Author/Bai Jiafeng
Two years ago, in my book "Migration Between Eastern and Western Culture", I looked at a group of Chinese artists who, in the decade or so from the early 1990s to the early 21st century, went abroad to explore new creative possibilities and then returned home and put what they had learned into practice. Today, though many famous overseas Chinese artists have "returned", their works are unfortunately out of harmony with China as they now find it. In some cases, their views have hardened into a kind of artistic rigor mortis. In other cases, they consciously attempt to transplant ideas and modes from one culture to another, not realising how clumsy and indeed redundant this effort appears in a world where East and West are so closely intertwined. Some artists, seeking to comment on Chinese society and its concerns, attempt to convey their "social responsibility" with huge and expensive works that are embarrassingly at odds with their intention.
In fact, the diversity and openness of cultural globalization provides fertile ground for these Chinese nomads of contemporary art. So when we look at how the returnees develop back in China, we must take into account recent changes in the fabric of international politics, economics and culture. We have just passed the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, which not only had a profound impact on the international community, but also cast a chilling shadow on the cultural globalization that had been developing apace for nearly a decade. Promoted by the expansion of both the global financial system and networked information technology, the process of global integration that China joined in the 1990s blurs international boundaries in every area. It erases other boundaries, too. The internet enables information and resources from different sources to vault the limits of time and space, to the point where people from all countries increasingly speak a common cultural language. This is still a trend, however: the vision of global unity is by no means a reality. Full integration has encountered numerous stumbling blocks, not least the attempts of the United States to maintain control of the allocation of profits and resources, which it dominates with increasingly sophisticated international financial interventions, and also of the world system, in which it provokes disruptions aimed at justifying its enormous military power and weakening the power of other nations. This hegemonism makes it hard for true multiculturalism to triumph. September 11 can be seen as having launched an era of cultural conservatism in the West, of which the United States is the leader and avatar. The intensification of foreign hostility to the West and the West's inherent weakness have stimulated quiet changes at the heart of Western culture. Multiculturalism—born in a mood of self-confidence and cultural tolerance—has been transmuted into, for example, an interest in the purchase and sale of oriental art, though even this has been declining as a result of global economic shocks.
In the context of Chinese art, a decade in which contemporary art was characterised by "import of ideas/export of work" has segued into a decade in which China has built up its own internal art market system, together with system of art criticism based largely on Western collectors' standards and taste. Responding to the rise of cultural conservatism in the West, around 2005 Chinese contemporary art theorists also began to discuss and deliberate a "postcolonial" tendency in local art. This started with criticism of "pseudo-Chineseness" or inauthenticity in the works of overseas Chinese artists; as the homegrown contemporary art market flourished, the focus of the criticism shifted to the proliferation of political pop art and the prevalence of "Big Face" painting. This movement from culture to market parallels the West's shift in focus from Chinese contemporary art per se to the ins and outs of the art trade.
I find it largely pointless to seek a so-called "Chineseness" in the ideas of overseas Chinese artists. The source of their creativity is in fact introspection into their individual cultural identity in a context of cross-cultural conflict and blending that has nothing to do with Chinese society or culture. Seen as quasi-representatives of China by both the West and the East, these artists are a blend of individual needs and international preconceptions. On the plus side, these artists do generate freewheeling blends of elements of Chinese culture. However, after they return to China, they must all find a way to adapt their pattern of creation to the realities and "language" of contemporary Chinese society and culture.
This brings us to the recent works of Wang Zhiyuan, which in my view are a unique window into the workings of this "second transformation". The artist's recent exhibition, at Yue Mei art museum, in the Beijing 798 art district, is titled "Dislocation"—an apt summation of the present condition of art. "Dislocation" in this case has a secondary sense that reinforces the first one: the visual dis-location of readymade items. In fact, "Dislocation" the exhibition presents us with a theory of the readymade in art. Many of Wang Zhiyuan's recent works are characterised by the large-scale use of readymade items, and employ "dislocated" arrangements to generate a powerful sense of space. At the front of the museum stands a wall of blocks with "15712966740 for teaching lies" scrawled across it (picture 8); a gigantic tower made of discarded plastic containers near the entrance to the exhibition hall ("Thrown to the Wind"，picture 1), and a huge pair of underpants spews innumerable electronic items ("Purge", picture 3).
Such works, filled with the mismatched detritus of modern life, not only powerfully explore the theme of "dislocation" but also—by, in effect, converting the "dislocated" to the "repositioned" or "reset"—situate artistic creation directly in its cultural context. As we all know, giant underpants was for a period a leitmotif of Wang Zhiyuan, who employs it to insinuate veiled lust and the veiling act itself. The early work "Object of Desire" (Picture 5), which depicts giant underpants with a neon-lit bas relief of a horned devil and a woman—with decorative elements from the 1920s and 1930s—reflects human sinfulness and lust. Such desires, like the private parts that underpants are designed to hide, flourish at a time of booming materialism. Created shortly after Wang returned to China, the work reflects the turmoil of covetousness and greed that the artist saw in the "Chinese economic miracle".
Created even earlier, "The Cross Behind the Underpants" (Picture 4) uses the same motif with a different reference. Here the giant underpants can be rearranged with gears to make a cross-shaped space, into which is projected a video produced by the artist himself. The suggestive combination of underwear and religious symbol prompts reflection on themes such as instinctive behaviour versus organised religion, in this case a specifically Western one.
In more recent works, Wang focuses on the problems of technology-based urban society. "Purge", a characteristic example, presents a pair of giant underpants from whose crotch spews a torrent of discarded electronic equipment such as computer mice and monitors. The work calls attention to the ecological and social crises that are the hidden price of our modern conveniences and modes of communication: this e-waste is not just physical garbage but also the erstwhile carrier of intangible garbage in the form of useless or toxic data.
The works on show here illustrate several characteristics of Wang's recent creative language: a conscious use of the concepts of Arte Povera, an emphasis on the ability of devices to convey ideas, and an appeal to the viewer's instincts and emotions rather than his intellect or refined aesthetic sense. In other words, Wang is consciously avoiding using cultural icons to stake out his cultural identity, and instead paying more attention to the inherent value of his themes—themes that are universal yet mesh perfectly with the Chinese context. Having personally participated in the globalisation process as a migrant, Wang recognises the "flattening" caused by the spread of wealth, technology and information, even as he seeks a detached position from which to view and comment on that flattening. His creative output thus represents a Chinese take on universal social problems.
"Purge", for example, depicts the products of a highly developed technological society. But it also raises the question of China's role in producing and consuming these products. Wang reminds us that China manufactures most of the world's consumer products (and thus, indirectly, its garbage)—and that this role has been the source of China's own prosperity, in other words, its own ability to consume these products. Wang calls this cycle "new-cheap-materialism".
Other artists have conveyed this general idea by the use of "Made in China" labels or by documentary-style references to cheap labour and social problems. Wang employs an Arte Povera-type approach, constructing his works—including works made entirely of rubbish—as enormous readymade items of the kind that might be manufactured by that same cheap labour. In works like "Thrown to the Wind", Wang eschews symbols and shallow narrative; instead, he makes a tornado of brightly coloured plastic containers, all cleaned and piled up in decreasing order of size. His tornado implies a situation of coercion, suggesting that we are all swept up in this way of life based on industrial products. Large as this tornado is, the viewer cannot help but wonder how vast China's entire waste pile must be—and what impact it must have on society and the environment. China needs to mass-produce goods to maintain its own and the world's living standards—yet can it afford to continue mass-producing goods on this scale? And if it ceases to do so, will it bring about a new "clash of civilisations"?
Wang's "new-cheap-materialism" both perfectly expresses a universal theme and fits seamlessly into its local context. He abandons symbols of China and Chineseness and eschews commentary on current events. Rather than issuing provocative "objective" criticisms of China like some other returnees, he observes for himself. He does not seek to shrug off what he has learned from Western art theory and discourse, but he uses this knowledge—and his aesthetic preferences for Arte Povera and Pop Art—to convey contemporary local realities. The dramatic distances he has travelled and changes he has witnessed—social and cultural, artistic and geographic—make Wang Zhiyuan a kind of special cultural symbol and endow his works with unique artistic merit—a witness's practice and thinking on "Chineseness".