For most of us, life without books can't be imagined. Yet there was a period in recent Chinese history when few books were permitted. Young people were allowed to read only those documents that reinforced the goals of the government. Of course, Chairman Mao's "Little Red Book" was the best seller.
"Shu: Reinventing Books in Contemporary Chinese Art," the current exhibition at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, provides a provocative exploration of books as an influence on contemporary Chinese artists who were youths during the Cultural Revolution.
They were the city dwellers of China sent off to distant villages to take part in the exhausting manual labor of farming and, through that experience, gain the proper mindset of a comrade in the new order. Only when Mao died in 1976 and the Cultural Revolution ended did they have access to universities and texts.
The intellectual deprivations of the 1960s and '70s were particularly painful because for 2,000 years books had been an important element of Chinese culture. Books were not only symbols of learning but also complements to the arts.
This cultural significance is reflected in the current exhibition, which offers works that uniquely blend the old and the new. It's an exhibit replete with historical references embedded within modern conceptions. It honors the past with the humor and energy of the present.
In the very first gallery, the visitor is dwarfed by the majesty and enormity of the book. In Xu Bing's installation "Book From the Sky" one is enveloped by the book. Walls are covered in text; the center of the gallery is spread with opened volumes abutting one another. Draped from one end of the ceiling to the opposite end is a triple swag of texts that drops down to within feet of the open books. The artist carefully carved each of the wood-block characters used to print the various texts. But not one of them is a real word.
Thus the text in this vast assemblage is empty of meaning and can only be appreciated on an aesthetic and symbolic level. But the installation speaks for the artist who says, "My generation has never had a normal relationship with books. When we should be learning to read, there were no books. When we can't read, we are surrounded by books."
Song Dong expresses his ambivalent relationship to books with a work entitled "A Room of Calligraphy Model Books," which consists of a vast carpet made from conjoined calligraphy lesson books whose pages have been cut into strips but left attached to the book spines. The raffia-like papers rustle in a breeze created by adjacent fans. The words are there, but can be read only by the wind.
The exhibit is wonderfully diverse. The drawings in Gu Xiong's "Cultural Revolution Sketchbooks" show us the conditions experienced in the farmlands by the resettled urban youth, giving us a graphic sense of what life in China was like during these difficult days. Qiu Zhijie's 6-by-12-foot photography installation of a wall of bookshelves gains meaning when you realize that it's not as it seems. In it books belonging to many different people have been combined, and many of them have been given new titles, thus muddying the distinction between the real and the unreal.
Other works contain books that have been burned or that have been embroidered. There's a black Desert Storm book that superimposes national leaders on top of the men and machines of destruction. Some works contain crisply drawn words; others hide meaning on blurred pages. Together, all of these works speak to the energy and intelligence that is driving the contemporary Chinese art movement. In addition they encourage us to reconsider the impact of books in our own lives and to challenge the authority of any single text.
IN ASSOCIATION WITH the Shu exhibit is a video and static art installation, "Ink in Motion: The Art of Sio Ieng Ng." Ink has been a central element of Chinese art and especially its calligraphy for millennia. What Ng has done is free the ink from the brush. Pouring ink and then mixing it with water and other fluids, she creates flowing abstract images - on paper, on canvas - and captures the intermingling of the two properties in mesmerizing videos.
She manipulates the fluid and ink as they run together, creating swells and valleys, cloudlike skyscapes, mystical landscapes. In the video on display the ever-moving forms and patterns come into being and then transform themselves into new shapes and altered contours. The work is a sweeping, feathery abstract whose lyrical shapes meld into and separate from one another as the artist choreographs their movement through her application of the fluids.
In this exhibit organized by the China Institute Gallery in New York and curated by Josh Yiu for the Seattle Asian Art Museum, we have the serene images created by Ng, and wry and thought-provoking works by some of the most highly regarded contemporary Chinese artists. Through the exhibit we gain a deeper sense of the social and personal impact of recent Chinese history and the pervading influence of China's long cultural history.
'SHU: REINVENTING BOOKS IN CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ART'
and
'INK IN MOTION: THE ART OF SIO IENG NG'
Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St., Volunteer Park
Through Dec. 2
Open Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Thursdays until 9
654-3100
Suggested admission $5
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