 The Quiet Gesture: Recent Chinese Art is an installation of works by four of the most prominent artists working in China today - Zhang Huan, Wang Jin, Lu Shengzhong and Zhan Wang. These artists rose to prominence in the early 1990s in both China and worldwide primarily with conceptual and performance-based work. These recent sculptures set in the Alice Ransom Dreyfuss Garden and additional works installed inside the Museum are an extension of their interests in mining China's rich cultural past for its relevance to contemporary ideas about spirituality, reflection and history.
While many artists in China today are tackling broad issues related to the rapid economic and social changes affecting the country, these artists have turned inward, exploring issues of the self and one's identity in relation to the past. Referencing simple actions like the ringing of a bell, the act of contemplation, repetitive carving or traditional paper cutting, their work is a testament to the Chinese belief that even a small and quiet gesture can have a large impact.
Works in this exhibition are installed in both the Alice Ransom Dreyfuss Memorial Garden and inside the Museum, in and around the Charles W. Engelhard Court.
Zhang Huan (born Henan Province, China, 1965)
Zhang Huan's large-scale sculptural installation, Peace, consists of a bronze bell and a gold gilded cast of the artist's body hung from a simple framework. The artist modeled the sculpture's bell after those found in Chinese temples and inscribed it with the names of his ancestors. In the work's original configuration, visitors were invited to push the body against the bell, thereby forcing a symbolic confrontation between this contemporary artist and his ancestral past.
Zhan Wang (born Beijing, China, 1962)
For many centuries, Chinese culture has valued unusually shaped, naturally occurring stones, which have come to be called "scholars' rocks". For his modern take on these traditional forms, Zhan Wang molds sheets of malleable stainless steel around these rocks, recreating a traditional form in new materials and also plays on the term "reflection" as the rocks both reflect those who view them, and also suggest the original intent of the "scholars' rock", which provides a place for spiritual reflection.
Wang Jin (born Datong, China, 1962)
In his series of sculptural robes, entitled A Chinese Dream, Wang Jin has replaced the typical silk and satin of a traditional Peking Opera robe with translucent plastic or polyvinyl chloride (PVC) sheets and has substituted clear and monofilament line for silk thread. For the artist, these robes, one of which has recently been acquired by The Newark Museum, embody the ever-present remnants of tradition in modern life, and the way in which traditions are altered throughout time.
Lu Shengzhong (born Dayujishan Village, Shangdong, China, 1952)
For generations, richly patterned, lacelike tissue-paper cut-outs have been used in Chinese ceremonies and rituals. In his series Human Bricks, Lu Shengzhong carefully cuts his signature human figures out of red tissue paper and arranges thousands of them, sewing them in place. The repetitive figures suggest presence and absence, the role of the individual among the greater society and the relevance of long-standing traditions to today's art practice.
Special funding provided by:
Abel and Sophia Sheng
The Wallace Foundation
Images:
Banner (detail): Zhang Huan (born in Henan Province, China, 1965), Peace, 2001, cast bronze bell, body with gold leaf, and wood frame © Zhang Huan and Chambers Fine Art
Top to bottom:
Zhan Wang (born Beijing, China, 1962), Ornamental Stone, 2006, stainless steel © Friedman Benda
Zhang Huan (born in Henan Province, China, 1965), Peace, 2001, cast bronze bell, body with gold leaf, and wood frame © Zhang Huan and Chambers Fine Art
Lu Shengzhong (born Dayujishan Village, Shangdong, China, 1952), Human Brick IX, 2005, paper, Plexiglas, silk thread, Private Collection © Lu Shengzhong and Chambers Fine Art
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