The Sacred Marriage of Opposites: "Double History" Revitalizes the Ancient Icon for the 21st Century
by L.P. Streitfeld
As bookends to The Brewster Project 2002 this past summer, Linda Dennis and Pan Xing Lei presented mythic personal journeys to the public. The couple extends their dialogue this fall with a collaborative exhibition, "Double History" at Gallery 456.
The convergence of personal with collective mythology takes more a comprehensive form in the public venue of the Chinese American Arts Council. Beyond showcasing two fascinating artists conversing through the separate mediums of painting and sculpture, "Double History" presents collaborative partnership as a bridge extending beyond multiculturalism. Here the reflection of antithetical east/west mythologies emerges as a unique symbiosis between two individuals.
An internationally recognized Chinese performance artist dedicated to the resurrection of his native culture in the face of globalization, Pan Xing Lei inserts his physical being into mythological identities in the form of living sculptures presented as performance. The gallery displays two-dimensional photo based reflections from the journey along with three-dimensional props documenting the presentation (such as the horse head and props from his Brewster project performance). Meanwhile, Dennis utilizes the illusionist tradition within the masterly confines of western oil painting to explore a fabulist personal mythology challenging both classical and feminist notions of beauty.
At one end of the Brewster Project, Dennis unveiled her monumental painting, "Beautiful World ? Once," in which she images her own autobiographical history with Pan. At the opposite end, Pan Xing Lei performed an act of his living sculpture on the lawn of the Brewster House. In multiple layers of symbolism, including the horse sculpture as symbol for journey and the parted curtain before the painting as a form of wedding veil, the double reflection served to project the personal into the collective through a ritualistic revelation of an iconic image.
The hidden meaning in the Brewster bookend is the self-containment of this pair, who are together and separately revitalizing an ancient ritual for the 21st century. At Gallery 456, "Beautiful World ? Once (in the Green)" presents the painted iconic image of this holistic marriage in the context of nature, with two rows of dried giant reeds planted in sand veiling the masterpiece. The installation succeeds, spectacularly, in transmuting the ancient symbol into an utterly contemporary embodiment. It does so both in process–through the absorption of old master style, technique and form into a feminine consciousness–and content, by the unity of male and female symbolized by the penetration of Eros (Pan) into the autobiographical subject (Dennis). What was considered "Other" under multiculturalism is now transmuted into a symbiosis of opposites for a new era.
With an authentic feminine consciousness exuded by her "Beautiful World" series of bittersweet paintings and drawings, Dennis embraces eroticism as a beauty that is alive and aware of its imperfections. This challenges both the feminist denial of the erotic and the classical notion of beauty as an unattainable ideal. Moreover, the centerpiece installation pays homage to the pre-patriarchal origin of the sacred marriage (hieros gamos), where reeds represent both the physical environment of Sumer and an essential tool of Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, who integrated the polarities.
Reciprocating the dialogue, Pan Xing Lei transmutes the opposites into a cyclical form in his "Imitating Zhu Da" installation. In this work, the tree/stone motif of Zhu Da, the legendary Chinese artist, is reconfigured within a contemporary context by means of a polychrome plastic sculpture merging two melded rubber figures set against a graffiti/calligraphy backdrop.
Ultimately, "Double History" revels in the sacred space for unity within a human relationship, individually achieved by a pair of artists on unique parallel paths. This symbiosis happens to be the fortuitous result of a process dedicated to mutual transcendence through the embodied exploration of separate and individual cultures.
