LANGUAGE AND TEXT: ARTISTS

Wang Youshen
(Born 1964, China)

Conceptual Framework

Background
An arts editor of the ‘Peking Youth News’in the 1990’s, Wang Youshen has been active in establishing the contemporary art scene in Beijing. He has been involved in the ‘Anti -Dokumenta’ in Kassel as well as organising a survey exhibition called ‘New Generation Art’ in the Museum of Chinese History. He believes that Chinese contemporary art became focused with the China Avant Garde Exhibition in the China Art Gallery, Beijing in 1989.

World
Youshen has been working in Beijing and exhibits regularly in Europe and Asia including prestigious show like the Venice Biennale. As an artist, Youshen has been very influenced by the possibilities of printed material, particularly with the relationship of text and image. This is very evident in an early work called The Portrait Series (1990) where the calligraphy of Chinese language is overlaid with moody, photographic images of the figure.

Artworks
Newspaper Curtain (1991) Wang Youshen installed rolls of fine white cloth onto which was printed pages of the Peking Youth News from the windows of a building facing the Tiananmen Square. In using curtains, the artist has attempted to convey the cover-up that occurred after the massacre in 1989 (symbolically representing historical fact reconstituted as propaganda). It was however, deliberately ambiguous rather than politically rebellious. Youshen believes that the printed word has the ability to communicate with a vast audience much greater than the art museum impact. The curtains were printed with the images of young technicians and scientists and a genuflection to the Communist Party full of intentional cliche and propaganda.

Practice
As an installation artist, Wang Youshen has been also aware of the landscape and the place it has played in Chinese history. In 1993, he ‘wrapped’ a large section of the Great Wall with newspaper advertising (News paper Series 1993). This has the effect of both focusing on the strong tradition and formal conventions expected of Chinese history but at the same time providing the irreverence and satire intended by a young dissident.

In another work, text was printed onto fabric transforming curtains, clothes and sheets Newspaper Advertising (1993). Youshen believes in the political message and the use of the Great Wall was ideal because it acts as a signpost to make people take notice. The Wall itself is significant to the historical culture of the Chinese people being both protection and cage. Another work Dry in the Sun (1997) uses the site of the Great Wall to emphasise the connections between contemporary and historical fact. The use of installation as a medium allows the audience to literally interact with the site as well as the concept of the work.

The work, Washing: 1941, Datong, Ten thousand Men in a Ditch (1995) is based on the historical subject of the fiftieth anniversary of the victory against Fascism. Youshen used two photographs from original readings of the reports. The first referred to an incident when hundreds of thousands of Chinese were buried alive by the Japanese in Datong 1941. The second photograph came from a report about Japanese outrage over the invasion in China.

Wang Youshen

References


mattress.org
Images of the performance piece, Washing:1941 Datong, (1995)Chui, M., ‘Everyday Sightings Wang Youshen, Art Asia Pacific, vol. 3, no.2, 1996, p 50

Fan Dian, Hou Hanru From the Barrel of a Gun Wang Youshen Art Asia Pacific Supplement to Art and Australia June 1993 p. 42
Fenner, F. The personal and the political, Art Monthly, No.105, 1997.
Goodman, J, Chinese Character, World Art Vol. 14, p14 ,1997.
Hanru, H, Beyond the Cynical Art Asia Pacific Vol. 3, No. 1, p42, 1996.
McDonald, J., Islands of lost soul Sydney Morning Herald, Sept 28 1996.
McDonald, J., Close Encounters Sydney Morning Herald, Oct 5 1996.
Wu Hung Wang Youshen, Art Asia Pacific Issue 37, 2003 (Jan, Feb March), p93