East Brought West
Alexandra Hyde
The exhibition
Chen Zhen. An artist between East and West currently at the Padiglione d’Arte
Contemporanea in Milan (until 18th May), centres around “differences with
no hierarchy”. Zhen’s ethics and art are derived from travels in diverse
continents, forming his concept of “globalisation” – “that
people from different races can unite and live together”. Political and
social comment are there for the picking: a Chinese prayer wheel of abacus beads
and electronic calculators, photographic tirades against the westernisation of
Shanghai, or games with the natural and the artificial (a wall with plastic roses
on one side and manure on the other challenges our preferences and playfully
questions our self-constructed position between the two, with mirrors at the
centre of each side). The exhibition is accompanied by a concept-by-numbers introduction
and guide. Zhen’s work is indeed dense and multi-layered and these interpretations-on-a-plate
are readily digested, but the answer sheet perhaps discourages searching out
the more subtle and interesting ambiguities of the work.
By contrast, the
exhibition of Shu Takahshi’s work at the Museum of Oriental Art in Genoa
(until 11 January 2004) struggles to make itself clear. Takahashi’s abstract
paintings are composed of jigsaw canvases, straight, curved, rounded edges interacting
cleanly. There is an overwhelming impression throughout the exhibition of still,
balanced space. Space of Remote Memory (1998-99) for example portrays a strongly
geographical sense of receding viewpoints, the point of a red triangle retreating
at the centre of two balanced curves. The viewer often stands somewhere between
the title and vision, but the significance of either is not always clear. Thus
some paintings overshoot the mark of stillness and become remote, and abstraction
becomes a problem (or simply disappointing, such as the flimsy Air, Water, Earth,
Fire (1998-99), ‘water’ being a strip of weakly diluted blue brush-marks).
In addition, the art fails to engage comfortably with its surroundings in the
Museum, before the European viewer perhaps. The titles of Takahashi’s work
are Italian but paradoxically worsen the problem by erasing any evidence of translation
or adaptation from Japanese culture: there is little to show the viewer the path
by which to make the cultural leap. The work does not possess a satisfyingly
complete identity and it suffers in the gap between continents and cultures (At
the PAC in Milan the information sheet at least insures against this problem,
though it at times overcompensates.) Consequently Takahashi’s paintings
seem to float aimlessly, failing to settle amidst the surrounding Buddhist statues
and pagodas.
The solid political
and social significance of Zhen’s work is embodied in the installation Round
Table (Side by Side) (1997). Two tables are joined together with chairs from
five different continents attached, their seats flush to the surface and incorporated
into the whole on the same plain: “a metaphor for the search for a consensus
between individuals” (more spoon-feeding from the omnipotent guide). Yet
the tables are mismatched, there is a divide which distorts the circular shape
and disconnects the two halves. The chairs neutralize this dichotomy, all equal
in their individuality, united in their status as ‘unique’. However,
there is a pleasing ambiguity that shakes this up a little: on approach, there
appears to be a central chair – darker wood, greater size. There is a hierarchy
then, or the viewer’s trained consciousness projects social order onto arbitrary
selection. That this chair was included despite it’s effect, demonstrates
the artist’s awareness of reality that in turn strengthens his ideals. Zhen
is aware of their impracticality: the chair is a recurring motif in his art but
it’s practical function is constantly made redundant.
The strongpoint
of this thought-provoking exhibition, however, is where it progresses beyond
social politics. Crystal Landscape of the Inner Body (2000) is a fragile and
delicate yet arresting assault on issues that are contested more aggressively
elsewhere. The complete installation (unfortunately limited by space at PAC)
consists of twelve glass and metal medical tables with glass representations
of the internal organs, clear and completely still. It is not life-like but unapproachable
and frozen, an edge of clinical purity counterbalanced by the organic tone of
each organ’s form: buds, fruit, liquid. The result is dignified, graceful
and utterly compelling. The brain – the mind – is absent. Here Zhen is not labouring
over difference, individual thought and identity, but basic matter, the human
body as the root of equality. It is not until the viewer sees this portrayal
of peaceful humanity that the exhibition joining cultures, thoughts and individuals
gains true significance.
Neither the Zhen
nor the Takahashi exhibition then is a straightforward case of transferral or
translation of work from East to West, more cross-breeding and adaptation, rooted
in Eastern origins, but created in another context to a broader purpose and audience.
The difficulty is that the multi-layered transformations (the history of Zhen’s
battered furniture, each symbolic reference to gods or elements in Takahashi’s
paintings) are accumulated through years and tradition, nature and nurture. Yet
this must all be adapted, absorbed and understood by the viewer in one bulk:
the challenge of these exhibitions is acclimatisation. Zhen’s work, however,
with pieces such as Crystal Landscape, successfully appeals and communicates
using the basic unit, that which is universal, the human body.
