TINGTING WU
Rose Wylie
I visited Rose Wylie’s show in Serpentine Sackler Gallery this December. The show exhibited the works that she created since the late 1990s. Rose Wylie created her works usually by memory. Her works cover movies, fashion, culture, myth, news and things that she saw in life. They are usually bright-colored and full in composition with political, social or autobiographical elements.
My first impression on Rose Wylie’s oil paintings is that her works use simple lines but filled with strength and naivety. After getting further, I can gradually understand that the works contain in-depth meditation and exploration of visual presentation of their own attributes. I think her way of creation by memory makes the paintings entitled with imagination and humor. I like this way because the uncertainty of memory plus artist’s personal imagination may yield more surprises during the creation. I think many contemporary art works are too rational. Rose Wylie once told Guardian: “The painting isn’t about something. I think lots of people don’t understand that. They think it’s the message, which it isn’t. The message is the painting. The painting is the painting.” This made me think about the phenomenon of over-reading of contemporary art works. Artist’s language or emotion were over-read by art curators or critics, which I think is very meaningless and ridiculous. I used to create for something. But now I often think that the work itself is something, and the uncertainty during the creation may contain more possibilities or even surprises.
David Spriggs
In his work “Transparency Report”, he showed four transparent suitcases and things inside them using transparency as the theme and the artistic media. Here audiences are just like airport staff monitoring the luggage carousel who seemed to have the right of monitoring. In the work “The Logic of Control”, he also used the aesthetic concept of transparency and created a completely transparent image system mechanism. Audiences seemed to have become the controller, but the overall structure of the work cannot be seen at any given position. Hence, we still need to focus on the work to get a general understanding. As a result, the controller has to be under control, urging the audiences think how we see and how we are seen and surveilled.
Through his work I realized it cannot be ignored to explore the visual presentation of materials in works, which is also the key for audiences to get perception of the work. Art should be taken as a way of communication. It is also a part of the work that audiences have certain feelings when seeing the work. In future work, I will consider making myself an audience rather than the creator sometimes. This doesn’t mean I am creating to cater to audiences’ sensory cells but when I am looking from audience’s perspective I could further think what I am doing, what I saw and why I am doing this.
Jakub Geltner
Prague artist Jakub Geltner focuses on a series of “camera” devices: he placed the cameras in public space and natural environment, such as abandoned walls or huge stones by the sea, aiming to remind modern people how they live in “surveillance”. Jakub Geltner thinks that camera is seen everywhere in the city and is almost saturated, which is a damage rather than a progress to the culture and society.
Jakub Geltner’s works are similar to my theme, which also brought new thinking for me. People’s expanding life course is unconsciously surveilled in all dimensions, from social life to the natural environment and to the cyber world. Under such environment, people’s personal privacy is at risk or even invaded without knowing. We often don’t know who is behind the camera. He could be anybody, including ourselves. What about the monitoring information? Where did they go? Is there any standard for the permission to view or disclose the monitoring content? I found an investigation which showed people’s “surveillance indifference” in terms of network privacy issues. Although they have realized the problems in surveillance, they don’t think it is necessary to take further action; or even though they are aware that their privacy security is at risk, they decided to make compromise. All of these behaviors are a form of neglecting personal privacy security. Nest series, which used direct ways of presenting in public space, are the works I liked most. Because this way can present a real dense monitoring environment to people by surprise, which can help people realize and think whether such existence is a safe or dangerous signal.
Andreas Gursky
I took a visit to Andreas Gursky’s retrospective exhibition in HAYWARD GALLERY in Feb. 2018. Andreas Gursky seldom expresses any great or ambitious expectations in his works. Instead, he presents the real world objectively. Usually his pictures would be treated artificially which contain fictional elements. But when standing in front of his works, we will see a reality made or restored by him, presenting a condescending image of the contemporary reality.
Andreas Gursky emphasized democracy in numerous works. The elements emerged in the pictures possess the equal importance. There is not a single point in his works that would attract the audiences. All of them are details and the pictures were also arranged thoughtfully. Basically, the pictures are all about the subtle capture of things. By contrast, there is not any element that is relatively important in his works. Therefore, audiences need to enjoy his works from far to near. Surrounded by so many works, I think each audience can find his own concern gradually instead of following the direction of the artist. I think perhaps artist can better inspire the audiences if he focuses on the properties of the object rather than treat the object from his own perspective when he is creating the work.
The Lobster
The movie The Lobster is set in a fictional near future society, where people’s love and marriage are strictly controlled and managed. As required, singles will be sent to a “single hotel” and need to find a mate within 45 days. Those who failed to find a mate will be transformed to a self-selected animal and exiled to the forest. Singles in the hotel are also allowed to hunt other fugitives in the forest so that they can extend the 45-day limit. In this story, the leading character called David was delivered to the “single hotel” with other singles. He had to stick to all the strict rules in the hotel. He also tried to find a mate in various dating activities arranged by the hotel. But he didn’t succeed and the deadline was around the corner. After failed in a date with a woman, David escaped from the hotel and got to the forest where lived many escaped singles. However, in this new place where singles opposed hotel’s system, David faced another completely different system.
Instead of saying that The Lobster satirizes specific value systems e.g. marriage systems or celibacy, it would be more nearer that the movie doubts and criticizes an abstract social structure which is inescapable. Only when people think there is only one standard in the world and that the standard is universally applicable to every person, those who failed to stick to the standard will be deemed as devils that need to be marginalized. “Single hotel” can be likened to a specific social form or the organ of state power. All the service items and rules in the “single hotel” are designed to serve the ideology of the state and the mainstream value system of the society; yet the singles in the forest follow another social value system. This type of criticism is just the form that dystopian theme truly required: in the dystopian world, any specific revolution is not easy, or not much useful even the revolution did succeed. This is because the dominant-dominated power structure is not actually changed, only a dominant value did. The dystopian tone exhibited from this movie is frightening, which presented a crude reality and also made me think about the rules under the invisible framework of the current society.
