No Fruit at the Root

Beijing Commune

Until January 28

No Fruit at the Root is set out as a maze that moves between dark and light spaces, and through three works that focus the viewer’s gaze so intensely on texture and surface detail that the subjects and sculptures themselves are effaced. The effect is not so much disorientating as displacing.

‘Initially, my interests in reflecting on the differences, appearances and unanimities between surface and essence came about from the split personalities inside myself and some of the people around me,’ says artist Hu Xiaoyuan of the wood-and-silk sculptures she has been creating in recent years. The pieces, also titled ‘No Fruit at the Root’, are placed carefully across the floor – geometric shapes in silent conversation with each other. Each discarded block, pillar and joist is partly whitewashed; the surface is then shrouded by taut silk, upon which thin traces of black ink have been laid, mimicking the texture of the wood grain underneath.

The two video works that accompany this are also about the translucency of surface. In ‘See’, the original subject is almost imperceptible – an undulating, white, liquid-like shape, moving across a creamier white background. ‘Drown Dust’, the three-channel video on display in a darkened room, looks closely at corals, the warp and weft in the edge of a fabric and a board that, in close up, is spiked with splinters and rough edges. all of these works are vestiges of wider experiences – other films shot by the artist; objects found in the city or in her studio – but the sense of fleeting impressions is one that can leave viewers pleasantly spooked. The jarring and even limited nature of the works does not diminish the overall sense of otherness, of deposits, left by this intriguing exhibition. Clare Pennington

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

Industrial action: Xie Molin

Xie Molin's solo exhibition is at Beijing Commune Sat 1-October 13.

The dusty roads and piles of trash that choke the north-eastern suburb of Heiqiao are unlikely to feature on any postcards. And yet here you’ll find a quietly cooking hotbed of creativity. This community of artists is where Xie Molin, one of Beijing’s up-and-coming talents, has spent the last two years creating his own brand of abstract, minimalist-inspired paintings.

Xie is in his early thirties, but his earnest-yet-quiet mannerisms make him seem younger. He cuts a slight figure and, as he talks, his eyes are wide under their furrowed, messy brows. He has been preparing for his upcoming exhibition at Beijing Commune; a series of carefully crafted paintings limited to a palette of black, white and yellow.

The artist has attracted attention for his abstract canvases, not least because he has discarded that most traditional of painter’s tools, the brush. ‘People have been saying for quite a while that painting is dead. It no longer excites people’s interest, because they think the possibilities in the medium are limited,’ Xie says, leaning forward.

Instead of a brush, he uses computers and self-built industrial-style machinery. At the back of the studio is a large contraption that he designed with a professional engineer to create his paintings. A table-like surface is straddled by a pronged machine, connected to an old desk top by a series of wires. It looks like a mad scientist’s loom as it begins weaving its pre-programmed patterns into heavy-quilted paint. 

When we visit, Xie’s busy creating a large piece of pure lemon-yellow; there’s a loud revving as the steel rods move across the surface, delicately scraping a thick layer of the freshest paint. Sometimes they dip up and down, as the machine carves lines into the wet gloop. The last attempt at this very work lies slumped against the wall, to be discarded. ‘Too rough, too many bubbles,’ he says, running his hands over it. ‘I’d like it to be perfect.’

Xie hopes to break new ground with his technique, which has demanded extreme patience and plenty of experimentation. Some observers say that he already has. ‘Normally the brush is operated by painters to express their vision. Using different tools brings new possibilities to painting,’ Xie explains. But it’s not just about updating the tool, it’s also about using it to create technically proficient, original and arresting art. ‘The final word in my work, for me, is still in the aesthetic feeling.’

‘The traditional way of painting by hand is very difficult to be excellent at nowadays, and it feels forced anyway,’ he says. ‘I can paint well by developing in the digital world we live in. I still hope that people will be drawn in by the work. A good artist should always want people to stay in front of his paintings.’

Abstraction in art, of course, is nothing new, and neither is resorting to methods that leave the brush behind. US artists such as Ad Reinhardt made abstract pieces back in the ’40s. The legendary Jackson Pollock reinvented his relationship with the canvas by hovering above it, dripping and dolloping paint from the air. In fact, early last year, Pace Beijing showcased one of Xie’s works alongside those of Mark Rothko and Donald Judd, the founding fathers of American abstract expressionism and minimalism, seeking a visual connection between the works.

Xie’s paintings possess, thanks to the machine he built last year, a certain aesthetic of their own. Shadows play over the patterned grooves that texture their surfaces, sliding under your eyes as you move before them. Using subtly shifting gradients of colour adds to the effect of industrial perfection and detail, though the mechanical nature of the work is not so obvious to the naked eye. Works that look like they could be screen-savers in photographs come to life in the flesh.

‘I like minimalism,’ says Xie, as he discusses the inspirations for his work, citing late US artist Fred Sandbank as a favourite. ‘I feel that it is closer to art itself. Its possibilities are not easily described in words.’

But while Sandbank’s works, which consisted of multi-coloured strings stretched across galleries, or wooden blocks with lines carved into them, were intended to be experienced purely on an aesthetic level, Xie’s are also consciously about wider society. ‘I would call the yellow here “the Confident Yellow”, because as an identity and a skin colour [in China], “yellow” has not been confident in the last 100 years.’

The yellows and blacks in these paintings might seem like tired metaphors for Chinese hair and skin, but they represent something deep for the artist. ‘We grew fearful and unconfident because of losing wars with Westerners,’ he says. ‘The Olympics show this clearly: we want to win lots of gold medals to show that we are able.’ Xie’s experiences working in a Chinese takeaway in Edinburgh and getting to know illegal Chinese aliens there took their toll – he dreams of a China with more to be proud of. Then there is the machine. Industrialised China, with all its complexities, its positives and its downfalls, is rather like the undulating grooves in Xie’s works.

Most of all, though, Xie is seeking a new direction for Chinese artists. ‘I think I take art very seriously,’ he sighs before we leave. But then he’s buoyant again, saying that he’ll continue experimenting – perhaps even completely changing his mode of working in five or ten years. Whatever he does, we suspect it will be worth seeing. Clare Pennington

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

Don't trust me: Zhao Yao

You Can't See Me, You Can't See Me is on at the Beijing Commune from June 12 until August 12

Back in 2008, when firereworks rained down upon the Beijing Olympics and affirmed China’s status as a rising global power, Zhao Yao produced the video piece ‘I Love Beijing 999’. Made from more than 30,000 still photographs, each featured the Beijing cityscape with the sun at its centre.

‘I didn’t have much to do at the time, so I spent around 200 days hopping onto buses,’ recalls Zhao. ‘I must have criss-crossed the city on nearly every bus route in Beijing.’ The images were all taken from bus windows, and are a journey through the city in space and time, taking viewers through the deep, dry winter with its pale, hard-blue skies and faraway sun to the melting summer of the capital’s Olympic heyday.

That work’s beauty and symmetry stands in stark contrast to the pieces now littering his studio. Made from flat wooden boards slotted together like paper cut-outs, crooked paint-sculptures – covered in gunk-like masses of acrylic, wire and other materials – lie among keyless keyboards, an electric saw, assorted spray cans and other evidence of Zhao’s recent endeavours. In places, edges of the sculptures are cut into a close pattern of spikes, reminiscent of a digital sound wave.

Each hails from Zhao’s 2011 solo exhibition, I Am Your Night. Drawing upon his training in graphic design, they have been labelled ‘ugly’ by some critics. Others say that they’re a conceptual tease aimed squarely at the art world eyeballing them. However, with a new exhibition in the offing this month, these are perhaps the best clues as to the contents of a show that the artist is keeping very quiet about.

Hailing from Sichuan, Zhao is now just over 30. He finally secured the attention of the art world in 2011, but his work had been evolving over the past five years. ‘I gradually realised I had been informing people about what is so-called “good art”. I had been providing them with a kind of belief about my art. But I soon came to see that this was pointless.’

He compares the change to quitting smoking, working up to a seemingly decisive break with previous concerns to create a more conceptual approach. As part of his newfound focus, he intends to force the audience out of their comfort zone; he wants to prompt viewers into thinking of new ways to revisit the question: ‘What is art?’

As a result, Zhao’s works are ‘no longer concerned with making something that is simply interesting in itself,’ he says. ‘They are informed by observations of what others are looking at, and how they are looking.’

At his studio in Heiqiao, he is working on a painting. Instead of canvas, a wooden frame is wrapped in mass-produced gingham and shows a strong likeness to ‘A Painting of Thought I-10’ (2011), from his previous exhibition. He shows me images of tall sculptures being finished at another space, also similar to those from I Am Your Night.

As we stand over this new, as yet unnamed, piece, he explains: ‘These pictures are imaginative. At the same time they are ready-made, taken from a series used to train kids to think logically; things like colour patterns and exercises to teach them to move shapes around and form a new design. By integrating these lessons with the mass-produced cloth, these appear as abstract works of art.’ Before adding: ‘It’s a bit of a joke because this piece is in itself a very superficial piece of art.’

Arguably, the new exhibition is targeted at people who pay close attention to the art scene. ‘It’s built on the foundations of I Am Your Night, but will alter certain impressions made upon people by some of the pieces,’ he hints, cagey about divulging too much. Most of all, he wants the exhibition to have an element of surprise.

‘I like it more when the audience doesn’t trust the artist’s perspective, when the artist doesn’t trust himself and when the audience doesn’t even trust itself.’ Playing games helps Zhao dodge expectations – as well as questions – but if he wants to convey one thing, he reminds me, it’s this: ‘Don’t trust me; don’t trust anything.’ We believe him. Clare Pennington

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing

Static Electricity: Ma Qiusha exhibition

Showing at Beijing Commune until Thursday 19 April

When a static electric charge builds up, you can feel the air around you change: your skin tingles, your hair stands on end, and then you get the hit! But Ma Qiusha’s latest exhibition isn’t about the moment of inevitable shock. In Mandarin, its title is Jingdian, referring to the static build-up – it’s all about the anticipation.

On the wall of Beijing Commune, three flat screens hang in a row, each showing differently coloured melting ice blocks. In ‘Red/White/Yellow’, the first rectangular lump is made from blood, the second from milk, and the third from urine. We glimpse the first minutes of melting, as the white-frosted texture of each block begins to darken, revealing a clear film of latex over the ice. The colours are meant to recall the coding of the audio jacks you would use to connect a TV to a sound system – a charge locked inside a protective plastic casing (in this case a condom). The artist links this to the intensely private, sexual and even insanitary fluids that make up our daily routine.

Although the link between static and these visceral elements seems a little tenuous, Ma’s works are often unsettling. ‘Token’ shows a dark road illuminated with a single, dim beam, filmed unsteadily as if from the back of a moving trolley. Across the dark tarmac, roughly cut organs are intermittently and violently thrown – a large kidney, brains, a liver – all accompanied by a feline purring, distorted like something from a horror film. Hot steam from the offal fills the screen and quickly disappears.

Ma’s works are as visceral as ever, yet here they are made up of traces, things left undefined. ‘Fog’ is a painting consisting of layers of watercolour built over a pattern of lace. The textures of the material remain on the paper, although the material itself has been removed. We are left only with the remains of bodily fluids, viscera and elements of man-made lace.

If this exhibition evokes in us anything, it’s a feeling of underlying foreboding and mortality. As the title suggests, it’s not about the shocks, but nor is it for the faint-hearted. Clare Pennington

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing