Under the shadow of the virus, fear for death lurks at the bottom of our heart more than ever. Consequences incurred thereby such as self-protection, isolation, quarantine and test arouse complicated feelings among different people. Due to the pandemic, Zhao Bandi had to stay abroad in the spring and summer of 2020. Arriving in China at the end of June and after a 14-day quarantine at a hotel in Shanghai, he finally made his way home in Beijing.
Witnessing the spread of the pandemic and the escalating conflicts among different nations, and experiencing the sense of loneliness, isolation and helplessness first-handedly, Zhao Bandi came to the conclusion that art is a way to sympathize and emancipate.
As a result, taking Me & Beuys at HOW as an opportunity, Zhao Bandi presents his version of Noah's Ark – Zhao Bandi's Hut.
A "Hut" in a Cast-Away Situation
At the outbreak of the pandemic, people actively or passively isolate themselves to protect them from each other, which in a way makes life into a Cast-Away situation. Zhao Bandi's hut consists of bamboo shack, mask hammock, and bamboos and bamboo leaves scattered around. Inside the hut, traces of human civilization and imprints of panda, one of the most endangered animals, could both be perceived. As we all know, the latter is a signature in Zhao's practice as well as his pre-life memory.
Beuys's Grease and Felt of v.s. Zhao Bandi's Hut
Zhao Bandi has been known for his wittily surprising ways to challenge the rules and ridicule the prejudice since early 1990s. However, as a matter of fact the seemingly mischievous intrusions run parallel with the reverence he harbors for the classical spirit – after all, they are both about love and hope. And his favorite artist, Joseph Beuys, is exactly an example who managed to connect the two together.
Being a gunner in the German Air Force during WWII, Beuys's plane crashed on the Crimean Front. He was rescued by the Tatar tribesmen, who had wrapped him with animal fat and felt. Consequently, as prominent symbols of life and redemption, pain and cure, grease and felt constantly appeared in his later artistic practice.
While the pandemic makes people all the more isolated and longing for shelter, Zhao Bandi's hut fits exactly such a goal. Aesthetically speaking, he sets up a cradle, a refuge, a confessional in the surreal sense for the curing and redemption of the soul. People who are very much depressed and anxious under the threat of the pandemic are just like those who were in the face of the world-engulfing flood. They are welcomed to come to the hut, to embark on the Noah's Art of the soul and escape this fallen world within an aesthetic ambience.
Painting and Several Parties
In recent years, Zhao Bandi has organized a series of parties at spaces such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, which has earned him the reputation as the "King of Party". Also, he has passionately picked up his painting brushes again. During the time he had to stay abroad, few people wanted to spend much time outside. But Zhao Bandi sometimes went out to the street, setting up his easel and delineating the verves under the equatorial sunshine in the form of oil on canvas.
He's given explanations of his dualities: In the past two or three years when I had been keen on creating hilarious art parties one after another, the other me chose to go back to studio and spent time quietly in front of the canvas. There was a reason for that: after years of dealing with the world, I gradually felt frustrated at the so-called "truth" and became more concerned about "surface". Painting, as an old lover of mine, came back to me at this point with renewed looks.
Probably it is because the truth is too cruel that Zhao Bandi chooses to build a Utopia of his own.
In this newly-built hut, paintings he created during the pandemic are put on display. Also in this hut, he'd receive friends, which leads to the series of hilarious parties.
Is Zhao Bandi's Escape Plan a Panacea to Rescue All Beings?
Experience during the past six months has greatly stimulated his nerves and perception, and the sense of stimulation is still as vivid as yesterday. Once Zhao Bandi raised a question, in a somewhat self-mocking manner: In the face of the global pandemic and an overwhelmingly cruel world, is it unethical for me to still stick to a fine sense of beauty?
Rather than self-question, it is more like the artist's confession of his choice of an aesthetic escape when his perception of the world is deepened.
Zhao Bandi's hut will create a new dimension, within which the boundary between reality and art becomes blurred. To be more specific, within this dimension, the reality that is thin and rigid is to be imbued with the energy of aesthetics, the ordinary is transformed into the extraordinary, and severe heaviness is melted into mellow lightness…
In a time when the whole world descends into a post-pandemic scenario and when conflicts and crises have reached an unprecedented level, Zhao Bandi presents to the world his version of escape plan!
Does Zhao Bandi's ark of art also work for us?
