Counterpoints
Counterpoints, a two-person exhibition of work by contemporary Chinese artists Lu Chunsheng (b. 1968, Changchun, Jilin, China and Jia Aili (b.1979, Liaoning, China) at the Institute of International Visual Arts, London.
Counterpoints, a two-person exhibition of work by contemporary Chinese artists Lu Chunsheng (b. 1968, Changchun, Jilin, China and Jia Aili (b.1979, Liaoning, China) at the Institute of International Visual Arts, London.
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Lu Chunsheng
and Jia Aili:
Counterpoints
31 March – 15 May 2010
Lu Chunsheng
and Jia Aili:
Counterpoints
Curated by David Thorp
Jia Aili :
Make Believe…
Lu Chunsheng: The
first man who bought
a juicer bought it
not for drinking juice
Front cover:
Lu Chunsheng, The first
man who bought a
juicer bought it not for
drinking juice
film still, 2008
Left:
Jia Aili, Untitled
oil on canvas, 2007 – 2008
Artist Jia Aili applies an epic vision in paintings that
portray man in a chaotic and apocalyptic environment,
an environment in which ecological concerns have
been overwhelmed by unspecified chaos. Jia Aili’s
theatrical approach to painting allows him to make
paintings that move off the canvas and onto the walls
and floors, extending his field of imagery out from the
illusion he has created on the canvas into the real
world of objects in space. His paintings frequently
depict the image of one human figure. Their theatrical
presence is so powerful that often his paintings seem
like tableaux in which his solitary character is the single
performer in a visual drama set in a bleak landscape.
The plight of the individual in an unforgiving
world is a fundamental theme that runs through much
contemporary art. The plays of Samuel Beckett above
all have consistently expressed this and informed and
influenced the subject matter of contemporary artists in
the West over the past fifty years. The simple bleakness
of Beckett’s sets in which the individual is condemned
to a purgatorial existence that has no satisfactory
conclusion is the stuff of late modernism. Jia Aili’s early
paintings where a lone figure sits on the ground in
the centre of an apparently devastated, vast, and totally
barren landscape or on a bed abandoned in a post
industrial desert devoid of anything else, evokes the
iconography and forms of Beckett. But Jia Aili has
no such point of reference. His painting has developed
in an Oriental context which nevertheless throws up
similar concerns.
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As a young artist Jia Aili is engaged with this
predicament and with all the anxiety it implies when
navigating an insular life; confronting inner
contradictions and disquiet. But his attention extends
from an existential position to consider the implications
of environmental catastrophe and political legacy,
and the relationship between the two, particularly in
the context of China. When Jia Aili’s solitary man tries
to rest on a rusting bed or approaches a burnt out
car they almost disappear in the expanse of landscape.
In his huge paintings these images manifest essential
ingredients of late modernism extended to comment
on the condition of the modern world as well as
the modern man.
The scale of Jia Aili’s paintings are crucial to
the experience of his work and the impact of his ideas.
There is a physical relationship between the viewer
and some of his larger paintings in which, when
close to, the viewer cannot see their full extent and so
becomes enveloped in the painting. The huge
painting he is currently working on in his studio in the
northern edge of Beijing is the scale of a backdrop
to a stage performance.
As Jia Aili’s work has progressed the lone figure
has become more clearly discernable, sometimes
drawn into the foreground of the painting rather than
adrift far away. He, we assume it is a man, is naked
apart from a gas mask of the sort left over from the
Second World War. The suggestion is clear, the
environment has deteriorated to such an extent that
Above:
Jia Aili, Mr.Yang
oil on canvas,
2010
Right:
Jia Aili, Good Morning
acrylic on canvas,
2007 – 2010
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man is stripped of everything but his will to survive. As
he wades through a Nameless Lake or crouches at the
edge of an endless sea in Nameless Day (the titles of
series of paintings produced in 2006/7), his survival has
become dependent upon filtering air into his lungs.
Like many artists trained in China, Jia AiIi has a
virtuosity with paint that enables him to express his
ideas fluently. His facility not only provides him with the
technique to depict images as he chooses but to
explore and experiment with the painterly properties of
the medium. In his more recent works the illustrative
dimension of his painting has been augmented with an
energetic gestural application of paint that surrounds
his central figure, still in the post apocalyptic landscape
of despair, in a jungle of brush strokes, flailing strips of
matter, a sea of tendrils, a forest of branches, strips of
light industrial waste, whatever, they express a psychic
condition more than an illusion of reality.
Jia Aili’s concern with the medium of painting per
se makes reference to the history of art. His site specific
installation at Rivington Place (shown alongside recent
paintings that demonstrate the range of his work) is
his interpretation of Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of
Saint Thomas. Inspired by Caravaggio’s masterpiece,
Jia Aili applies a study of the shapes and mechanism
of interactions in the original work to the window
of the gallery at Rivington Place that faces out onto the
street to make a composition of shapes — a spotted
surface of obliterated faces full of ‘wounds’ and the
medication for them.
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Jia Aili, 001
oil on canvas, 2010
In contrast to Jia Aili, Lu Chunsheng works with film
and photography. His first film to be shown in the West
in 2006, History of Chemistry 2004, is located between
the overtly social and the specifically individual.
Although it may first appear preoccupied with the
industrial era and communist history because Lu
Chunsheng uses imagery that alludes to the Socialist
Realist canon in communist China, his narratives are
closer to surrealism than socialism. Using a form that
alludes to mainstream cinematic narrative but often
abandons it, History of Chemistry tells a fragmented
tale of the endeavours of a sea captain and his crew
shipwrecked in a desolate post industrial land.
Although a crew, the isolated nature of the separate
crew members is accentuated by Lu Chunsheng as
they each silently pit themselves against a weird and
unfamiliar environment.
His longer film History of Chemistry II —
Excessively Restrained Mountaineering Enthusiasts
completed two years later in 2006 relates the story of
John Dee, astrologer, magician and mathematician,
consultant to Queen Elizabeth 1st. Lu Chunsheng brings
John Dee’s story forward into the present day and
develops it into a kind of thriller in which the central
character is John Dee’s descendent. This man has a
‘special ability’ (Lu Chunsheng’s words) which he has
inherited from his ancestor. He is able to foretell the
future and is being hunted by three ‘Company’ men
who want him to tell them what he knows… As with
History of Chemistry, History of Chemistry II lacks any
clear narrative although viewers have the sense
of a story unfolding before them much as it does
in a dream.
In the process of making these films and in his
most recently completed; The first man who bought a
juicer bought it not for drinking juice (which has its
European premiere presented by Iniva Rivington Place),
Lu Chunsheng has developed a formal filmic language.
Characters inhabit open spaces, lone figures pace
the streets, traverse deserted building sites, car parks
and industrial estates. Lu Chunsheng’s characters
work away but achieve nothing in settings that have
shifted from the symbolism of the Cultural Revolution to
the imagery of mass production. They absurdly
repeat actions in a manner that evokes once again the
presence of Samuel Beckett and establishes a
structure for the film that pays homage to Fellini
and Bunuel.
The solitary condition is central to the work of
both Jia Aili and Lu Chunsheng. Man alone in a world
defined by loneliness, isolation and uncertainty. Myth
and imagination vie with reality as each artist asserts
his personal vision whether in the language of cinema
or the historically established conventions of painting.
David Thorp
Associate Curator
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Lu Chunsheng
Lu Chunsheng, The first
man who bought a
juicer bought it not for
drinking juice
film still, 2008
Lu Chunsheng’s films are not linked to specific places
but rather to events. In The first man who bought a
juicer bought it not for drinking juice, the two events
that gave impetus for this, his most recent film, may
seem disconnected, yet, were ever present in the artists
mind during its production. Filmed in San Antonio,
Texas, The first man who bought a juicer bought it not
for drinking juice, began with Lu Chunsheng’s interest
in Orson Welles’ 1938 adaption for radio of H.G. Wells,
The War of the Worlds, and with the story of the exile
of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in 1897 to eastern Siberia, a
major agricultural region within Russia.
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Lu Chunsheng’s past works appear preoccupied
with the Industrial Era and Communist history, and in
this film our relationship to industrialisation, the natural
and artificial, and land agriculture dominated by
mechanisation, is seemingly explored against
a backdrop of American urban-industrial and rural
settings that have held mythological status.
Here centuries after the Industrial Revolution, which
marked a major turning point in human history,
two interdependent characters, one the creator and
its creation, both toil towards a joint end goal, in an
interdependent, interlocked existence. Psychologically
dense, the film documents in progressive stages,
without any recognisable plot and without further
explanation, the mechanistic progression of a combine
harvester, a machine used for harvesting crops. One of
only two characters in the film, the combine is cared for
by a mechanic. Disassembled in a workshop, and
exiled from the arena of its function, the various parts
of its mechanism undergo careful repair and
methodical reassembly based on detailed
diagrammatic instructions.
Left:
Lu Chunsheng, The first
man who bought a
juicer bought it not for
drinking juice
production still, 2008
Right:
Lu Chunsheng, The first
man who bought a
juicer bought it not for
drinking juice
film still, 2008
10
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As is often the case in Lu Chunsheng’s work the male
character portrayed in the film appears in a slight
state of malaise, repeating acts which appear to have
no clear outcome. Appearing at once removed from
his world, in actuality the result of his deep absorption
in it, the character’s individual identity takes second
stage to his individual act of productivity, the outcome
of which promises continued sustenance. The
documentation of this process, one including the
skilled production of new machine parts and
eventually to the machines subsequent ‘re-birth’, a
kind of Modern Prometheus, and its ultimate return to
and looming presence in a cultivated field appears
steeped in symbolism. Through a series of
contemplative tableaux, the film gradually unfolds
into a seemingly epic evolutionary journey told in
reverse, as played out in the exterior world and the
interior life of the subject, one where the man
machine relationship and philosophical questions of
existence are re-examined.
As the artist himself has previously stated, the
important thing is not the physical factors, but the
incidents, and as the title of the film The first man who
bought a juicer bought it not for drinking juice
suggests, no event has a wholly predictable outcome.
Keith Whittle
Director, Fountain
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Left:
Lu Chunsheng, The first
man who bought a
juicer bought it not for
drinking juice
film still, 2008
Below:
Lu Chunsheng, The first
man who bought a
juicer bought it not for
drinking juice
production stills, 2008
13
List of Works
Jia Aili: Make Believe…
Lu Chunsheng: The first man who bought
a juicer bought it not for drinking juice, 2008
running time 27 minutes 17 seconds,
blu-ray disc format
Untitled, 2007– 2008
Oil on canvas, 296 x 200 x 3.6 cm x 2 pieces
Courtesy of DSL collection
Mr Yang, 2010
Oil on canvas, 200.2 x 188.2 x 4.3 cm
Courtesy of Platform China
001, 2010
Oil on canvas
Left: 68.1 x 37.5 x 3cm; Up: 200 x 45.5 x 3cm;
Down: 200 x 232 x 3cm; Right: 54.3 x 112.4 x 3cm
Courtesy of Platform China
Lu Chunsheng’s film is the product of a residency at
Artpace San Antonio, Texas, organised by
Hans Ulrich Obrist. Iniva’s staging is organised by
Fountain as part of a wider touring exhibition
of the film in Europe and South East Asia conceived,
curated and produced by Fountain. The film is
commissioned and produced by Artpace San Antonio
and supported by ShanghART Gallery, China.
Good Morning, 2007–2010
Acrylic on canvas
286.3 x 200 x 3.6cm x 3 pieces
Courtesy of Platform China
New commission for the window of
Rivington Place, 2010
14
Acknowledgements
Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) and David
Thorp wishes to thank Jia Aili and Lu Chunsheng
for their generosity in working with us, and Adelaide
Bannerman for her project management.
We would also like to express our gratitude to
Sun Ning and Claudia Albertini of Platform China
Contemporary Art Institute, Beijing; the DSL
Collection; Keith Whittle and Li Xiang of Fountain;
Hans Ulrich Obrist; ShanghART Gallery, China;
Artpace, San Antonio, Texas; Leticia “Letty” Rocha,
and all those involved in the production of
Lu Chunsheng’s film:
Producer - Riley Robinson (Artpace)
Actor - Steve Bissell
Camera - Kenneth Massengil & Daniel Maldonado
Camera Assistant - Russ Massengill
Sound - Pee, John Bentley and Alan Green
Music - Wang Fan
Coordinator - Emily S. Morrison (Artpace)
Photography of stills - Timothy Lefkowitz,
Deng Gao, Ju Yiding
Director Assistant - Ju Yiding
Director - Lu Chunsheng
Bauhaus Media Group Inc., San Antonio TX - post
production
Eureka Sheet Metal, Inc., San Antonio TX - Manuel
Elizondo Jr.
Lubianski Grain Co., St. Hedwig TX - Craig Lubianski
Holt Cat, Victoria TX - Peter Holt
CPS Energy - Mission Road Power Plant - Scott Smith
Texts © David Thorp & Keith Whittle
Images © Jia Aili and Lu Chunsheng
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Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts)
Stuart Hall Library
Iniva engages with new ideas and thinking in the
contemporary visual arts, reflecting in particular the
cultural diversity of contemporary society. We work
with artists, curators, creative producers, writers and
the public to explore the vitality of visual culture.
Exhibition opening hours
Tues, Wed, Fri: 11am-6pm
Thurs: 11am – 9pm (last entry 8.30pm)
Sat: 12 – 6pm Sun, Mon: closed
Free admission
Rivington Place
London EC2A 3BA
T: +44 (0)20 7729 9616
www.iniva.org
The Stuart Hall Library provides an extensive
bibliography of reference materials and resources
relating to Lu Chunsheng and Jia Aili’s artwork.
The bibliography is available in print as well as
through the Library website, and a display of these
materials will be available in the Library throughout
the exhibition.
The Library is open Tues to Fri: 10am – 1pm, 2 – 5pm.
To make an appointment, phone 020 7749 1255 or
email: library@iniva.org.
You can also plan your visit by accessing the Library
catalogue online at www.iniva.org
Iniva is a registered charity (No. 1031721)
A copy of this booklet is
available in large format print.
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