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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.

3


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

4



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.

6


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

7



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.

9


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


11


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

12


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

15


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.

16



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