Chai Yiming: Landscape No.1, ink and collage on yunlong paper, 90 x 80 cm, 2008 - 2011
My works are created according to the idea of growth, just like a gradually growing seed. I slowly add things to the painting, but I am merely a sower of seeds who allows my work to develop freely. When they grow for a long time, they become more complicated, and produce many different ideas, so it becomes a narrative language.
When I start to think about painting something, just then something [a magazine cutting or image] pops up and I will find an appropriate place for it in the painting. In this way, meaning is produced through these different combinations.
Mankind has a short history, thus the damage man can do to earth is limited. In the end, we will find out that the trees, stones and rivers are the most powerful. This is the reason why nature occupies such a large area in my works.
Chen Hangfeng: Don’t Move, cut plastic shopping bags, acrylic paint, glue, pins, board, fans, sensor, timer, transformer 120 x 100 x 4 cm, 2011
The Chinese literati of successive generations were proud of copying the paintings of the ancients. Some masters even spent a whole lifetime. The ancients use ink, but I have manipulated acrylic paint combined with cut plastic shopping bags in order to imitate Zhang Xiong’s work "Pine Tree" (1803-1886). I have also installed several fans controlled by a sensor. Plastic shopping bags are essential for modern life. These cheap things have practically overrun every corner of the land. This rampant consumption of plastic is just like the blind pursuit of Chinese traditional culture, which has become a consumer trend.
Nailing the plastic pieces onto the board symbolizes that the culture has already become a specimen, like one found in a museum of archeology or natural history.
Viewers walk up to the painting, and activate the sensor. The sensor sets off the fans, and thus blows the leaves made of plastic bags which rustle in a way seem to bring the specimen to life. The viewer himself becomes an uncertain element, who in looking at the work creates a new visual experience. After the viewer’s departure, the painting recovers its calm – and the work gradually returns to its original shape.
Ji Wenyu Zhu Weibing: New Chinese Potted Landscape, wire, cloth, wood 92 x 65 x 109 cm, 2006
A piece of rock, a gnarled pine tree, a bank of mist, a murmuring brook, a small pavilion, a small arched bridge – these things have always been considered by Chinese to make up a rich poetic scenery, and bonsais are seen as a kind of distillation or refinement of such scenery. Idlers and the scholar officials have continuously played with these symbols and from the contemplation of the bonsai came endless hours of satisfaction.
Since the pursuit of science and Western civilization of the May Fourth Movement and up until the Reform and Opening up, we’ve slowly changed our aesthetic principles. We want to develop! We want to build something! We want to build the most modern cities. But the authorities ambitious investment in urban planning research and realization of these projects are for the purpose of creating a model which can be displayed, to make everyone in the city pay attention to it, to enjoy it together and take satisfaction in showing it off.
Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou provide models for the whole country. They each offer a symbol of ideal modernization for people to appreciate, study and copy. It’s like a life-size big bonsai that we’ve established on land. It makes us sigh, our city is developing so quickly and we have the ability to keep pace with the times – to build a perfect era. Tomorrow will be sweeter than honey.
Shi Jinsong: Over There, Locust tree and a number of animal skeletons made into charcoal installation, variable in size, 2011
The locust tree and the remains of animals were successively turned into charcoal.
They were ground down by the pestle of karma.
Though they still haven’t been turned into ink. We have nevertheless a kind of landscape, just lying over there.
Su Chang: Untitled Mountain No 1, digital print on low acid paper, 60 x 60 cm, 2011
I often prefer the way that our predecessors regarded things. They could easily pick something up at random and master it in one go. So this time, in my work, I wanted to use controllable means and familiar materials, to realize an image of lofty mountain peaks.
Wu Gaozhong: Brilliance No. 2, digital print on Endura paper, 95 × 80 cm, 2003, 3/10
Whose Beauty: About "Rotten Organic Compounds"
When I returned to Xuzhou from Beijing in 2000, I continued with my works – the Tonic Series. Once after soaking some tomatoes in a vat, I then left town for some time. One day, a month later, I came to the studio as before and when lifting the wash basin which covered the glass bowl, I was astonished by the scene before my eyes: those tomatoes (I soaked in the bowl one month earlier) floated on the surface of the vat. They were covered with mold and long white hairs standing upright. I was shocked! It was a magnificent and enchanting scene despite the offensive odor.
I was thoroughly moved and couldn’t imagine a better scene than the one before me. I knew it was a beauty which came from a strange world, and too beautiful to describe. I couldn’t help the arrival of that kind of beauty, yet at the same time I was excited by it. As soon as the gate which lead to that strange place had been opened, I realized that it was too late to close it.
From 2000 to 2003, I indulged in this beauty, and was powerless to ignore the wonderful feeling, which was neither friendly nor aloof; neither real nor illusive; neither distinct nor indistinct. This Rotten Organic Compound wanders between existing and disappearing; between offensive odor and extreme beauty; between happiness and uneasiness, between fear and excitation.
