The phrase is mawkish and self-deprecating on purpose, as if admitting the impossibility of upwards mobility in a post-communist social order that has within one generation calcified into inequality. Similarly, Weng's catalogue essay takes its title from a generic term that refers to 'poetry and distant places' as a way of describing aspirations that briefly lit up the Sinophone internet.
But the intensity of their colouration, not to mention their dense hanging, also suggests a high-keyed anxiety behind these depictions of absurd leisure from between the cracks of escapist fantasies, a morbid picture emerges. There is a playfulness to these haphazardly stacked compositions.
TEMP TATIONS PRESENTABLE OVENWARE SERIAL
The exhibition catalogue suggests that the corny classicism in Duan's fantastical scenes is anything but outdated they are inspired directly from the cultural production of young migrant workers, from the prominence of old tales in the online serial novels, karaoke-ready pop, and wuxia fantasy games that circulate over 4G connections across China. Titles like Spring River in the Flower Moon Night 1 (2017) offer a purposefully awkward allusion to a Tang Dynasty poem by Zhang Ruoxu: this painting features an egg-yolk moon, slate sky, ghostly maidens playing the lute and reclining nude, and rabbits frolicking among thickly painted floral patches. Sharing the airy, high-ceilinged chamber with Wong's animation is Duan Jianyu's eclectic oil-on-canvas paintings that cover the walls, which appropriate motifs from classical ink-painting, fauvist palettes, and the schmaltzy feel of socialist realism. Courtesy the artist and Vitamin Creative Space. Ho Family Foundation Collection 2018.14 © 2018 Duan Jianyu. Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Robert H. In Wong's dystopian narration, the old must make room for the new-it's a theme that resonates with the sense of unease that Hong Kongers feel about their gradual marginalisation within the hegemonic idea of China.ĭuan Jianyu, Spring River in the Flower Moon Night 1 (2017). The voiceover performs a diaristic diatribe by an 80-year-old man who lives in a world where old age is criminalised, centring on the narrator's decision to throw out his lovingly amassed collection of porn VHS tapes. Projected onto an elaborate sculptural screen with an overflowing pile of denture-shaped wind-up toys behind it is a film containing the usual admixture of graphics that Wong Ping employs, recalling the glory days of Adobe Flash. Wong Ping's single-channel video Dear, Can I Give You A Hand (2018) is one of five large-scale commissions laid out over the Museum's Tower Levels five and seven. Lin Yilin and Cao Fei are both from Guangzhou, where Duan Jianyu studied and settled and Wong Ping and Samson Young are from Hong Kong. A set of keywords, provided to the artists to kickstart the commissioning process, stand in for a curatorial theme: 'future, technology, system, myth, ghost, groundlessness, disaster, chaos, absurdity, uncanny, medium, togetherness, existence, humanity, and utopia.' These ideas have purchase in the region the show's artists call home: the Pearl River Delta, recently renamed to the Greater Bay Area, and the ground zero of China's export manufacturing. Drawing on a vague if widespread sentiment that China is somehow the way forward, the exhibition's catalogue is peppered with references to theoretical trends like accelerationism and futurism. This doubling of old and new, high and low, sets the tone for the exhibition's theme: uncertain futures. Its title is an allusion both to the old Japanese zen koan-'What is the sound of one hand clapping?'-and to Cantopop hero George Lam's anthemic 1996 hit about unrequited love.
Guggenheim Foundation.īoth Weng's and Hou's curatorial approaches intertwine in this show.
Guggenheim Museum, New York (4 May–21 October 2018). Exhibition view: One Hand Clapping, Solomon R. Edition 1/3 with custom-modified LED panels, fibreglass and polyester resin with motor and LEDs, and plastic wind-up toys with spray paint and metal foil. Wong Ping, Dear, can I give you a hand? (2018).
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