artforum.com.cn: Nowhere to Land – Yin Xiuzhen at Pace Beijing

无处着陆:尹秀珍个展 Nowhere to Land – Yin Xiuzhen

2013.07.20–2013.09.28 佩斯北京| Pace Beijing

Pace Beijing, 798 Art District, Beijing

20 July – 28 September, 2013

以一系列表现烟花绽放于漆黑天空的画作作为尹秀珍最新个展的开场或许有着什么特殊的含义(“烟花”系列,2012-2013)。尹更为人所知的是她融合缝制在一起的衣物的装置性作品,而在此她的画布都是几何形状的:六边形、十二边形等等。画布深深的边缘侧面被灰色的颜料覆盖,在画布周围凸起成脊状。在隔壁的一个黑暗的展厅里,一座如同雕琢过的宝石状的大型雕塑伫立在地面上(《黑洞》,2013),彩色的LED灯从雕塑里打出。这个宝石是由黑色T恤做成的,每个logo和标志都放在了雕塑立面的正中。

衣物始终保持着与人体的某种联系,甚至当穿衣人不在时一样如此。在尹秀珍的作品里,这种与人体的联系保持着一种叙事方式,仿佛这些衣物的原主还继续活在这些作品中。有时艺术家在衣物的柔软(可被理解为生物体的一种性质)与另一种材料的坚硬之间做出明显的对比。《救生筏》(2013)就是一套被黄色衣服覆盖的座位形状的作品,由一套铁管框架支撑。许多根汽车尾气管也从这底下戳出,这些管子高度磨光的金属质地可被理解为“救生艇”的喷气推进系统。这种相似的连接以更佳的效果出现在《无处着陆》(2013)中。一个原尺寸的飞机起落架被倒过来放置在画廊地面上。走近看你会发现,这个巨大的轮胎也是由纺织物制成的,而支撑它的金属结构则包含了金属的盆和盘,忠实地模拟了飞机的形态。

从画廊高屋顶垂下的是“孤独”系列(2010)。一根长长的管状米黄色织物条内部一节一节地被塞得鼓鼓囊囊,有如章鱼吸盘。一只童鞋挂在这条向下垂吊一端,并且只有鞋尖轻轻触地。当画廊里空气流动时,作品也来回移动,而这只鞋子则开始在地板的沙面上画线。这个超现实的人体部分以一种奇特的方式侵入画廊的空间,并以它不协调的存在形式和无目的的移动制造出一种关乎失去的辛酸感。在这件作品中,尹秀珍成功地将意图的精妙与富有诗意的标志性材料和外形结合在了一起。

— 文/ 李蔼德 (Edward Sanderson), 译/ 吴玉笛

The first works encountered upon entering Yin Xiuzhen’s current solo show at Pace Beijing are a series of paintings representing bursts of fireworks against a dark sky (Fireworks Series, 2012–2013). Each canvas is shaped as a geometric form, a hexagon, dodecahedron, etc. the deep edges of which are each coated in thick grey paint, building up in a ridge along the front surface of each piece.

It is perhaps significant that paintings serve as the introduction to this show, as Yin is better known for her installations incorporating elements made from stitched-together clothing. Turning the corner into a darkened room, a large structure shaped like a cut diamond sits on the floor (Black Hole 2010). The facets of the diamond are made from panels of black t-shirts, with the logos and symbols applied to the original items positioned centrally on each facet. These also have small gaps between them, through which light from an LED array inside the structure glows in ever-changing colours.

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ArtSlant: Monuments to What?

Constructing Form: Ma Qiusha, Tang Hui, Li Yousong

Beijing Commune, 798 Art District, 4 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China

27 February – 20 March, 2011

[It may appear that I have something of an unhealthy obsession with Leng Lin (Director of Pace Beijing and Founder of Beijing Commune) and his activities, having now written two pieces about shows in which he has directly or indirectly been involved. Maybe this means he is doing something right, to have attracted my attention so often. That said, the reason those particular shows have attracted my attention has been for negative reasons, due to a lack I’ve seen in the quality of the work or the quality of the presentation. So, although I’m reviewing a show at Beijing Commune this week, for once I will concentrate on the artists’ own work.]

Constructing Form is a small group show presenting three Chinese artists—Tang Hui, Li Yousong and Ma Qiusha—including drawings, paintings and collages produced over the last two years. The artists all deal with a human relationship to architecture, but between the three of them, show two distinct approaches to this subject matter.

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ArtSlant: Will the Pace Beijing Curator Please Stand Up?

Beijing Voices: Together or Isolated

Pace Beijing, 798 Art District, Beijing, China

30 December, 2010 – 28 February, 2011

Although at first glance an example of the stopgap shows thrown up during Beijing’s slow season of Christmas through Chinese New Year, Pace Beijing have laid on a group show with grander aspirations. Beijing Voices: Together or Isolated addresses recent questions about the development of gallery shows in Beijing and the role of curators in general, but cuts the rug from under its feet with its confused presentation.

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ArtSlant: Kitchen Catastrophes

Review of Song Dong: A Blot on the Landscape at Pace Beijing

Pace Beijing, 798 Art District, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, 100015 Beijing, China

October 30 – December 18, 2010

The new series of video works by Song Dong on show at Pace Beijing continue the artist’s playful experiments with impermanence and the illusory nature of everyday objects, but are ultimately let down by a lackluster installation.

Pace Beijing have devoted a large section of their space to showing these four new video projections. Arranged asymmetrically, one on each wall in the large darkened space, these short videos begin with artful arrangements of foodstuffs in tableau which hark back to traditional Chinese landscape paintings or shanshui penjing 山水盆景 (tray-based arrangements of materials representing idealized landscapes). In Song Dong’s case strips of smoked salmon or a butchered pig make for fleshy terrain; cut fruit, green peppers, or broccoli stand in for verdant hills and shorelines.

Over the course of the videos various tragedies take place in these worlds. Hands from above wield knives, choppers or blow-dryers, and proceed to aggravate the landscape, toppling the parsley trees, slicing the fruit and meat formations in their destructive rampage until all is laid waste and we are left with the raw materials stripped back. But in the same way that the micro is initially interpreted as macro—foodstuffs as landscapes—we still feel the urge to remap these interventions as natural phenomena, tsunami, earthquake, or war.

Song Dong’s work has consistently dealt with this urge, confronting these delusions of fixed meanings through various tactics. Works such as Breaking Mirror (1999), Crumpling Shanghai (2000) and Burning Mirror (2001), present an image of reality destroyed in the way indicated by the titles, physically exposing the image for what it is. The new works are a continuation of a series taking food as their material, either in videos such as Eating Landscape (2005), where a fish-head vista is picked apart by chopstick-wielding hands; or, large-scale installations of cityscapes formed of sweets, consumed by the audience over the course of the exhibition.

An interesting counterpoint to the works at Pace Beijing is fortuitously on display at Beijing Center for the Arts this month in the group show “H2O.” Touched 100 Years (2010) presents 100 small monitors each showing a well-known photograph from world history, one for each year from 1910 to 2010. Every so often a hand brushes across the photo, disturbing the surface and revealing it to be a layer of water between the photograph and camera. The hand disappears off-screen, the water settles, and once again the photo is clear – but the clarity of the image and the ability to gain knowledge through touch has been thrown into doubt by this simple gesture. Whereas Touched 100 Years presents the image as a point of return interrupted by the process of disruption, A Blot on the Landscape offers no such restoration of the image.

The installation of Touched 100 Years, with its floor-hugging chain of videos snaking around the walls of the gallery,feels entirely appropriate to the extent of the piece – something which unfortunately cannot be said of the installation at Pace Beijing. It’s difficult to see how the four video projections of A Blot on the Landscape successfully occupy the amount of space they are required to fill. It is as if the installation feels it must make up for a lack in the works themselves, which may indeed be the case as these are only modest developments over Song Dong’s previous works. I feel this conflict between the arrangement and the works detracts from the overall experience, diluting the works. The weakness of the installation is mirrored in the weakness of the wall text introducing the works. This “Preface”—in pride of place as the contextualization for the works within the Gallery—seems to bear little direct relation to the works on display. Ultimately textual vagueness and contradictions, coupled with a weak installation do the artist and his works little service.

Author: Edward Sanderson