Whispers in the Vacuum
“Ce que le postmodernenomme hybridation consiste à greffer sur le tronc d’une culture populairedevenue uniforme des <<spécificités>> la plupart du temps caricaturales, comme on parfume avecdifférentes flavours synthétiques les sucreries industrielles。”
——Nicolas Bourriaud <<Radicant--pour uneesthetique de la globalisation>>
Theongoing exchange between information and business, thanks to the ever growingglobalization, has plunge the world into the torrents of auto capitalism. Newtechnologies coexist with new communication models and new business models,gradually leading the socialized public subjectivity to a huge community inautomatic growth. In the vacuum left by the vanished subjectivity theindividuals, mutually independent and adapted, are found in agreement. A bigstructural movement is under way in the exploratory and meticulouslyinterlinked context, revealing more and more about capitalism as an externallydiversified and internally normalized compact community.
“He (Xia Hang) manages to keepa distance from the naïve cartoon style to build a new world of his own, aworld of sculptures and game, something rare in the current art scene in China.”
—— Sui Jianguo
Like aplayful hip-hop singer, Xia talks about his own world. From the piglet in hisearly works to Alu and the teasing gesture series of “fuck”, his rebelliousinstinct has been searching his series of portrait-like works for hissubjectivity. No doubt such self-examination in him enables the artist to getinspiration from his own experience. Assembling toys is his hobby for manyyears. The impulse formed during his mischievous years leads him to one andanother structure. He even converted his studio into something nothing lessthan a big factory of toys, in which Mickey Mouse, locomotives, sharks, spines,spiders, etc., are crammed, disassembled, and reassembled into something newaccording to his new logic. Indulged in pleasure from narcissism and satisfactionfrom deconstructing traditional models, Xia looks for a code-like connectionbetween the free individual and the pubic system, raising questions as to whatkind of logic, form or combination can meet the demand for coexistence betweenhuman emotions and the environment that is modulated from the outside.
Deconstruction, compromise andextension
Weoften find ourselves obsessed with attention, attention to the self, attention fromthe center and attention to each other. The silent communication in this wayshows our longing for self-understanding and continued curiosity for all kindsof existence. With the help of simple instinct and unreserved self-examination,artists are determined to explore the possibility to penetrate the depth of theinternalized cultural landscape. The body in this case becomes an opencontainer for a rich variety of cultural elements. Xia approaches thesubjective world with qualities unique to the animal world and deconstructs itwith mechanical precision, so while detecting similarities within theindividual, Xia succeeds not only in retaining the original meaning of theindividual but also in focusing more on the connection between the individualparts that have been in the system of diversity. The homogeneous structureenables different cultures to meet and impact on one another, presenting apicture of connection and exclusion that reminds one of “pluralism = monism”,Deleuze’s paradoxical formula. Culture is becoming milder and milder, more andmore compromising and ambiguous. Trapped in the rootless and confusingentrophy, the individual longs all the more for a definite, stable and lastingworld for the self, a pluralist community rooted in primary impulse.
Deconstruction also helps to set up an opensystem in the vacuum between different cultural modes, in other words, anindependent zone of hybridity beyond the standard aesthetic system, anaesthetic category without standard or class. It is a stimulus to the artist toabandon the conventional cultural mode and to open for himself a door of desirethat leads to all directions. The desire is no more directional or modeled, andthe individuals can therefore take the advantage of the freedom of productionto embrace subjectivism and narcissism, giving the utmost expression to theirown world. In the pluralist subjectivity an open system is thus to beestablished, in which the subjects are linked but do not interfere with eachother. Xia’s cross-cutting treatment of the spine, themosquitoes, Mickey Mouse, the poppy leaves and the electric saw not onlyhighlights his unique aesthetic perspective but also adds to the fluidity andtransferability of the original field of these objects.
It has something to do with cultural storage. Inreference to Deleuze’s theory of Rhizome, grass grew from the center andneither coming nor going is a ready concept. Human beings gather in the centerand grow therein, so their nature is not definable. By means of deconstruction theartist establishes between different entities the principle of interiorheterogeneity and the possibility of indiscriminate sharing, so that multipleentities can constantly encounter, leading not only to the fusion of differentcultures but also the extension of the whole cultural system.
Fluid energy and conditions fromjudgment of tastes
Thesocial conditions in entrophy loosen the connection between the individual andthe structure of the original social system. Due to lack of limitation,liberalism and rebelliousness stimulates creativity in artists, making strongerthe impulse to tear down the system and free themselves of olds conventions. Artistsabandon the life they used to live and turn to a kind of society that is hotand confused in molecular dynamics. This orderless and rootless state, however,is permeated with what Xia often talks about as “fascinating energy”. Thesurface of the mortise-tenon structure made of iron and steel, together withthe changing images reflected by the electroplated surface, highlights vividlythe flow of energy in the course of deconstruction, so as to reveal thefeatures of the socially open image system in the contemporary world and themind of the individual. While symbolizing the industrialized cultural role itplays in the social system, it carries out the function of social comfort andsocial recombination, ushering in a culturally industrialized era in which anindividual enjoys great freedom of art production. With milk-like permeation,the fluid and smooth images on the surface of the same quality imply theintrinsic homogeneous quality of culture, as well as the possibility ofbuilding a ductile and barrier-free system. The judgment of aesthetic tastetoday, the artist reiterates, is formed on the basis of a common world, asocial one, one characterized with mutual communication between subjects,rather than a skeptical or a tragic world view. To sum up, it will be an“eternally open” system nourished by open technologies and free communication.
Individual’s restoration and theecology of hybridity: New self-awareness and longing for a new modern society
Thedisintegration of mode provides opportunities for individuals to restorethemselves and rebuild landscapes. The individuals are no longer confined bythe established paradigm, and moreover their natural emotions break away fromthe original value system, paving the way for what Heidegger often referred toas “openness” that characterizes the existence of an individual in the public“we-world”. By means of deconstruction, Xia hopes to offer at the small gapbetween the individual and the public landscape some link that arise from theroot, starting the communication between Heidegger’s open individual world andthe public we-world (landscape).
Theindividual and the public landscape, while penetrating each other, are eagerfor some connection and mutual correction that come from the root. Xia’s worksproduced in the energy filed, like a typical eastern cultural attempt, i.e., toplant once again the multi-culture and the landscape of memory in themechanical body, in order to reach the basis of the co-existence of the body,the system and multi-culture in an Eastern context.
In thehistory that has never seen real “cultural fusion”, we can find wild longingfor change and irresistible impulse to destroy. Like a lonely whisperer in thedark wilderness, Xia is bent on finding a system of coexistence, hybridity ofindividual experience, emotions and information in this post-Darwinist worldpredominated by a natural law common in the animal world. The body becomes abridge joining the primitive impulse and a multiple world, allowing possibilityof random growth. In the artist’s unrestrained effort to stand aloof from theconventions to pursue the quality of life, we find an idealist, whose life impulse,as well as the private, sentimental and introspective life that is well wrappedin passion, might be the motive power for the individuals in the contemporaryworld, in the spirit of eastern mentality, to build a social community and anideal mode of existence. How to rebuild a community and how to maintain theindependent and regenerative connection between individuals have become aprimary concern for Asian artists today.
Local trend and global experience
Landscapeof fragmentation is no longer something new, and to pick up the fragments willprobably become a paramount task in the future. Due to multiple relativism, oursociety gives up uniform standards, and in its wake, the conventional publicvalue system was invalidated. Our landscape that has been there for so long isnot totally in ruin, however, and it is growing unchecked in the absence ofstereotyped and sublimed modernist standards.
Liketheir fathers, these youths, with essentialism complex, keep trying toestablish an everlasting and stable community. In this large-scale structuralmovement, Xia, with his deconstruction series via fluid images, intends to finda way to put in symbiosis our awareness of “the self” and the modern milieu inthe framework of traditional natural philosophy, a bidirectional open systembetween naturalist philosophy and auto capitalism, the former is centered onthe release of instinctive desire and the latter is formed in the later stageof globalization. Such observation enables the artist to approach problems ofpublic concern on the global level from a local perspective, providing the newgeneration with a new way of interpreting in the global milieu. By focusing onthe self-adaptation in a world in drastic change, the artist reveals thetransformation individuals experience as subjects while deeply involved inglobalization in the East. In the future cultural landscape based on newtechnology and new life model, the constantly changing human subjectivity andthe expanding autonomous social system, an open system in vacuum that allowsbidirectional growth will be a great impetus to cultural fluidity. The youngindividuals are embracing this trend, and a new biological form of life will playa leading role in the world. The principle of openness can lead to the mostdaring cultural infiltration and accumulation, which will take us to a worldthat is open and in transformation, and will continue to extend in a brand newand open perspective.
Su Lei
May 27, 2016
Whispers in the Vacuum
“Ce que le postmodernenomme hybridation consiste à greffer sur le tronc d’une culture populairedevenue uniforme des <<spécificités>> la plupart du temps caricaturales, comme on parfume avecdifférentes flavours synthétiques les sucreries industrielles。”
——Nicolas Bourriaud <<Radicant--pour uneesthetique de la globalisation>>
Theongoing exchange between information and business, thanks to the ever growingglobalization, has plunge the world into the torrents of auto capitalism. Newtechnologies coexist with new communication models and new business models,gradually leading the socialized public subjectivity to a huge community inautomatic growth. In the vacuum left by the vanished subjectivity theindividuals, mutually independent and adapted, are found in agreement. A bigstructural movement is under way in the exploratory and meticulouslyinterlinked context, revealing more and more about capitalism as an externallydiversified and internally normalized compact community.
“He (Xia Hang) manages to keepa distance from the naïve cartoon style to build a new world of his own, aworld of sculptures and game, something rare in the current art scene in China.”
—— Sui Jianguo
Like aplayful hip-hop singer, Xia talks about his own world. From the piglet in hisearly works to Alu and the teasing gesture series of “fuck”, his rebelliousinstinct has been searching his series of portrait-like works for hissubjectivity. No doubt such self-examination in him enables the artist to getinspiration from his own experience. Assembling toys is his hobby for manyyears. The impulse formed during his mischievous years leads him to one andanother structure. He even converted his studio into something nothing lessthan a big factory of toys, in which Mickey Mouse, locomotives, sharks, spines,spiders, etc., are crammed, disassembled, and reassembled into something newaccording to his new logic. Indulged in pleasure from narcissism and satisfactionfrom deconstructing traditional models, Xia looks for a code-like connectionbetween the free individual and the pubic system, raising questions as to whatkind of logic, form or combination can meet the demand for coexistence betweenhuman emotions and the environment that is modulated from the outside.
Deconstruction, compromise andextension
Weoften find ourselves obsessed with attention, attention to the self, attention fromthe center and attention to each other. The silent communication in this wayshows our longing for self-understanding and continued curiosity for all kindsof existence. With the help of simple instinct and unreserved self-examination,artists are determined to explore the possibility to penetrate the depth of theinternalized cultural landscape. The body in this case becomes an opencontainer for a rich variety of cultural elements. Xia approaches thesubjective world with qualities unique to the animal world and deconstructs itwith mechanical precision, so while detecting similarities within theindividual, Xia succeeds not only in retaining the original meaning of theindividual but also in focusing more on the connection between the individualparts that have been in the system of diversity. The homogeneous structureenables different cultures to meet and impact on one another, presenting apicture of connection and exclusion that reminds one of “pluralism = monism”,Deleuze’s paradoxical formula. Culture is becoming milder and milder, more andmore compromising and ambiguous. Trapped in the rootless and confusingentrophy, the individual longs all the more for a definite, stable and lastingworld for the self, a pluralist community rooted in primary impulse.
Deconstruction also helps to set up an opensystem in the vacuum between different cultural modes, in other words, anindependent zone of hybridity beyond the standard aesthetic system, anaesthetic category without standard or class. It is a stimulus to the artist toabandon the conventional cultural mode and to open for himself a door of desirethat leads to all directions. The desire is no more directional or modeled, andthe individuals can therefore take the advantage of the freedom of productionto embrace subjectivism and narcissism, giving the utmost expression to theirown world. In the pluralist subjectivity an open system is thus to beestablished, in which the subjects are linked but do not interfere with eachother. Xia’s cross-cutting treatment of the spine, themosquitoes, Mickey Mouse, the poppy leaves and the electric saw not onlyhighlights his unique aesthetic perspective but also adds to the fluidity andtransferability of the original field of these objects.
It has something to do with cultural storage. Inreference to Deleuze’s theory of Rhizome, grass grew from the center andneither coming nor going is a ready concept. Human beings gather in the centerand grow therein, so their nature is not definable. By means of deconstruction theartist establishes between different entities the principle of interiorheterogeneity and the possibility of indiscriminate sharing, so that multipleentities can constantly encounter, leading not only to the fusion of differentcultures but also the extension of the whole cultural system.
Fluid energy and conditions fromjudgment of tastes
Thesocial conditions in entrophy loosen the connection between the individual andthe structure of the original social system. Due to lack of limitation,liberalism and rebelliousness stimulates creativity in artists, making strongerthe impulse to tear down the system and free themselves of olds conventions. Artistsabandon the life they used to live and turn to a kind of society that is hotand confused in molecular dynamics. This orderless and rootless state, however,is permeated with what Xia often talks about as “fascinating energy”. Thesurface of the mortise-tenon structure made of iron and steel, together withthe changing images reflected by the electroplated surface, highlights vividlythe flow of energy in the course of deconstruction, so as to reveal thefeatures of the socially open image system in the contemporary world and themind of the individual. While symbolizing the industrialized cultural role itplays in the social system, it carries out the function of social comfort andsocial recombination, ushering in a culturally industrialized era in which anindividual enjoys great freedom of art production. With milk-like permeation,the fluid and smooth images on the surface of the same quality imply theintrinsic homogeneous quality of culture, as well as the possibility ofbuilding a ductile and barrier-free system. The judgment of aesthetic tastetoday, the artist reiterates, is formed on the basis of a common world, asocial one, one characterized with mutual communication between subjects,rather than a skeptical or a tragic world view. To sum up, it will be an“eternally open” system nourished by open technologies and free communication.
Individual’s restoration and theecology of hybridity: New self-awareness and longing for a new modern society
Thedisintegration of mode provides opportunities for individuals to restorethemselves and rebuild landscapes. The individuals are no longer confined bythe established paradigm, and moreover their natural emotions break away fromthe original value system, paving the way for what Heidegger often referred toas “openness” that characterizes the existence of an individual in the public“we-world”. By means of deconstruction, Xia hopes to offer at the small gapbetween the individual and the public landscape some link that arise from theroot, starting the communication between Heidegger’s open individual world andthe public we-world (landscape).
Theindividual and the public landscape, while penetrating each other, are eagerfor some connection and mutual correction that come from the root. Xia’s worksproduced in the energy filed, like a typical eastern cultural attempt, i.e., toplant once again the multi-culture and the landscape of memory in themechanical body, in order to reach the basis of the co-existence of the body,the system and multi-culture in an Eastern context.
In thehistory that has never seen real “cultural fusion”, we can find wild longingfor change and irresistible impulse to destroy. Like a lonely whisperer in thedark wilderness, Xia is bent on finding a system of coexistence, hybridity ofindividual experience, emotions and information in this post-Darwinist worldpredominated by a natural law common in the animal world. The body becomes abridge joining the primitive impulse and a multiple world, allowing possibilityof random growth. In the artist’s unrestrained effort to stand aloof from theconventions to pursue the quality of life, we find an idealist, whose life impulse,as well as the private, sentimental and introspective life that is well wrappedin passion, might be the motive power for the individuals in the contemporaryworld, in the spirit of eastern mentality, to build a social community and anideal mode of existence. How to rebuild a community and how to maintain theindependent and regenerative connection between individuals have become aprimary concern for Asian artists today.
Local trend and global experience
Landscapeof fragmentation is no longer something new, and to pick up the fragments willprobably become a paramount task in the future. Due to multiple relativism, oursociety gives up uniform standards, and in its wake, the conventional publicvalue system was invalidated. Our landscape that has been there for so long isnot totally in ruin, however, and it is growing unchecked in the absence ofstereotyped and sublimed modernist standards.
Liketheir fathers, these youths, with essentialism complex, keep trying toestablish an everlasting and stable community. In this large-scale structuralmovement, Xia, with his deconstruction series via fluid images, intends to finda way to put in symbiosis our awareness of “the self” and the modern milieu inthe framework of traditional natural philosophy, a bidirectional open systembetween naturalist philosophy and auto capitalism, the former is centered onthe release of instinctive desire and the latter is formed in the later stageof globalization. Such observation enables the artist to approach problems ofpublic concern on the global level from a local perspective, providing the newgeneration with a new way of interpreting in the global milieu. By focusing onthe self-adaptation in a world in drastic change, the artist reveals thetransformation individuals experience as subjects while deeply involved inglobalization in the East. In the future cultural landscape based on newtechnology and new life model, the constantly changing human subjectivity andthe expanding autonomous social system, an open system in vacuum that allowsbidirectional growth will be a great impetus to cultural fluidity. The youngindividuals are embracing this trend, and a new biological form of life will playa leading role in the world. The principle of openness can lead to the mostdaring cultural infiltration and accumulation, which will take us to a worldthat is open and in transformation, and will continue to extend in a brand newand open perspective.
Su Lei
May 27, 2016