Stray Alchemists
尤伦斯当代艺术中心｜ ULLENS CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
北京朝阳区酒仙桥路4号院798艺术区
2008.04.12–2008.07.13
Perhaps this exhibition’s title, “Stray Alchemists,” subconsciously braces audiences for an underwhelming experience, as it suggests that the assemblage of international artists vagabond minor players in comparison to Huang Yongping, whose alchemical wizardry is on view in a retrospective in this venue’s main hall. Here, tucked into a low network of halls on the perimeter of the UCCA, is a group offering of emerging artists touted as being among the vanguard of the international art world.
The exhibited works are rhetorically sewn together by common threads, among them an emphasis on process, the deliberate alteration of materials, and on examining everyday experience. Matt Bryans has erased the contents an enormous newspaper collage to create a primordial nebula of social information and display incredible feats of process. In the agitated installation Five Pointed Star, 2007, Amy Granat’s scratched and worn 16-mm films loop endlessly within a claustrophobic room, the clicking sound of five vintage projectors amplified by the space constraints and the speakers that amplify the sound of the film running through the projectors. Also of note are Takeshi Murata’s mesmerizing videos, “digital paintings” made in collaboration with Robert Beatty, who provided the sound tracks. These are installed in soundproof, utterly dark rooms that make for embryonic appreciation of his brand of digital-age psychedellica.
The conceptual practice of other works seemed simplistic and technically unimpressive, as in Li Tzay-Chuen’s 100 spiders and 1 sticker, 2007, and Sterling Ruby’s monumental junk art, which may evoke a response in Western contexts but has difficulty competing with the complex and contradictory urban construction site on display outside.
Perhaps dwarfed by this new context, or by the weighty nature of the works in the neighboring space, “Stray Alchemists” seems more trendy than relevant. Neither Day-Glo colors, nor hip-hop culture, nor vintage borrowing could redeem its sense of significance. It remains worth a visit for the inclusion of a few stimulating works, but fails as an introduction to the vanguard practice that is unfolding in the West.
originally published in Chinese on artforum.com.cn
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