2022.12.18-2023.4.16

Space 185 of Bund Art Center, Shanghai

Curator：Cui Cancan

Artists

Chen Wenji, Chen Yufan, Ding Yi, Huang Yuanqing, Liang Quan, Tan Ping, Wang Yi, Zhou Li

Taking a glance at the list of the participating artists, this exhibition seems to be well recognized as a typical and standard one of abstract art by gathering together eight “Chinese abstract artists” from different periods and regions, whose works are, obviously, well known for bearing a strong characteristic of abstraction in the form. Among them are the pioneers of early Chinese abstract art, the backbones of the abstract art transition after 2000 and also the young bloods inheriting and passing down abstraction in China, whose names all appear in various kinds of exhibitions named after “abstract art” in recent years.

However, the exhibition presented this time no longer continues to follow the way of the past abstract art exhibitions, and neither its focus will be placed on the old-school abstraction that has lasted for over a century. The aforementioned is inspired by the following ideas. First comes the basic standpoint of the contemporary art, which refers to the fact that, in the long history of the process where abstract art was derived from the legacy of modernism, ranging from Kandinsky’s point-line-plane, Mondrian’s rationalism, Malevich’s supremacism, to the formation of abstract art and the revolution of abstract expressionism, the counterattack of minimalist art to formalism, the reconstruction of conceptual art towards thought and form, process and structure, neither the transformation of artistic practice nor the theoretical paradigm bears a relationship of extension and inheritance, but constantly breaks the past standards and moves away from the orthodox meaning of “abstract art”. The inheritance of modernism, put in a nutshell, was abandoned by the transformation of contemporary art.

Second will be the self-awareness of theoretical research. Instead of art history, the exhibition pays more attention to the present on-site relationship between artists and their works. It seems that these works can therefore, with the past hundred years of abstract art development providing artists with numerous classic and convenient research methods, be fixedly labeled like knife through butter, if we simply take a shortcut to borrow the past theories as “formal self-discipline”, “purified language”, “rationality and sensibility” and “methods and results”, and that such works are, more or less, featured with aforementioned characteristics after all. However, we cannot easily conclude such superficial and well-known appearance into the big and inappropriate category of “abstract art” without knowing the fact that whether these visual judgments are sufficient to summarize the full meaning conveyed by artists through their works, and serve as the primary question as well as the essence of the artist’s motivation to creativity. In other words, we might as well spend some time studying the subtle differences between works rather than just make one generalized claim after another.

Finally, curatorial awareness, or we say, how we treat the relationship between the past exhibitions and the present one cannot be ignored. Back in 2003, Li Xianting’s Curator’s Notes on Prayer Beads and Brush Strokes and Gao Minglu’s Chinese Maximalism did not follow the use of conventional terminology of abstract art, but redefined art phenomenon took place in China by the concepts of maximum, beads and brushstrokes, which undoubtedly brings local legitimacy to Chinese abstract art in expectation of getting rid of the embarrassment of plagiarizing from the western countries. Later, the Great, Celestial Abstract Art curated by Archile Bonito Oliva vigorously demonstrated an eastern art genre that is different from Western logocentrism, from which we are justified to draw the conclusion that both the seeking of a strong touch of the mysterious eastern lands from western curators and the perception of preserving western features dramatically held by Li and Gao contributed greatly to the curatorial awareness. Whereas, due to the need for effectiveness and pertinence of the exhibition, the words of Confucius as “if a statement is not made in a licit name, it will not be justifiable; if the statement is not justifiable, the goal will not be achieved”, once again brought deafening enlightenments that such urge for justifications has long been lingering in the practice of several generations of curators, followed by various concepts as post-abstract, new abstraction and after abstraction springing up afterwards.

However, for such a large-scale exhibition, we still need to think over several questions that, what is the relationship between the group exhibition and the individual, and that between the individual themselves? Whether they echo the same theme at the cost of burying individual differences and antagonistic relationships? Or is it because of the similarities in the works that the primary motive of personal creation and the uniqueness of the self-system operation are obscured? Is it the similarity of forms between the works that makes the exhibition merely a game of “Mahjong Quest”?

Obviously, no matter how comprehensive the art history is macroscopically written, it cannot replace the importance of the history of individual artists, which corrects the integrity and decisiveness of the time while still maintaining a certain relationship with it. As the golden rule in Gombrich’s art history writing indicated, what happens in the era will be the same thing taken as inspiration by the artists. Such generalized judgment makes art history writing nothing but a release of social news, from which we can always read lines as “A happened in the 1990s, and the artists then created B “, and this view does black out the self-consciousness and initiation of individual and art.

Greater Than Abstraction lays its foundation under the aforementioned backgrounds and thinking. The differences of the eight artists invited, who come from different eras and systems and bears controversially personal languages and working path, outweigh their similarities, serving as functions of antagonism and correction between works that finally become the driving force and the original intention of the artists to establish their personal language. It is no denying that their works are more or less inextricably related to abstract art, but the core of this exhibition, rather than establishing a common connection to emphasize a certain concept of “purity”, emphasizes the huge value that differences and complexity have on personal creation.

However, instead of giving top priority to the description towards abstraction, the features presented outside of the abstract border that distinguish these works from typical “abstract art” are highly emphasized this time, with the effects and influences of Expressionism, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Activism, Fluxus, Happenings and Mono-ha on artists serving as an excellent example, especially when different art genres are referenced and mix-used. Such influences are widely considered far more important than the inheritance of abstraction itself in the formation of an artist’s individual style, in that, to the artists, their artistic horizons are activated and broadened while dogmas are weakened so as to allow a great extent of freedom for individual works which, due to the highly diversified tools, are finally established into mixed module ones.

Hence, Greater Than Abstraction aims to lead the audience to the individuality and uniqueness of the artists who established brand-new ways of thinking and working through a comprehensive utilization of languages, materials, symbols, images, behaviors and procedures, which all direct to completely different purposes and results. Such Individuality includes different perceptions of the function and value of art, the geographical location of the individual, the historical context of learning and education, the uniqueness of identity and environment, as well as the suspension, change, reflexivity towards and mutually targeted works within the system exerted by personal events experienced during years of creation, which will be of greater significance than abstract art. In other words, only when one is free from the shackles of mongolism and essentialism can he gain certain kind of tension; only when he bears several completely different and contradictory value systems in his mind, can he form an evolving work with freedom and intelligence.

For example, unlike most Chinese artists, “time” is found special meaning by Ding Yi in his life experience. Since the late 1980s, Ding’s continuous creation of the Chinese character “ten” for nearly two score years had transformed the simple image of “cross” into a symbol, from which formed into a huge system then, and thus became the pin of time and the only form of life. Consequently, “time” has become the primary criterion for valuing Ding’s creation, rather than the quality of form on a single piece of leaflet; Tan Ping’s mixed use of Fluxus, activism, and conceptual art makes him the artist with the most varied styles, languages, and modes in the Chinese abstract art circles where his new changes are witnessed every few years. His works are free from the bi-dimensionality and planarity owing to such constant transforming relationship between rules, methods, theaters, and the switching of subject and object; Chen Wenji, who emphasized the transformation of vision towards material, derived the abstract form in reality from the early partial realistic method and recently hold an absolute pursuit of industrial color, becoming one of the few artists in China with almost pure rationality and metaphysics due to his unique way of intertextual exhibition that compares between group pictures; Liang Quan’s works, unlike those of the former three, use regional materials and language system early enough to be characterized of exotic eastern elements, the technique of which stands out as the most important features by splicing and structuring from historical forms to the pure dots, lines, and surfaces, and ultimately establishing a new abstract field, as the decomposition, reconstruction, proportion and combination of language presented by Eight scenes of Xiaoxiang on display this time having been re-transforming the multiple relationships between regional themes and universal languages.

In addition, Huang Yuanqing’s manuscript works over the past ten years are exclusively showed at this exhibition, and behind such seemingly “hot” abstraction, which is different from the influence of chance, passion or emotional mechanism on painting behavior shown in previous artists’ masterpieces, lies the experiments designed elaborately and rationally. The gaps, changes and structural relationships between manuscripts and large-scale creations aiming in different directions have been highly concerned; As the only female artist on the show, Zhou Li’s creations are not taken completely from a feminist angle, making the relationship between identity and abstract creation an eternal question worth much consideration. Sharpness and twists, along with the direction of the structure and the interweaving relationship of short lines hidden in the flowing brush stroke in Zhou’s three new pieces of works, where multiple, mixed, subtle and pulsating sense of vitality can be seen all over the picture, are clearly different from the single-point perspective features presented by the previous artists. The rule for object and subject is challenged here with meta-narrative being also suspended; Chen Yufan’s several installations and paintings, compared with those simply sketched on the easels, pay more attention to the relationship between physical objects and time, with elements as volume, weight, multi-dimensional space, and flowing time appearing in the same work. His possession of physical materials and traces of things indicates his style favoring Mono-ha and Arte Povera. The complicated manual process made his early works on paper way closer to the eastern concept of “Zen” at a behavioral level; Youngest artist on the show as Wang Yi is, his works are mostly processes of industrial production, where the display principles, compared with other artists whose pursuits are mainly pictorials and painting feelings, use electronic light and color instead of natural ones, just like the combination of the luminous body of the mosaic and the early “primary structure” of minimalism. The design concepts of Bauhaus architecture and suprematism are also absorbed into his personal creation, which undoubtedly becomes Wang’s irreplaceable feature under the grand era of electronic industry and urbanization.

We are, without question, recognizing the considerable amount of connections and similarities among the eight artists’ works, but at the same time, we focus more on the difference and uniqueness between artists and behind their creations, embracing the fact that the unique pursuit of the two factors, though neither apparent nor absolute, tend to be the basis of individual existence as well as the vital voice and wisdom to artists in a universally homogenized era lacking imagination with limited possibilities and less complexity, which will be far greater than abstraction.

Written by Cui Cancan

Read more about the exhibition