“Speed and Chaos: Into the Future of Asian Art” brings together the work of seven Asian artists who track the process of global restructuring taking place in Asia. The paradigm shifts in the region are defined not only by swift economic changes but also by seemingly irreconcilable struggles between individual preferences and social mandates. By penetrating the surface of Asian realities, these seven artists’ works go beyond mere appearances and delve into the substance of the multivalent Asian experience in the 21st Century.
This exhibition draws on various reinterpretations of religious imagery as well as
examines the tremendous rate of urbanization taking place throughout Asia. Both of these conditions are apparent in works like Noh, Sang-Kyoon’s sequined Buddha to Miao Xiaochun’s reinterpretation of the story of Genesis, as told by Michelangelo in his Sistine chapel.
This mixture of self and society, object and subject is evident in Shanghai Shall We
Dance, Hsin-Chien Huang’s video in which humans become buildings, and Hu Jieming’s
meticulous creation of a new society in The World is Under Construction, one replete with skyscrapers and factories. Through Junebum Park’s manipulated videos, Xu Changchang’s photographs, and Wang Qingsong’s time lapsed skyscrapers we are further invited to experience the breakneck speed at which change occurs in the region. The works in this show offer a view at the fragility of existence by creating and manufacturing spaces that demonstrate the precept in Asia that what can go up can just as easily come down.
Taiwanese artist Hsin-Chien Huang’s interactive piece, Shanghai Shall We Dance, first
exhibited last year at the 7th Annual Shanghai Biennale, deals with the radical rebuilding
of Taiwanese cities as the direct effect of the rapid social development of the country.
His video projection responds to the movements of visitors, which trigger a gigantic urban building to arise, change its form, and even crumble.
Korean artist Junebum Park re-organizes the realm of human beings through the medium of film. Repetitions with slight adaptations and shifts in scale are transferred onto virtual images, which are then projected onto the structure of that environment. His newest work for this exhibition, Strong Piety, shows the artist creating a makeshift church within an abandoned building, only to disassemble it as quickly as it went up.
In his work For the Worshippers, Korean artist Noh, Sang-Kyoon uses his customary sequins to accentuate the features of the Buddha. Noh’s play between the sacred and the profane, in his use of the kitschy sequins on something venerated, confounds the notion of what sacred means in a society that can be simultaneously reverent of the traditions of the past but willing to move quickly beyond itself in order to achieve success.
Chinese artist Wang Qingsong has witnessed the unprecedented changes that have
characterized China’s political, social and cultural transformation. His photographic
works often parody and deride the effects of globalization. In his first video Skyscraper,
Wang traces through time-lapse photography the mammoth construction of scaffolding, which emerges from the landscape in the rural outskirts of Beijing. Devoid of all human labor, Wang’s video sequencing reflects the meditative and rhythmic quality of building, which upon completion gives way to fireworks. Yet another building of consumer culture is born!
Chinese artist Xu Changchang’s photographs recall the energy and intensity of Lucio
Fontana’s slash paintings and Gordon Matta Clark’s Building Cuts. Xu’s No. 10 & No 37,
draw on existing content, in this case magazines covers that show images of a Caribbean island and the aftermath from a tsunami. Here the artist highlights the fragility of human existence, by literally punching holes in the surface of the image, to create a new perception of these realities.
Chinese artist Miao Xiaochun, based in Beijing, is best known for his digital photographs, often assembled panoramas, of modern Chinese cityscapes. He appropriates important historical paintings, replacing each of the figures in the original painting with his own likeness and places these figures in corresponding poses and positions. In his video piece for this exhibition, the artist digitally reinterprets Michelangelo’s story of Genesis as seen from the vaulted ceilings of the Sistine Chapel, by describing the creation of Man, his transient time on Earth, and his fragility as both menacing and tranquil.
Chinese artist Hu Jieming, envisions life on the Moon, replete with roadways and
refineries in The World is Under Construction. The artist directly confronts the capacity
of Mother Earth to house and sustain its children, in his futuristic vision of forced
expansion to the Moon. Inversely, Hu questions whether the Moon is prepared for mans’
constant drilling and construction and really whether the Moon, just as the Earth, would
similarly and quickly be doomed.
This exhibition was co-curated by Gerald Pryor.
