Culture

Using new medium to project old ideas

By Phyllis Zhu (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-13 09:59

Top: Wang Gongxin is one of the earliest Chinese artists to use video as a medium. Left: Wang's work: Relating - It's about "Ya". Right: It's about Dream. [Provided to China Daily]

When Beijing artist Wang Gongxin left his second home in New York in 1995, he took a little piece of Brooklyn with him back to his hometown. Wang dug a three-meter-deep hole in his backyard in downtown Beijing and placed in it a television monitor playing a video of the Brooklyn sky from his apartment rooftop. Thus, Wang's first piece of video art - The Sky of Brooklyn - was born.

As one of the earliest contemporary Chinese artists to use video as a medium, Wang began with this simple yet innovative work and has embraced new technology in what he describes as his "most hi-tech" exhibition yet.

"Video art is popular in Western countries but few Chinese people know about it. I hope to introduce Beijing art lovers to this fresh category of avant-garde art," he said.

Relating, a four-part series that uses LCD screens and mp4s, is being shown at the Platform China Contemporary Art Institute, a local gallery famous for its promotion of China's contemporary art. The installation, Relating - It's about 'Ya', presents various sequences of images and sounds that are derived from the sound, "ya", which Wang said is inspired by the sound of Peking Opera.

Wang says that the concept behind the piece is analogous to humans' experience with the Internet and in particular, with Wikipedia searches.

"Today you log on to the computer and start with one concept that you're interested in - whether it's news or a new movie - and then your search leads you to something else, then something else," he explained. "At the end, when you can remember the last thing you searched and compare it with the first thing you sought, you will find they are totally different things."

The other video installation in the series, It's about Dream, features 200 colorful mp4 screens depicting sleeping faces, landscapes and objects, and an eerie hum of snoring pervades the room. The work plays on the slogan of the 2008 Olympicsm - "One World, One Dream."

"During the Olympics, the slogan was everywhere, and when I saw that I thought, 'Can you imagine if your dreams and my dreams were the same?' The slogan isn't really about that but I tried to show that all have their own dreams; even rocks and trees have their own dreams," he said."They don't have the same dream, but they dream together."

A native of Beijing, Wang graduated from Capital Normal University in 1982 with a bachelor of art degree in oil painting. After teaching oil painting at the university for five years, Wang moved to the United States as a visiting scholar at the State University of New York in Cortland. It was during his seven years in New York, experimenting with various art forms and drawing from what he calls the "creative energy"of the city, that Wang discovered video.

"At that time, in China the only art we learned was putting brush to paper. When I went to New York, I learned that there were all kinds of possibilities and materials to work with," he said.

"For many years I tried different mediums, but then I found video and loved it. It actually took about three or four years for me to switch to video art," he said.

Wang and his wife Lin Tianmiao, who is also an artist, are two of the leading figures in what is known as "apartment art," a movement in which experimental and avant-garde groups seek alternative spaces for exhibiting their art.

"Today contemporary art is more popular and accepted compared to even five years ago, but in the mid-1990s when my wife and I moved back form New York, contemporary art in China was still underground. Performance artists, such as Zhuang Huan, were making the news and drawing negative attention [to nontraditional art]," he said.

"The government didn't allow our works to be shown in public galleries, so the young artists of the time were looking for a private space to transform into a contemporary space."

When Wang created the site-specific Sky of Brooklyn, he invited a small circle of close friends to see his work in what is known as an open studio. Unlike a gallery setting, open studios are independent and spontaneous gatherings and invitations are often sent by postcard.

Although the idea of transforming a private space into a gathering place for intellectuals is not new - it can be traced to 17th century Parisian salons and before - Wang's open studio exhibition greatly facilitated collaboration and conversation among Beijing's artistic circle.

While the perception of contemporary art and the technology used to make it have changed in the past two decades, Wang says that his motive for making art has not.

"Even though it was hard to make art in New York [for a living], we didn't think of selling art for money at the time. We were doing other things, like designing, but we never forgot to make pure art," he said.

Wang's earlier works carry a sense of nostalgia and include personal elements. In The Old Bench (1997), for example, the artist replaced a section of a wooden bench that he found in his home with a monitor displaying a black and white image of the missing piece. In another, Baby Talk (1996), Wang projected a video of family members making faces at his newborn son onto a pool of milk. Wang insists that the subjectivity of his works, however, does not hinder their accessibility. Instead, he claims, his work is merely a starting point for viewer's own creative process.

"Every image, every color in It's About 'Ya' and the way they relate to each other are my own associations, but they are all open to interpretation. I'm only offering the audience a system of linking," he said.

"Once I finish a work, I take a step back and re-experience it as a visitor rather than as the artist. It no longer belongs to me," said Wang.

China Daily