THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

Some of the most successful and well-known contemporary artists working today are from Asia. They produce work around the world, including in their birth land and in the US. The ten artists included in this exhibit are from countries Korea, China, Cambodia, and Japan. This combination of artists has shown all throughout the world including the Guggenheim in New York. Many have been involved in and contributed to the Beijing Olympics in some capacity. All clearly show the influence their heritage has on their work whether through material or subject matter. This exhibit features 9 men and 1 female. All ten artists have challenged what is acceptable in their country, some even challenging Western ideals. They are fearless artists that create incredible work.

Ai Weiwei sacrifices his record and safety for his artwork. Do Ho-Suh recreates life-size versions of the houses and apartments he has lived in throughout his life. Momoyo Torimitsu creates work that comments on cutesy, kawaii-style’s influence on Japan’s contemporary art. Choi Jeong-Hwa creates oversized, mechanically inflated lotus flowers that seem to breath on their own. Wenda Gu shocked China and other countries by pushing boundaries with universal taboos. Xu Bing created his own Chinese characters and combinations to demonstrate how the language

has been warped to fit the needs of the government. Yanagi Yukinori fuses historical Japanese imagery with contemporary Japanese art. Lee Jae-Hyo creates very organic sculptures that can create a nature tone even within a gallery setting. Soheap Pich creates skeleton-like structures that mimic the fragile nature of human organs. Cai Guo-Qiang creates very large pieces and fills museums full of work.

All the artists have their own style and identity within their work based around similar concepts and issues. Some have fused their Eastern culture with their adopted Western culture and some try to show a connection between the two without combining them. Without a doubt, all of these artists have also influenced contemporary Western sculpture and installation art in return.

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK CITYJANUARY 7- MARCH 7, 2012

Ai Weiwei has become one of the most famous and notorious Chinese artists of this century. His name may actually be more famous than his work itself but aside from headlines, his work takes just as much notice.

Born in China in 1957, son of a famous poet, Ai Weiwei was brought into a home of literature and art. His immigration to New York in 1981 caused him to make friends with other artists like Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp. His interest in contemporary art blossomed once he left China where contemporary art is considered a part of western corruption.

His work shows an eye for detail and concept. They are often large-scale installation pieces or sculptures. He claims his work has no purpose but the social commentary behind many of his pieces begs to differ. One of his most recent works, Sunflower Seeds, from 2010 is a commentary on Chinese industry. The piece included in this exhibit, Descending Light from 2007, conveys the idea of order falling into chaos. The red chandelier does not descend from the ceiling like the title alludes to but instead lies on the ground. The red represents Chinese culture and the lights that still shine illustrate a sense of hope. For Weiwei, chandeliers reflect the Western culture of glamour and class. With his relocation to New York, he unconsciously passed chandeliers in different settings across the city consequently leading to his interest in chandelier imagery. The crystals in his chandeliers are

always very elaborate and based on a mathematical formula. The color in the chandelier is a deep red with sparks of yellow that burst out in various areas not obstructed by crystals. The scaffolding is unharmed by the “fall” and creates a curve in the chandelier as it lies on the ground. When looking at it head one, it seems oversized but the fact that its normal position would be far above you, the size seems appropriate. All of Weiwei’s chandelier pieces are magnificent. The architecture is clear and the light is poignant. They don’t even feel like chandeliers or sculptures but paintings of light hanging above you.

In 2010, Weiwei’s studio was destroyed and he was arrested for his outspoken work and interviews. A movement among fellow artists and fans of his work sprung up to attest and protest for his freedom.

Choi Jeong-Hwa boldly states that he is “elevating dumpster diving to high art.” He also cannot place what kind of artist he is because he says he could consider anything around him to be art. He may feel this way because he does not limit his materials. He uses every day items and found and mass-produced plastic for most pieces.

Choi was born in 1961 in Seoul, South Korea. He studied painting for almost 30 years until moving into video and installation art. Like many of the artists featured in this exhibit, he does not discuss the purpose behind his work, though it shows a commentary on consumer waste and globalization. He likes to focus more on the beauty of the flowers being produced and the fact that the material creating the pieces becomes ambiguous once used. His generation watched as South Korea started to industrialize itself and become more commercialized. Plastic became a staple in Korean culture. Plastic items like the ones used in Choi’s work, like Happy Happy, is often used in daily life of South Koreans causing him to pick it up and use. He constantly appropriates everyday objects to create completely new works.

Clear Lotus was commissioned in 2009 by the National Gallery of Australia from The Gene and Brian Sherman Contemporary Asian Art Fund. Clear Lotus displays similar imagery to most of Choi’s soft sculptures. They

are mechanically inflated lotus flowers that can quickly fill a space. Choi does not associate with a particular religion though he does recognize the symbolism that a lotus flower holds in Buddhist beliefs. It represents progress and strength as is beautifully springs up from muddy ground. He actually feels very odd around real flowers stating, “I feel strange when I see a real tree or flower. Nature, as such, is so rare in Korea these days, that I’m actually afraid when I encounter it. I’m afraid of the ‘real’. Maybe all I can deal with is an idea of nature, immune to destruction, so I make an artificial one to look at and enjoy.”

His artificial flowers are truly breathtaking. They are large and undeniably mesmerizing as they can inflate at the snap of the fingers. They seem to actually breath as if they are truly coming alive. His use of color shows a love for culture, Korean or not.

Do Ho-Suh has become one of the more prominent Asian sculptors in this past decade with his recreations and reflections of his past. He was born in Seoul, Korea in 1962. Many of his pieces reflect his childhood home in Korea including the pointedly named piece, The Perfect Home (2002). This piece was a replicate of his childhood home. The pieces are life-size and realistic down to the mechanical parts of the houses and apartments.

Many of his pieces carry a theme of reflection whether it’s a literal reflection or a memorial reflection. Suh creates his sculptures out of wire and stretched nylon. His pieces look soft and delicate with the combination of the material, the detail, and pastel color palette. His 2003 work Staircase is a bright red nylon sculpture that hangs from the ceiling. The literal staircase ascends into a foreground level that stretches across the whole room. There is a duplicate staircase above the first that becomes lost in the shadows of the nylon foreground. The staircase mimics the staircase that stood between his apartment and his landlord’s apartment in New York. It represented the human relationship and boundaries we create for ourselves.

These pieces, portraying living quarters, are so flexible and light that they feel like they can be packed up and brought with him wherever he goes though he claims to never felt homesick between any of his movies from Korea to New York to LA and back and forth.

The piece that is showcased in this exhibit is titled Reflection from 2004. It is, again, a nylon sculpture of a walkway in his childhood home.

Similar to Staircase, a reflection of the arch is made by creating two of the same sculpture, connected at the bottoms with a thin layer of nylon stretched across the room between the arches. The combination of the light blue color and thin nylon between the arches creates the illusion of a pond or some other reflective surface. The piece looks light and airy with the weave of the nylon loose enough to shine light through. He meticulously sews the small details into each curved tile that creates the roof. It’s a breathtaking sculpture that keeps every detail of the arch intact and sustains the essence of the arch. Even without ever seeing the real structure, this piece is sufficient enough to give the feeling of the arch and it’s weight and shadow it casts upon a subject underneath it.

Momoyo Torimitsu is most famously known, much to her dismay, for her large robot sculptures, titled Jiro Miyata, that she showed all around the world in 1994. Born in Tokyo, Japan in 1967, Momoyo originally set out to be a graphic designer, however, failed the entrance exam multiple times. In 1996, she relocated to New York where she now resides full time.

Her work often studies the relationship between “reality” as we sense it and the reality which exists in front of us.

Recently, her work has started to bring attention to the way Japanese females, whether in America or Japan, are viewed and how they must act in public. In 2000, her piece Somehow I Don’t Feel Comfortable, featured in the show “My Reality: Contemporary Art and the Culture of Japanese Animation” in 2001, addressed the issue. Momoyo stated that women, “use cuteness for communication.” She gave an example of a Japanese woman answering the phone in a high pitch voice no matter who the caller was. The piece consisted of two oversized, inflatable balloons in the shape of bunnies that sat across from each other in a small room. They are cute bunnies that are in similar style to much of the Japanese pop culture imagery associated with the region. The term “kawaii” refers to this “cute” and “young” style. The bunnies’ size, however, obstructs any happy tone felt in the piece. They are too big for the room and

as a result are jammed in, curling in on themselves. Their bodies face each other but their eyes never meet because of the way they are slumped over. They can’t take comfort in each other and just sit awkwardly and uncomfortably in a room. In the end, they lose all the cuteness they would normally radiate. The piece was also an illustration and commentary on “the influence the Japanese anime culture has on contemporary art.”

She says she often feels like there is certain work expected of her as a female Japanese artist but after living in New York for over a decade now, she does not feel like she can accurately make artwork that relates to Japan. Her work is successful a successful look at Japanese culture from a Japanese American, living amongst artists of all backgrounds. Her pieces are interesting and appropriately start a dialogue the affects of the world around her.

Yanagi Yukinori is one of the more conceptual artists in this exhibit. He pulls from everywhere for inspiration and material with the concepts relying heavy on pop culture. His work relies on Japanese issues yet still manages to fuse Western perceptions into the pieces.

His interest in Japanese war iconography is present in most of his work causing some uproar within Japan. Many of the subjects and icons that he uses are taboo within the country. Yanagi was one of the first artists to break away from the status quo and bring forth the taboo subjects.

His series Hinomaru from the early 90s depicts a Hinomaru, or Japanese flag, created out of over 200 neon lights. It shines in patterns over rows of haniwa. Haniwa were small human statues that were used as tomb offerings from 300-710 AD. The setup was very dramatic and theatrical with the flag standing before figurines almost as if it were on a stage. This installation is a fusion of old Japanese culture and tradition, as seen by he haniwa, with new, modern technology like the neon lights. As a conceptual artist, some of the meaning and understand of the piece was lost, especially when taken out of Japan. Many people viewing the installation were not familiar with the specific history of the haniwa and were left to assume their own meaning. Yanagi was aware of this but insisted on keeping it the way it was. He actually kept with this practice of including historical items that may not be as well known or understood.

Yanagi does not offer solutions to the problems he address in his installations. He is more focused on the past and future and where the viewer is to go with the problem address. He is very concerned with “identity.” In one interview, he reflected on a memory involving his identity and how he felt as if he had none stating:

The red cover of my Japanese passport is imprinted with the crest of the Imperial family. When I first received this passport five years ago, I remember wondering why my passport had the Imperial family’s crest on its cover. Every Japanese, including the members of the Japanese Red Army and those who fought against the construction of Narita Airport, must possess a passport imprinted with the crest of the Imperial family when flying from Narita Airport. With my passport in front of me, I gradually began to wonder if I might be a clay figurine, a haniwa.

His desire to find and uncover identity within a culture that is nationalistic is a key theme in his work and shows his courage to stand out from his country. His unwillingness to explain every aspect of his works, like the history of the haniwa, shows a regard for principle and intent which is very respectable.

Lee Jae-Hyo is one of the younger artists in this exhibit and also one of the most different. His work is very natural and organic. He was born in Hapchen, Korea in 1965. He graduated from Hong-ik University with a Bachelor degree in Plastic Art in 1992.

His craftsmanship is nearly flawless with the work he puts in almost undetectable. He seamlessly mixes natural items like wood and leaves with metal like nails and bolts. Unlike the other artists, his work does not necessarily tell a story or have an issue it is trying to address. His pieces are able to stand alone and speak for themselves as works of art and pieces of nature with the audience to decide whether there is a deeper meaning.

Design and form are the key elements in his work. His work is not overdesigned or overproduced. The work is flawlessly executed as if it came straight from the nature setting the materials came from. Described as poetic, his work shows an understanding of texture. Lee shows great attention to texture. Some of the texture comes from charred wood and others from nails pointing out in all directions.

Fallen Leaves, 2004, is simply created from thousands of fallen oak leaves that have been loosely rolled up and placed together onto a wall. Every leaf is shaped and sized differently which creates a rolling texture across the width of the piece.

In Lee’s piece 0121-1110=10210 from 2002, the letters start to converge into one mass of line and shadow. They turn into an illusion of something growing or moving on the charred wood. The base itself is very formal looking and smooth showing Lee’s work, however, the grain and cracks in the wood is still prevalent. The organic nature of the wood is not lost in the darkened color or even by the metal covering it. It all merges together naturally and smoothly. It is a very unique and beautiful piece that looks like something you want to touch. Lee would probably not protest because of the natural feel and the fact that it is supposed to act as something found in the wild that you would be able to touch. This organic and real feel of the piece is not lost when placed in a gallery. Instead, it works with the space and creates a warm, biological atmosphere. The space does not inhibit the works but unites together with them.

Sopheap Pich creates structural sculptures that are fragile and complex which mirror the subject matter of organs that he frequently uses. Almost every sculpture relates back to his country. Pich was born in Koh Kralaw in 1971. His family eventually fled Cambodia to Thailand and then to America where he received his bachelors and masters degree. Pich lived in America until 2002 when he relocated back to Cambodia.

The organ imagery often relates to the issues raised in Cambodia involving the body. Not every piece is represented as an organ but Pich says that he almost always stats with an organ whether it evolves away from that or not in the final piece. In Cycle 2, Version 3, Pich has connected two sculpted stomachs together. They become a circle, infinitely feeding off each other presenting this idea of hunger and stomach problems prevalent within Cambodia.

His work looks like skeletons or frames of sculptures however they are finished products made of various items like bamboo or rattan and wire. The structures are made of simple material associated with Cambodia drawing more ties between his work and his heritage. He talked about the piece saying, “When displayed correctly, Cycle has...suggestive tendencies. But it remains a sculpture; it doesn’t try to tell a story. It appears both strong and tragic...It’s monumental yet is easily shaken by a slight

gust of wind.” The same can be said about all of his sculptures.

In the 2009 piece Caged Heart, featured in this exhibit, Pich has created a delicate heart structure within an equally delicate cage. The heart itself is massive and alludes to a possible problem, possibly a disease caused by the cage surrounding it, encroaching on it. The piece is powerful because of not only its size but its content physically and metaphorically. The dyed burlap that barely covers the bamboo and rattan acts as a burst of color. It also causes a flow of movement alluding to blood in the veins surrounding it. It gives little protection to the structure outside and even less to what lies inside of it. The holes in various areas further this idea that the heart is unhealthy and diseased. There’s vulnerability in his work that comes from the fragile material and skeleton-like shapes. It makes his pieces speak more complexly than the structures themselves.

Cai Guo-Qiang was solely featured at the Guggenheim in 2009 in the show “I Want To Believe” where he completely filled the space. He showed 80 large scaled pieces. He is quoted as saying that he wanted to, “fill the museum with the energy of an explosion.” He did so by including Inopportune: Stage One (2004), a piece made up of nine cars hanging one above another with sequenced multi-channel light tubes bursting out of them. The cars were made to look like they were exploding red, white, and blue light, the color choice of which he claims has no meaning and was not intentional. It represents a car bombing that moves up within the space. He often explores the idea of good vs. evil and creation vs. destruction.

He frequently uses Chinese symbols in his pieces though the majority of his life was lived in Japan and the US, respectively. Many young Chinese artists work underneath him to help create the massive amount of work he produces for such shows as “I Want To Believe.”

Cai was born in Quanzhou, China in 1957. He actually studied stage design, which could explain his affinity for theatricality. In the 80s he moved to Japan and then later to New York in early 90s though his background is unforgettably rooted in theater and drama as seen by his large scale pieces. He rarely takes sides in his work when in interviews. He never

admits intentionality. Much of the debates over his pieces do not include him.

In his 2006 work, Head On, 99 life-sized wolf replicas were suspended into the air in a flow structure that ended in a glass wall where multiple wolves have supposedly hit and fallen. The whole piece is very large, stretching across the expanse of the room it was featured in in the Guggenheim. It is one of the most captivating pieces by Cai because the use of ground and air. Standing beside this piece, the wolves are above you and also at your feet. They seem attainable in some areas and unreachable in others. There is a very strong sense of movement that keeps the piece fluid and interesting. It feels like a snapshot of this unfortunate accident involving wolves and a glass wall. It is a undeniable piece. It is hard to look away and strikes an emotion within whether it be sadness or disgust.

Xu Bing is an influetntial Chinese artist, considered to be a major contributor to the New Wave movement of the 1990s. Bing was born in Chongqing, China in 1955.

Repetition is a common element in contemporary art and is the theme that Xu often uses within his work. Repetition was also what drew him to woodblock printing, which he first specialized in. Xu found particular interest in Chinese lettering with which also showed repetition as all languages do.

In Book from the Sky (and sometimes referred to as Book from Heaven), Xu presented a commentary on the Chinese government and their use of the language as a political tool to keep tabs on the citizens. The new Chinese language was broken down and simplified from the traditional language for ulterior motives, which Xu was not happy with. In the piece, originally shown in 1988, he uses three forms of writing: bound book, scroll, and newspaper. He combined and rearranged characters and printed them with hand carved woodblocks onto rice paper. Although at first glance, they looked like legible Chinese words, they were unreadable jibberish made up by Xu. The project took nearly four years to produce between the time of conception of characters, the carving of the thousands woodblocks, and ultimate installation.

Originally viewed in China for only Chinese viewers,

Xu wanted to document the effect it had on visitor and what their interpretation was.

The purpose was “to deconstruct and expose how words shape knowledge and beliefs, and position authority.” Within China, this installation was not well received for the critical gaze it put upon the culture though it was always praised for how aesthetically pleasing and beautifully formed it was.

Xu took a very interesting approach that caused the audience to feel deceived or misguided as they walked through the installation. They assumed that they would be able to read the prints but were left feeling confused and left out instead. He, however, was not deceitful for he never told them going in that they would understand or be able to read the script. He said that he wanted “to create an oppressive, prison-like atmosphere, within which the viewer would be led to doubt himself.” The interactive aspect of the piece shows a disconnect between what the viewer expects and what they receive.

Wenda Gu is considered one of the pioneers of installation art in China in the 1980s. Like Aiweiwei, his artwork ran into trouble with the Chinese government resulting in two shows being shut down. That is not to say that his work has always been welcomed with open arms in the Western world either. Some of his more controversial shows have been denied in America and Poland. What’s more interesting is that none of this seems to affect Gu.

Gu was born in Shanghai, China in 1955 during the time that he refers to as, “the cultural revolution and the post cultural revolution, when people lost their belief.” He began as a painter. He immigrated to America in 19—and quickly learned that he had to market himself. Coming from China where art that was not made for government propaganda was not seen or even allowed, his artwork that he made in America had to be profitable to survive.

The Oedipus Refound Complex series from 1990, as exhibited here, is one of his most well known works of his career. It is also one of his most notorious. Very controversial, the series includes taboo subject matter such as placenta powder, menstrual blood, and hair from animals and humans, collecting material from over 2,000 women. He focused less on idea of the specific parts and products of the body and focused more on the body as the center of everything in the universal.

Although initially shocking, the series creates a dialogue about things that are considered universally taboo. Of course not finding his work particularly jarring, Gu said, “My idea was for individual women to create their own work… For me, a social response, whether from audiences, corporations, political or otherwise, is an important element towards completing the work.” He is a strong proponent of the idea that installation art is about the viewer and the artist as a collaboration.

He quite an admirable artist that is constantly breaking away from tradition and what is considered acceptable. He has been described as, “probably the artist, in the realm of contemporary Chinese art, who has the most violent destructiveness, rebellious consciousness, and radical creation in art making” by famous Chinese critic, Xiao Cheng. His use of menstrual blood, among other things, shows a link connecting women from every culture.

He successfully breaks boundaries between cultures like the Chinese and American culture and raises debate on what is taboo.