4C Exhibition 2023 Q2
While deconstructing the spectacle, they also propose dialectical oppositions between the individual and the collective, reason and the senses, humans and nature, spirit, and flesh.
Words by Yangyang Li
French philosopher Guy Debord wrote in The Society of the Spectacle that in the age of capitalism, human material production and spiritual production and their products have turned into alien forces, leading to mental alienation while images replace our genuine perception of the world. In the 4C Exhibition 2023Q2, ten artists, Bian Ka, Biyun Ren, Jia Jia, Jiayun Chen, Kun Zhao, Pan Pan, Wenjie Jin, Sining Zhu, Xiao He, and Zengyi Zhao, discuss topics including objectification of people, bodies, globalization, nature, and subjectivity in the alienated world through mediums like painting, photography, video, and installation. In this exhibition, 4C adheres to the purpose of exhibiting and promoting contemporary conceptual art, providing professional space for Chinese artists to display and communicate, and contributing to the cultivation of a rich cultural soil for the Chinese art community.
Zengyi Zhao's photographic works explore the moment of spectacle concentration, questioning the objectivity of vision. Through post-production techniques, he synthesizes and stitches the photos together, making them largely realistic but also strange. However, at first glance, the audience would only think of them as a dreamlike real scene in the photos. In the society of spectacle, the absolute order of society - "the Real" - is obscured by the social construction of spectacle, thus becoming unreachable and indescribable, and what we see of reality is merely an illusion. Extending this point, Zengyi Zhao questions the objectivity of photography and light as mediums, and whether we have the ability to challenge the status of vision as the most "objective" sense.
Jia Jia's installation work discusses the alienation and resistance of individual identity under globalized capital. In the wave of capitalism, individual value is defined by economic concepts such as productivity and efficiency, detaching from the authentic self. Within fragments of surgical knives, clay, and dictionary paper, there are many contradictions and ambiguities. It is in such existential crises, in our fragmented conception of the world, that we redefine our identity in the world.
Xiao He's handmade book pages focus on the experiences of women under social construction, such as the identity of mothers, family responsibilities, and mental illness. Feminism puts forward the view that "gender is socially constructed". In one of the handmade books, Xiao He took inspiration from the novel The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, extracting text and painting images from it. The heroine of the book, brought by her husband to an old house for recuperation, goes insane from seeing countless women crawling inside the room's yellow wallpaper, becoming one of the crawling women herself. While analytically dissecting the construction of the female mirror identity from a psychoanalytic perspective, it also satirizes the patriarchal system's neglect and destruction of women's mental health at that time.
Jiayun Chen uses the combination of arms and clothing to explore the humorous and absurd mistranslations found in English text on T-shirts and Chinese tattoos. Language is a construct made up of countless symbols, and the chaos generated in the process of symbol transformation precisely illustrates the limits of translatibility of symbolic systems in global cultural exchange. This prompts us to reflect on whether humanity has entered a "post-globalization" phase. But such limitations also bring humor, such as translating "Keep moving" into "bao liu yi dong" (literally, "preserve motion"), which is amusing.
When humans are alienated, the conflict between the individual and social construction often brings about bodily trauma. Biyun Ren's experimental video works on the body take the perspective of self-collision with the world. Through the use of numerous symbols, images, and virtual scenarios, she displays the unspeakable female experience. The performance in front of the mirror also seems to mirror the theory that humans always "misrecognize" their own image through the other in the mirror, thereby compensating for the fact that the self is fragmented.
In Sining Zhu's multimedia work, she delves into the topics of living condition and death of marginalized groups, focusing on the psychological state of elderly people living alone who ultimately commit suicide. She uses these elderly people's suicide notes as the blueprint for her creation, carving them into stones, and burning them with flames. As the stones slowly turn charred, these inscriptions gradually disappear, representing the ignored loneliness of the elderly, and finally, the traces of their existence disappear. Sining Zhu also made a video with these suicide notes as the voiceover, showing a book with images of these stones. We can hear that these words are gentle, but they also allow people to feel the authors' alienated psychology in their loneliness and silence, and a peaceful departure is their only way out. When the reading of the suicide notes ends, the book turn to two black sheets of paper, ending the story.
Wenjie Jin uses abstract methods to depict architectural structures, and her minimalist compositions have the tranquility of Hopper. She emphasizes the role of windows in architecture - they bring in light and serve as a conduit for connection with the outside world. As an image in art history, it also carries a strong religious significance. Her window-centric images display surreal dreams, and just as Freud said, dreams are a reflection of the subconscious, her images can bring a strong sensory resonance.
"In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles." The ten artists, through their conceptual artworks, depict, question, and resist the spectacle of social construction that obscures reality, showing us alienation, marginalization, mental and physical scars, environmental destruction, illusion, imagination... While deconstructing the spectacle, they also propose dialectical oppositions between the individual and the collective, reason and the senses, humans and nature, spirit, and flesh.
This exhibition, grounded in conceptualism, gathers the masterpieces of 10 diasporic Chinese artists, showcasing their diverse innovative styles and rich thematic depth. It vividly reflects the living conditions of the diasporic Chinese community and their deep insights into social phenomena. 4C Gallery is honored to carry and disseminate the intellectual trends of contemporary Chinese conceptual art and to display the latest artistic contributions of emerging Chinese artists on the international stage.
Our Art Panel
