So much has happened since I last got around to updating (sorry for using the same excusatory tact each time we meet). Shanghai and Asia in general had an onslaught of artistic ennials (bi’s tri’s ) Fairs, counter fairs, etc. It’s way too much to remember or write down and way past the point to make any difference any way. During the beginning of this mayhem I was busying myself with the work of his majesty, Micheal Lin on his installation ‘What a Difference a Day Made’ at the Shanghai Gallery of Art.
Besides acquiring an entire zaohuodian (general store) for an undisclosed amount of moolah he reinstalled the contents of the store in the entrance of the very zaohuo unfriendly SHGA. He went on to hire acrobats to juggle the store's objects inside the gallery’s atrium space. This performance was pre-recorded from 5 different angles as well as performed live at the opening. The videos were then projected around the space on hanging scrims so that the image was visible form either side. At the opening the pre-recorded video was interchanged with projections of the live performance.
The five videos de-constructed the figure as it were, breaking it down proportionally (feet, head, torso-profile, above the head and finally- full figure) –as that figure toiled in dynamic, majestic contraposture with juggling toilet scrubbers, light bulbs or multi-colored plastic pails. Many came crashing down with thunderous sounds, many flipped effortlessly, cutting the air with melodic, Beckettian happiness. I should add that the mirror encased columns leftover from Gu Dexin’s last sort of, yawwwn, ho-hum exhibition made for some super crazy hall of mirror reflections for the video and objects.
Amongst these videos (dispersed around the space at varying heights to mimic the camera’s POV were a bunch of plywood art crates decked out with red carpet lining and spotlight to display the contents of the store de-re-contextualized. A simple pisspot or scrub brush because museumified, fetishised, interesting as an object in itself. Often the arrangements were lyrical, queer, a ceramic ashtray next to a toilet pluncher.
The project formed organically. There was the initial mind fart *buy the store there and install it here!… and the rest just was a matter of making meaning from meaning without meaning to mean in a way that will mean nothing in the end. Jasper Johns once said something like - art is taking something and doing something to it, then doing something else to it.” He also said “Everyone is free to interpret the work in his own way. I think seeing a picture is one thing and interpreting it is another.”
Michael was taking some things and doing some other things to them. It wasn’t a very new idea (ahem what's that chess player guy's name Duchomp or DuChamp..?) or form(s) but it was an opportunity encased in the trappings of what the zaohuodian is as cultural artifact. Anyway the conceptualization process was a discursive one, the results of much elliptical conservation between Michael, David Chan, SHGA’s curator and myself. How to do without over doing? How to create an equation where many but not all of the answers would appear? How to make interesting, intriguing but not over determined layers with all this stuff and space and time…? Outside Russian tanks were destroying homes in Georgia, children were dying of melamine laced milk powder and the credit market was teetering over the deep dark ravine we now find ourselves in, while we sipped white whine and pondered how? If we added this ... how would it affect the temper of that? How did art become such a strategy of seductive, semiotic warfare? Anyway it turned out a very fine piece indeed… Even Christian Marclay liked it.
BIG VIDEO / PERFORMANCE Production credit to: YTVProductions and Mathieu Borysevicz
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