Wang Youshen: The Generation and Extinction of Time through Art
In 1986, Wang Youshen was a student in the Central Academy of Fine Arts. The series Paradise (Leyuan) which Wang completed in the same year, however, demonstrated no association with the realistic style of painting advocated by the Central Academy of Fine Arts. As a major in folk art, Wang Youshen had been to the Tibetan regions of southern Gansu to sketch the natural scenery there. The breathtaking scenery, overwhelming religious atmosphere, and the geographical environment inspired Wang. He incorporatedfolklore elements and religious symbols in his Paradise(Leyuan) series. In Paradise, he was not bound by realism; rather, he employed bold and strong brushstrokes and composed the painting with none of the restrictions of traditional realism that was the ideal of the Academy. However, in cities like Beijing and at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Wang Youshen was not the only revolutionist. Even thoughhis fondness for illustrated sutras, particularlyGuanjing (Amitayus Sutra), set the young Wang apart, his ideas about art were basically shaped by his surroundingsand the times.
Wang Youshen received his art training when the ’85 New WaveArt Movement was unfolding. From 1976 onwards, the atmosphere in fine arts and philosophy at the academy had changed. In the 1980s, in particular, an increasing number of illustrated publications on modernist art were published, mostly articles in periodicals such as Fine Arts (Meishu), Jiangsu Art Monthly (Jiangsu huakan), Art Trends (Meishu sichao), Fine Arts in China(Zhongguo meishu bao, literally China Art News) and Painter (Huajia), all of which exerted influence on young artists. In May 1985, the Progressive Chinese Youth Art Exhibition, sponsored by the Organizing Committee in China of the International Youth Year, was held in the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. This exhibition signaled the artistic potential of China andheralded the creative freedom of young artists in that country, as symbolized by the exhibited work titledIn the New Age (Zai xin shidai) but sometimes also simply called Adam and Eve(Yadang yu Xiawa), created by Meng Luding and Zhang Qun.In the subsequent two years, from 1985 to 1986, there was a flurry of artistic activity in China, and there were a large number of art groups and events, bringing together young artists from different parts of the country, as well as exhibitions, official and unofficial publications, and increasing numbers of Western art exhibitions.A large-scale liberation of creative thought was underway, and a variety of artistic languages made their appearance.The First New Figurative ImagesExhibition, showcasing expressionist or neo-representational works by Mao Xuhui, Pan Dehai and Zhang Xiaogang, was held in Shanghai and Nanjing, in June and July, respectively, of 1985. In October, Jiangsu Youth Art Week: Large-scale Exhibition of Modern Arts showcased surrealist works by Ding Fang and Shen Qin. In Beijing in November of the same year, anexhibition, simply titled the November Exhibition ofPaintings, featured local modernist artists including Xia Xiaowan, Ma Lu, Ding Pin, Shi Benming and Cao Li.Nobody was astonished, therefore, when Wang Youshen employed expressionismin Lotus Figure:APainting(Lianhua shengxiang), a work filled with religious imagery and folk masks of ghosts.In an interview with Melissa Chiu, Wang Youshen explained:
Rather than say that the painting skills I learned at the Academy helped my artistic career, I’d attribute my art tothe Academy’s intellectual environment. From 1980 to 1988, I first studied at the Middle School of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and then at the Academy itself. During those few years, China had opened her economy to the outside world, and begun to strive for fast economic growth. At the same time, the thinking of Chinese people changeddramatically. At the Academy, I had the chance to access information and learn about classical, modern and contemporary art worldwide, which until then people in China and young people outside campus could not have accessed or understood. That was very important for a teenager like me. It’s fair to say those few years were vital in my art education and in shaping my world view. I believe that what I learned at that time benefited me for the rest of my life. Also, in my later years at college, China was experiencing the highpoint of the ’85 New Wave Art movement. Some of my schoolmates and friends were actively involved in this, and that was also a big influence on me. I eventually took part in the movement too, whichfor me remains a vitalpart of contemporary art history, and it has changed my perception of art ever since.[1]
Yugong and his Descendants(Yugong yishan) is a series of paintings that Wang Youshen created as his graduation piece. We can hardly say this series of nine paintings was highly original. Wangused traditional symbols and images,and set some of the inherent connotations of Chinese culture within a symbolic framework. Mountains, the rising sun, the moon, hovering clouds and flowing water are all cognitive symbols that the artist learned from Chinese traditional art. In the work, the confident and amiable Foolish Old Man from the legend, who is an image of tenacity for his persistence in moving an entire mountain from the front of his house, is a demonstration of Wang Youshen’s fondness for preserving elements of ‘folk art’ in his work. Perhaps his professional understanding of narrative Buddhist paintings aroused his interest in stories,and here he set out to narrate a well-known legend through paint. Yet his overly expressionist brushstrokes and his non-specific portrayal of figures minimized the readability of thestory told through this experiment in oils.
Just before graduation, Wang Youshen assisted a teacher do a photo-shoot of a group of models used by the sketching class. Afterwards, Wang Youshen invited the models to help him in a shoot for a series of his own titled Studio Models (Huashili de mote), which would total twelveworks. The series was shot from different angles in aself-consciously arranged environment. Wang approached the work as a symbolically meaningful drama without a fully fleshed out plot, but included fragments that offered room for imagination. He was interested in the characteristics of the physical body and the juxtaposition of the bodies and relief sculpture. The sculpturedisplayed the musculature of the models and his arrangements suggested otherconnotations. His structural composition, influenced by the genre of news reporters’ photography, displayed a subtle theatricality and sentiment. In the finished photos the artist intentionally rendered the surroundings in darker tones. In the darkroom, he not only preserved the light and dark contrasts capturedby the lens, but also gave prominence to the holistic sentiment of the imagesthrough hisprocessing and printing of the film. This sentiment was an ambience of grayness, sadness, and the inherent poetic sense popular among Chinese artists in the 1980s.
After graduation, painting remained his major interest. He set about depicting the Chinese concept of Zen,retaining his expressionist artistic language. His personal style began to develop,although hebasically adhered to the nihilism emerging at that time. Politically, 1988 was a year of both chaos and possibilities, as people took stock of the social problems resulting from the reform. Wang Youshen and a large number of his fellow Chinese artists were focused on overthrowing entrenched ideals and goals,while the vision of a new world was beginning to stir the general public.Wang Youshen made the ideas of meditation and Zen key subjects for exploration in line with the times. Talk of ‘ideals’ (lixiang)and ‘ultimate goals’ (zhongji mubiao) prevailed until the events of 1989 nullified these concepts. In February 1989, the China Avant-garde Exhibition, presentingworks ofmodernism andpost-modernism was held at the National Art Museum of China. The audience found it difficult to assess various performance events,such as the famous ‘Gunshot’ art incident of Xiao Lu and Tang Song,presented during the exhibition and wondered whether such events could have beenavoided, as if the political turmoil that exploded later in that same year could have been predicted. Everyone reactedin different ways to the inexorable chain of unfolding events, but Wang Youshen’sreaction to the events of 1989 can be best assessed in light of his works made before that year. Wang Youshen had not paid excessive attention tothe spiritual aspects of expressionism, specifically its inner tension, andhe was closer to French fauvism which manifests exuberance. His earlier art was a sharp contrast to the ‘depressed’ and ‘tragic’ expressions ofthe New Figurative Images group fromKunming or the Neo-Fauvism of the Jiangsu group. Wang Youshen did not want to move in their direction. The concepts of ‘the soul’ (linghun)and ‘destruction’ (huimie) that hadbeen discussed at length in the 1980s were played out in reality which meant thatif an artist wished to continue creating art, he had to adopt a new working mode.Wang Youshen adopted a stance that signaled the end of speech. His works from this period express the need to control spiritual freedom,and, and in a society fraught with danger, ‘control’ became an issue everyone had to think about, even though Wang had no interest in extremely personal emotions. In August 1989, Wang Youshen completed a series of works titled Serious Games(Yansu de youxi) that signaled a sudden change in style. These were shown at the China Avant-garde Exhibition. The grey tones and the simplified and symbolic images were very different from his earlier expressionism. This radical change is perhaps best seen in hisArrest Series (Tongji xilie) triggered by real events. The figures in the work lead the viewer to think automatically of issues of control,but the symbols employed in sections of the works are not explicit.The monochrome gray tones and the hollow headsform a stark contrast with his earlier folk figures,and folkloric elements disappear from his works. Although Wang Youshen depicted some human figures using his expressionist brushstrokes shortly afterwards, the appearance of this style was more like a brief retrospective episode. In similar works, Wang employed new materials, such as cotton threads, papier-mâché and waste newspaper, weakening the painterly element. This type of work influenced by Robert Rauschenberg, marked a turning point in Wang’s career in which he discarded painted images and the use of only one medium. [2] These were no longer issues for him, as he began to step out of the confines of painting. In September 1990, at the Sydney Arts Festival, Wang’s Portrait Series: Modern Niche(Renxiang xilie: Xiangdai fokan), comprisingsix linked albums, was exhibited. In this series, Wang Youshen broke all the restrictions of painting,by superimposing and layering different images and words on paper, or pasting ready-made printed materials (mostly waste) onto paper sheets, to create the silhouette of the Buddha’s head. From his sensitivity to actual eventsand his questioning of the reality created through media-processed information, Wang Youshen discoveredthat the language of art had non-modal characteristics.This symbolized his evolution from unrestrained modernism to a somewhat non-sentimental post-modernism. As for material and form, Wang Youshen’s art differed from the Cynical Realismpaintings that used reality to create sentiments. However, in its ‘legitimized seriousness’ (hefahua de yansu taidu), Wang Youshen’s art had an identical function. The information in Modern Niche provided information that could be read; the six spread albums form a massiveicon of a Buddhist shrine, which is both complex and detailed. However, when analyzing its relationship with the objectsto which it could refer, the Buddhist shrine is empty. The artist explained this work as follows:
Another signifier of modern society is the various restrictions placed on people. Even TV programs are set up in advance. You must acknowledge the restrictions before you make your selection. SoI demonstrate these restrictions in my work. More significant are the controlsover people exerted by paper and typography. In a certain sense, the restrictions that are exerted throughpaper and typography are the very controls over people exercised by the entire culture over the human being.[3]
This statement shows that the artist was focusing on much broader issues. Paper and print are not abstract historical concepts and thepower behind the news and printing may be the crux of many contemporary problems. The symbols and fragments of information that Wang used in his works are chaotic and unrelated,even though the information was derived from the reality created by the news and printing. Its meaning was decomposed and dismantled,so that the information became ambiguous or non-existent. This was not an issue addressed by Chinese advocates of the New Generation, Cynical Realism orPolitical Pop,although in ideology and mode, the Buddhist shrine of Wang Youshen appeared closer to the pop trends that emerged later.
In 1991, many Chinese artists’ confronted the issue of ‘meaninglessness’ (wuyiyi). At the Guangzhou Biennale held in 1992, ‘Cultural Pop’ (wenhua bopu)predominated. Wang Youshen did not participate in this show; and the proclivity of his work wascloser to the paintings of thepop painters ofWuhanpublicized during the summer of that year. Looking at the art scene of 1988 overall, people realized that, if spirit was indeed of value, then the ‘grand soul’ (da linghun)of Li Xianting, a concept often invoked from 1988 to 1989, needed to be laid to rest. During those two years, Wang Guangyi expressed the view that individual sentiments often obscured real human problems, and an artist could not reveal the true rationale of his work unless he dispassionately wipedthe moralistic dust from it, which was what he originally intended in 1989 when he articulated his concept of ‘cleaning awayhumanistic enthusiasm’ (qingli renwen reqing).
In 1988 art critics discussed the question of ‘linguistic purification’ (chunhua yuyan),but the academic issues were never resolved. The two sides in the debate, despitetheir seemingly opposed positions, both partook in the spirit of modernism what is ultimately a dualisticgame. ‘Content’ (neirong) and ‘form’ (xingshi) were still terms that could be easily bandied around. Therefore, if language per sewere a problem in this transformationalprocess, then we would have to acknowledge the validity of Derrida’s conceptof the ‘bottomless chessboard’. In fact, from the 1990s onwards, some sensitive artists began to play with deconstructionism, although some artists and theorists of modernism refused to accept it,even they soon became involved whether voluntarily, or involuntarily.
After graduating from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Wang Youshen was sent to work for Beijing Youth Daily (Beijing qingnian bao). This job not only gave him an occupation, but also offered him a niche. As an editor who handled words and pictures daily, he used the resources at hand as the basic elements of his artistic creation. Unlike the New Gradation Group (Xin Kedu Xiaozu, literally, New Calibration Group) with whom he was well acquainted, Wang Youshen believed that the familiar symbols and words, though chaotic, were the very resources that could influence them. The questions of whether art has an‘internal’ (neibu) problem or whether conceptual self-discipline actually existscould never be discussed in depth,because an artist chooses the form of art that suits his or her individual personalityand objective surroundings.
In his seriesNewspaper: Eyesight Testing(Baozhi: Ceshi), created in 1991, Wang demonstrated his fascination with images and words, especially those words stipulated by sources of power. He superimposed photographic film discarded after processing and suspended or placed itin a light box for display. By using ambiguous and unassociated effectsachieved by superimposingsymbols and images, the artist aimed his work at a psychologically prepared audience. A printed newspaper usually disseminates influential or even astonishing information, but what do we think when confronted withdiscarded print or film? What is the relationship between these discarded materials and the newspapers sold on the street? Common sense tells us that power does not necessarily come from direct force, and, as people on Beijing streets so recentlyrealized, power comes from orders and the relay of ideas. All media are tools that can be discarded freely once used. Once discarded, there is no sense of sanctity and seriousness in reading what is now waste,and two superimposed films appear as nothing more than carriers of chaotic symbols.
Wang Youshen repetitively experimented with media materials and symbols. As an art editor for Beijing Youth Daily, he used the newspaper, which hehelped edit, to produce clothes, bed sheets, T-shirts, handkerchiefs and curtains; he even used thousands of newspapers to cover part of the Great Wall. He used pictures to demonstrate the omnipresence of the media in the form of pictures, and prompted people to ponder this phenomenon.The composite of daily life and the media form a problematic but dazzling world of its own. Wang Youshen presented his own works at the opening exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 1993. Kong Chang’an, the curator, remarked:
Coming from Beijing, Wang Youshen has dedicated himself to working in the news media and become highly sensitive towords and the extension of their meanings, as well as the changes in meaning when words are placed in different contexts. Wang’s art is, to some extent, cultural, as well as social and political. People’s lives and lifestyles should be based on personal judgment and needs, but the spread of commercialism and politics through the media prevents people from pursuing those needs. Acknowledging this, Wang has hung printed newspaper over windows, so that all products associated with our lives are made from the newspapers encircling the room, just as they encircle our real environment. This metaphor prompts us to go beyond the influence of the media and to search for the reasons for our actions. Through that metaphor Wang urges us to throw off the influence of the media and to look for our own reasons for doing things.[4]
From his previous works, we can see that, apart from using mediaas ready-made materials, his works are also imbued with symbolic connotations. As shown in the earlier 1989 exhibition China Avant-garde, Wang Youshen worked with several friends exhibitedpictures reflecting reality. Of course, his art piece titled ‘ √ ‘ did not reflect any image that required appreciation,[5] but this collage workwith randomly taken photos made the viewer feel uncomfortable in a period when it seemed as though violence was imminent. At the top of his work, the artist affixed a real decree from a law court, and wrote an enormous‘tick’on it, the standard grim indication that an execution has been carried out, but Wang’s ‘tick’ looked more like an afterthought. However, where was the violence located in this new group of works? Regardless of the artist’s starting point, the semantic elementsin Wang’s work appeared ambiguous. In Wang’s installations and performance art from 1991 to 1993 newspapers were a major medium, but the newer workshad not yet acquired the definite connotation ofhis works made prior to 1989. With the newer works, the audience could participate in the media game. This situation is interesting because prior to 1993, art movements, such as the New Generation, Cynical Realism and even Political Pop, were often associated with some specific ideology, conveying messages that were obvious and easy to understand. Wang was one of the organizers of the New Generation Art Exhibition, yet he was not involved himself in producing oil paintings that narrated everyday life. He chose to skip over the choice and not get embroiled in emotions. It is hard to say whether this decision was a result of the influence from friends from the New Gradation Group. Regardless of what stance his piece revealed symbolically, Wang remained open-minded and insisted that the media is a fusion of power, desire,commerce and even politics. But at the same time, the media is a mixture of culture, communication and even the forces that give rise to reform. Wang Youshen's work therefore reflected every possible meaning, and allowed audiences to judge and think about the work for themselves. This approach was notmodernist in stance,even though the game of intellectual reflection (sikao) had become the major content of the piece. The work is not intended to provide any absolute answers one way or the other, even though we feel and sense that ‘the interior decoration’ (shinei zhuangxiu) of the piece is suffocating us.[6]
After 1989, Chinese artists were forced to change their perspectives. The focus of the grand narrativehad vanished, and the era that had fostered the idea that an individual artist’s work could be influenced by his or her social and political stance was also gone. Wang began to observe and pay attention to his everyday surroundings, hoping to locate problems through subtle details. His family is like many other Chinese families. His father had been ill and stayed at home, passing his time raising birds and growing flowers. The quotidian routine of his father aroused Wang’s interest, andhe found that his father’s use of a special ‘nutritious soil’ to grow orchidsconstituted a symbolic act. In the second half of 1994, Wang decided to create the work titledNutritious Soil(Yingyangtu). He decided to explicate the ‘public attributes’ (gongzhongxing) of art through personal details:
I conceivedNutritious Soilat home, and that’s where I completed the work, even though it was exhibited in different ways. If you want an explanation of the reasons why I created this work, you can translate and look over my descriptions of this work,published in the article titled ‘About My Latest Works: Nutritious Soil’, which appeared in Issue 3 of 1994 of the magazine Gallery.In the process of producing this installation, I hit on a topic that brought together my artistic work and my everyday life, namely nutritious soil and the work itself, and also had a bearing on me and my father. This could also create relationships with other persons viewing the piece. The nutritious soil provided me and my father with a sense of the alienation of this version of nature.[7]
Wang Youshen bought 20kg of bagged nutritious soil, and splashed it onto all the floors in the public areas of his home: the lobby, kitchen and lavatory. For several days he and his family members lived in this environment. Afterwards, he cleaned up the soil, which after being used, seemed to be qualitatively different from the original nutritious soil. The artist wrote:
After the first experiment, I better understood ‘nutritious soil’.
A:‘Nutritious soil’ is a basic material of the earth, and it acquires different functions on different flooring surfaces.
B: There is a relationship between ‘nutritious soil’ and other types of ‘soil’ moved to either natural or human environments. I had a particular sense of the ‘nutritious soil’ when I scattered it by hand.
C: I experienced the fun of buying, selling and owning land, when I purchased20kg of nutritional soil with cash.
D: Does the ‘nutritious soil’ really benefit to the land? Or is such high-grade soil as this really going to improve the natural or human environment? I need to do more experiments and testing to verify this.[8]
According to his own ‘work plan’ (gongzuo jihua), Wang later had the nutritious soil shipped fromChina, and used at exhibition venues in different ways. When doing so, nutritious soil was not scattered in places where it was required in everyday life,and above all, it was scattered overseas. The artist hoped this performance would enable him to transform what was originally personal and routine behavior into an act with wide application, thereby proposing a new question for symbolization: Could human kindness be spread far and wide? Is ‘entropy’ (shang) nothing more than a social and human concept, with no linkage to nature? This leads directly to another question: Is ‘nutrition’ (yingyang) wasconditional in meaning.
Time, image and venue are interrelated concepts of importance to news reporters. When one’soccupation becomes a natural part of daily life, one’s job awareness influences all aspects ofthe individual, as Wang Youshen’s own experience demonstrates. When Wang photographed his grandmother over time, this continuous actionwas also somehow related to his job asa news reporter. However, who would take note of a person who is not a social issue? Who would care for a deceased person when death is an everyday occurrence? This ordinary fact of life was revealed to Wang as he selected photographs from his collection and displayed them in a specific way:
In Before and After My Grandmother Passed Away(Wo nainai qushi qianhou), the participant’s visual journey together with the artist and the process of reading provide the emphasis of the piece. The materials comprise not only photographs, but software, water, lighting and natural light, which are prerequisitesfor photo processing. By recording the images through a video recorder, at the exhibition site,I would like to let the audience see, not only these photos, but also the physical transformation of the image in association with the theme of my works, an image changed by clear water and light, and something else besides.[9]
In 1996, the artist also talked about his works:
My works in recent years are associated with my daily life and my job. My job in the newspaper editorial office has exposed me to a phantasmagoria of social scenes, while my daily life has widened my perception of artistic possibilities and led me in a different direction. This is also the reason why I now pursue reality issues, such as the privacy of public issues. My Newspaper Series, Washing: 1941 Thousands Buried in a Deep Pit in Datongtreat public issues, while other works treating private issues (Before and After My Grandmother Passed Away, and Nutritious Soil, etc.) command public interest.All relate to my daily life and job.[10]
Therefore, when discrete problems concealed in a daily event are amplified, the artist invariably discovers that the game in the microcosmic world will turn out to have a macroscopic narration. Thus, a theme related to ‘death’ (siwang) is no longer a personal matter, but raises political, social and even ethical considerations. In 1995, Wang Youshen focused on a theme with historical significance inhis installation work titled Washing: 1941 Thousands Buried in a Deep Pit in Datong(Qingxi: 1941 nian Datong wanren keng), which comprised two bath tubs and photographs put thereon. These photos document Japanese military atrocities inChina during the War of Resistance to Japanese Aggression, and the effect is shocking if viewers examine the pieces. Without doubt, such works raised broader questions:
Melissa Chiu: Your latest works displayed in Osaka, Japan, seem to be a vehement statement about Japan’s invasion of China. In the works, what issue is the focus of your interest? Can you explain the significance of these works? For example, what does the water in the bathroom represent? Where did these photos come from? What kind of response did you receive from Japanese audienceswho viewed the works?
Wang Youshen: I always pay attention to the rationale or attitude behind works by contemporary artists. My works should have motives that can sway me and others. This is why I am always concerned about the reasons for psychological and physical changes in relationships between humans in today’s society.
My work Washing: 1941 Thousands Buried in a Deep Pit in Datong was exhibited in Osaka and Tokyo. It highlighted prominent historical issues of 1995, which was the global celebration of the 50th anniversary of victory in the Anti-Fascist War. For China and other parts of the Asia-Pacific region, the 50-year-long invasion by Japan during World War II was a nightmare, the psychological effects of which extend to the present day. In order to address historical issues that are of public concern and to respond to the New Asian Art Show to be held in Japan in July and August, I began to read newspapers and came across a report about Japanese soldiers burying 10,000 peasant miners alive in a large pit in Datong, Shanxi province, in 1941, and I decided this would be the subject of my next work. The report was accompanied by a string of photos showing Chinese researchers washing skulls of the dead. I also read a full description, on another page, of all the atrocities of the Japanese invasion into China,and that later became a major text for my works. Washing: 1941 Thousands Buried in a Deep Pit in Datong was the result of reading these two newspaper articles. The main objects exhibited are two bathing tubs and utensils which people used to clean bodies.Above the two bathing tubs I placed two sets of positive and negative films blown up at the printing house. The images on the films had become large dots, because the photos inthe original newspaper reports were very small. At the exhibition venue in Japan, clear water was used to wash the films through a siphoning device and a sprinkler head.Thiswas intended to document not only the circulation of the water, but the process whereby images fade.[11]
This work appeared in the New Asian Art Show held in Japan in 1995. The photographs, in the form of positive and negative films, were placed on twowashing baths each with a showering system for continuous washing. The concept and the physical process of ‘washing’ was intended to arouse the imagination through associations and process could be used anywhere. But through historical association with the Nazisand the Japanese invaders, ‘washing’ or ‘cleansing’ had become a complex word in the political arena. The word was subsequently applied to any event resulting in slaughter. Wang Youshen's concept of ‘washing’ is explicit. It is an expression of remembering history and questioning the effect of time. Photographs lose content fromcontinual washing. So what does this say about the washing process? How did the images originate? Can people’s judgment of history change,in the way Wang’s ‘washing’ shows? What factors determine the reliability of historical facts? Wang Youshen's series directly addressed a historical event, but his expression of that event was multi-tiered and raised many questions. As a result, the artist renounced making any definitive conclusion regarding the history, agreeing that atvarious stages of human evolution, history can be interpreted differently for various historical and political reasons.The ‘essential truth’ is thus completely eliminated. Different from Before and After My Grandmother Passed Away, this new work Washing: 1941 Thousands Buried in a Deep Pit in Datongstressed the social and historical functions of art, indicating the importance the artist assigns to historical issues. At variance with his early work ‘ √ ‘, Wang rejected mono-directionalquestioning based on reflection theory, and turned to show different facets of meaning. This was an important logical shift from essentialism to empiricism, rendering metaphysics empty, and only preserving the connotations of the sociological and political game. This was a common feature of those conceptual arts in the 1990s that addressed issues such as ‘individuality’ (gerenxing) and ‘meaninglessness’ (feiyiyixing).
From 1998 to 2004, Wang Youshen’s Darkroom(Anfang) was exhibited in Sydney (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998), Pittsburgh (Mattress Factory Arts Center, 1999), Taipei (Taipei Biennial, 2000), Guangzhou (Guangdong Art Museum, 2003) and Shanghai (Shanghai Biennial, 2004). Theidea of this work was unambiguous.He moved his familiar darkroom of many years into the exhibition space,and told audiences that they could take part in darkroom work. In the exhibition held in Shanghai, the artist provided the following details of the work flow:
1. Participants select the negative film offered by the artist (or bring their own negative film) to the film selection area, before filling out the ‘registration form for darkroom users’ as requested by the artist.
2. Participants wear work aprons, enter the work area and develop and print photos in keeping with the ongoing work in the darkroom.
3. Participants are provided with instructions on photo printing and development, and they can paste these up where the select the forms and beside the zoom.
4. Participants are requested to develop and print two photos from each negative film, one to be retained in the clear water, and the other which can be taken away.
5. The finished photos are placed in the clear water tray in the exhibition area.
6. The image of each photo in the clear water tray will start to fade after being soaked in water forseveral hours.
7. Remove the faded photos separately, and clip them onto the line in the darkroom for display.
8. Mail back the negative film album, all the finished photos (including those on which the images have faded), and the ‘registration form’ to the artist.
Wang Youshen intended to analyze the issues related to ‘when, what, who, where, why, recording, editing, producing, consuming and responding’. Each exhibited darkroom had different audience groups from different backgrounds. The contents provided by participants and their way of working led to different effects and results. All participantswould have different feelings,but the artist had the chance to acquire the results of each participant’s work, before taking stock and analyzing them. Audience participation became part of the process of the work, as they helpedthe artist push the work to its conclusion. As the artist demonstrated, the darkroom offered an open, interactive possibility, as the audience was allowed to choose between the negative films provided by the artist and their own. However, when the finished photos were placed in the water as part of the film development purposes, time washed away the images on the photos. We do not know if the audience experienced the entire ‘washing’ process,but we do know that the artist himself controlled the entire process from setting and observation to analysis. At variance from Wang Youshen’s earlier works that also utilized images, the artist was no longer concerned about the content of the image, or whether the images were realistic. He was concerned about the evolution of an image and the process of fading away. Essentially, this evolution and process encapsulated Wang Youshen’s questions about the media, and Darkroomwas a symbolic observation. We live in a world restricted by the media, andso what response and performance can we provide? At each darkroom exhibited in different countries, the artist hoped to construct a temporary social spaceby providing the ready-made information (his negative film) and giving freedom to his audience, but also allowing them to bring their own films. Nevertheless, in the end, the generated results were stipulated and predetermined by the artist within the flow. The artist noted:
One major feature of life today is that individuals are confined by various restrictions. For example, TV programs are all pre-recorded. You have to accept these restrictions before choosing what programs youwatch. I express this confinement in my works,especially when using printed matter. It is fair to say that this is a form of restriction exercised by the culture over individuals.
‘The audience is allowed to experience both reality and virtual reality, the real scenario of democracy and power, as symbolically reflected in the exhibition’, Wang said. His symbolic undertone was subtly presented at different exhibitions,and people's understanding of Darkroomwas similar to the artist’s personal view:
Wang Youshen cares about how the context and images in the information dissemination process have been generated, conveyed, consumed and responded to, and the meaning of all these links, as well as the ‘virtual’ essence of information. We all live in a society in which mass media serves as the intermediary. Media has taken over the generation and dissemination of most daily information. The truth in society is, more often than not, truth as it is mapped out and presented by the media. The generation of information is often confused with reality. Wang Youshen allows the audience to control the development of photos and experience the process of information presentation.The negative films treating different themes which are provided by Wang help the audience further understand both the real and the virtual scenarios surrounding them. The art gallery becomes a public space, in which the audience can participate more ‘democratically’ in the social system. To some extent, Darkroom has overthrown the idea that the mass media are manipulated by commercial interests and political power.[12]
The interpretation of Darkroom is subjective, as it has no absolute meaning.Under the arrangement of Wang, a photo that came from the media, the artist or the audience could taken on any significance, depending on the person‘s analysis and judgment of its significance. Although Wang Youshen has offered explanations and annotations of his own works at different times, anyone can explain his works in different waystaking into account his personal experience, knowledge and stance. From 1988 to the present, Wang has remained a journalist. He is a news reporter, so he observes society.As an editor, he processes information gathered from his observations,and as an artist, he puts the results of his observations into an exhibition space, and calls on people to observe the objects that he personally questions. These are all aspects of changes in the physical world, as well as of the derivation of information and on-site control. Wang Youshen has described his work until 2005 as follows:
In my recent works Washing and Darkroom, my main task has been to change times and places,using images as the medium, and the features of the medium and technological flow,in order to restore reality and manifest the chain of social relationships. I am concerned with the relationship between the artwork, the artist and the viewer. As well as having the natural participation of the audience, I am more concerned about ‘the introduction of the concept’ (guannian de jieru), allowing the artwork to become a starting point andto interact with other people’s ideas, and eventually changing the artwork’s meanings.
Given Wang’s occupation and his utilization of photographs and documents, ‘washing’ is no longer an artwork, but a habitual social action. From his previous work Before and After My Grandmother Passed Away to the present, he has been washing images. The artist has always been influenced by omnipresent images, and he strives to achieve the results of ‘washing’ just as he attempts to reveal the images in his early works. This makes for an interesting contrast,as we notice, for example, the ideological associations among the various works titledWashing: Before and After My Grandmother Passed Away, Washing: 1941 Thousands Buried in a Deep Pit in Datong, and Washing: Y2K Bug (Qingxi: Qiannianchong), and Washing: Scenery (Qingxi: Fengjing).
At the Symposium titled Another Voice: Forum of China’s Contemporary Artists which had as itstopic ‘Arts or Technology: The Relationship between High Tech/ Multimedia and Art Creation’, held at the He Xiangning Art Museum in 2005, Wang Youshen selected ‘Arts are Media’ as the title of his presentation. With his knowledge of media derived from his long-term job, he presented a new concept of art forinformation-oriented society. He fused the concepts of ‘influential power’ and ‘instrument’, arguing thatpeople in different historical periodsemploy different modes, means and instruments to narrate artistic issues. Today, media and art are becoming inseparable. In taking this step, Wang Youshen is clearly influenced by conceptual artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Robert Rauschenberg. However, the logic of Wang’s concept replicates his daily work, and this provides the best explanation of the legitimacy of using all materials and instruments to describe artistic issues in an open-minded way.
The social and political functions of the media and media’s possible roles in society and politics are givens, so what can the participants in Wang’s works gain from them? Because the experience of each participant is different,the artist or the critic can only explain a small part of the significance of the artwork. His works necessarily remain open to interpretation. As Wang demonstrated through a work exhibited at Another Long March, the conceptual art exhibition organized by the Holland Fundament Foundation in the city of Breda in 1997, within a space that had been a military barracks withinhistorical memory, an artist may modify a question if that enables him to express his concepts and stance in a more interesting way.[13]
If time has meaningof itself, then this quality must be associated with the constant rewriting of history. In his early years, Wang Youshen photographed the street activity in Wangfujing, a prime shopping district in downtown Beijingteeming with people daily. He made use of the continuity of time,and his later photographs of his grandmother applied a similar time frame. But historical time did not become a tool until Wang saw old photographs of historical incidents and allowed audiences to experience ideas of ‘generation’ (shengzhang) and ‘disappearance’ (xiaoshi) within a time frame he set up. In his most recent work, he continues to use existing photographs and has also attempted to demonstrate their historical attributes in different contexts. He has alsobegun to carve relief stones with the composition of meticulously selected photographs. Unlike the ‘no-stance’ scenario in his works titledDarkroom, Wang Youshen now chooses to ‘wash’ or ‘freeze’ particular photographs of historical events. This new reduction in the target of his work is related to the artist’s idea of rewriting history. Time is generated when photographs emerge and fades when images are gone. The art of Wang Youshen portrays the generation of and the vanishing of time,and Wang’s deconstruction intrinsically contains Zen concepts,and that distinguishes his work from the rhetoricalintellectual background of some Western artists.
16 February 2007
NOTES:
[1] Art Asia Pacific,Sydney,Australia, No.2, 1996.
[2]From 18 November to 8 December and from 2 to 23 December, the Robert Rauschenberg International Touring Exhibition was staged in Beijing and Lhasa, respectively. This exhibition amazed young Chinese artists and influenced many of them.
[3]No manuscript was published.
[4]Kong Chang’an writing inJiangsu Art Monthly, No.11, 1993, p.18.
[5]This is the collage work comprising ‘news photos’ randomly taken every minute in Wangfujing,Beijing.
[6] Wang Youshen introduced his concept of Interior Designas follows: ‘It was an art activity that I masterminded and organized in 1994. The activity lasted a year, and in each monthly session, one artist would preside over the activity launched by our newspaper. In total, twelve renowned Chinese contemporary artists contributed. I initiated the work in an attempt to continue demonstrating the relationship between the arts and everyday life,as well as the response of art to social appreciation, and to disseminate arts more widelythrough the media, which is a conventional and powerful mode of transmission than can connect artists with audiences in the most direct way. Interestingly, this type of activity has always attracted the attention of audiences, artists and entrepreneurs.’ (Revision of text that appeared originally in Art Asia Pacific, Australia, No.2, 1996).
[7]Art Asia Pacific, Australia, No.2, 1996.
[8] ‘About My Latest Works: Nutritious Soil’ (Guanyu wode jinqi zuopin: Yingyangtu), Gallery(Hualang), Lingnan Fine Arts Publishing House, No.3, 1994.
[9] Art Asia Pacific, Australia, No.2, 1996.
[10]Ibid.
[11]Ibid.
[12]Zhang Fang-wei, Taipei Biennale 2000 Album of Paintings(2000 Taibei shuangnian huace), Taipei NationalFine Arts Museum, 2000.
[13]Bredawas once the largest military city in the Netherlands, and the exhibition venue itself was once the largest biggest barracks, whereGerman troopswere stationedduring World War II. After the Cold War ended, thesite became a refugee camp. The Urban Planning Proposal for 1997, the year of exhibition, envisaged transforming the area into a city museum and residential quarter. The barracks are not far from the city center. The change in function of this site was a reflection of the changes taking place in European society, the political climate and the urban scene. Before its past was about to be relegated to history, artists were invited to review its historical and cultural resources. Wang Youshen’s proposal was to cover the magnificentstain glass window in the rear wall of the side chapel of the barracks with a blown up negative photograph of a beauty pageant in Sarajevo. At that time, the war in Bosnia was raging, but the photographshowed scenes of singing and dancing, except for the detail of one beauty queen, who wore a blue ribbon over her shapely body, but held up a banner reading ‘Don’t Let Them Shoot Us’. The sunlight cast shadows through the windows of the Side Chapel which had been converted into a pub. Such heavy themes of war and peace and of life and death acquired urgent significance in a barracks and chapel under such concrete semantic circumstances.Reference: Tang Di, ‘Urban Space and the Arts: Intermittent Thoughts and Associations’ (Chengshi kongjian yu yishu: Duansi he suixiang),Shanghai Art Museum: Academic Research(Shanghai Meishuguan: Xueshu yanjiu), April 2002.
Translation by Dr. Bruce Gordon Doar