When Su-Mei Tse was awarded the Golden Lion at the 2003 Venice Biennale for her works in the Luxembourg pavilion, she was relatively unknown in the art world. In 2006, she had her first solo museum exhibition in New York at MoMA's P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center. She has exhibited her work internationally, including The Renaissance Society in Chicago; Museet for Samtidskunst in Roskilde, Denmark; Moderna Museet in Stockholm; The LIST Center at MIT, and an artist's residency at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
The daughter of a violinist and a pianist, Su-Mei Tse is not only an artist but she is also a classically trained cellist. Her works often incorporate rhythmic or musical elements, and sometimes include actual musical performances.
The two videos now on view at SAAM are synched on a seven-minute cycle. Modern and contemporary art curator Michael Darling has spaced them in the gallery so they complement each other like dancers performing a duet in a ballet. You enter the gallery and the sound from one will cue you into a thoughtful choreography of viewing each work in turn.
In Mistelpartition (Mistlescore) (2006), Tse, in collaboration with Jean Philippe Deslandes, uses a tree line outlined against the sky and rolling hills as musical notation. The trees are leafless, in their winter state, but ethereal clumps of mistletoe embrace their branches. Tse visualizes the white bunches of mistletoe as the tones of Shostakovich's "Cello Concerto No.1 in E Flat Major. OP107"
The viewer is able to follow the music through the landscape by following the notes as the score progresses as sound, nature and art combine in a beautiful unity. The Grand Orchestre Symphonic de RTL, under the baton of Leopold Kager, recorded the concerto. Animated flashes of light cued to the tones of the vibraphone as the camera slowly pans across the landscape punctuate the six minute and 49 second journey.
The Yellow Mountain (2004) depicts a mountainous Chinese landscape that is elegantly changed by a digital yellow sun rising between the misty peaks, while a traditional song, performed by Francoise Groben, adds an otherworld ambience to the piece. The video projector is set on a vertical axis creating a form not unlike the magnificent scrolls of Chinese painting, which SAAM has in its collection.
The artificial sun rises as if the viewer is facing east. Ordinal directions are thrown out the window, as the peregrination of the faux sun keeps moving toward the upper right and then travels across the top into a vanishing point. The artist makes a profound point about the limits of veracity that digital media can claim.
Two sculptures and a photograph accompany the video pieces. SUMY (2001) is a small sculpture in the form of headphones. Here the artist has playfully switched speakers for seashells encased in clear cubes. The title is a double pun playing on the artist's name and the electronics multinational SONY.
"Bird Cage" is located in an adjacent gallery and uses neon tubes to articulate this well-known form. Tse's photograph "Pieds bandes" from 2000 has been inserted next to a pair of "Golden Lotus" shoes, which describe the disturbing tradition of feet binding from ancient Chinese culture.
"East Wind" is both an artist's personal journey balancing the traditions of Asia and Europe and an open invitation for the viewer to make their own passage across space, time and culture. It has the power to take reality and twist it into the mists on the mountain showing how fragile our tentative grasp on the subject really is.
East Wind by Su-Mei Tse runs through Dec. 7 at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, which is located in Volunteer Park. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday, with extra hours on Thursday to 9 p.m. The museum is closed on Mondays.
Steven Vroom writes about the visual arts for the Capitol Hill Times. He is the host of the Visual Art pod cast Art Radio Seattle at www.vroomjournal.com. He can be reached at editor@capitolhilltimes.com.
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