Article reprinted from The Paper.
Xu Zidong on modern and contemporary literature and art. (02:54)
On October 29th, the "Art Within Reach I" contemporary art exhibition series opened at APSMUSEUM in Shanghai's Lujiazui district. The exhibition showcased 25 works by 14 artists, including Olafur Eliasson, Daniel Arsham, Miya Ando, Liu Jianhua, and Liu Wei. The theme of "Art Within Reach" envisions contemporary art further integrating into everyday life.
Xu Zidong, the exhibition's curator and a literary scholar, believes that in the Chinese context, modern and contemporary literature and modern and contemporary art are two separate concepts. While modern and contemporary Chinese literature developed in tandem with 19th-century Western realism, romanticism, and symbolism, modern and contemporary art largely draws directly from the Western context. Classical art pursues elegance and sublimity, while modern art is not always perceived as beautiful but a little distorted.
At the exhibition entrance, a stainless steel door suspended in mid-air divides the space into indoor and outdoor. Cacti were in the "garden," while Eliasson's light-reflecting "lamp" were in the "room"... The exhibition is constructed as a space within reach, redefining the boundaries between everyday objects and artworks.
The most striking aspect of Chinese contemporary art is the exaggerated faces. Xu Zidong believes this early paradigm of Chinese contemporary art exemplifies the way Western values, reflected through the market, impact Chinese society. It can be said to be a reflection of Lu Xun's spirit, laden with criticism of national character. Chinese contemporary art shares similarities with the spirit of Chinese literature.
But is this critical work suitable for everyday life? What is the boundary between art and everyday objects? These are the questions raised by this exhibition and explored by "Art Within Reach."
In the exhibition, Olafur Eliasson's Affection emits a warm glow. The Icelandic artist excels in using light, color, water, sky, and temperature to transform empty spaces into artificial environments that offer viewers a mysterious experience, creating a world of interwoven light and shadow. A similar luminous world also appears in the work My Heart is Tender, which carries a sense of classical painting: in the picture, a potted flower sits on a table by the window. "Eileen Chang once said something very philosophical: 'The flowers on the windowsill seem larger than the parade outside.' So, how can the flowers on the windowsill be compared to the crowd outside?" Xu Zidong said, "But because of vision, symbolically the flowers on the windowsill represent private life and personal feelings. There is a certain philosophy to be drawn from this."
Many works in the exhibition are artistic representations of objects found around us. For example, Liu Jianhua's Sustainable Trapezoidal Scenery series made from glass bottles. The combination of transparent, fragile glass containers and ceramic objects with common, practical, ready-made objects in real life creates a visual conflict and tension. Simultaneously, the natural consumption of the objects within the containers reflects the individual's psychological state in today's rapidly evolving world.
Zhang Ruyi’s Individual Plant-47 takes the cactus as a central motif. Its roots are soft, yet its surface spines are extremely hard. This serves as a metaphor for the artist’s own state of existence. The concrete blocks, drawn from the transformations of the city, together with the cactus, point to notions of immortality while simultaneously expressing the changes of life and the urban environment.
Based on photographs of specific cloud formations captured at precise moments, American-born and Japanese-raised artist Miya Ando uses a watercolor-like technique to apply translucent ink and pigment to metallic canvases. Using chemical principles, she creates a sense of depth and movement by making the reflective metal shimmer through the soft gaps in the ink. In her work Kumo (Cloud) October 2.2.7 the moon, hidden behind a thin mist, guides us gently into the night.
Daniel Arsham's briefcases, Liu Wei's handbags, and the Jiu Society’s Maotai hand sanitizer all carry a prophetic vision of the dire future of consumerism.
Xu Zidong sees these works as works of art integrated into everyday life—not as dazzling as sunlight, but ever-present in our family ethic. The delicate boundary between art and real life is being seriously challenged. From a contemporary perspective, this reflects the postmodern trend of flattened, mundane thinking; from the context of Chinese society, it also reflects the ideological shift from grand narratives to everyday life.
Note: The exhibition series will be divided into two phases: "Art Within Reach I" will be on view until January 28, 2024, and the series of exhibitions will continue until June 2024.
Appendix: Exhibition Foreword (Text by Xu Zidong)
Art within Reach, seeing thoughts without words.
Art within Reach, is one of the forms of contemporary art and, therefore, possesses some basic characteristics of it. First, in contrast to conventional realism, which holds that all things can infinitely converge to the objective reality, it does not view mimesis as the ultimate goal. What is appearance? What is reality? Contemporary art reveals different types of reality from diverse perspectives, points of view, seasons, even various times of day. Second, contemporary art does not pursue the romanticism of the 19th century, in which a large cast of characters assembles in a passionate scene to narrate a particular historical moment. Naturally, contemporary art has its passions, but most of them are not fully expressed; similarly, its imaginations exist, but they are generally more restrained. It is what Wordsworth referred to as a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility”. Thus, it is more related to everyday life with less myth and legend. Thirdly, contemporary art is also, generally speaking, less concerned with narrative. The intriguing part in contemporary art is often found in the material and the creation process rather than the image or the aesthetic effect. Therefore, contemporary art tends to be less interested in the “sublime”, less in awe of the great rivers and seas, less enamored of heroic legends, and less obsessed with overcoming great hardship and challenges. Themes such as the vicissitudes of time and life are usually presented in contemporary art more abstractly.
Art within Reach, is just a branch of contemporary art. In addition to the above-mentioned characteristics of contemporary art such as irreality, anti-romanticism, and light narrative, Art within Reach, shows less grotesque, absurd, or abstract aesthetics (deformity, grotesqueness, and abstraction are the basic characteristics of contemporary art in general). The art is more concerned with figurative details, material texture, and juxtaposition. Art within Reach, does not necessarily have to be seen in the white cube. A few examples of the exhibits at APSMUSEUM are a pot of lilies on a chair bathed on the routine sunlight every day, a concrete cactus ornament, a “pendant” made of glass mixed with Greenland glacier rock dust, two ceramic hammers, two suitcases, and a door that hangs in the air, all of which are the works of local and foreign masters of contemporary art. They quietly meld into our daily lives rather than narrating legends. They don't dazzle like sunshine, but quickly melt into our family ethics. The delicate line separating real life and artwork is seriously questioned by Art within Reach. From a historical perspective, this is the post-modernist trend of planarization and fragmentation, a subversion of the modernist norms of fine arts. In the context of Chinese society, it also represents a shift from grand narratives to the ideological underpinnings of day-to-day life.
From grand narratives to everyday life, that is the key phrase here.
However, APSMUSEUM's attention to the Art within Reach pieces is not necessarily out of sensitivity to the shifting of ideological trends, bute, in my opinion, probably out of a "classsical" interest in contemporary art. In college textbooks, aesthetic norms from ancient times to the present are often roughly classified into four categories: the beautiful (autumn moon over a placid lake, etc.), the sublime (the picturesque, etc.), the parody (irony, and satire), and the ugly (for example, The Stagnant Ditch by Wen Yiduo). In general, traditional art tends to focus more on the sublime and the beautiful, whereas contemporary art is more tolerant of the ridiculous and the ugly (magical, exaggerated, grotesque, distorted, etc.). However, at least in this exhibition of APSMUSEUM, we notices that the collector has a tenacious interest in beauty, in addition to taking into account the artistic achievements, stylistic traits, and market reputation of the emerging and established artists. Contemporary art, yes, is always abstract, always challenging, always subverting the norm, but can it not, at the same time (or even in the first place) be beautiful?
Door (by Gao Weigang) naturally delineates the virtual boundary between "within reach" and "outside", yearning for everything outside the door but cherishing the world inside as well. The acrylic Armchair and Bordo Coffee Table could be deemed as the infinite approximation of symbols to physical objects, inverting our definition of art. Further towards the inside, there seems to be a kitchen and a bathroom where we find: Individual Plant – 47, a cactus-like sculpture; hand sanitizer in Moutai bottles by Jiū Society, which happened to be an artistic prelude of the liquor’s overspreading crossover campaign; the handbag designed by Liu Wei - the luxury brand with whom the artist has cooperated prompts a homophone joke in Shanghaiese; the soap, necklace, and candles by Zhang Yitong; the cellphone by Frank Wang Yefeng; and a piece even more abstract, Petrified Seas: The Lump, by Tong Yixin, etc. One of the most beautiful is Lilies on an Old Chair, emanating a tint of realistic style of Herman Melville. By contrast, the Rimowa Attaché by Daniel Arsham juxtaposes erosion and consumerism, foretelling the doomed modernity. For sure, where there is “within reach”, there is “outside”. My Heart is Tender seems to echo Eileen Chang’s famous line: the flowers on the windowsill look bigger than the parade outside. Coincidently, Mary Ann Strandell and Liu Jianhua are both attentive to the “stairs”, which link the interior scene to the social fabric. The pendant-like artwork Affection by Olafur Eliasson is the highlight of this contemporary art show. Passing by the interior scenery and standing in front of the window, admiring the Kumo (Cloud) by Miya Ando and Flowing Clouds by Wu Kuan-Te, there might come the moment of epiphany: after all, if there is no “outside”, how can there be anything “within reach”.
Art within Reach, reaching thoughts and beauty without the need for narrative.
