Unclaimed Objects: Yang Jian solo show
Where Where Art Space, No. 319-1, East End Art Zone A, Caochangdi Village, Chaoyang District, Beijing
16 June – 15 July, 2012
In the exhibition text for Unclaimed Objects, artist Yang Jian recounts the story of a parasitic fungus which lives in the stomach of a cow, and spreads by passing out of the cow via it’s dung which in turn infects ants in the vicinity. The fungus then implants an urge in the ants to present themselves to be eaten by the next cow, thus passing into the new cow’s system. This life-cycle is presented very specifically as a “story” by the artist and—while there are reports of such occurrences—this aspect of fiction versus truth forms a background to his collected objects and narratives in currently on display at Where Where Art Space.
The exhibition space presents a set of objects that the artist has been collecting over the past few years. The initial impetus of this show—as being about the discarding or loss of objects which the artist then appropriates and places within an extended narrative of his own work and of the show—is itself layered with a rather odd understanding of the activity of these objects within an ecosystem of creativity. Referring to the story of the fungus, Yang Jian make direct links between the cattle (as host for the fungus) as the audience, the ant (as inadvertent disseminator of the fungus) as the media, and the fungus itself as these discarded or lost works.
This extended metaphor suggests that, as with the fungus, these lost and found objects somehow have the ability and urge to infect us in order to continue their lifespan. While this infection is again perhaps meant in a metaphorical sense (being the infection of ideas or images passing from the person to person), it is also interesting to see images as somehow embodying the urge to self-dissemination.
Looking at the objects that are presented, these are not just found objects in the Duchampian sense, but here a very real meaning for the object is also being found or applied to it, to be mediated with the audience. This additional application is done by the artist, and—in a perverse and patronising way—on behalf of the object.
Duchamp’s found objects act as responses to commodity production: as well as taking each objet trouvé out of the cycle of production into the rarefied artistic context, each objet retains the feature of being replaceable by any other piece. The aura of production is minimal here; the hand is absent; the machine has ostensibly placed a barrier between maker and user; user becomes consumer.
Yang Jian’s found objects, however, reintroduce the hand of the maker very much into relation with the artist and the audience. However the maker is held off, in the sense that the link with them has been separated in the process of loss. Each object then provides a “fuzzy” link back to their owner/maker, presenting a partial tale about them and the circumstances under which the object was produced, used and lost. So, while they are “found” objects, they do not act as objet trouvé – these are lost, found, and then re-imagined objects.
Some significant pieces include three passport photos of the same man, placed on the steps of a stepladder as you enter the space. The artist tells me that he found each of them in the same place on three consecutive days. This coincidence left him feeling that they were being left specifically for him to find. This strange overlapping of the artist and the original person’s activities provide a link to a magical realm where coincidence can be confused with some ulterior force or presence.
On the other side of the room, a discarded picture frame with a ripped shred of canvas, is propped up at right-angles to the wall. On one thin edge Chinese characters inform us that this was retrieved from the garbage outside the studio of the painter Zeng Fanzhi. Immediately after translating this for me, Yang Jian backtracks and says that in fact it is not from Zeng’s studio at all.
This setting up of the stories around the objects by means of handwritten notes on the walls and the objects themselves, and the artist’s own interventions into and as a cause of those stories, sets up a consistent ambiguity over what is true and what is invention. This ambiguity creates a playful and humorous setting in which the imagination freely explores and completes the objects.
The text provided by the artist provides further clues and distractions, and as with the objects themselves ultimately seems designed to upset any fixed interpretation of them. As Yang says in this text: “The exhibition exists in parallel withmy [sic] oral narration.” (given the complex intentions that the artist presents, it is difficult to dismiss as irrelevant the multiple missing spaces, and the subsequent word-collisions, in this text). The show as a whole, including its leakage out into the world before and afterwards, makes this upsetting the main aim of this process. As the artist says, the setting up of the stories, and the continual “self-criticism” evident as part of the stories, “fosters a detachmentin order to avoid having people get lost in the spectacle of my recycling. [sic]” Yang Jian succeeds in this task, never letting the audience settle on too rigid an interpretation of the works, the infection exploiting this instable situation to pass to a new host.
Author: Edward Sanderson
ArtSlant: Things Lost and Found by escdotdot is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International