Arrow Factory, 38 Jianchang Hutong (off Guozijian Jie), Beijing, 100007 China

3 July – 20 August, 2011

He An’s new installation at the store-front space Arrow Factory, is the first in a series of shows in Beijing for the Chinese artist: Tang Contemporary and Magician Space hosting shows opening this week in the 798 Art District. The installation at Arrow Factory continues the artist’s concern with lighting systems and sees a working streetlight poking through the glass of the gallery’s frontage. Below the light a small switch invites you to turn the light on and off. Behind the glass, inside the inaccessible gallery, the streetlight is broken up into short sections to fit into the confined space and snakes across the floor before disappearing into the back wall on which a black, schematic painting of rings and linking lines has been applied.

In reality this is only a third of the installation, there being another two parts nearby which the painting seems to direct the audience to. “Some 500 meters away” a shop’s lights have also been connected to system, and in another, undisclosed location another light is to be found. All these instances of lights have their respective switches, forming some kind of symbiotic lighting system that extends the reach of each flick of the switches.

Previous pieces by He An have worked with lights as a means of playing with their potential meanings as symbolic objects. From the stolen shop signs recomposed to spell out the name of the artist’s father and a Japanese actress; to the emotive phrases partially outlined in strips of light, which somehow leave a literal blank space for meaning to be grasped between these borders which brush against the forms of the characters. Shaped light seems to have a proposal of communication for the artist, which is always delayed or reconstituted.

This new piece takes that further to suggest that in the simple act of the presence or absence of light, there is the possibility of meaning to be communicated. Maybe this represents a purer form of communication, divorced from language systems – for example the Chinese characters that have been the forms in the artist’s previous work. And unlike other works by He An, the title of this piece is not physically reproduced in the installation, but remains left behind as a puzzling, surplus meaning.

In this case it is not light so much as the change from light to dark and back that allows for communication. The elaborate set up; the switching on and off; and the deliberate distancing over the three sites prevent direct communication beyond the simplest binary mode, so communication seems to become a utopian dream of connection and what remains in the blind flashing of the light is the simple fact of being present.

When I encountered the piece’s most visible section, in the Arrow Factory’s space, there was only the promise of these other locations to begin with, and the switch gives only a vague possibility of communication between them. This left me with something of a dislocated experience, where I could only take the artist’s word that these other locations exist, and if they exist, that I have some kind of control over them. Even if they exist, the dislocation suggests the users might all be working against each other in our flipping of the switches. Our initial inability to coordinate our actions by sight means that any observable effect appears random and unpredictable. It seems less communication than flailing in the dark; all we can do is express our presence by turning the light on and off.

But there are always ways to create communication at some level; binary or Morse code would seem to fit for this set of lights. But what this lighting system makes clear to me is that all communication requires collaboration and accommodation, one side must let the other “speak” and not interrupt. So a tacit agreement between the sides must be instituted, an accommodation of each switcher as communicating beings and of the space and time they need to communicate. In this case a successful communication begins with what could be characterised as an attitude of kindness and patience.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 19 July, 2011 on ArtSlant.

CPU:798 is delighted to welcome Michael Yuen to our roster1 of artists. Michael’s work encompasses a plurality2 of media3, and he is already well-known4 in his native Australia for a body of exceptional works making use of light5, sound6 and performance7. With Michael joining CPU:798, we are building on our mission8 to present the most interesting new media9 artists from both inside and outside of China today10.

Over the past few years Michael has divided his time equally between Australia11 and China12, and in both environments13 his works have investigated the nature of public spaces14 and how small events and interventions15 can have large-scale effects16 on those spaces and the people in them.

1. What would be the appropriate collective noun for this?
2. Plurality: perhaps plenitude. Or plethora.
3. ‘New’ media as opposed to ‘traditional’ media.
4. see his biography
5. e.g. Flash. Also includes sound as part of the piece.
6. e.g. Pulse. Also includes light as part of the piece.
7. e.g. Follow. Developed because of the specific difficulties creating a sound or light piece in an urban environment where the ambient noises and visual clutter would mask the elements of the work.
8. see statement on website
9. see note 3
10. expanding the gallery’s focus out from photography per se
11. Adelaide
12. Beijing
13. How different are they, and how does this manifest itself to the artist and through his work?
14. Particularly differences in the nature of public spaces. I have never lived in Australia (I visited Sydney once for 3 days), but from my experience from living in China, comparing this to the UK and Europe, the Chinese use their spaces in very particular ways. The spaces may be the same, or in many ways comparable, or completely different, but people here in China occupy them in a very characteristic way. It is a confluence of character (habit, tradition), architecture (in the sense of a human planned external controlling affect on the occupants), environment (a ‘natural’ external affect), and immediate practicality (an internal affect) which all go to suggest what happens there.
15. sound and light work in this way – materially discrete
16. an effect is that we experience them as an artwork (something removed from everyday life;or, something like everyday life which makes everyday life suddenly seem strange?). They assert themselves, make themselves known. Distract or attract attention. Trip up, disturb, unsettle.