Guang-Yu Zhang
Make ? Great Again , 2016
Mixed Media; Oil Colour, Canvas, Digital Print, Frame, 3D Animation, Interactive Programme, Wood Board, Acrylic, Aqueous Ink-Jet Ink
25 1/4 x 25 1/4 x 2 1/2 in.
64 x 64 x 6.4 cm.
64 x 64 x 6.4 cm.
Edition of 5
The Contemporary Art Modern Project’s June group exhibition, The Immutable Will of Nature, features works from six Asian artists: Guang-Yu Zhang, Ziesook You, Hou Guan Ting, Xuanchen Fan, Cecilia Moy Fradet, and Su Yu.
The cycle of life and death is an intrinsic facet of existence itself, not singular to the human experience. Flowers are bound to bloom just as everyone here has been born, and a lifetime passes before we decompose and return to the earth. With each cycle of renewal and decay, remnants are deposited over the last, layered upon each other like strata in the physical manifestation of creation, and folded in to become part of the fabric of human consciousness. The artists in this exhibition weave ancient foundations across East Asian and Western cultures together with contemporary interpretations. Together, they react to both the inevitability of the natural world and the capacity of choice as a natural impulse of the human condition. This exhibition serves as a testament to the enduring power of art to draw parallels between the delicate balance of human agency and The Immutable Will of Nature.
Guang-Yu Zhang, born and based in Shanghai, China, uses digital components while retaining traditional painterly aspects in his framed series Gold Sharks – bridging the worlds between what is natural and manmade. The artist incorporates a blend of traditional Chinese motifs and Western style, encapsulating his numerous cultural influences within digital and analog realties. In an increasingly digital landscape, we have swapped out cohabitation with the natural world for a coexistence within the intangible. Ink pours out as a means to escape the confines of the frame in works such as Gold Shark V, while the accompanying digital animation binds the images of fantastical micro-ecosystems that are pictured within. His work puts on a visual display of the persistence to turn to the natural despite our physical movement away from it, even within the arts.
Ziesook You’s floral self-portraits are vibrant in color and serene in tone. The Korean-American artist has spent the last eight years taking ethereal photographs of flowers in a ritual inspired from her travels to Broq-pa in Nepal, where communities of women dedicate themselves to growing flowers and wearing them in their hair each day in appreciation of the natural. Bursts of flowers sprout from her head to envelop her poised face in works like Scent of Texas 04292022B. Her demeanor is peaceful, content in the liminal realm where nature physically occupies the mental space. She utilizes both fresh and dried flowers in her photographs to make the cycle of life malleable, placing it in juxtaposition with the ephemerality of her medium and the new life it is given by the process of preservation. Her photographs work in the same way by capturing the moments held within the frame, a snap-shot of a fractal of time where Ziesook has recognized the power in submitting and surrounding oneself in the natural as an act of reverence.
Taiwanese artist Hou Guan Ting’s textile works are delicately embroidered, adorned with tiny beads and threads that branch out in a pattern reminiscent of arteries, tissue, and blood. Using materials like garnet powder, ocher powder, and Seiryutai ink in combination with textiles, beads and thread, the artist composes his small works in a life-like imitation of flesh. Hou deconstructs parts of the body down to tissue as a way to draw gentle attention to familiar, yet perhaps uncomfortable, topics like death and decay digestible through painstaking craftsmanship. Keeping these themes central in his work, the artist is accepting our innate future as living things to one day blend into the backdrop of time’s infinite landscape, choosing to draw inspiration from it instead, in order to display the hidden beauty within the final stages of life.
Xuanchen Fan engages with the trials of climate change head-on through a blend of classic Chinese ink painting and acrylic. The viewer is invited to meditate on traditional landscape ink paintings transformed under the Xena Ocean Blue backgrounds; a unique, deep blue that saturates the canvas’ is a color created by the artist herself, a blend of mineral pigment and acrylic. Works such as 9°03’ E are named after major cities’ geographic coordinates, a sobering reminder of the very real—and worsening—conditions of sea-level rise. Her work is in defiance of that future that ostensibly looms over us, a refusal to accept it as the inevitable by making it tangible on canvas. Expressive strokes of vibrant colors are emblematic of the radioactive waste that accompanies the future of a world underwater.
Having grown up between Hong Kong and New York, artist Cecilia Moy Fradet centers existing landscapes by featuring mountain imagery in her collage and oil monotype pieces. While there are differences in texture, color, and size in all her works, all are united by a palpable intimacy. In Hidden Smile, where handwritten notes and torn up newspapers are on display, the artist invites the viewer to connect with her on an intrinsically humanistic level. The repetition of the mountain in varying forms is two-fold: all of us have landscapes of our own that serve as the backdrop and context to our existence, which remains unmoving and unchanging throughout generations. The artist commits memory to paper so as to show the recollection of our environment while we are alive is not for naught as long as we have the ability to connect to it in a way that innovates creation of our own.
Blending oil painting, one of the most traditional and commodified mediums, with the surreal, Chinese artist Su Yu’s works serve as the contextualization to the environment within which these contemporary artists have produced their art. In Let The Titanic Fly, Su Yu adopts imagery from the iconic film Titanic, where the artist has replaced the faces of Jack and Rose with Benjamin Franklin – a sign of the capitalist ideal that remains out of reach — as he props up the figure of Venus in a deceptively tender gesture. His eyes peer out to the viewer as he holds her steady, a reminder that the influence of money has had a hold on the art world since its inception. When the realities of a modern life are too difficult to bear, it is easy to try and look for ways to escape. Su Yu depicts the falsehood of that reality by painting portrayals of wealth and Western pop culture in a playfully absurd manner. He cautions us of the potential of a future where if humans become so lost in hubris and arrogance, we are destined to hit the prophesied iceberg.
The Immutable Will of Nature parallels the cycle of life and death – each artist creates as a reaction to the will of nature in the face of time unending. Human customs become enmeshed in an ever-globalizing society, and what will remain in the end are the remnants of our memories and the results of our reactions to our world. We turn to the will of nature as a guiding force and create art borne out of inspiration from the natural. Through each artwork a narrative emerges, revealing glimpses of personal relationships between the artist and their creations, as well as a broader dialogue between humanity and the environment. Amidst the chaos of a modern society, the exhibition invites viewers to ponder the preservation of our planet and find solace in the harmony between self and nature.
