Wang Mai: ReconstRuct Realities

Fan Di'an

Stood before Wang Mai's 'Oil Monster' series of artworks, we are left feeling 'astounded' and
'dumbfounded'. 'Astounded', because Wang has employed fantastical techniques to craft bizarre forms
of the strangest appearance. Structurally they are decidedly odd; they certainly occupy a substantial
amount of space, and the close detail they contain is of a kind that challenges our everyday experience,
something as far beyond our imagination as a visitor from outer space. The most direct comparison
I can make is that Wang's works seem to have stepped out from the virtual world behind a computer
screen. Although we are accustomed today to virtual imagery created using digital techniques when
it is two-dimensional and on a screen – even to the point that we look forward to still greater visual
stimulation from fresh and unusual imagery of this kind - when such images take solid form before
our very eyes we are likely to find ourselves astounded. We likewise find ourselves 'dumbfounded',
the predicament of speechlessness, as we stand before these works Wang has created. They seem to be
linked at some experiential level to the reality in which we live; the artists' use of the 'Oil Monster'
as a theme to some degree hints at a possible route to understanding the work; the appearance these
works offer most resembles a particular spatial field, a certain atmosphere or the existence of some
physical object that is more cultural than it is real. That we are 'dumbfounded' does not imply the
impossibility of attempting any discourse of the true meanings contained within these works, it speaks
rather to how these visual structures that present themselves to vision have a social and linguistic
nature beyond form itself that is hard to give a verbal account of.
It is probably more interesting to talk about Wang Mai the person than it would be to discuss his work,
and it is only through understanding the intellectual system behind his art that we can understand how
that art has come to be the way it is today. Within Chinese contemporary art circles, Wang Mai can be
considered, without fear of contradiction, one of the more experienced practitioners of the younger
generation. Since the 1990s he has made sustained efforts to effect a personal exploration of the meaning
of 'contemporary' as it applies to art; the highly individual path he followed lay firmly within the bounds
of the Chinese contemporary art scene overall but never succumbed to mere adherence to fashion or
faction. From the very first he established a mode of speech located between his own intellectual interests
and the direct experience of reality, keeping a definite distance from artistic fads but not turning away
from the actual context in which he lived and where he experienced the richness of real culture. At a
time when the trend was for most artists to be eager to establish their own unique 'style', Wang took a
path that was 'anti-style'. When others were busy using symbolic images as markers of their own personal
style, he set himself to the task of 'deconstructing symbols'. It might well be said that for some time
now it has been difficult to offer a verbal fixed assessment of Wang Mai's art; indeed, Wang gave up on
what was most likely a short route to quick success in favour of a deep immersion in his own intellectual
system, relying on his own innate intellectual faculties to achieve a natural growth of language and the
free development of expression. For Wang Mai, 'self' has the quality of true reality.
Wang Mai has an innate sensitivity to form and a sustained interest in the same. Be it in his paintings
or his installation work, the sources of the forms he employs have been multifarious, and all his works
exhibit a great richness of form, at times appearing positively heterogeneous. Wang selects random forms from lived life via a process of deconstruction and reassembles them in his work in a way that
resembles stream-of-consciousness; yet a careful inspection of the forms he chooses reveals them all to
be in some way connected to the sensations garnered from contemporary living. Wang is not striking
an obvious pose at the 'avant-garde' of reality; instead he respects his lived experience in the 'venue' of
the reality he finds himself in and collects together the information of forms as seems opportune, in
such a way that the particular character of his works is that they positively brim with structures shared
with contemporary social reality. The social and cultural psychology of China's advancing urbanisation,
a mindset where vast history and rapid change intersect, the overlaying linkage of collective ideologies
and personal fates, the confused entanglement of the power of capital in a period of economic
ascendancy with the fate of culture, development in which the native and global intermingle: all these
and more emanate from Wang's work and it is for this reason that his works appear as some sort of
grand data-bank of imagery. Were we to say that other artists of the period often devoted themselves
to certain images or a certain type of imagery, then Wang Mai developed a style all of his own by
employing methods that went 'cross-form'.
Wang is in fact not just 'cross-form' but also 'cross-media'. He is interested in a variety of fields of
endeavour, including painting, performance and installation, and will mix things up within a particular
field so as to break conventional conceptions. For example, from the very first his painting was notable
for its 'integration', combining a wide variety of different paint media; this was still more the case
in his installation pieces, where found objects were integrated with hand-crafted items – he would
use both ready-made items and also design and craft objects that were radically unlike the concepts
of found objects, so creating a hallucinatory effect capable of confusing the visual sense and allowing
a fantastic re-appreciation of the pre-given conceptualisation of material objects. Building on this
foundation, Wang also pays particular attention to the situational context of a medium, for exam ple
in his Oil Monster series of installations Wang will take media from the site where he is working,
combining ready-made objects with craft-processed discarded trash items to give the finished piece
even greater internal meaning and more forceful visual output.
Commenting on Wang's art, noted critic Zou Yuejin has written, "Within contemporary art, Wang
is an artist with an extra-ordinary ability to construct meanings and make logical connections in the
juxtaposition of different forms"; "it is easy to see in Wang's work the exceptional effort he puts
into choosing, arranging, interlinking, altering and repositioning forms; he not only makes the very
fullest use of the original meaning of forms, by re-arranging them he further allows them to grow
spontaneously towards an ideological significance, such that they gain the ability to expose the
real motivations behind things and events." Curator Dang Dan has written, "Wang Mai's
narrative method is replete with an interest in structure; the combination of a variety of
imagery achieves a curious poetry and lively vitality. He excels at establishing a critical logic
that is both visual and conceptual, turning objects lacking in any significance into bearers of
the richest possible meaning. Through a sustained deconstruction and questioning of postmodern
civilisation, he combines concepts drawn from the everyday with real contexts in
a process that mechanically displaces and extends them." These two critics accurately and
concisely describe Wang's particular language and special cultural features of his art; in a
certain sense, the random way Wang selects images and the diffuse nature of the language he
employs corresponds to the richness and frequent disorder of life of the times we find ourselves living
in. By his use of this method Wang exposes the true nature of our reality. Through his intermingled
twin approaches of deconstruction/re-assemblage and displacement/combination, Wang expresses an
aspiration to link together the richness of the real world with other imagined existences.Looking at Wang Mai's Oil Monster series from this point of view, it is easy to ascertain that these are
the outcome of a development of the artistic logic he has employed for close on two decades now. In
his paintings, performance pieces and installation work, the internal connectedness of his language
is very clear; it is a difficult and admirable quality in a contemporary artist. If Chinese contemporary
art is to escape its present childish state of creating art on the basis of disparate emotional impulses,
when forming their language artists will need to develop a logic of their own; only when they have a clear
direction in their understanding of underlying principles will they be able to use language at
will and in an easy, unforced way. Before all else, Wang Mai has the very broadest foundation
in the disposition of his language, and it is only because of this that his formal elements can
transcend the normal rules of 'type' and where 'meaning' is concerned he is able to create
new structures. There can be no doubt that Wang has provided an inspirational model for
Chinese contemporary art if it wishes to establish its own methodologies.The same applies when it comes to concepts. Wang Mai has always applied his own consistent thinking
to questions of history and present reality, motive and outcome, imagination and actuality; within
the complex formal information in his artworks, particularly in his deconstructions of imagery, are
metaphors for the reasons things happen and irresistible external forces. He seeks to use 'appearances'
that can be seen to express the 'hand' behind phenomena that cannot be seen, making a fresh
examination and disposal of power and rules of the visible state. I don't think that in every single on of
his works Wang finds the key point for entering into a deeper reality; sometimes a jumble of language
only succeeds in expressing a temporary feeling, but the consistency of feelings and thinking evident
in such works as Stele Entering Pagoda, The Mystery of 798 and Future Buddha is clearly apparent,
and his recent series Oil Monster is still more obviously prescient. In addressing issues of the global
expansion of capital and the pillage of natural resources, of market competition and unregulated
growth and of the link between the domestic economic order and the international economy, behind
Wang's emotional responses lies an awareness and intellect. The way this series seeks to reflect the
general state of capital and resources in the world today and how it makes reference to the tensions
between consumerism and economic globalism are quite obviously an expression of Wang's sensitivity
to culture. When he employs fantastical forms and maze-like structures to express concepts, it creates
an organic overlap of conceptual meanings and linguistic meanings and we move beyond 'cross-form'
or 'cross-media' to the realm of the 'cross-cultural'; we go from using language to reorder reality to
using concepts to reorder reality.
20 May 2009
Beijing