Tag Archives: abstract art

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Visual Poets Series, Episode 2: Xu Demin 许德民

Here is the second installment of my Visual Poets series. This one features the work of abstract painter and poet Xu Demin. In fact, Xu is one of the leading figures in both creating and theorizing abstract expression in contemporary China. His studio (formerly the Jiaodu Gallery 角度画廊) in Shanghai is a locus for such activities, but so are his courses at Fudan University, where he teaches history and practice of abstract art and poetry. The latter of these media, of course, the more extraordinary. The poem in this video is a good example of his abstract writing, and presented such translation challenges that I included Chinese characters as well. Feedback, as always, most welcome:

 

 

 

 

 

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Zhong Biao selections

Jintian

I thought I’d repost some of my favorite old Zhong Biao works along with newer work marking among other things changes over time.  The image above,  “Today” (今天) (acrylic on canvas 400×280 centimeters), strikes me as good a starting point as any for such an exercise.

There was not much new in the “Today” image in 2009 when it was created, as an abstract method juxtaposed with human and other animal figures have both been core elements of a Zhong Biao picture since 2005. The figures themselves are also not particularly new, with birds and airborne human beings being about as close to thematic constants as Zhong’s work provides. The most notable element of the canvas, the belly-flopping corpulent fellow, on the other hand, had not emerged in any work before, as far as I know. He, spectacular as he is, seems more variation on a theme.

I couple “Today”  this with his 2013 “裁云剪水” (acrylic on canvas 130 x 388 cm):

Caiyunjianshui

The title is a challenge to translate. Literally its “trimming clouds and cutting water,” a phrase drawn from Ming dynasty critique of poetry that is miraculously perspicuous and creative. The work is expansive, sharing many features with Zhong’s largest painting to date “Mirage,” most particularly its panoramic quality. What is new here is relatively minute point of the abstract box, new to the vocabulary of his painting. Rather like pointillism of Seurat, one needs to take a few steps closer to see them:

ZhongBiaoNewWorkFragment1

Upon closer inspection, the polygons, all white in this painting, emerge as angular portals of light, like windows or other apertures in fixed structures. They also refer to pixilation, interruptions in what should be seamless digital universe that may or may not intersect with (un)virtual reality.  This is particularly true when they are in a background of darker colors, such as the street level boxes around the pedestrians’ feet:

ZhongBiaoNewWorkFragment2

What also intrigues me about the geometric elements is their implication in terms of practice. As I’ve observed Zhong work on painting, the abstract component is usually applied first, and human and other figures drawn out over time from them. The abstract brush work is dynamic, rapid, and in larger canvases involves something very much like dance to execute. The squares are a different kind of image production altogether, it seems to me.  In order to find out just how this comes together I guess I’ll have to make another trip to his studio and hang out there for a few days and watch what happens.

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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.