WHY SHOULD WE ASK THE HISTORY? - RE-EVALUATION OF SUN XIAOCHEN'S WORKS

China's saint Confucius has a famous saying "time passes by without a break like the flowing river" which means that the ancient Chinese likened time to a river and they standing on the bank have feeling for downstream like that for time. The future passing by the people has become the present, which only is sawn from their eyes, so people have not a chance to face the present which has become the past. Compared with Westerners’ thoughts of the future in front of people, the ancient Chinese’ idea of the future behind them is more appropriate, because the latter recognizes the present will come from the past when people will face more surprise. Therefore, the cycle is very prominent in oriental concept, and time is actually the single and eternal present, not linear relationship. In most cases, the themes of oriental art works are not relative to time, and those chrysanthemums, bamboo, and withered vine always are beyond the specific time because the scenes on the screen are formed through different observation time.

Although the “Human Desires”, “Balance”, “Belief”, and “Promotion–Demotion” under “Kacha-Insight” by young artist Sun Xiaochen, are the works in the particular space, rather than ancient traditional painting. But the four works still reflect the tradition of the East, also beyond the linear concept of time. The birth of the camera is less than two hundred years in the West, but “round-backrest chair”, “figure of Buddha”, “balance”, and “screen” are all from the ancient China. Subjects from different times and geographical space are in the same space, thus it can be inferred that time for artists is not necessarily a linear relationship. In other words, time is the present and the future is behind; the history is in front us and the present is the history, the present is the future.

Because of casting off the entanglement of linear time, those subjects which originally don’t belong to different nodes in a specific time are given strong energy under the comprehensive concept of Sun Xiaochen, leading to strange psychological feelings of the audience. Once getting rid off the limits of living environment of the Earth on the speed, time and space is a pair complementary existence with close link: when time extends, the space will shrink; when time contracts, the space expands. A series of studies and discoveries in science area during the late 19th and early 20th century, have changed the deep-rooted concept of space and time separation dominated in the Western world for one thousand years, thus the human subjectivity and creativity have been unprecedentedly mobilized and developed. Sun Xiaochen’s bold creation for displaying of objects in different time has shown that the specific space will greatly activate the audience's curiosity and subjective imagination, thus gaining a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional interpretation.

The birth of the camera has changed the way in people’s view for the world for thousands of years, and become an advance item of objective reappearance and things reproduction by mechanical image projection and capture. However, it is noted that the artist does not use the old camera as a finished product, but the color and paint-like and ceramic-fired camera. The mode is different from other materials and elements in the four works which use finished products directly. There is no doubt that, the ceramic camera because of its size and unique texture beyond conventions has become the works of art in our opinions, with the artist's subjective feelings and personal marks. The original mechanical properties and recording functions of the camera have been stripped off and erosion, and the look and texture has been retained and reproduced by the artist deliberately. This suggests that the artist’s camera works remain as visual works, thus such present way displays the whole works with extreme trickiness. The ceramic camera models which has never recorded and can not record historical events and scenes, and those objects representing the traditional social power, desire, faith and fairness stay in the same space, and even endowed with the functions of recording and witnessing the spiritual awareness, social and legal system as well as religious belief by the artist.

Prior to the creation, Sun Xiaochen produced ceramic simulation camera with large size and volume, and I have written that he intended to use the form of visual art to evoke understanding of passing memories, and consciousness of passing time. Camera represents the real world which does not give us a real sense of realism and trust for past, present and future, because in the hands of the artist, the camera having reproduced and witnessed life experiences and social events has already become an antique - the future is not far away from us, but passes by behind us. Therefore, there is not the future, the present is the future, and also the past; to face the history means the future. What is the historical truth? For the love and hate of persons, families and success or failure of the nations for thousands of years, does just the camera recover them? A famous saying is that my camera does not lie. Yes, the camera is a mechanical thing, but the person operating it would be lying. The most loyal things are often most unreliable. Those ceramic camera models without usage have told us it’s vain to try to reveal the historical truth. However, from the four works of “Kacha” two or three years ago, Sun Xiaochen seems to have started think the historical truth from a larger historical perspective and space dimensions. The balance and the solemn figure of Buddha, the round-backrest chair representing rank promotion, and the screen with lust of men and women behind may provide some important clues for interpretation of historical truth, or, the history itself is composed of such events and scenes, built by the people's understanding of these objects.

In any case, Sun Xiaochen has set up the four puzzles for us. We are curious for the disappearing objects in the seemingly absurd, but very real scene works, and reflect on the future and the present spewing from behind us. Because those cameras constantly release the following information to us: questioning the truth of all things including history is everyone's power. Despite those cameras being deprived of record functions, but they created and placed in the exhibition hall by the artist can always evoke our impulse and imagination, and we will examine their visual relationship with those furniture objects on their periphery. We may also be allowed to feel unspeakable experience for person-things-space in a closer distance to them, but it is definite and true that as we are in or face the space created by the artist, our past, conventional and common physical and psychological existence are re-set and combined while all solid things have vanished, everything refers to the place, everything is the present.

Sep 14, 2011