March 21 - April 25, 1998
Xiaoping Li, Artspeak
The Yangzi River flows out of the mountains of the Qinghai Plateau,
rushing through valleys and plains, coalescing with the vast
Pacific Ocean. A river dashes out of the cosmic order of ancient
Chinese philosophy. The red wall of the gallery, though embodying
multiple connotations, reminds one of lifeblood and magnifies
the immeasurable energy in the cosmos, whose outpouring rhythm
and impulse create life and enliven the earth. White socks and
plaster casts of salmon are suspended from the ceiling of the
gallery to further discharge senses of flux, circulation, and
voyage.
Rivers — like the Indus, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the
Yellow River, the Yangzi, the Amazon — are the seeds and
life sources of human civilizations. Perhaps that's why rivers
have special meanings for the artist Gu Xiong. As an immigrant,
Gu's life is like a river full with the torrents of anguish,
trial, and rapture. The struggle has been so vividly documented
in the images of his previous works — the bicycles crushed
on Tiananmen Square, the cafeteria, the garbage bag, the basement,
and the yellow pear tree. From the Yangzi River to the Fraser
Valley, Gu Xiong has found, in rivers, an enduring source of
energy. An immigrant artist unfolds like a river in its eternal
labour for regeneration. But where is he to anchor in the infinite
course of border-crossing? What is the constant in the eternal
motion of the universe and human existence?
The installation You and I focuses on the "river
culture" of Jiangnan, China, the region located on the
south side of the Yangzi River before it reaches the sea. Noted
for its significance in both historical and contemporary times,
the region offers plenty of cultural splendour for celebration.
Yet Gu does not intend to extol the cultural glory, nor to expose
the despotism, decadence, and excess in the history. No longer
culturally coherent and pure, Gu speaks in You and I of cultural
transgression carried out by the immigrant artist: the meeting
of the Yangzi River and the Fraser River bridged by the Pacific
Ocean, and the intermesh of two different cultural geologies
through the artist's migration. The rich symbolism embodied
in socks and salmon discerns a journey which is both existential
and spiritual. It accentuates a dialectical model of travelling
between global and local geocultural currents and, more, carving
out an interstitial space.
You and I is then profoundly philosophical. Both its
succinct visual speech and philosophical underpinnings issue
a rejection of the excessive appetite for materialistic expansion
at the age of late capitalism and an unyielding assertion of
the spiritual aspect of human existence.
The assertion is grounded as much in the artist's life journey
as in ancient Eastern philosophies, which comparative philosophers
have noted is essentially postmodern. Stylistically, the work
visualizes the fundamentals of the philosophies. As the artist
recalls, the process in which this work came into being can
be summed up in a single word: reduction. The fundamentals of
Zen Buddhism and Buddhist art have eventually come to prevail.
The abundance in Nothingness. The polyphony in Simplicity. Less
is More.
Gu Xiong, as we've heard from his previous articulations, has
always closely engaged himself in the materiality of immigrant
life. Now, in the spiritual realm, the artist has found a way
of extending his current practice. |
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The River, installation
piece
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