waiting for a living monument

When I open my explorer, I see the news: one person, one hour. The British sculptor Antony Gormley plans to create a huge living monument supported by 2400 volunteers this summer. He said in the video, he wanted use this living monument to express the feeling of people who lived in London and what is more important is to create a new image of London.

The site, Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, has once reserved for statues of Kings and Generals. Now it opens to the ordinary people in London. They can do anything they want on the top of the monument. Every hour, 24 hours a day, 100 days without a break, a different person will make the Plinth their own.

The news reminds me of different definitions of counter-monument and anti-monument which referred in class before. And according to that definition, Gormley's living monument belongs to counter-monument, coz it doesnot throw away the icon of monument and just creates a new format of it. However, this new format has its own meaning which can be seen a symbol impling the resistence to the power politics.

Once been the place only served for upper class of a nation, now everybody can stand on it to make it their own. I want to say that humanity is not only the artist like to show.

See the video followed.


Antony Gormley on the Fourth Plinth from One & Other on Vimeo.

high art or just kitsch?

There is a question always confusing me a lot, what can be said a pure way to approach the real art or something called literature. Contemporary life, thousands and thousands informations surrounds us. There is a result: everything is concerned with money. If we talk about a movie, a book, especially an art work, we will naturally shift our topic to their force on the society. And what is the most obvious point about that is economic benefits they make. People always believe that money is the best way to judge onething triumphs or not, coz it determined whether it is welcomed by customers. But there has another misunderstanding that most people do not make decisions by theirselves, discourse power is always controlled by a few people depending on their taste or business strategy. I say it can be apparently seen in the Contemporary Art Markets both in China and West.

Yesterday I heard a piece of news about the famous artist Damien Hirst. It was said that a Spanish young artist made a sculpture depicting Damien Hirst shoot himself on the head in his famous glass tank with T-shirt painting his famous diamond skull. The work was named 4 the Love of Go(l)d which was borrowed from Hirst's own work For the Love of Gold.

I must admit that I was so suprised when I saw the news. I know it is an irony towards to Damien Hirst and before that I never know this young spanish artist name: Eugenio Merino. He said "I thought that, given that he thinks so much about money, his next work could be that he shot himself. Like that the value of his work would increase dramatically, Obviously, though, he would not be around to enjoy it."

He thought that Damien Hirst was too concerned about the profit of his work instead of art itself. indubitably, Hirst becomes the richest artist recent years relying on his bizarre art works including the diamond skull and the dead shark. To some extend, art will be a kitsch to Capitalism. Even if artists self do not mean this, others will throw this title on them. Just like everything has two side, in this event, money which once made the success of Hirst in the Art way now pushes him to another way of KITSCH.

But I wonder if this is Hirst's fault? No, I will not say that. Damien Hirst just did what he wanted and by accident he made it. That is the institution of Capitalism made Hirst succeed. People want to see something different, astonished, making them hurt. Curiosity and autosadism maybe are the two aspects in human nature and Damien Hirst captured that. He knows what is the weekness of human being , also of Capitalism. So, it is not art's business but Capitalism's.

And next, you see what happened. Eugenio Merino, this young Spanish artist used the same way of Hirst to make it anyway. By that, he earned himself $ 41,ooo, though it was just a piece of cake compared with Hirst's £50,000,000 diamond skull. But his perfect personal show made himself known to all in the name of GOD.

So, a pity, maybe. I don't know what else I can say. Art becomes a joke in my eyes, but I have not any strength to stop.

Right Hand, Left Hand

The couples in the Contemporary Art


Venue: Shanghai MoMA


Exhibition period: 2008.12.21-2009.2.22


Visiting the exhibition in a rainy day, I with my friends had not any conceptions of what the exhibition wanted to tell before we arrived there.

What Right hand, Left hand meant? and what was the relationship between it and art? I was so confused even after I finished my trip. A few weeks passed, when I thought all of the exhibits I saw, something came across my mind.


It could be said INFLUENCE, the influence between people and people, man and woman, creator and spectator, the influence that we even ignore but truely exists. People could easliy notice the things happening to us and seldom catch the influences of them, but the influences even subtle influences could slowly change people in an unobtrusive way.


The exhibition said so. Seeing through the whole exhibition, the artists who participating were 15 couples, like Qu Guangci and Xiang Jing, Rong Rong and Yingli, Chen Ke and Cao Jinping, Chen Shuxia and Liu Qinghe , etc. They are all active in the Chinese Contemporay Art Market. The exhibition wants to explore the influence between the couples that they try to make on each others.

In those art works, I noticed this one which created by Xiang Jing, one of the most famous contemporary sculptural artists. This piece of works was one of the two , another was two naked women named WE.

She was good at using naked woman sculpture to describe the lonely and ambigous relationship between people. The details of the sculpture were so meticulous as real human being. The expression on her face implied the emotion inner, especially being a woman.

And then I turned back to her husband Qu Guangci's sculpture named EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLIE. That was his personal style I could recognized at the first sight. He made a series of works in this style to express the trauma which pushed upon on the people who experienced in the recent 30 years after Cutrual Revolution.

In this art work, a little figure sculpture stood on the top of the branch. In my point of view, he represents the icon of the leader in the contemporary China. Maybe it was another expression of Politic Art.

In these couple's art works, one was from the feminine angle and another was in the masculine eyes. They were couples, so they shared the same conception in their works but did a different way to express it. Xiang Jing was more emotional and Qu Guangci felt like a bit more sensible.

Chinese Contemporary Art Retrospective Exhibition

The another exhibition I visited in Shanghai is DoLand Five Years-Chinese Contemporary Art Retrospective Exhibition( 2003.12.28-2008.12.28).

The exhibiton retrospects the development road of Chinese contemporary art in the past five years, and it can be said an important record of what is happening in China now.

There are more than 46 artists participating the exhibiton, many of them are active in the recent art market such as Wang Guangyi, Zhao Bandi, Zhang Dali, Song Tao, Gao Brothers and so on.

The exhibition mainly focuses on the artists in Shanghai and other places near Shanghai. They represents the central force in the Chinese contemporary art. Not only a retrospective exhibition it is, but also a new experimental try in the art road.


Some of exhibits have already been famous in the art sphere. Like Zhao Bandi's panda. And I am also happy to see more art works that I have never seen. Like Sun Xun's video art.

More and more Chinese contemporary artists emerging in the global art markets recent years, which in certain ways raises the reputation of Chinese artists. But in other way, political-pop and kitsh culture dominates the trend of art. In this exhibition, we can easily see that from these art works.

CHEMA MADOZ's Poetica

Exhibition period: 2009.1.11-2009.2.28

Venue: Spanish Consulate General in Shanghai

In the sping festival last month, i came back my home town Shanghai and visited several exhibitions there. Here is one of those.

The exhibition is named POETICA, a spanish word meaning poetic. It is a photography show operated by the Spanish photographer Chema Madoz. His works focus on the subtle things in the dairy life that people used to ignore. He uses some trick ways to fool the spectators' eyes in order to establish a model that makes viewers think deeply.

Like this photo, the auther hides a crutch in it pretending to be a banister. In the first sight of this, you could not ingnore of this subtle difference. But when you approach the photo, you could find the trick.

In the auther's words, he wants to express the existence of truth in front of the people. In some ways, it looks like the art works of post-modernity which aims to overthrow the traditional social ideology.

And in this photo, it describe a metal spoon in a glass and coming down like a soft sponge. That is impossible! How could be a metal spoon soft like this! You will be amazing when you see this photo. But that is the point what auther like to tell.

Thinking if the photo transfers the truth or not. We use to think that photography is a kind of tools recording the things really happen, but in another view, it could be not. The more you trust the photos, the more you will be cheated. That is the paradox of photography especially in the recent world.

It is the superrealism style that looks like Man Ray's works. Chema Madoz wants to post a new kind of view to explore the details in the daily life. Maybe it is not so innovative in the contemporary art, but the exhibiton hold in Shanghai is good for people to be learned of much more about art.