Duan Jianyu, The Muse Has Awoken No.3, Oil on canvas, 181×217cm, 2011

Both Wang Xingwei’s Ji Gong and Duan Jianyu’s The Muse has Awoken No.3 both offer conspicuous comical impressions, which on the one hand, articulate a kind of literary comedy from the narrations of the figures on canvas, their expressions, motion, theatricality and etc., while stylistically – be it Wang Xingwei’s compositional momentum and the exaggeration rendered through brushwork, or Duan Jianyu’s kitsch and crass emphasis – give shape to the comedy of mannerism, providing theatricality for the language of painting. Thirdly, they are comical on a cultural history level as they have adopted the Baroque style to portray the Mad Monk and placed the Goddess on Dunhuang murals into modern countryside context, this kind of casual yet poignant fusion has taken the “La Comédie Humaine” approach to respond to the rapidly evolving Chinese society and the unsettled dust of cultural order.

RELATED

Hu Xiangqian, Xiang Qian Museum, Video, Color, Sound, 14’31”, 2010

Xiang Qian Museum is an ongoing collection of artworks that exists in Hu Xiangqian’s mind. According to the artist, a museum collection is usually a collection of materials – the physical existence of artworks, while the collection at Xiang Qian Museum is represented through the artist’s body and conveyed to the audience–Xiang Qian Museum is non-materialistic. Hu believes art exists through his performance without physical form, as he said: “I think the best thing about art is that we are able to carry it around to wherever we go.”

Hu Jieming, Home?

在门的正面锁孔处安装电视机一台,电视机播放的画面为正在锁孔中窥探的脸部特写。
这个脸由59个不同种族的五官构成,不同的五官每秒5秒交替出现。
在门的背面,观众通过锁孔观看影像内容。

Please scan the QR code to follow us on WeChat :新世纪当代艺术基金会