Revisit of previous works
For the past years, I concerned very much on the combination of the two subjects, biology and art, and spent a lot of time digging in the physicality and cultural aspect derived from the subjects. In about more than 10 years ago, there has been an arisen controversy on biotechnology, and this became the new point of penetration in making art. The technology changed our traditional view to lives. It gave us a new hope to the future, in certain ways, for medical and food issues. But at the same time, it also brought along with us a lot of unknown factors and issues, especially on ethics and against our existing perceptions on human and non-human body. There is a new understanding of the relationship between nature, technology and human subject for the artists to think about. I was influenced by the artist Matthew Barney from the 1990s and Edwardo Kac from the early 2000s. Kac and Barney’s art works made use of the element of transgenic, which blurred the boundary among different species, and between artificial and natural lives. They brought us to a new scope of art world and question the new ways of seeing to life and ethics. I think that a new art language, which is quite detached from the traditional art history, can also be found through biological art. It is puzzled in the transformation of life itself and the art media. Artwork could be no longer simply “exhibited”, but more close to lives and interacted with the mind, sense, and body of the audience. In concept development and presentation of art, the Happening Artist Allen Kaprow, Povera Art from Italy, and Korean artist Nam June Paik and his Fluxus movement also influenced me a lot from their absurd, playful, and somehow parody style.
I paid a lot of time making art based on scientific research, philosophical study, and experimentation. I am interested in different ways of seeing in life and death, true and untrue, real and unreal, by playing with the forms of living things and flowing materials and concept. The past work,
Later on, my focus turned to eliminate or fade out the physical and material elements from the artwork, keep the volatile, edgy, experimental essence of the work. I try to dig out the very spiritual essence or nature of art, in a very minimal and poetic way.
At the Mid-Autumn Festival 2011, I “published” a poem collection, not in a booklet, but in an old building at Wellington Street, Central, 99 Senses, an alternative art space and bar. The exhibition is called Ling Sui Dei Bai 零碎地擺. The poems were selected or composed site specifically to every single corner at where they were post. I want to create the artworks that would have a very close proximity with the public and the space but you might not notice the presence of them.
The content of the poems are very broad actually, from the question of the cosmos to the philosophical solution and to the inward feeling to life, and most of them were using the words of colour or depicting and sketching the environment or space, which may possibly reflected my previous training in painting when I first get into the world of art.
Red plus blue plus yellow thus elimination
Just situation. Just universe.
And another drop of blue in the city in October
City, generated, light out
out of the city
slow,
temptation,
vibrant,
still,
next,
Your lightness flies you to the sky. But,
a shadow falls down dead.
While I am chasing the light, a shadow standing there
I saw Zarathustra's shadow yesternight.
Chasing.
Time. It lost.
It's come.
"Transmigration." thus spoke Zarathustra.
"How can we make a work of art," he said very seriously, " that has no physical substance?"
The wind under the door
remember not
nothing
What's it behind the door?
No, not I watching
橘子散紅，悶了藍
斷塵不在，影子落，見淡
水且隨，月解黑，覺醒夢朦朧
春光斬，千秋徐徐
浪看岸凝，空壁拾殘，只剩杳渺人間
亂星投問千古，萬般破
數花微微拈，也微煙
色盡無藏
落雨
葉下一條草
花靜
無語
香
飛上天 ，輕盈
落下，成了影
一‧破
厭，人間太艷。
夜涼。暮色。
往事不如記憶，洗不盡。
煙絲捲入風裡，抽斷了
一段記憶。
I was inspired from the ancient time that the Chinese scholars or poet usually wrote their poems onto the walls or doors or windows or just anywhere whenever they had inspiration or came up with any idea or comment to the corresponding moment. This was ever quite a romantic and scholastic practice in the old days. But nowadays people just treated the practice of any “painting” on wall as Graffiti or even vandalism. This became two polar extreme to combine the writing of poem with the act of painting them on wall. But it also touched the system by raising a question on the definition and who own the right of definition on the private space and public space. It is of course set by the law, but what is the rationale of the law, if the law is going to be set narrower and narrower by the will of the power center and we don’t even have the right to lie down on the so called public grassland?
I saw Zarathustra’s shadow yesternight.
This exhibition is very important to me in developing a more solid attitude and style to art and jumping out the confined perception in finding a metaphor or symbolic subject to tell a story. This is a path to the new movement.
On going.
Project 1.
“Can we make a work of art that has no physical substance?” is an experimental project on the front glass walls of galleries in Central. It is developed from the previous Poem exhibition Ling Sui Dei Bai 零碎地擺. On 27 October 2011, Thursday, 11pm, I started the project with two partners, one as lookout and the other one taking documentation by video and photo. I prepared two copies of A4 paper stencils dye cut with two statements: “Can we make a work of art that has no physical substance?” And “Here and elsewhere but not at anywhere perceptible.” The texts were then stained on the glass walls of the galleries in Central by acrylic and sponge. Approximately 20 galleries were being attacked. The duration of the action time was about two to three hours.
The action was done in a hot and wet midnight along the Hollywood Road, uphill, across the Soho district, and then down from the Peel Street. Even though it was supposed to be noisy at the Thursday ladies night for drinkers, the closed and light off galleries stood a bit alone from the crowd, and the whole action was running in a rather tranquil, sweaty, and tense atmosphere.
The time was like frozen with the noise from the crowd tens of steps away. The A4 stencil papers melted down gradually from one gallery to the next with the paint and sweat from the hands, and the statements painted on the wall blurred out from one to another gradually as well.
The poetic “vandalism” act led to some controversial response from the Facebook page of those galleries. And they became part of the artwork. While most of the comment were negative and felt being offensive, a few of them would think on other possibility.
The process was photographed and recorded in video. The whole piece of work finally exhibited in projecting video and transparent slides on a handmade light box. There is a statement “you are just a commodity” marked on the box.
Can we make a work of art that has no physical substance?
The statement is questioning, literally, the possibility of any work of art that can be presence without any physical substance. It is easy to be related with the notion and discussion on the essence of Conceptual art. But the second meaning referred from the “physical substance” is the challenge to the commodity nature of art in the commercial world. The statement was post on the transparent glass wall outside the galleries, while the wall is transparent but is a physical substance, and you can see through the wall from the statement into the inner space of the galleries, and thus created three layers between the text, the wall, and the artworks inside the galleries, in a strong contrast manner.
Here and elsewhere but not at anywhere perceptible
A statement that can be read but cannot be clearly understood is a question and challenge on how the art and space/place being defined with each other. Whether an art is perceptible or can be placed to be perceptible is subject to who define the place it is placed. But who has the right, or who is most eager to define such place?
But the viewers can also neglect or avoid thinking too deep on the statement, but just treat it as a poem.
Project 2
HOW GREAT THOU ART?
This project involved the experiment and action on ice.
Salt is being used as an agent to leave mark on ice, because of its very chemical nature to raise the melting point of the ice, and hence speed up the crystalized water particles to break down and hence leave marks on the surface of the ice.
A statement of question borrowed from a church song
The ice was made layer by layer. When the first layer of water was crystalized, the statement would be carved on the surface of that layer, by applying salt and the stencil. There are totally three layers being made.
The marks on it is a statement YOU ARE JUST A COMMODITY
The chemical reaction of the salt on water would not stop at room temperature actually, as the salt particle (Calcium Chloride Ca-Cl2) bombing on and breaking the crystallized water particle (H20 – H20) would release more energy and hence heat out, and thus the middle part of the ice would melt faster and became hollow.
The greatness of the text HOW GREAT THOU ART faded out as the ice melted into water like tears shed. This is the action of salt and heat on ice, or just time on the ice.
The other part of the project was the pushing of ice block, 10”x20”x40”, 300 pounds, in JCCAC (Jockey Club Creative Art Centre) by the art group named Sisyphus. HOW GREAT THOU ART is about the greatness (heaviness) of art. On 26 November, 4pm, six people of the group gathered at the fourth floor of JCCAC. One of the missions of this group is to keep working on art from each of us, forming a loop like Six Domain from Buddhism (Echo with the action of Sisyphus?).
The original plan was to push the ice-block around the building of JCCAC, by adding energy and friction on them, until they all completely melted down. But the ice blocks were all crashed and broken down during the course of pushing at late mid night. The whole process was recorded down in video.
This is a very introverted process to reconstruct the relation between art, self, material, environment and the running of time, which is a continuation of the action “can we make a work of art that has no physical substance?” on galleries. Now is a challenge to the weight of art. How great is Art? How heavy of it if we carry it like Sisyphus?
Sisyphus’ looping action on rock is never end? Never change? The reproduced looping ice action is a transforming undefined process (or it is being defined already, in a way? Or somewhat in between?)
Ice is melting or transforming by action on it. The action can be heat energy from the environment, human, chemical materials, or can be nothing? Or after all it is simply a matter of time?
Some trivial thoughts:
Assimilation of introverted world to the pushing object.
Transformation of energy.
What if this is not an art?
Time, temperature, pressure, friction.
Action on action.
Without the beginning and ending.
What if this is also an action painting?
While the action diluting art?
Reconstruct nothing
Create and break the loop.
I traveled for a hundred miles and a hundred miles, possibly just looping and looping, just for an eye opener to the transformation of nothing.
In review of the projects, and the study of the history from Dadaism to Futurism and Avant Garde, and most of all the continuous root from Happening to Fluxus and Conceptual art, I am thinking on the relation and reflection from art to the society, and vice versa. The post of poem or the push of ice was in a realistic world, but the exhibiting way and the response are very much related to the Internet virtual world. Especially for the “poem vandalism” work in which the response from the Internet world became part of the work. While the work touched the definition of space and the system, it can be pushed to the virtual world as well.
Fluidity, flowing and unstable status are also the nature of Internet world. It is getting closer and even blurred in the relation between the real world and virtual world. The use of telecommunication network and platform, electronic mailing system became a new art medium and tool. Not just a creative design of digital composition as symbol or metaphor to tell any story, but can be a new way to set the parameter and configuration of an artwork.
The uncatchable and unpreserved nature of Happening can also be redefined. Like the poem on galleries and the ice, they cannot be preserved in the real world, but could be embedded and growing and developing in the virtual world digital highway in a biological way. And there is a contrast between the post of texts on concrete wall and the post of them on a webpage wall; and also the post on a melting ice wall in the realistic world that cannot be last longer than a couple of hours but the post on a virtual world wall can be last and growing and being recreated and appropriated.
In the recent days, Time Magazine has just presented the Man Of The Year to the protestor. The many activism and protesting action are actually growing in the World Wide Web. And this is a very good opportunity to rethink the social mechanism through Internet to make art. If Haruki Murakami insists the stand on eggs against the high wall, to “rephrase” the metaphor, the existence of the high wall, no matter right or wrong, should always be the attacking target. That is the push to art.
