| Since the wave of British art released its energy in 1990s, China’s art scene has also demonstrated its outstanding force of imagination and creativity. This was driven by decades of continuous fast development of the economy, coupled with the momentum of the country’s history. |  |
Leng Lin
Since the wave of British art released its energy in 1990s, China’s art scene has also demonstrated its outstanding force of imagination and creativity. This was driven by decades of continuous fast development of the economy, coupled with the momentum of the country’s history. The art from China often stems from Social Realism with a focus on local life, and launches in an environment filled with art dialogues, cultural exchange, and global competition.
The ground for China’s contemporary art has changed drastically after the 90s. A small group of artists started to work with mediums traditionally inconceivable or extreme provocative, such as live animals or human corpses, in order to challenge society’s moral standards and ethics.
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu are prominent figures in this group. They collaborate with each other frequently, exploring and testing the uncertainty and intensity of art by all possible means. With works such as Soul Killing, Safe Island, Civilization Pillar, and Barbarossa, it seems that these two artists have staged a rehearsal of their own. The question is: does the rehearsal establish a general view of ethics and morals, or does it help contain a fear of the future?
In their work, we witness a pursuit of the Classic force, a reinterpretation and new understanding of Laocoon. What has been described by J. J. Winckelmann as “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur” (“edle Einfalt, stille Größe”) is now only left with “simplicity” and “grandeur,” while both “noble” and “quiet” have been replaced by “chaotic” and “restless.” Is this a call from Classicism, or Classicism is the nature of our time? When the latter question occurs to us, Classicism seems to become part of us, part of our own culture. How different it is if we compare them with the artworks from China back to the beginning of the 90s, when the contemporary Chinese art was more of irony, and the “individual” was presented only through self-sarcasm. Along with the rapid growth of the economy, the “individual” started to recover, via strength of exaggerated “individualistic heroism.” This is the reincarnation of Classicism with its “grandeur.” What we see in Civilization Pillar, which is a simple straight column made of human fat, a symbolic use from the reserve of human energy.
As for the Chinese culture, a culture that has been suppressed for so long, when it encounters with a new space to release its inner energy, it will for sure demonstrate itself in the form of “Renaissance.” Any “Classic” “form” or “perspective” could be easily taken for the sake of modern values. Either the use of threatening creatures, like the tiger in Safety Island, or the running dogs in Dogs Which Cannot Touch Each Other, both have emphasized the force in the original Classic sense. It is such force to “cause an object with mass to change its velocity, or cause them to deform.” As a subject, seemingly, the “force” can have all matters and their growth under its control. Sun Yuan and Peng Yu are obsessed with such force.
Guided by a psychological need to be “self-deified,” Sun and Peng incline to use symbols or mediums more in their original status, for instance, the “behavior” of “humankind” or “live animals,” a “monumental pillar” or “bird hunting.” Such living beings or moving objects become a “form” in the works of Sun and Peng. This “form” stays constantly on the verge of getting out of control. Such control and materialization of limit automatically empowers Sun and Peng’s works.
As early as 1998, Sun and Peng started to work with live animals to challenge the stability of artworks as objects. They focused on contingency and uncertainty. They gained “force” by deviating from a common knowledge of art. Their heroic manner put them in a role as revivers of culture.
In their latest work Freedom, Sun and Peng facilitate water pressure to make a water pipe move and spray freely. The route of the water movement as well as the random direction of the water spray unified two elements, freedom and beauty. It could even be regarded as a tribute to the tradition of the Chinese ink painting and calligraphy, or as a blown-up version of the action painting by Jackson Pollock.
The attention and respect that contemporary Chinese art receives are not solely because of its humanistic sympathy and narration, but its strength and force. Sun Yuan and Peng Yu are part of such force.
