EXHIBITION SYNOPSIS
About The Magic of Being
1918ArtSPACE is pleased to present The Magic of Being: A group exhibition of Chinese and foreign artists: SONG Gang, PAN Honggang, Micah BLOOM, and Ricardo ARENA whose works have created a disproportional reality by transforming the common and everyday into the marvelous and unreal, thus made us question traditional ideas of time, space, and identity and finally the discovery of a totally new world. This attitude towards reality is so called “Magical Realism”, a term originally used in the 1920s by a German art critic, Franz Roh, to describe a new trend in German painting which combined realism and abstract expressionism. When a highly detailed, realistic and normal setting is injected with magical elements or illogical scenarios, it blurs the boundary between the natural and the supernatural. We are drawn into Jorge Luis Borges’s “Labyrinth of labyrinths”, diving deep into the meanings and mysteriousness in things, in life, in human acts. In the world of magical realism, there is no psychological or logical explanation in the supernatural events. One simply takes it as part of the magic of being, the magic of reality. As one Mexican critic, Luis Leal said, "If you can explain it, then it's not magical realism."
Magical Realism as an aesthetic style has been widely used in relation to literature, art and film. In Latin American literature, it has expressed a new form of social protest, involving issues of conflicts, race, and borders. In the novel “The kingdom of this world” by Cuban writer, Carpentier, writes about extreme aspects of the history and geography of Latin America that are almost unbelievable, but that are in fact true. This “marvelous reality” reveals a crucial purpose of magical realism: a more deep and true reality, gaining self-knowledge and insights into the fundamental aspects of human nature that are not easily understood. In this art exhibition, the magical world is manifested through contaminating reality with dreams, creating a different space of diversity, breathing new life in real objects. We are confronted with an enchanting world full of diversity, variety, and relativity. In the estranged and alienated world of the paintings by Chinese artist, SONG Gang, the role of magical realism explores the transition of a woman from adolescence to adulthood, from innocence to maturity. The woman is isolated, enclosed by dark and cold walls with face partly covered in oppresion. The setting is dark and sombre, except for the strong spotlights shining on the subject, her every actions being watched, like in the theatre. The feminine world is full of danger, threat and mystery, as she goes through a period of physical, emotional and intellectual growth.
The transformation of the common and everyday into the stunning and unreal is found in the highly detailed miniature paintings of American artist, Micah BLOOM, whereby the interior of a typical American home are painted with a distorted perspective. It evokes a dreamy atmosphere, where nothing is as it seems. In a distance, we are observing life of an ordinary American family. But on a closer look, we notice some strange objects and things happening, like 2 girls pulling an overly thin baby apart while being watched by their mother with a Christmas hat in the painting “epiphany final.” An ordinary home is transformed by the mysterious relationships between each subject and its environment. In Ricardo ARENA ’s photographs of the different landscapes of China, cities are magically transformed by merging urban and rural scenes. He created the illusion’s truth like in Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” whereby the imagination and the imaginable are explored in the potentialities of cities. His vision has inspired architects and artists towards the development of modern urban cities. A highway infrastructure covered by natural forestation and skypscrapers looking like mountains from Huangshan are fantastic and real. We have seen buildings defy the laws of physics beyond the human imagination. Even if there is no logical explaination, we choose to believe that these cities exist. Magical realism has created a beautiful space for interaction and diversity.
Magical reminds us that beyond the surface of objects and reality, there lie something mysterious which we may not fully understand. The sculptures of PAN Honggang are not really imaginary beings, but human beings clad in animal skins. All the creatures have humanly features and expressions, delicate and vulnerable. In reality, there exist the supernatural and magical in beings. Magical realism is an art of surprises by showing reality in a new refreshing way. The artists are not creating imaginary beings or world but the discovering of the mysterious relationship between human and its environment like a child in an adventure-filled land.
