This week, ICA London opened a solo exhibition of works by Chinese artist Guan Xiao in association with K11 Art Foundation. GX’s work explores current ways of seeing, as influenced by the mass circulation of digital images. Here, she discusses the work shown in Flattened Metal, and her recent inclusion in Zabludowicz Collection’s Emotional Supply Chains.
Whenever we are brought into a scenario in which each factor exists by its own right and does not correlate to one another via language, what makes the correlation is the onlooker (language, likewise, does not necessarily stand for itself via humans’ correlation). Through different backgrounds and different experiences, the viewer relates one thing onto another in their own way. The information is generated through the mutual action of the looking and the looked. It is not pictorial, nor linguistic, nor aural. For me, such delivery of information is quite accurate. When we express what the information is really about, any translation is a simplification, partialized. The information decreases in the process.
So, I always ponder how to maximize, as much as possible, the delivery of what we sense.
For example, in Documentary: From National Geography to BBC that I am currently showing in Emotional Supply Chains, I set camouflaged screens for two purposes: firstly, I needed depiction of context, which helps to remove boundaries of current/general exhibition spaces; secondly, I intentionally selected these kaleidoscopically patterned screens in order to cloud the interface between the backgrounds and the sculpture or subject in front of them. Surely it is also the result of my own obsession with biological patterns.
Considering the internet, I feel like it can be seen as a model, simplified indeed, of our raw consciousness. The internet has provided a site for endless encounters, making visible the fact that the viewer makes the correlation on their own. Within the internet, the rich, serious world is compressed into a way of seeing things as one single layer. We can actively pursue a certain experience, and the internet gives us a chance to view the process and the way in which cognition is shaped. This made me realize that the way I attempt to describe should be applied in a way that is more synthetic.
So, coming to the idea of my ICA exhibition; it’s called Flattened Metal, and includes a previous video Action, and 5 brand new installations. These 5 installation works (Amazon Gold, Public Chair, Marble Floor, A little Drum, From Unit3 to Unit7) are based on my understanding of the idea of conversation. Conversation starts when we try to exchange what we have in mind with others, which is usually in the form of language (literature or sound). But I understand it as a means of translation that can easily to be misread. Here I use different ways of expression combined all together: sculpture, ready made, printed image, word, including each title of the work–they serve as keywords, tags. They do not necessarily have any connection from one to another. For me this non-relationship between things best represents the situation that we encounter in our cognitive process.
Regarding the title ‘Flattened Metal’. In the very beginning I conceived an apt title, something closer to what I’d like to say. But then I realized that’s precisely the worst situation it could be. So I changed my approach to the title. Metal: it’s a metaphor. A metaphor prevents its own signification, or it is two things at the same time. I found the title in one of the images when using the inverted colour effect on Photoshop–it’s a colour suffused with white, that I found in the metal colour palette of the gradient effect.
‘Guan Xiao: Flattened Metal’, runs at ICA, London in association with the K11 Art Foundation until 19 June. All images: Installation view of Guan Xiao: Flattened Metal in association with K11 Art Foundation, 20 April ñ 19 June 2016, Institute of Contemporary Arts London (ICA) Photo: Mark Blower
