Mu:Screen-Three generations of Chinese video art
1 June – 16 July 2010
UTS:GALLERY
Opening Tuesday 1 June 6-8pm
Contemporary Chinese art is now firmly established as a leading force in the
international art world. Operating independently of the commercial sphere, China’s video
art is gaining increasing attention for exciting and daring approaches as it questions a
broad range of issues.
Mu:Screen presents an historical over-view of Chinese video art and provides an
introduction to the breadth of themes and styles in this field. The exhibition includes
work by forefathers of the medium in China, Zhang Peili and Wang Gongxin, alongside
their proteges and new animations by recent graduates.
Including Zhang Peili, Wang Gongxin, Wu Junyong
Chen Shaoxiong, Kan Xuan and Ma Qiusha
Curated by Marie Terrieux
http://www.muscreen.com/
http://www.utsgallery.uts.edu.au/
Intreview
WU JUNYONG: SOCIETY OF THE ABSURD
A little character in a cone-shaped hat has been the focus, muse and hero for Wu Junyong’s creative practice for the past five years. This character has made his appearance in paintings, watercolors, prints, paper cuts, video animation and, more recently, in laser cut brass. With his mischievous smile and caustic gaze on society, the figure could well be Wu himself (they do look conspicuously alike), crossing the oceans and swimming through the centuries that make up the unique and ludicrous carnival that is the landscape of Wu Junyong’s work.
Wu’s protagonist first appeared in 2003, and began wearing his distinctive hat in 2005 as a symbol of power. Just as the king wears a crown, his headdress represents the pyramidal shape of a society that mirrors his own. With a decidedly black humour, we are shown the absurdity of this society’s order, the brutish behaviour of many of its participants and the role that each of us also plays in its construction.
The son of a wood engraver in Fujian province, Wu Junyong always loved to draw, and even in the years before art school had begun to record what he saw as the idiocies of the world around him. This need for critical expression in Wu led to the development of his own visual dialect – a patois of mockery, myths and iconography inspired by classical humanists like da Vinci and Dürer, and their secular explorations of the human being.
Wu’s work over the last five years has seen an evolution from the personal and physiological to more public, sociological issues. The quasi-hysterical Wait Us Rich (2005) expresses an obsession with the body, with a rash, and almost gross, visual vocabulary; the Opera Series work, Parade (2006), is preoccupied with sexuality and its fantasies; while in the more recent Flowers of Chaos (2010) personal concerns have been overtaken by questions relating to history and society’s manipulation of human beings.
Wu Junyong has said the use of new media allows him to fulfil many dreams and expectations on a relatively low budget, the ink and the computer side by side on his desk.
Wu’s art practice has developed over a twelve-year period in the relatively peaceful and moderately sized Hangzhou; however he recently moved to experience the challenges and stimulations of the large city of Beijing. Using the computer terminology of his generation, Wu describes this move as hitting the ‘refresh’ button on his practice.
Marie Terrieux, 2010