Du Xiyun

A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical genetic qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society. The categorization could be based on physical characteristics (i.e. skin color, eye color, eye shape, hair color, hair texture, nose shape, lip thickness, head shape and face shape), genetic traits or self-identification. The concept and categorization of "race" have always been considered controversial and defined differently during different time periods and cultural contexts. 

Studies on race are carried out on at least two levels (domestical and international). As purposes of such studies vary, discussions into the topic are highly complicated. Currently, studies and debates on "race" are interdisciplinary, and so far no universally acknowledged conclusion has been reached concerning what race is, whether it exits, how many races there are and how to define, understand and analyze race. 

According to many evolutionists and sociologists, based on recent research on biology, all the definitions on human races lack stringency and preciseness in terms of scientific classification. Definitions on human races are imprecise, casual, politicalized and established mainly by usage. They change as cultural perspectives shift. In this regard, race should be deemed as a kind of social construction. 

However, some scientists claim that the concept of race is not totally groundless. There is evidence of connections between race and multilocus genetic data. And the reason behind the attempts to abandon the concept of race is often driven by non-scientific factors. For instance, support for terms such as "Caucasoid", "Negro" and "Mongolia" from the scientific community has decreased significantly during the past century. But these terms originally derived from techniques of craniofacial measurement and referred to skull types, and currently are still widely used in forensic anthropology. 

Tatars, who are considered descendants of Rouran, is an umbrella term for different Turkic ethnic groups bearing the name "Tatar". Their origin could be traced back to Mongol Empire when Genghis Khan unified the various steppe tribes. The Tatars in China and Russia all derived from the Tatars living on immense grasslands of the ancient Mongolia. Today the Tatars mainly live in Central Asia, Afghanistan and Europe (including Kazan in Russia, Crimea of Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania and Finland). 

In an account Beuys gave of the near-death experience he had, he said he was rescued by a group of nomadic Tatars who tended to his wounds with animal fat and wrapped him in felt. In this story, compared with the modern people who had been disenchanted and left with nothing but void in mind, it seemed that the Tatars managed to retain some mysterious power that mankind had for long possessed, which imbued new inspiration to Beuys' artistic practice. To him, the incident presented itself as an opportunity for him to embrace the fables and signs related to Shaman and theology, re-enchanting the artistic exploration gearing towards infinite openness and possibilities. 

By installing a set of face recognition facility at the gallery space of the museum, Wang Guangyi makes it possible for the viewers to see with their own eyes how much similarity they share with the Tatars. To the viewers, this could be either an unexpected and yet quite solemn chance to "search for their roots", or a casual and fun game, or both. In the maps drawn by the Europeans from the Middle Ages to early 20th century, the nomadic areas of the Tatars are known as Tartaria. In some European literature, "China" sometimes was perceived as a parallel concept to "Tartaria". In the context of Beuys' art, the Tatars enabled the desperate to restart with full vitality after re-enchantment. Tatars, Shaman, theology, politics and art in this case formed an organic chain. According to Beuys, art equals life and art equals human beings: "The liberation of human beings is the goal of art, for me, art is about the freedom of science." To the contemporary people who are almost besieged by AI and big data, what does face recognition mean to them? And what do the descendants of Tatars look like?

When ordinary life is on an accelerated pace of transformation under the impact of science and technology, individuals trapped in it have no choice but to feel increasingly helpless. The intensities between free will and orders feed art with the possibilities to ferment. This time, artist Yin Xiuzhen transforms the white-cube gallery space, a place where habitual experience and perception are often met with challenge, into a construction site and invites people to join her to water and mix cement. Together they could create a "highway" block by block. As a contrast to all the hustle and bustle, a simple and mild action like this sends out a warm invitation to people to indulge themselves in hands-on experience, rationality and transcendence…

Highway is a highly visible indicator of the development level of infrastructure. By placing a cement mixer in the gallery space, Yin Xiuzhen gives those who want to make a cement block by themselves an opportunity to operate the mixer, pour the concrete into prefabricated mold with a daily object they'd like to embed in. The process of manual labor is no different from what tens of thousands of construction workers experience on an everyday basis. Probably it is even a bit more "manual": as the drastic development of mechanical automation has already taken the place of manual work in many aspects.

Cement powder has the capacity to become hardened during the process of chemical reaction. Each participating "laborer" chooses a piece of daily object to be embedded in the soft and moist concrete... In a society witnessing increasing changes, encounters among people with different visions, among experiences from the past and the present, would inspire new sparkles in this context.

Daily object is a vehicle containing the unique traces and even smells of its owner. Before the cement hardens, Yin Xiuzhen and her working partners would take the daily objects out and pour butter into the hollow space they leave. The sweet and fragrant butter seems to be in contest with the cement that is getting hardened on the dimension of time. On the one hand, cement, the inorganic matter, blocks the way of butter, the organic matter. But on the other, grease of the butter slowly spreads and sinks into the cement, dissolving the hardness of it… 

When the fragment butter is taking shape in the "mold" created by the daily object and slowly sinks into the cement, a unique sense of aesthetics is radiated from within both visually and olfactorily. In ancient times and even nowadays, butter is often imbued with multiple sacred implications in many parts of the world, and it is widely considered to stand for strength, power, holiness, kindness, happiness, health, purity and quality life. During the slow process of making, the laborers physically touch the substance that has been ruthlessly neglected, disenchanted and de-emotionalized by the drastically rapid development, summon the sentimental feelings and experience embedded in themselves, and witness the changing "reality" in the flow of time. 

Braking is the process of making a vehicle go slower or stop. As the system is on a track of continuous acceleration, every individual who is trapped in it is doomed to feel powerless. Under such circumstance, people would easily feel frustrated. However, the world is also brimming with uncertainties beyond the control of the system. As a result, the constantly accelerating system would experience unexpected braking every now and then, which opens up a door for new possibilities to sneak in. One Piece of Highway is a simple and mild action, inviting people to come to work on the "construction site", and to test the potential of "braking" during the physical touching of construction materials – as the inertia we experience on the highway tends to make it elusive and somewhat distant. 

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?

The concepts in Yang Zhenzhong's works are intricately layered and thought-provoking. The constant advancement of the conceptual aspects drives the development of the work's highly experimental selection of material, style, and execution. The stream of thought invoked by curiosity and critical awareness transforms with the shift in his attention to a given problematic area that he is concerned with, it is during this process that he stretches out his vitality.

Because of his constantly shifting focus, apart from mirrors and metals bars, there are few recurring materials in his work. Instead, Yang Zhenzhong constantly refreshes our perceptions and expressions of the basic conditions of contemporary existence that deal with the tension between truth/illusion, private/public in the age of the spectacle.

In his 2009 work Black Board, he began using mirrors and bars to show viewers their own mirrored image seen through the bars of the apparently open space, rendering members of the audience confused and not knowing whether they were inside or outside the cage. In 2013, mirrors and bars were placed on several of the walls, causing the mirrored images to converge and overlap, creating multiple images of people "inside and outside the cages" adding to the viewer's disorientation. In 2017, Fence a spatial installation in Beijing's Arrow Factory, consisted of a "two-sided mirror" attached to an iron grille on the wall facing the street and in the wall was a camera. When people who are usually in hurry saw the mirror on the wall, they instinctively paused to look at themselves in the mirror, completely unaware that there was a camera situated behind the two-way mirror.

In the work "Cube" produced for this exhibition at HOW Art Museum, Yang Zhenzhong uses mirrors and red fire hydrant pipes to form a large cube. On the ground, four mirrored walls conceal mysteries, while the walls of the exhibition hall have their own settings. Once the audience intervenes into the set of visual relations he has established, they will generate mirrored and filmed images, which will then reflect and overlap on each other generating a constant flow of new information and meaning....

In the world of the spectacle, illusion is in a constant state of metamorphosis, false appearances are more enticing and charming than the truth, and so truth is "ashamed of itself" and forced to retreat. People immersed in screens and reflections have long been unable to find the border between truth and illusion. Cameras are everywhere, personal information is collected and analyzed by machines day and night, and there is no way to  secure one's own personal privacy. At times we even give up our privacy willingly… This installation by Yang Zhenzhong adds spectacle to the society of the spectacle, tempting people to look in the mirror in a world of mirrored images, doubling down on being open in an era of openness, inviting the viewer to grow in their own experience of looking in the mirror.

The Detective Project-To Chase One's Tail Training, implemented by Zhou Xiaohu in August of 2008 is a premeditated monitoring test. After signing separate contracts and paying the required fees, 10 private investigators from 10 different private detective firms got busy playing the game designed by their employer, Zhou Xiaohu. Each of the investigators immediately began the serious investigative work by following the person appointed by his or her employer without ever knowing that he or she is being investigated and followed at the same time. Only their employers, who are in receiving a steady stream of reports and looking down on them from above, know that this is a loop of information that feeds on itself: everyone is snooping and collecting information about someone, yet everyone is also being snooped on and having their information collected.

Detective Project-To Chase One's Tail Training was conducted in crowded shopping malls and subway stations. Ten busy investigators were paid according to their investigative abilities according to the contract they signed before the investigation. After aesthetic transformation, the artist Zhou Xiaohu posited the process of the entire operation into the museum, a space for viewing and reflection, which raises a series of questions: Which channels and methods can personal information be obtained without having been publicly disclosed? What is the client's reaction when he finds that he is being investigated and followed by another private detective company? What will happen when the information of the parties is published without their knowledge? "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" When the investigator is also the respondent, and when the investigator finds they are also being investigated, and everyone becomes aware that they are both the investigator and the respondent, what subtle changes will happen to the questions asked?

As circumstances change with the passage of time, the technology implemented in Detective Project-To Chase One's Tail Training has already become outdated, but the basic logic of the situation and the issues addressed all relevant to contemporary life and continue to on in the form of video surveillance, facial recognition, big data, 5G, and artificial intelligence. Of course, it can also be that these prickly topics have been smoothed out by new life experiences…