SHANGHAI ZENDAI MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

SO PARCHED - I COULD DRINK A CASE OF ART

In recent months the art scene experienced something of a drought, yet the plum rain has brought with it a refreshing downpour, aesthetically speaking.

One rainy afternoon we entered that crypt of darkness, Zendai Museum, and we made our way towards a flashing light. Much like Dorothy, we pulled back the velvet curtain and beheld a surreal sight: no, not the Wizard of Oz, rather a series of sculpted heads impaled upon iron rods fixed to a rapidly rotating central axis. In seeming synchronization with the flashing strobe, the heads’ mouths opened to reveal regurgitated cud. This veritable vomitron suggested the thoughts of William Boroughs after visiting the cows at the county fair.

This disturbing, though remarkable, piece by Gregory Barsamian was built upon the concept of the zoetrope, and just one of the many wonderful works we encountered at Flash to Pixel. Passing by Du Zhenjun’s (∂≈’æ˝) video tableau of an outdoor market, we triggered a series of floor-mounted electric fans.

The resulting gust created a mini-whirlwind of newspapers, vegetables and fowl. Surprised but unruffled, we moved on to Thomas McIntosh’s Undulation, an expansive rectangular box holding a shallow trough of water. The box emitted sound, which caused ripples on the water that, in turn, reflected a spasmodic spectrum of colour on the wall.

Unlike many of the tentative fumblings into media art we’ve seen in the recent past – i.e. the last Shanghai Biennale – the artists represented here have proved that art takes precedence over media.

Equally interesting was Ji Wenyu’s (º∆Œƒ”⁄) The Scene is Better Here. His day-glo acrylic pastiches of gaudy consumer imagery featuring bovine breasted women and slimy porcine men provided a sharp contrast to his more wholesome cloth sculptures. The exquisite handmade details, including individually formed tree leaves and intricate roof tiles were a subtle reminder of the sacrifices we’ve made to mass production. His cloth bas-relief, So Far Away, seemed to encapsulate our estrangement from nature. It features a young boy perched on a balcony reaching out towards a mountain shrouded in a mist of medical-grade gauze. Indeed, Ji’s sculptures were so pregnant with meaning they were virtually bursting at the seams. He deserves praise for holding his vision together while crossing into a new medium.

from ART DIGEST

Jul, 2006