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Internal/External
– Objects and “Ware” in the Art of Tang Qingnian
Yin Shuangxi
For the generation born in the 1970s, the name Tang Qingnian is likely to be unfamiliar, partially because he went abroad in the early 1990s and also because he was an editor of text, not a practitioner of art. In actuality, for our generation, Tang Qingnian was an important organizer in the development of China’s avant-garde art in the 1980s. Aside from the 1989 Contemporary Art Exhibition, he was researching avant-garde art in China with the director of the Pacific Asia Museum in California as early as 1990. In January 1991, an exhibition entitled “I Don’t Want to Play Cards with Cezanne” and Other Works was held at the Pacific Asia Museum which introduced contemporary Chinese avant-garde art. The participating artists were Geng Jianyi, Zhang Peili, Lu Shengzhong, Xu Bing, Yu Hong, Zhang Xiaogang, Ye Yongqing, Zhou Changjiang among others, and the exhibition’s success was undoubtedly a result of Tang Qingnian’s efforts.
Having been away from China for many years, Tang Qingnian returned to Beijing without fanfare. Meeting up with this old friend of mine, I was shown his recent works, and my impression of him was transformed. In his works, various objects of daily life are scattered in a seemingly ordinary way. But if we look at them carefully, the objects embody depth. Existence and reflection on life set the basic tone in Tang Qingnian’s artistic practice. Through conversations with him I learned that the motivation behind his practice correlates to his reflection on the painful experience of his mother’s death. He observed his mother’s life drifting away in her last days at the hospital, and two other brain dead patients in the same ward made him realize that life is essentially an osmotic reaction of materials. The nurses continuously injected various solutions into the patients who, lying in their beds, became “vessels of skin” that contain and filter these solutions. It led Tang Qingnian to the realization that the human body is a container within a space that is being constantly refilled and exhausted, making it a metabolic life. Once the refilling stops, life ends.
The concept of “ware” is given great importance in Tang Qingnian’s art. He considers the human body a container of life. On the one hand, external materials enter this container and fill the interior, which reveals the emptiness of life. On the other hand, life expands outward into nature’s myriad forms. From this process, Tang Qingnian gained his enlightenment on the meaning of life. As Laozi stated, “The one gives birth to the two, the two gives birth to the three, and the three gives birth to the myriad creatures.” Therefore, the exchange between internal and external aspects of the body allows life to gain its temporal yet eternal existence. In Tang Qingnian’s view, healthy people recharge their lives with food, whereas the sick recharge their lives with medication. Moreover, one’s life, even if one were to live a hundred years, would be a mere 36,000 days: lengthy, yet still temporary. Aside from food and medication, how are the human spirit and soul recharged; how is life consumed?
Tang Qingnian does not generate his practice from form or style, nor by a certain medium or material. He combines materials with readymade objects and finds the channel between mind and nature, the logic between material and spirit.
Life is concrete, yet also abstract. Tang Qingnian believes it is necessary to use semiotics to express the multiplicity of life. He appropriates the xieye style of Chinese painting and the concept of “symbolism,” such as images of “plums, orchids, bamboos and chrysanthemums,” using a formula to convey rich, spiritual meaning. “Manifest meaning through objects” and “metaphor through objects” are concepts found in traditional literati paintings that have been valuable inspiration for him. One can claim that his works are “literati paintings” of installations that embody symbolism of the contemporary, rather than simple collages of superficial Chinese elements. The “figure” symbols in Tang Qingnian’s work originate from his observations of hospital patients: their hands dangle effortlessly, they lie prone in bed. In his 2006 series, typical objects found in a hospital appear in his work: respirators, CAT scans, pills, rubber bags, electronic circuit boards, soap suds, as well as newspapers and other memories. Flowers and love set the detached background for the figures: an expression of the artist’s quiet sufferings on irrevocable life.
One core concept can be found throughout Tang Qingnian’s art: his observations and analyses on “objects.” His works showcase the “external objects” that surround us and the “internal objects” that fulfill us. The existence and flux of objects make up the world’s interactions, fulfillment and emptiness. For example, the potato in the German artist Immendorf’s work subtly implies the ongoing exchange of material and energy between man and nature. In Tang Qingnian’s work Clothing Rack, hangers give form to clothes in lieu of people. However the suspended clothes are also empty, implying that our bodies travel outside of clothes. In Shopping Center, the shopping bags are also empty; we use them to carry things, but rarely notice their artificiality. In Gyri and Sulci, a small model of the human brain is suspended, surrounded by disks which also contain their own gyri and sulci (convolutions of the brain). These are the “convolutions” of the present, in which a tremendous amount of information is stored; but these disks can neither think nor process information. True Roots, False Flowers represents the reality of the absurd, and absurdity in reality.
As for our understanding of the object, it should not only reside on the scientific level of “thorough investigation”, but also on a philosophical level, reflecting on human relationships with objects – a blind spot in contemporary consciousness surrounded by an abundance of material. In Tang Qingnian’s work, there are objects both internal and external to the body, yet they are consolidated on man. In contemporary art practice, there is still great potential for using and representing objects. We do not need to be bound by natural or artificial objects, because they all essentially originate from nature and will return to it. The myriad things in life are both ruthless and meaningless – part of the universe – and will return to it. The difference is that our concern for and insights into objects is in regards to opportunities in life, and these twists and turns make the origin of the myriads things become a mystery. Our attitudes towards objects project those that we hold toward people and life.
The value in readymade objects is manifest through their combination in artworks to differentiate the concepts they represent. Tang Qingnian’s use of readymade objects in his work intends to distract the audience from their aesthetic value – that is, to invoke an appreciation of technique in order to abandon the right of analysis. Moreover, the other value of using readymade objects in artworks is the embodiment of meaningful ambiguity and multiplicity when set in different contexts before different audiences.
In my view, Tang Qingnian’s works explore and discuss the embedded essence of objects through his attempts in representing natural and artificial objects (and in other works, the nature of objects, in order to express his observations and insights on the world). Tang unveils quotidian objects after reorganizing them to, after the initial shock, garner our attention and reflections. The relationship between man and object does not depend on the distance between them, because most people use objects without paying much attention to them. Thus, despite his close proximity to objects, he is not intimate with them. Instead, if we approach the objects, we can access their essence and be enlightened by their existence. Just as Heidegger stated, “To approach an object is to abstract oneself from narration, in contemplation of response and memory.” As for the appropriation and combination of readymade objects in installation art, I am more interested in the latter’s creativity and structural relationship. In old German, the word “object” signifies gathering and unification, especially of thoughts and spoken words, and the crux of disagreement. For artist Tang Qingnian, he is not challenged by the technique of appropriation, but the vision that the appropriation projects. In other words, his choice of objects represents a foundational grasp of the human understanding of objects and thus reestablishes people with objects, returning to the essence of objects in response to life’s primal calling.
June 19, 2008
(Translated by Fiona He) |
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