Yang Xinguang
01 Jun - 20 Jul 2012
YANG XINGUANG
Violence without Mercy
1 June – 20 July 2012
Boers Li Gallery is pleased to announce Yang Xinguang’s solo exhibition, “Violence without Mercy”, opening May 31st, 2012. This will be the third solo exhibition held by Boers-Li Gallery for this young artist. Yang Xinguang is a prominent representative of the younger generation in the world of Chinese contemporary art; his creations bypass direct description, metaphor or critique of life in society and political reality, fulfilled rather through plain form. The title of the exhibition, “Violence without Mercy” rests upon this meaning-- there is no eloquence in the use of force – calling attention to the core qualities in the exhibition: crudely blunt, sharp, a touch dangerous -carrying a primitive vitality. To those who know Yang Xinguang’s work, the new work in this exhibition appears similar, with the continued use of metal and wood as his primary materials, he pulls a distinguishable thread through his ongoing series of work, composing a new naturalness to its constant order and sequence.
In this new flight of work, differences appear in the piece “Two Tigers,” an installation clearly designed as a complete narrative in its structure and composition. Two tigers cast in bronze, mounted on a single bronze square, chase each other, each in the pursuit of the other’s life. The sculpture’s surface is scratched almost as a testament to the ferocity with which this battle is being played out. Yang Xinguang uses such simple props as this to build those ‘improbable castles in the air’ from the cruel nature of our reality. The bronze cast tigers produced during his college term, are brought here, completing these produced materials as a work of art.
Scattered throughout the exhibition hall are, “Sharp Points”, of different sizes arranged in varied patterns, their sharp points bored into round wooden blocks. In order to navigate between these obstacles, visitors have no choice but to carefully pick their way through, paying close attention to the floor, keeping a prudent eye out for the various leftover points that lay astray, and only in this way can they avoid their rather menacing touch; the strength and speed within the action of chopping or scraping ever-emerging from the open cross sections of wood, almost as if they were signals to mark danger. “Portrait of Two Stupid Men” were originally two worthless trees that narrowly escaped the chop of the axe, but, in keeping with Zhuangzi’s concept of “the worth in worthlessness,” it is exactly because of this worthlessness that they were passed over and far outlived their natural lifespan, their worth and value left untouched.
There is an investigation of core meaning throughout Yang Xinguang’s work. In “Pyramid,” its many irregular white holes, random and alternating in formation, come together in an aesthetic combination, yet the visual information presented is hardly clear-cut and defined, it serves rather as a guide pointing the way: the universe is not just an infinite continuation horizontally, it is an infinite continuation vertically; within such structure, the equilateral triangle is the very fundamental component, it is the equilateral triangle that forms the pyramid, three degrees of gravity’s perfect form.
Within the different model of structural openness that emerges from the ordered exhibition hall in which Yang Xinguang spreads his work, it can in fact show the manner in which the very origin of “space” first was revealed? Its answer lies in the white-faced, black edged irregular circle of wood in the work, “Circle” – strung together with a cold frigid feeling, they are sequenced in arrangement across the white wall, carving out another form in perfection.
Violence without Mercy
1 June – 20 July 2012
Boers Li Gallery is pleased to announce Yang Xinguang’s solo exhibition, “Violence without Mercy”, opening May 31st, 2012. This will be the third solo exhibition held by Boers-Li Gallery for this young artist. Yang Xinguang is a prominent representative of the younger generation in the world of Chinese contemporary art; his creations bypass direct description, metaphor or critique of life in society and political reality, fulfilled rather through plain form. The title of the exhibition, “Violence without Mercy” rests upon this meaning-- there is no eloquence in the use of force – calling attention to the core qualities in the exhibition: crudely blunt, sharp, a touch dangerous -carrying a primitive vitality. To those who know Yang Xinguang’s work, the new work in this exhibition appears similar, with the continued use of metal and wood as his primary materials, he pulls a distinguishable thread through his ongoing series of work, composing a new naturalness to its constant order and sequence.
In this new flight of work, differences appear in the piece “Two Tigers,” an installation clearly designed as a complete narrative in its structure and composition. Two tigers cast in bronze, mounted on a single bronze square, chase each other, each in the pursuit of the other’s life. The sculpture’s surface is scratched almost as a testament to the ferocity with which this battle is being played out. Yang Xinguang uses such simple props as this to build those ‘improbable castles in the air’ from the cruel nature of our reality. The bronze cast tigers produced during his college term, are brought here, completing these produced materials as a work of art.
Scattered throughout the exhibition hall are, “Sharp Points”, of different sizes arranged in varied patterns, their sharp points bored into round wooden blocks. In order to navigate between these obstacles, visitors have no choice but to carefully pick their way through, paying close attention to the floor, keeping a prudent eye out for the various leftover points that lay astray, and only in this way can they avoid their rather menacing touch; the strength and speed within the action of chopping or scraping ever-emerging from the open cross sections of wood, almost as if they were signals to mark danger. “Portrait of Two Stupid Men” were originally two worthless trees that narrowly escaped the chop of the axe, but, in keeping with Zhuangzi’s concept of “the worth in worthlessness,” it is exactly because of this worthlessness that they were passed over and far outlived their natural lifespan, their worth and value left untouched.
There is an investigation of core meaning throughout Yang Xinguang’s work. In “Pyramid,” its many irregular white holes, random and alternating in formation, come together in an aesthetic combination, yet the visual information presented is hardly clear-cut and defined, it serves rather as a guide pointing the way: the universe is not just an infinite continuation horizontally, it is an infinite continuation vertically; within such structure, the equilateral triangle is the very fundamental component, it is the equilateral triangle that forms the pyramid, three degrees of gravity’s perfect form.
Within the different model of structural openness that emerges from the ordered exhibition hall in which Yang Xinguang spreads his work, it can in fact show the manner in which the very origin of “space” first was revealed? Its answer lies in the white-faced, black edged irregular circle of wood in the work, “Circle” – strung together with a cold frigid feeling, they are sequenced in arrangement across the white wall, carving out another form in perfection.