despite their HD quality, the films have been projected so large, and the audience can approach so close to them, that the perceived quality of the image suffers badly. On top of this, the large gaps between the edges of the projections (through which the audience can walk from the outside to inside spaces of the installation) disconnect each video segment from each other, preventing a connected experience of the space of the explosion event.

On the other hand, the “making of” documentary in the adjoining room (directed by Richard Widmer) provides a counterpoint to the installation, bringing back a human dimension, making evident the trials of producing such an event.

Looking at the installation as a whole, this show reiterates the fact that UCCA’s Big Space remains difficult for monolithic presentations. While to be chosen to work with this space is something of an accolade, the sheer immensity of the room, which should be an opportunity, is often too much of a temptation to produce overblown pieces. In this case Zhan Wang’s response is let down by pushing the installation beyond its technical possibilities. I also feel the treatment of the subject matter prevents the audience from truly engaging with the artist’s world-view as presented in this installation.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 12 December, 2011 on ArtSlant.

Dan Edwards: I noticed in a lot of the footage in the film [Ou Ning's Meishi St (2006)], Zhang [Jinli] is filming the police, but the police have cameras too.

Ou Ning: Yeah, it’s very interesting. You can say that digital technology has had a great impact on Chinese political society. You can see at the end of the film during the demolition process, there are so many cameras on the scene. That means that there are some cameras from the police station, some from our team, some from NGO organisations. The digital technology has brought some opportunity to the people to document history by themselves. This is a great change in China. Before that, history only had one version, by the Chinese Communist Party, but now with digital technology history has different versions. History has a Zhang Jinli version, a Security Bureau version… there’s a lot of different versions, not just one version. That is a great progress in the political situation in China.

Taken from CinemaTalk: A Conversation with Ou Ning by Dan Edwards

Out in the University District of North-West of Beijing, near the South Gate of Tsinghua University, the WenJin Art Center has just opened inside the WenJin Hotel. Yesterday it was hosting a day of video and new media work curated by Wu Qiuyan, a teacher at the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

This was a great opportunity to have, if not the cream then at least a representative collection, of the last few years’ linear work on video presented. Splitting the works into the sections titled “scene,” “area,” and “emotion” presented the audience a broad range of artists, work and techniques, from the computer generated works of Miao Xiaochun and Feng Mengbo; through narrative (including a particularly subtle yet quietly sensationalist piece by Ma Qiusha, I still don’t now what I think about that…); semi/pseudo-documentary from Gao Yuan etc,; performance (for me the weakest set of works, but that’s my personal preferences). All of this was presented in a fairly tightly curated selection, which—although long—really felt like a comprehensive but concise account of the field in the time available.

Being able to devote this kind of time and attention to all this lovely material was a real luxury which I can’t often don’t give to linear video work (much less to interactive, non-linear work, but it’s usually not such a requirement of that). When I visit a gallery there is never enough time to view the whole video as I duck in and out of the screening rooms. So I really appreciate what the curator was doing here, enforcing some kind of participation, it was a real joy to experience.

Artists by section:

Scene: Miao Xiaochun 缪晓春, Feng Mengbo 冯梦波, Bo Hua 卜桦, Zhang Xiaotao 张小涛, Wu Junyong 吴俊勇, Bai Chongmin 白崇民, Ye Dan 叶丹, Wu Weihe 吴玮禾, Gu Zhenzhen 谷真真, Dai Hua 代化, Liu Qianyi 刘茜懿, Xu Ruotao 徐若涛, Chen Hailu 陈海璐.

Area: Liu Xuguang 刘旭光, Chen Zhuo + Huan Keyi 陈卓+黄可一, Tan Ji 谭奇, Wu Qiuyan 吴秋龑, Ding Xin 丁昕, Cheng Jie 盛洁, Wang Gefeng 王歌风, Ma Qiusha 马秋莎, Chen Wei 陈伟.

Emotion: Feng Jiangzhou 丰江舟, Zhang Haitao 张海涛, Chao Fang 沈朝方, Tan Tan 炭叹, Tian Miaozi 田苗子, Song Song 宋松, Wang Tingting 王婷婷, Chen Zhou 陈轴, Pei Li 裴丽, Gao Yuan 高媛, Shi Jingxin 史晶歆, Deng Li 邓黎, Chen Xi 陈曦, Zhang Minjie 张敏捷, Ren Lun 任伦.

In March, the curator Wu Qiuyan will be hosting another event of film and new media, this time at UCCA. More details when I have them.

The hands of Abbas Kiarostami

The Iranian film-maker, Abbas Kiarostami, signing posters at his show at the Beijing Art Museum of Imperial City, which closes on the 28 February 2008.

Two of Keiller’s films are being shown that afternoon, “London” at 1pm and “Robinson in Space” at 3pm. I have both these on DVD so I won’t bother going to see them, but I would heartily recommend them to everyone.

The DVD cover

Then at 6pm the man himself is presenting a lecture about his work.

Patrick was one of my tutors while I was doing Fine Art BA at Middlesex University in 1993 – he was always very patient and helpful although I can’t have been the easiest student to tutor.

I’ve always read his films as being ruminations on the state of being of a traveller in a city as expressed through the disjointed imagery. “London” especially brings out the relations between these places and the experience of them physically or mentally, through the traveller’s day-to-day, hour-to-hour existence walking, or being propelled through them. The films also have an eye to their own structure, they make you somewhat aware of the breaks, the editing process and it’s creation of a sequence of images which are interpreted as a narrative space (or otherwise?).

Wonderful, funny and poignant films. I’m looking forward to seeing Patrick again after all this time, and to hear what his future works will be.

* These events are in parallel with the “Global Cities” exhibition currently on display in the Turbine Hall, which in itself is an interesting presentation of factoids about and proposals for world cities, intelligently combined with artworks in many cases providing the focused view of the city which is lacking from the charts and statistics plastered across the installation.

. . .The history of art of the last 100 years is the road leading to the concept of art as its own science.. . .

Patrick was my tutor at Middlesex University, so a touch of nostalgia led me to purchase the BFI’s DVD release of London and Robinson in Space. I think that the tutors were encouraged to present their own to work to the students and I remember that Patrick showed London. This must have been 1994, the year it was released, and the year of my graduation, although I have a feeling it was earlier than that, so we may have seen a pre-release version.

I think I was placed with Patrick as my tutor because of my interest and semi-background in Architecture (Patrick having been an Architect). After leaving school, at age 18, I immediately began the BA in Architecture at Kingston University, which ended ignominiously two years later having not progressed beyond the first year of the course.

The films are wonderfully evocative series of scenes. Having lived in the areas mentioned in London all my life until 5 years ago, it felt very familiar and homely.

The techniques of filming used—the long shots of seemingly bland areas, the static camera, the invisible protagonists—encourage an increased concentration on the scenes in the frame. They also seem to merge the activities taking place into a flat tableau with a distinct emphasis on the artistic presentation of the human and semi-natural landscape. In Robinson in Space almost every scene seemed to be organised around a centered point which becomes the point of focus no matter what else is happening on screen. This also occurs in London, e.g. the very first scenes of the cruise liner being drawn through the almost perfectly framed Tower Bridge.

Strangely, Robinson seems almost rushed in comparison to London. The Narrator has much more information to impart about poets, philosophers and scientists, the history of places, and there is less about the interplay between himself and Robinson. On the whole Robinson is as good as London, but it has a different modus operandi.

I loved both films. They made me think of Proust and boredom and observing the world from a distance.