Monthly Archives: October 2011

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Zhong Biao’s recent work

new works coming out of the Zhong Biao Studio, an increasingly impressive operation that includes a number of capable assistants, including recently graduated (from Sichuan Academy of Art, where Zhong teaches) 张晨, about whom there will be more to say later on I hope.

I understand that Zhong is casting about for new approaches, but for the moment he is responding to very real pressures to produce work for a string of exhibitions, including his most recent US show in May at Frey Norris followed in September by a more major exhibition in Seoul.  I find indeed a certain flagging of energy in some of his works, where the formerly rather pure juxtapositions of concrete-isms (in fact, sometimes just concrete) were enough to set in motion ruminations old, new, near far and seemingly everywhere in-between.  Since his forays into abstraction have become mainstays of his work, a certain leveling off of the edges of significance come into effect, a flattening onto too two－dimensional space.

Then again, there are those images which achieve something close to total vindication of his current approach, and they’re not that uncommon.  Why an old man in blue pants with white hair and a cup of coffee setting off a cacophony framed in red seems to ‘say it all’ (to me anyway) I don’t know, but it does. And though something powerful sits with the old man hunched forward on his recliner, it is so much more as it grows up the canvas.

距离 Removed 200 x 150

and just for good measure (and because its a nice photo), the artist with the painting:

And though the following is not a good image (of much lesser resolution and therefore not of its greatest impact here), I think this perhaps an achievement in the realm of connecting his abstraction with an acutely rendered object, again the recliner (what is it about that chair?)

 

 

 

 

The first painting is called “distance,” the second “yearning” 思念 , and both are evidence that there’s still some mileage yet in his approach.  How much mileage will depend on how long he can go on producing, under considerable time pressure, images like these.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Original poems by me and Wei Hui

This last trip to Beijing involved delivering my own poems written for the first time in Chinese.  In fact, its been twenty years since I’ve written a poem anyway, so the language shift did not seem such a daunting task, at least not until I tried it.  The result was, in fact, a delightful collaboration between me and life partner Wei Hui, who began as my editor, but as the edited text began to bear no resemblance to its original “self,” emerged as co-autho of two Mid Autumn Festival poems.  Below is the better of the two, “Taipei Mooncakes”.  (for uninitiated: mooncakes are small pastries exchanged among friends and particularly family during one of China’s major festival days 中秋节). The original Chinese version is  followed by the highly curious exercise of translating myself (or is it the marital “us”?) back into English.

台北月饼

离开你们

是出于一个正当的邀请

于是我来到这个

被炎夏控干了一遍又一遍

却又在夜色中无悔地丰艳开来的

都市

在一个便当与另一个便当的

呼吸中

我捕捉着一袭又一袭的

似曾相识

也应该是你们进餐的时辰了吧

胖胖的小手，还在空中索要着

无尽的果汁？

被流放的无望淹没了

倦缩在泛黄的旧床垫上

窗外一浪一浪的蝉声

将十天后的归期

推止遥遥

终于，我回家了

与一群吵闹的月饼

和一卷

塞在唇彩盒里的纸币

今天，是我们十年的婚庆纪念日

…

Taipei Mooncakes
I left you three
on official invitation
and came to this city
smothered in summer
and open, shamelessly, to the night
in the breath between one take-out lunch
and another
I glimpse again and again these seemingly once familiar faces
–should be about time for your dinner as well?
Those chubby little hands, still waving about for apple juice?
submerged in exile
curled up on an old yellow mattress
with the waves of cicada song outside my window
reminding me of how very long the days
till my return
and finally, I am back
with a noisy box of moon cakes
and a small roll of cash
stuffed into a cosmetic case for
this, our 10th wedding anniversary
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798, still there, still strong

I find it curious how people take a consistently critical view of this place.  And by “people,” I mean the artists and art-related folks I hang out with when in Beijing.  THe habit, and its just that, habit, is to lament the influx of commercial ventures, from small shops to big, installation like design operations, the economically central but aesthetically marginal operations that, to hear tell, are invading what once was pure “art zone.”  True, of course, that they may know something I don’t.  More likely, they see writing on the wall, writing that still strikes me as artistically relevant graffiti, but to them smacks of advert, plain and simple.  STILL, and at least for the moment, I find that 798 offers a terrific place to go and see, yes, art.  Part of the pleasure is simply logistical.  Once upon a time (5 years ago), when I first started visiting Dashanzi, I worked hard to get Beijing taxis to even go there. This last trip, nary a hesitation when I mentioned it upon getting in the cab.  More important, the invasion of commercial ventures has included, naturally, eateries, and while the preponderance of hamburgers and pizza suggests a (hopefully) misguided assessment of present and future clientele, at least there are numerous options to keep one going the whole day.

But mostly, the 798 Zone is simply a great place to walk around.  The art is inside and out, and incidental populations, great on weekends and more subdued at other times, makes for endless interesting contrast between (aesthetically) built environment and people who use/enjoy it.  As in :

…

becoming,

of people and things, no doubt the most photographed (because roughly at the “center” of the Zone itself in part), is this sculpture:

one really is given to wonder how the family feels when that one comes up in the photo album….

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Xi Chuan in Seattle

 

 

Poets Xi Chuan and Zhou Zan were in Seattle on September 29.  They were reading at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, first iteration of a multi-city tour including Chicago, New York, Washington.  Prior to these major cities, though, they will visit Port Townsend, a small town near Seattle that is also home of the Copper Canyon Press, publisher of the anthology Push Open the Window which Xi and Zhou will be promoting.

 

Below, Xi Chuan outside the Monsoon Cafe, Seattle.  I told him I wanted a shot of him smoking in Seattle, something increasingly subversive on the West Coast of the United States.  He opted to hide the cigarette.  入境随俗，I guess.