Time: 15th January 2005 ¨C 28th February 2005

Address£ºBeijing New Art Projects in Dashanzi Art District (boxun.com)

No.4 Jiuxianqiao Road Chaoyang District,Beijing China

Tel:86-10-84566660, 86-10-81970986

Fax:86-10-84566660

E-mail£ºbjartprojects@126.com bjartprojects@yahoo.com.cn

http://arts.tom.com/piclib/2282_1.html

Foreword£º

A Labyrinth of Vehicles and Mirror Images

Gao Brothers

' Vehicle and Mirror Image' is the first contemporary art exhibition held at ¡®Beijing New Art Projects¡¯, a new art space in Factory 798. First of all we should make it clear that this is not an exhibition that mechanically and unimaginatively follows a set theme. ¡®Vehicle and Mirror Image¡¯ is just the title of the exhibition, not the theme of the exhibition. Unlike those themed exhibitions, this exhibition has no intention of discussing any pre-established academic topic; rather, its objective lies in presenting, as well as it is able, the free creative state of contemporary Chinese artists today, revealing certain signs and conditions of contemporary artistic development, and drawing on numerous and diverse ¡®vehicles¡¯ and ¡®mirror images¡¯ created by artists¡¯ in order to reflect the profoundly fissile social reality that we inhabit.

¡®Vehicle¡¯ is a rhetorical concept, one of the two basic components of a metaphor. When we say ¡®life is but a dream¡¯, ¡®life¡¯ is the tenor of the metaphor while ¡®dream¡¯ is its vehicle. Not long ago, Wang Yi, a young liberal newly risen to prominence, published a list of ¡¯ 50 Public Intellectuals Who Influence China¡¯ in the Southern People Weekly (nanfang renwu zhoukan), and suddenly became the focus of heated debate on the internet. Shanghai based writer Zhang Yuanshan churned out a lengthy essay of more than 20,000 characters entitled ¡®A metaphor for China ¨C taking the self-deifying " internet opinion leader" Wang Yi as an example¡¯ and took the debate to a new level, claiming that Wang Yi ¡®cannot take criticism, never acknowledges his mistakes, fabricates evidence and covers up the true facts of history¡¯, that he is a ¡®charlatan intellectual¡¯ who ¡®just wants to find a [metaphoric] vehicle for himself¡¯, but is really ¡® a vehicle for the 2000-year-old autocracy that is China¡¯¡­

Anyone who understands a little of the inside story can see that Zhang Yuanshan went overboard with his attack and ended up harming himself. However, we as artists are in awe of the extraordinary surrealist imagination Mr Zhang must posses, that enables him to denounce a young hero who stands up to authority and speaks his mind frankly as being ¡®a vehicle for the 2000-year-old autocracy that is China¡¯. Indeed, we feel our own imaginations to be shamefully inferior in comparison. We found ourselves compelled to reflect on this, and engage in a spot of critical self-examination: are we ourselves also ¡®vehicles for the 2000-year-old autocracy that is China¡¯?

Here it should be acknowledged that, when thinking up a name for this group exhibition which will include new works by more than 30 contemporary artists, we were somewhat inspired by Mr Zhang¡¯s article, the cause of so much commotion on internet forums. The article led us to re-examine and rediscover the concept of ¡®vehicle¡¯, and appropriate it for use in a contemporary art context.

As for ¡®mirror image¡¯, this concept is perhaps most likely to call to mind the ¡®mirror stage¡¯ theory of French philosopher Jacques Lacan, in which he proposed that infants aged from 6 to 18 months are able to use the reflection in a mirror to gradually affirm self-image. Thus, with misreadings and mistakes along the way, they achieve identity and integrity of self. Before this stage, infants do not have the level of self-perception necessary to recognise the integrity of their own bodies. The mirror image, something external, provides the subject with an illusory structural integrity. Of course, very often, the ¡®mirror image¡¯ that Lacan speaks of does not just indicate an ordinary mirrored reflection, but rather a symbolic ¡®vehicle¡¯ that is external to the subject but at the same time also gives the subject orientation.

Looking at mankind in the context of the boundless universe, perhaps we have not yet got past the infant ¡®mirror stage¡¯ described by Lacan. We need to keep examining ourselves using culture and art as a mirror image, we need to keep questioning ourselves and reaffirming our self-image. The culture and reality of mankind is a world full of multiple vehicles and mirror images. If we regard art as being a vehicle and mirror image of mankind¡¯s spiritual desires and existential reality, then artists are the bearers and creators of this ¡®vehicle¡¯ and ¡®mirror image¡¯.

Up until now, Chinese contemporary art has always used the mirror image of Western values to affirm its own image, and is evidently still stuck in the infant ¡®mirror stage¡¯. When recognising oneself in the Western mirror image it is hard to avoid getting mixed up in an illusory and misty dislocation, but as long as one does not fall prey to an abnormal, Narcissus-like self-infatuation, the mirror image found in the eyes of the Other is by no means a monster. After all, the ¡®global village ¡¯ has long since become a ¡®vehicle¡¯ and ¡®mirror image¡¯ of contemporary human civilisation, and the program that set the world racing irretrievably in the direction of global unification was activated long ago. The crucial matter is whether or not the subject who is being reflected is consciously able to engage in contemplation and self-examination, whether or not they are living in the real world with their feet firmly on the ground, whether or not they have unearthed a novel and genuine correspondence between art and reality, as well as its metaphoric properties, and created a ¡®vehicle¡¯ and ¡®mirror image¡¯ that really belongs to them.

We have no intention of interpreting specific works by the participating artists according to the idea of ¡®vehicle¡¯ and ¡®mirror image¡¯. These works, with their different concepts and diverse range of materials, require direct examination and evaluation on the part of the audience. The things you will be confronted by are not true, neither are they false; they are simply some objects that exist, and that have by chance been gathered together here. They can be seen, touched and thought about, but cannot be unified by any single rule; as ¡®vehicles¡¯ and ¡® mirror images¡¯ they are perhaps metonyms of each other, or can illuminate and elucidate each other.

Misreadings are unavoidable and should not be feared. Without ¡® misreadings¡¯, the world as we know it today would not exist, and neither would the ¡®vehicles¡¯ and ¡®mirror images¡¯ we see here, created by artists, corresponding to reality.

To paraphrase an interesting post-modernist maxim from Jean Baudrillard, in a world that puts the cart entirely before the horse, correctness is just a mistake turned around. Thinking of this sentence now, it seems to have reached a linguistic and philosophical limit.

January 5th 2005, a snowy night in Tongzhou, Beijing

Translated by Francesca Jordan (boxun.com)