Art Basel's compass points to China
- By Harvey Dzodin
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E-mail China.org.cn, July 1, 2014
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"Eternity" by artist Xu Zhen courtesy of Long March Space |
At SCOPE, the Dubner Moderne Gallery in Lausanne, Switzerland featured the endearing folk-artsy ink-drawings of Li Jin transforming the simplest events of everyday life into a colorful and eloquent narrative by means of traditional Chinese brushwork.
Also in a folk-artsy vain but with significant philosophical depth beyond the Beijing artist's mere 34 years are the works of China Young Artist Project's Wu Jianan. Under the theme of "Having Floods under Control," the mixed-media works are based on "Da Yu Controlling the Floods" an ancient fairy tale about how some rivers always overflowed their banks.
Two of the works, the mainly green "Spring Mountain," and the primarily crimson/green"Autumn Mountain" are composed mainly of hundreds of laser-cut figures colored with watercolor pigments soaked in beeswax. In Chinese culture, the two seasons symbolize the passage of time.
From afar the head-shaped mountains, reminiscent of Easter Island, look like a pleasant montage of colors, but up close one can see all sorts of figures linked to traditional Chinese culture, mythology and folklore. For example, what appears to be an eye is on close inspection a head from the Han Dynasty with the long hairstyle favored by Daoists two millennia ago. Around the eye are many hands symbolic of Buddhism.
While for one week Basel is the art capital of the world, it is now clear that its center of gravity has moved eastward to Asia, especially China.
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