That one, the first one I devoted to the Anthropocene and how climate change was affecting the artists' gaze, already consisted of an East/West dialogue - to move quickly. But "Shun" focuses on the origins, and tries to highlight the ideological, mental, philosophical sources of the gap that has separated, for centuries, the European space and the Chinese space.
This fundamental divergence is the great subject of the philosopher François Jullien, who inspired this exhibition, but also of many historians: "If Greek thought is imbued with the spirit of the potter," he writes, "who works the amorphous thought of clay (...) Chinese thought is turned toward the spirit of the lapidary, who experiences the resistance of jade and employs all his art only to draw from the meaning of the strata of the raw material to release from it the form that pre-existed it and of which no one could have had the idea before discovering it. " It is important today, more than ever, to return to the archaeology of images and forms to understand the art of our time.
Read MoreDuring the period known as the "Warring Kingdoms", between the fifth and third centuries B.C., Zhuangzhi (or Tchouang Tseu) appeared, who laid the foundations of Chinese thought, the fundamental concepts of Taoism: Qi (vital energy), Yin and Yang, but also the notion of Wuwei, which is often translated as "not to act", and which above all means to act according to the course of things, to follow the natural movements. What desires, what analyzes or builds, is wei: acting is that impulse which forces and violates nature. At the same time, that is to say in the fourth century in Greece, Aristotle defined the creative act as the apposition of a form (active) on a matter (passive): the hylémorphic principle of the Western art, which legitimizes a violence made to the things.
The West has radically distinguished itself from Asia by adopting a purely utilitarian relationship with its natural environment. Dissecting atoms or ripping up the earth, exploiting natural resources as if they were at our disposal, these were the principles from which European capitalism developed, starting in the sixteenth century. These principles, which led to the ideology of progress, did not fit into the conceptual framework of the Chinese culture of the time, impregnated with Taoism, which conceived what the European calls "nature" in terms of interactions and regulations. For the West, the whole world is the scene of an opposition between (human) culture and nature, which is a neutral container. In contrast, in the Tao, it is a matter of embracing the course of things, which is summarized by the term shun.
For Bertold Brecht, "the Chinese composition lacks the element of constraint that is absolutely familiar to us. Its order costs no violence."
On the one hand, an ancestral cult of life, multiform, articulated in painting around a relationship between water and mountain. On the other, European still lifes, dead game and fish, cut flowers and crucifixions.
But what about this form of thought when nature has become the global expression of human industry, the image of its omnipresence? The artists I have chosen to present respond, each in their own way, to this question, at a time when lifestyles and production systems, equally toxic, are merging in the global productivist economy?
WORKS
30 x 30 x 35 cm
202 x 95 x 995 cm
A steel clothing rack on casters adorned with jute twine, nylon cord, knitting yarn, lampshade frames, copper plated bells, metal rings, screw eyes. These heterogeneous elements are used here to create an exotic yet undefined identity within the work.
Knotty Spell in Chunky Forest appears as a shamanic object or being. It is mobile and can be activated. Yang's work is strewn with performative elements: "it rolls or can be pushed, it folds up, it hangs, floats, dangles, or swings, it rustles, makes sound, or smells." In this work, nothing is static; everything suggests movement and an unfurling, momentous display of contradiction and transformation.
The significance of prayer to the cardinal directions is an ancient cross-cultural trait shared by many Indigenous cultures throughout the world, including Central Asia, Indigenous Americas, and even Indigenous pre-Christian Europe.
In Lakota culture, praying to the four directions of the medicine wheel represents prayer to all the beings: animals, rocks, mountains, plants, winds, waters, lands, and people before you, in each direction. But importantly these beings are regarded as relatives, and therefore praying to the directions represents ones connection to all the life, land, and ancestors you share space in the universe with. Global culture finds itself today in a state of disorientation, out of balance with land and nature and unable to navigate the future. Lost is a clear sense of scale or connection to earth systems. Perhaps a re-orientation starts with a simple acknowledgment of space and direction. This work is made in 3d software and is part of my larger practice of rendering scenes from nature. The process of simulating nature is a meditative practice that challenges me to look ever closer at the beauty, language, and detail of the natural world.