April 13 – May 16, 2013

In this inaugural exhibition for Star Gallery’s new Beijing space, curator Su Wei addresses certain perceived limitations in the discourse surrounding Chinese performance art. Drawing on the work of eight artists, the presentation avoids “formulated mechanisms,” Su writes, to specifically address works “irreducible to any classification within the historical process of aesthetics.” Su proposes that this can partly be accomplished by more fully addressing the original contexts of the performances: “It is impossible to [remove] the work of the artist from its site.”

Artists Ma Liuming, Zhu Ming, and Xing Danwen were part of the “East Village” community in Beijing in the early 1990s, known for body-art practices (e.g., Ma Liuming cooking naked in his studio’s courtyard) that would eventually lead to the scene being prematurely “shut down” by the police. In this show Ma is represented by documentation of his performance during a visit by British artists Gilbert & George to his studio in 1993 in which he stripped off his shirt and cut into a bag of red ink hidden in the ceiling, which poured down over his body like blood. Video documentation of a performance at the Istanbul Biennale from 2001 is also on view here, for which he reprised his role of “Fen-Ma Liuming” (the Chinese “Fen,” meaning perfume or fragrance, lends a gender-bending to the artist’s name), a personage that plays on Ma’s androgynous looks. Where Ma grapples with gender issues, Zhu Ming deals with actions of the body in limited spaces, often performing in an inflated bubble that clearly defines his space – and available air. In this show, a sculptural version of one of these plastic bubbles contains a dimly visible cross-legged human figure as a one-to-one souvenir, so to speak, of his performances.

Xing Danwen is well known for her series of photographs documenting the East Village artists. This exhibition displays a set of small prints capturing glimpses of their lives and performances, mounted on a roughly built brick column, perhaps reflecting the squalid conditions in which they lived. The ongoing debate in China over the status of these photographs as either documentation of artists’ work or as an original artwork by the photographer is resolved in this exhibition by not crediting the photographer’s subjects in any way.

Highlighting aspects of futility in the practice of art, Chen Shaoxiong revives two works from his early career, 72.5 hours of Electricity Consumption (1992) and Seven-day Silence (1991), the latter documenting the artist’s hushed week painting a series of plastic sheets in mournful black, while the former is a playful set of anthropomorphic metal structures with fluorescent lights linked to electricity meters recording their energy consumption over the allotted time. Chen Shaoxiong’s sometime-collaborator Liu Ding is also featured here with a performance video that focuses on confusing professional roles in the art world in a performative fashion. The artist performs as the character “Mr. Liu” (not himself) in a three-way dialogue between himself and two curators, Marko Daniel (of the Tate Modern) and Carol Yinghua Lu (coincidentally also the artist’s wife). Absenting the figure of the artist—the ostensible subject of said discussion—Liu Ding finds himself in the surprising position of being able to provide third-party responses to questions regarding his own artistic practice (I Simply Appear in the Company of…, 2012).

The younger artists in this show, those born in the 80s, Chen Zhou, Li Qi, and Li Ran, also use performance to set up problematic relations between the real and the fictional. Li Ran, in particular, has made a habit of constructing fictional cultural identities that he acts out in gallery performances or pseudo-documentary videos whose aesthetic would not be out of place on the History Channel. However, for the opening we saw him speaking as himself on the subject of how we look at ourselves within the art industry (Stop Imagining, 2013). The performance aspect of Chen Zhou’s piece, however, is left ambiguous: is the artist creating a fictional subject through this video? Or is this a real document of the subject? Chen’s subject is his friend and fellow artist Yu Honglei. Yu is presented in a tender video as a somewhat melancholy young man leafing through photos of himself as a punkish youth (My Loving Artist Yu Honglei, 2012), but the aims and meanings of this work in the context of this exhibition are difficult to pin down. In a more straightforward fashion, artist Li Qi pitches expertise against amateurism in Manual of Controlled Action – Wrestling Course (2012) in which the artist continually intervenes in a professional wrestler’s demonstration of moves with off-screen commands and suggestions, which subvert and discomfort the expert rather than assisting in any way; and in Biography of Li Xiushi (2013) the artist revisits his childhood attempts at putting on art shows, with a cast of friends providing fictional background and commentary.

While Su presents us with a strong set of works, the way in which they are “problematic” to aesthetic systems ultimately lacks sufficient explanation. Su’s curatorial vision for this show can be seen to extend the critical approach that he and his colleagues Carol Yinghua Lu and Liu Ding (also an artist in this show) have initiated over the past few years. In particular, they have been tackling thorny questions of the place of the individual artist versus the collective (no easy question within the specific Chinese context), and engaging in a reassessment of works previously dismissed as minor within particular artists’ oeuvres. Despite its flaws, “I’m Not Involved in Aesthetic Progress” productively adds to this process, highlighting works from a set of artists over several generations that deserve this rare opportunity for more sustained critical attention.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 2 May, 2013 on art-agenda.

Tang Contemporary, 798 Art District, Beijing

23 March – 30 April, 2013

Wang Yuyang’s set of disparate sculptural constructions that make up “Liner,” at Tang Contemporary, betray their design by computer in their fantastically ornate, mathematical shapes, spurs and swoops of material. They seem to express an aesthetic typically seen in the virtual shapes produced by CAD software. In the gallery they become slightly unreal or impractical forms: large cubes of marble are juxtaposed with jointed lengths of the same material, inserted with lengths of gleaming aluminium sheets; jagged wooden elements iterate and displace, their interlockings and overlappings forming a complex circular construction on the wall; a saddle-like construction is made up of multiple curved layers of hundreds of different materials proceeding in waves around the shape. A series of paintings accompany these sculptures, which seem to have been formulated by the same process, but when reduced to the flat surface of the canvas these works lose the “presence” in space that the sculptures effectively express.

As the titles of the works suggest, these realisations (through software and then through material) are only the latest manifestations of a process of seemingly arbitrary conversions initiated by the artist. The saddle construction is generated from a quote from the Bible (Anecdote / Bible 2013), the circular piece comes from the book “Making the First Universal Computer” (Evidence / Engines of Logic 2013), and the marble piece simply from “Random writings of 1 and 0” (Tenor 2013). In each case the genesis of these objects is prior to the computer-generated forms, they begin with those strings of 1s and 0s generated randomly or from the texts.

This process—of a source translated in various ways until we reach these structures—is one of deliberate and repeated rupture, both of form and meaning, leaving each stage distinct and discrete. What this seems to suggest is an inherent incommunicability, where communication is understood as the progression of meaning from point to another.

Looking at these pieces, and knowing their process of creation, it is difficult not to feel a little hopeless about the condition represented by these objects. They are complex, but to what purpose? What is their aim? And how can we relate to them?

Like much conceptual art, the hand of the artist is deliberately (even forcibly) done away with in this show. Conceptualism has often focused on a questioning of the artist’s presence in the work, but historical examples have often held a promise of relief through a lightness of attitude, which encourages the view that—even though these creations seem shut off from a direct relation to the body, to the audience, or the world—this is not a hopeless situation and leaves room for a resolution of this seeming stalemate. But in Wang’s works there is an earnestness, an aloofness, that removes any humour or irony that might leaven the atmosphere. Even the title of the show, “Liner,” it becomes apparent, is a random choice.

Wang’s previous work has played with the idea of a meaning that inheres in an object. In one series of works he recreated everyday objects in flexible silicon, that then breath in and out in a disturbing way through the action of an internal fan. Such pieces relate to the body through metaphor and draw the audience into their little worlds through empathy. But the works in “Liner” shut off recourse to their source or to a meaning that encompasses the whole process of creation; the translation process employed by the artist leaves the audience with only the implication that these shapes have a history and a communicable meaning. Although they are in fact as direct an interpretation of their prior source as you can get, they manage to lose all relation to it in the process.

This rupture is obviously a deliberate ploy by Wang. It seems to serve as a commentary—writ large—of the inherent fallibility of accurate communication between one thing and another. Evident effort has gone into these structures; they are highly elaborate creations, yet they are mute as to their origins. These origins exist as part of the work; yet ultimately sit out of reach to the audience. These are impenetrable objects and as such frustrate the viewer who looks for any meaning beyond the virtual amongst them.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 23 April, 2013 on ArtSlant.

Yan Jun talks about his “Living Room Tour”:

Sheng Jie (gogo) talks about her audio-visual practice:

VAVABOND (Wei Wei) and Li Jianhong talk about improvisation:

Zajia Lab are starting a series of midnight events to get us all out of the normal patterns of experiencing these things (as I understand it). The first was last Saturday night/Sunday morning with an album launch for 冯昊 Feng Hao and 李增辉 Li Zenghui’s project, 核桃室 The Walnut Room.

The stage set up featured Feng and Li working behind a gauze screen on which another artist and musician, Wu Quan 武權, projected visuals to accompany the music. These visuals were of an overhead view of a container of liquid, into which various objects and inks were added, creating a somewhat psychedelic effect. Dimly visible through the screen, Feng Hao and Li Zenghui played two sets, each about 30 minutes long. The first seemed very freeform, although I assume it had some structure. It began with small cymbals making sharp ringing noises over which Feng breathed. As the piece built up in content and loudness his breathing became a babble of distorted voices, and the addition of Li’s saxophone and percussive sounds created like a really loud freakout piece by the end. The second set was more controlled, incorporating synthesised drones (the snippets in the recording above are taken from this second piece). I felt this last piece was more successful, in that the spontaneity and open-endedness of the first set was given more obvious direction.

The feeling throughout seemed to approach the ecstatic: the voices and music had a magical, ritualistic quality that suggested an abandonment of the body to other forces. This feeling matched some of the imagery for the album (Feng Hao is also a graphic designer), which drew on line-drawings of mathematical structures and mystical diagrams (oddly, there seemed to be two conflicting strands to the graphic design for the album, one being the aforementioned mystical imagery, the other being a poem executed in braille type, arranged in a very minimal, vertical line).

Despite the elaborate presentation, I was not impressed by the event. The apparent abandon of the music and the symbolic artwork were overdone. The projected visuals, too, were almost a cliché of psychedelic art. In the right context these visuals might have worked, but here they did not seem to complement the intensity of the music, and ultimately were not a productive element in the mix.

The artists are obviously working hard at creating an immersive experience with their visual and musical identity, but it is not one I was able to appreciate.

Links:

• Douban page for album launch
• Douban page for The Walnut Room 核桃室
• Taobao page for The Walnut Room’s previous release, Doomscape

VAVABOND playing as part of the Pangbianr Improv Meeting at School Bar

Some new samples taken from last night’s Pangbianr Improv Meeting, a regular Wednesday night event organised by Josh Feola and Lulu Chow from Pangbianr. I only stayed for the first two soloists, Li Jianhong and VAVABOND, both of whom I have written about on this blog before, usually playing together, and whose sounds I really like. Last night it was very evident that Li Jianhong’s playing is very expertly done, a lot of control in the sounds he is manipulating out of his guitar and effects pedals. Despite being VERY LOUD, Li’s sounds carried you along in their tow, making for a series of sequences which had some feeling of progression. VAVABOND’s set, on the other hand, was far more difficult to lose oneself in. Her staccato blasts of sound, endlessly forced you to PAY ATTENTION, with no respite into a consistency which might have allowed you to sit back and relax. Previous events have seen Li and VAVABOND play together (under the names “Vagus Nerve” or “Mind Fibre”), and it’s interesting to see the similarities and disparities in their styles when they are taken separately, as here. For all their differences of technique and instrument, it was possible last night to hear how they share a sonic aesthetic, in their disjunctive ways of arranging their sounds. Good stuff.

Links:

• Pangbianr Improv Meetings

Yan Jun introducing Miji Concert No.12 at 2kolegas

A good selection of artists played last night at 2kolegas bar, as part of SubJam label’s Miji Concert series. Organised by Yan Jun, the evening began with him playing his electronics and feedback in a trio with Liu Xinyu on electronics and Yan Yulong on violin, performing some harsh noise improvisation.

Yan Jun and co. were followed by Soviet Pop, about whom I had heard good things. They focus on playing a set of analogue synthesizers, and their sound is characteristically softer and more organic than the previous set. While I liked what they were doing, and how they were doing it (very understated, almost aggressively geeky), it bothered me that it was really difficult to get beyond the cliché’d sounds of these instruments, harking back to Forbidden Planet-type tonal music.

Lastly, Tim Blechmann on laptop and Conny Zenk on visuals developed an apparently simple set of gradually building drones. At first I was sceptical, thinking that these endless cycles would be swiftly boring, but an interesting thing happened. Starting very quietly, the musicians seemed to be struggling against the background noise of the bar and a typically talkative audience. Yet as the drones gained in pitch and depth, these extraneous sounds were gradually smothered, leaving the drones to dominate. The visuals had a similar struggle, being projected against the heavily textured brick wall of the venue. This meant that much of the subtlety of the flickering lines being generated was lost, yet after a while watching for the small changes that stood out against the peaks and crevices of the brick became quite fascinating, not completely losing itself against the surface, and complementing the sounds well. In a way quite simple and not particularly original, but—in this setting—effective nonetheless.

Links:

• Subjam: Miji Concert No.12
• 2kolegas
• Soviet Pop
• Yan Yulong

Beijing Commune, 798 Art District, Beijing

21 March – 18 May, 2013

Interviewer: Edward Sanderson
Interviewee: Liang Yuanwei

At first glance, “Pomegranate,” Liang Yuanwei’s solo show which opened recently at Beijing Commune, appears to be a rather radical departure from this artist’s previous solo show in the same space in 2010 (“Golden Notes”). “Golden Notes” amassed a group of paintings of a similar format – canvases with floral patterns picked out from an overall gradation of coloured paint. “Pomegranate,” however, seems to present a rather more experimental proposition, and rationalisation of Liang’s practice. In this new show she seems to be dealing directly with the mutable nature of colour: as it is affected by the nature of materials over time, the nature of individual perception, and the nature of mechanical (or otherwise) reproduction. However, both shows, “Pomegranate” and “Golden Notes,” have strong parallels, and can be seen to represent different aspects of a consistent line of research into the appearance and effect of colour, as it exists in painting and in the world.

Edward Sanderson (ES): Taking the show “Pomegranate” as a whole, am I right in thinking that you are trying to investigate the vagaries of the reception of colour, and specifically the reception of painted artworks understood as collections of colours?

Liang Yuanwei (LYW): I actually treat the exhibition “Pomegranate” as one singular work of art, and, yes, I consider these factors through it.

ES: The process around which “Pomegranate” is built up begins with an on-going series of small paintings on paper, the coloured areas of which are dictated by the creases left when the paper is scrunched up and then flattened back out. This series uses lipstick as its medium, and over time this unstable material has changed consistency and colour. Your process then brings in various people to translate the colours of these paintings into Pantone references, then into paint samples, which are then selected by the gallery staff and applied to the wall of this show in various ways.

Why have you set up this convoluted process?

LYW: The conception of this exhibition came from a similar structural treatment that is found in my other paintings; that is, design a logical procedure, and from the process of this procedure through to its final execution, uncontrollable factors that exist in the act of human involvement and tampering are brought forth.

ES: What do you think this process is telling us about painting, or the world? What are the meanings of your choices?

LYW: For me, the act of art-making exists parallel to all the other things in the world. In my own creative practice I imitate the world, thereby understanding the world, in order to create the world.

ES: Do you consider the “paint” works as installations? Or paintings?

LYW: I consider the whole exhibition to be one painting. The interconnectedness that forms between the five walls – such a relationship is the painted surface.

For example, if you were to throw a very light ball against one wall, it would bounce off to the opposite side, and again to the next one; the trajectory the ball takes on is the painting. The “works” on each wall in the “Pomegranate” exhibition are not explanations or exist in anyway hierarchically; all the walls are of equal ranking.

ES: Also included in the show are four paintings from 2004, entitled “Meaning.” These represent scrunched up pieces of tin foil placed on coloured surfaces (book covers, I believe). The tin foil takes on the colours of its surroundings in its reflective surfaces and as such these paintings can be said to be less about the tin foil in itself than its transmission of these colours.

LYW: That’s right.

ES: There’s a parallel with the polished stainless steel sculptures by [Chinese artist] Zhan Wang. Zhan sees their mirrored surfaces as taking on the features of the surroundings to create a link between the forms of Taihu rocks and the urban surroundings of the Chinese cities in which they are often placed. In contrast to this, your own “Meaning” paintings deal with an abstract idea of colour itself, rather than the foil’s reflection of any particular “thing.”

Do you see the these paintings having a wider significance than just being about “colour,” like Zhan’s understanding of his rocks’ place in society?

LYW: For me, art is not a tool. Art has its own composition; art interacts with the larger social structure, but I would not say that art is a means of documentation, explanation, or that it exists for the use of the social structure.

“Meaning” is one of my earlier works. At that time I was simply concerned with the reasoning behind how an “artwork” becomes an “artwork.” I titled the work “Meaning,” because the subject of the painting—the tin foil—is a meaningless thing. Yet for me, the meaning of a thing comes from its relationship with the surrounding environment; it is the surrounding that brings meaning to the thing, and with that in mind, that’s how I proceed with composing the painted surface.

In this exhibition, I included this older set of artworks because they indicate a continuous line of thinking to that which takes place in my recent investigations. Another reason is that they happen to be the top and bottom half of the structure; in addition, the sizes of these paintings and the lipstick on paper works are identical.

ES: When you say, “the top and bottom half of the structure,” do you mean literally (either above and below on the wall, or relating to the tin foil in the picture?) or metaphorically/theoretically?

LYW: Using the four paintings of “Meaning” as an example, visually speaking they are structured in the manner of “a top and a bottom.” Each painting is composed of a top and a bottom colour block, tinfoil sits in the middle of the two colour blocks acting as a connector – this suggests that the subject of the paintings is not the paintings themselves, but a reflection of the idea of “relation.”

In the exhibition, the 120 colour blocks on the wall are arranged in the format of a top and a bottom; the two large colour blocks are also composed in a top and bottom manner. The lipstick works on paper are also arranged in the same way. There is a similarity to all the walls, and that is the “top and bottom” structuring.

The corresponding relation of the “top and bottom” is a relation of contrast. The whole exhibition also started from the contrast of the old set of lipstick drawings to the new set.

My study has always been regarding “relationships.” In the “Golden Notes” series, I utilized the logic of physics in the relationship between the different paintings to set up the exhibition (the colour range relationship of the diptychs and the contrast relationship of the large and small works).

In Pomegranate, I utilized both a vertical treatment of the logic of the mind (all the artworks arranged chronologically and according to evidence) and a horizontal treatment of the logic of physics (all the artworks arranged according to size and colour) to compose this exhibition.

The similarity between the two exhibitions is not only related to a focusing on the reception of colour, but also on these “relationships” as well. As I said, in both exhibitions, each of the exhibition spaces is to be considered as a singular piece of artwork.

Pomegranate attempts to look into the productive schema and the metaphorical meaning of a kind of equitability of “relationship” or “structure.” As in my paintings, their methods of production were carried out systematically from top to bottom, and from one section that connects to another. In Pomegranate, I started working with lipsticks on paper, and they developed from one series to the next. This mode of production is dissimilar to the system of the branching of a “tree”; the structure and model are more akin to that of a “hive,” or the way “pomegranate seeds” are arranged; it is a kind of “butterfly effect.”

ES: Does this have any relation to the Gilles Deleuze rhizome?

LYW: I have come across the works of Gilles Deleuze but I’ve never read any of them. My idea of the structure of the “hive” and “pomegranate” comes from observing my own artistic practice; I discovered that I have always been using this way of thinking to propel and continue on with my practice, and it is unlike the way a “tree” grows. I asked a friend who is familiar with the work of Deleuze what she thinks about this, and she answered: “If the making of a work is based on the principle of the rhizome, then that is a mockery towards the theory of rhizome, because that makes the artwork a supplement to the theory, and no longer the rhizome itself. It then returns to the idea of the ‘tree root’ where there is a difference between the main root and the branch root.” – I think my friend said it very nicely.

I believe both Deleuze and my own ideas then coincide, and I am in agreement with his theory. But my work is not an interpretation of his theory.

• First published 8 April, 2013 on ArtSlant.
• [Interview was conducted by email. Thanks to Lv Jingjing of Beijing Commune and Lei Chak Man for translation assistance.]

VAVABOND specialises in very subtle, fizzing staccato stabs of computer-generated electronic sounds, while Li plucks at a guitar and combines its tones with noises from various DIY electro-mechanical objects sitting near him, their combined sounds being variously modulated and distorted. The style of sound produced by these two is a little bit cosmic, from the warbles of VAVABOND’s programming, and the bends and swoops of Li’s notes and tones, the overall effect harking back to early synthesised tonal music without in itself being at all anachronistic. They produced a wonderfully intense effect, each sound feeling highly articulated and organised, and never over-bearing or violent.

Links:

• VAVABOND
• VAVABOND on Soundcloud
• Li Jianhong
• Li Jianhong on Soundcloud
• on Taobao

C-Space, Beijing

9 March 2013

The works in this show have come about through a steady process of placement and refinement by He Yida. The final installations project a feeling of extreme intention in the experience of their arrangements.

The process of the work moves from the selection of material, their arrangements in relation to each other, and their positioning with respect to the spaces. Overall there is an emphasis on the works’ relationship with the floor (rather than a hanging relationship with the wall or ceiling), as they spread out along that plane, or rise up from it. The effect is of a sense of flatness in the planes and tenuousness in the upright structures. The elements of the structures are ready-made for other purposes, variously adjusted with painted additions. Each material adjusts the effect of the other materials they are placed in a relationship with: the hardness of the metal bar stands in contrast to the softness of the elastic strip that is wrapped around it; this wrapping conceals and reveals various parts, playing the materials off each other, changing the perception of the materials and their arrangements as they are viewed from different angles.

The works can be seen to pick up on Minimalism’s experiments in form, and with the “anti-form” reactions to the hard geometries of Minimalism – Donald Judd’s metal boxes with coloured plexiglass inserts an example of the former, and Robert Morris’ felt works, for the latter. The simple forms of Judd’s “specific objects” asserted themselves in the spaces in which they were placed; Morris’ cut sections of felt hung loosely from the wall, their forms not dictated but an expression of gravity on the dense material.

He Yida’s own works clearly follow a trajectory from these historical developments into forms of site specificity, the intervention and critique of spaces that became subsumed and formalised as institutional critique (Daniel Buren’s striped inserts into spaces come to mind). Her works reflect an understanding of all these historical developments as well as their consequences, placing the entropic fall of softness against rigidity of form, the insertion of material into space, and its relation to space in material, form and meaning. These are seemingly fragile, ephemeral anti-structures, which play arrangements of the materials against their interactions with the spaces; playing the “natural” forms that the materials take under their own and external forces (gravity, entropy) with the adaptation of those materials and forms in the service of the artist.

In He Yida’s work Buren’s critique of institutional architecture becomes a more flexible and subtle activity. In her recent work Leg In (2012) the materials are sourced from shop display manufacturers, and so the work reflects forms and structures from this commercial context – the materials might be said to retain a residue of their original functions. However this original function is not directly referenced in her works, nor worked through as a reason for their being. Her structures divert this function into new meanings based on their current location in the gallery.

As the artist places and arranges the works, they become specific to their surroundings as interventions as well as reactions to the properties of the spaces.

The odd angle of one wall in C-Space’s gallery is addressed by leaning a length of wood against it. This is, in turn, balanced by a smaller piece, made up of a shorter wood baton, its ends connected by a snaking length of black rubber tubing. This is not about presenting the objects as they are, or their uses, in a new context, thereby making them strange through that shift. The objects do not remain as they are, but are manipulated to adjust their forms and relationships. This, in some senses, uses the materials and forms against themselves. Fabric strips hang from bars, but the fall of the material is interrupted by being stitched, hoisting lengths up into loops; or they are pulled to the floor by heavy metal rings pinching the material at its base.

The combination of materials of differing qualities, the arrangement of works of differing qualities, the spaces they occupy in relation to each other, all these aspects are significant to the experience of the exhibition. No work stands alone, and no work is the whole work. In this balance of internal and external forces the resulting piece represents the cusp between the two, a creative reflection on space and its effects.

To try and rationalise the activity going on here: the works act as interventions into their spaces, but also exist in the reverse direction as the space impinges on the works. The works contribute and at the same time react to those spaces. In a third movement, the presence of the body acts as a subsequent element in this interplay of space and work. It can be said that the work exists both in the movement outwards of its interposing of itself into the space, as well as its movement inwards of the space’s effects on the work. One can also speak of the space in a similar fashion, as having a movement outwards (which corresponds to the work’s movement inwards) and a movement inwards (corresponding to the work’s movement outwards). In a similar way, the body has its own set of movements in relation to the work and the space. This makes for a 6-fold set of movements of the work, the space, and the body.

This interplay of contribution and reaction is what creates a tension in the work in the link between work and the viewer as they are present in the spaces, and as they experience the pieces. This presence marks the viewer as part of the experience of the piece, completing the works’ work by adding the experience to the list of effects of the work – in this case in the personal space which moves through the institutional and architectural spaces that the work exists within. Each node of this set of movements depends on the others for an understanding of the whole. The work is but one part, and meaning is understood as the whole system.

Author: Edward Sanderson

何意达个展

提.防

2013.3