FUGUE - Gong Zhang
08.09 - 20.10.2012
WiE KULTUR
All seems to be chain effect. Some is visible, and some, less so.
In the summer of 2012, for the first time I saw Gong’s new work, which now form the exhibition entitled “Fugue”.
According to Gong’s introduction, they are accidental result of his unfulfilled wish to design and build his home, after he acquired a courtyard. “A mini courtyard”, he said. But I know well nothing is “mini” in Beijing.
Now, when he sits inside his mini studio in Berlin, plain pasteboard is laid on his table. A knife, a ruler, a tube of glue in his hand, which are the only help that he needs for the time being to play with space, or to build a space on his desktop where he can play with.
I could list all the chronicle facts, and yet, none could explain his recent work. Gong was born into a traditional Peking Opera family, which seems to predetermine that he should have been a performer rather than a visual artist. He has studied in the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, where he has acquired all the means to render his work with highly realistic and heroic style, which leaves no traces in his recent work. For couple of years, he has built up an art space inside 798 art zone in Beijing and started to support other artists’ practices. Architecture for Gong is not merely drawings on paper. Two of his design have been built.
Just imagine the volume of sound once surrounding him, as well as the scale of the field that his hands have reached. Just when his capacity has been expanded continuously, as if there is not such a thing called “limit”, he started to be cautious with the speed that he observed himself spinning within.
He took a deep breath.....packed up and started his journey. He visited Berlin, and then, settled here. Inside his mini studio in Berlin, he tests the richness in stillness, tranquility, and not yet exhausted depth into a micro space. Apart from his identical East Asian look, Gong, through this series of work, seems to remove those cultural, social, political meaning which universally attach to a person.
The space within his work seems to be free from gravity nor orientation. In a micro space that is seemingly restraint, he dances like music notes between bars. For the earlier part of his life, one voice has been rendered on the surface, outstandingly loud, while another voice deep down somewhere, after gaining awareness, develops parallel to the first. At certain point of life, they merge into each other.
Thus we name the new works by Gong Zhang, “Fugue”.
Chaos Y. Chen
A woman with Cembalo