Following the Stars Group and the Anonymous Painting Group Movements at the end of the 1970s, the early period of China’s contemporary art started to recover a spirit of individuality, after being used as a political mouthpiece, as the popularization of cultural unification, and as a representative of the “Serve the People” ideology.

The cultural phenomena of the 1980s, which sprung up in various places, clearly formed a temporary trend for the future of China’s contemporary art. If we compare the end of the seventies to 1985, the most striking difference is in the way art declared itself: the struggle for freedom and the need for an independent creative spirit in the 1970s, compared to the 1980s that acted completely outside of this context – doesn’t this exactly illustrate the ideological change? The needs for individualization at the end of the seventies and the diversified reality of the eighties—whether in direct confrontation or completely forgotten and dispersed—heralded the end of the revolutionary era.

 

What should not be ignored are the ripple effects to all levels of culture from the Cultural Revolution and before. From today’s point of view China’s contemporary art is neither the ‘90s trend towards internationalism, nor a return to tradition. The reason for this was the disappearance of the group concept, but also the concurrent contemporary features of history. When did the group concept disappear? Was the disappearance of art groups representative of that? And what about the general audience and their political landscape? These questions cannot simply be placed into an art historical discourse, but as a framework they must be taken into account as clues for a structured study of art history.

 

In the ‘85 New Wave exhibition, curated by Fei Dawei in 2007, there was a space providing such a temporal clue – it was a reference to the 1985 period. When Fei Dawei began his systematic research on that period, in the moment when this cultural phenomenon started to become history, the definition of 1985 was first and foremost derived from the logic of time periods, reviewed in the context of the development of China’s contemporary art. But this time, an emotional connection was built from a potential ideology and memory. This is an inherent element and relation in China’s contemporary art, and we cannot ignore the other side of China, that of its being constructed against the backdrop of globalization, the most important facet of contemporary culture since the rise of the press media: the emergence of ambiguity in everything we used to know. This also explains the awkwardness of those who gained within China’s contemporary art, but who could not exist in both contexts at the same time.

 

A third context has recently started to emerge in China, its focus lying on the very evident phenomena concerning capital as part of the economy and art. This newly added facet to the former relation between politics and art provides another possibility to the aforementioned internal and global contexts of China.

 

Seen geographically, the Western influence has become more and more apparent in China, from the art auctions to the trend towards gallery expositions in Hong Kong, etc., these are all indicators of a change in today’s contemporary art structure. Due to the art trade, and the growing numbers of Chinese art collectors, museums and galleries, the boundaries between East and West are no longer so apparent. However, it has not lead to the elimination of internal ideologies. On the contrary, it has even augmented them through the more powerful state policy and economic requirements. This is the reason why both the common people and those at high political levels, overseas Chinese artists, as well as the international art sphere hope to cast aside the so-called “Chineseness.”

 

While the new context is evolving, the former context has not nor cannot disappear. In the light of that, the so-called rise of China (a Rise of a Great Power) is not what should be noted, but the establishment of individual values, as this is not only a sign of a country’s development, but also a premise for the advent of a democratic society.

 

To sort out an artist’s personal history, one should go beyond the existing framework of China’s contemporary art and its elements from the social environment. Only in establishing its relations to different contexts, can one outline the reality of the individual art creations against the backdrop of Chinese society under Western (or non-Chinese) influence.

 

It is time to say goodbye to certain biased threads, and also time to see an individual existence after the dissolution of the above-mentioned elements. Of course, this interdependence cannot be eradicated, but it will disappear by itself at the moment it becomes completely transparent. Therefore, I hope this resolution might be the inflection point and foundation for our understanding of artists.

 

From the beginnings of video in 1994

Artists often need good reasons to preserve their works. Destroying them can be seen as part of a rational critique, an urge coming from their innermost being and despair towards their creations.

 

At the Minsheng Art Museum’s exhibition Moving Image in China (1988–2011) (2011), Yan Lei’s work 1500cm (1994) was placed prominently in the entrance area to the exhibition hall. Although the artist had kept nothing of the original, through the efforts of curator Guo Xiaoyan and the remains from Qiu Zhijie’s 1996 exhibition Phenomena and Image, it could be restored and displayed.

 

Yan Lei’s work from this period was not yet about global art politics or the development of China’s contemporary art; it mostly concerned itself with media and the artist himself. In 1500cm, he continuously forces a rope into his mouth until it completely disappears. The bulging mouth and the artist’s glaring gaze into the camera breaks away from the previous style of political declarations by art (group) movements.

 

If we look back to the time of this work’s creation, 1994 was of course after 1989, the China/Avant-Garde Art Exhibition and China’s New Art, Post 1989 Exhibition. It was before the first video exhibition, Phenomena and Image in 1996, and it occurred almost simultaneously with political pop (hailing from Beijing), cynical realism and gaudy art.

 

Was it the artist’s need to move against the politicization of art, or was this the beginning of his focus on the individual, ideology and expression through media outside of collectivism? Yan Lei does not often like to explain his artwork’s inherent needs or outside influences, or their greater context. His neglect in talking about and denial of his own works has turned into a creative method for him over the years, becoming apparent in projects like International Yeast (2004), Pompidou (2004), and Art Project Nice (2004). His interests and focus have always come from an extraordinary relation to culture. However, this method was clearly not present in his early works. The messages displayed in those video and photography works have more of a resemblance to an art manifesto and the artist’s deliberate alienation from an understanding of art beyond the artwork; they can be seen as a turning point away from the logic of modern art to contemporary art, a transformation which Yan Lei completed in 1997.

 

If we compare Yan Lei to Andy Warhol in regard to their approaches to Pop Art, video art or works like Warhol TV, we can find subtle indications of the intervention of the artist’s body and a deliberately kept distance to the work, as well as a sense of mystery emitted by it. Seen retrospectively, its influence on the future also becomes apparent. All this can be seen as a special, individual case in contemporary art’s development.

 

1997: Kassel Invitation Letter

 

1997 saw the Handover of Hong Kong, Documenta 10 in Kassel, and Yan Lei and Hong Hao creating the Invitation Letter. As mentioned before, the artist was completely invisible in the work. In this state he sent out 100 invitation letters to artists (and art workers) of China’s contemporary art sphere.

 

This work caused an seismic shock within the realms of cognition. Although Li Xianting had already proposed the context of integration into the global community, artists were still getting used to the blending of the international and national contexts. Particularly in the sphere of the visual arts, artists’, curators’ and critics’ reflections were concentrated on a few issues, which were how to establish the concept of China’s contemporary art; how to be brought in line with international practice; and the understanding of oneself and the world against the backdrop of populism. From these we can see that these considerations cannot be separated from a corresponding global and Chinese framework. They are all searching for possible means for individual creation in China, and all these discussions and practices led to the later emergence of the phenomenon of “Chineseness.” However, the series of art concepts introduced by Li Xianting in the 1990s—Cynical Realism, Political Pop, Gaudy Art—reinforced this idea and strategy, while also being a reintroduction of the already dispersed collectivism.

 

With regard to the idea of integration into the international community, the appearance of Invitation Letter was rather sudden. Yan Lei and Hong Hao had neither lived abroad, nor had an understanding of general cultural politics – at least in their expressions and experiences there were no traces of profound reflection on Documenta or global culture. I can imagine that their creation was to a certain degree a mockery of and resistance (or prank) to the context that was arising back then. If they had no deep insight on general art politics, their digestion of collectivism must have been intuitive and natural, which might be an element of China contemporary art’s development and not an exploration of strategies and methods due to a simple collision or intermingling of Western and Eastern cultures. This also determined the work’s fate as one of a kind, which was maybe linked to the two artists’ obsessive natures.

 

Did Invitation Letter resolve the misconception between Eastern and Western culture? Actually, it was precisely an intensification of this misconception, leading the creation of contemporary art to move away from the environment where it had come into being and the establishment a core idea of this place in Europe. Moreover, the artists achieved personal liberation through this diversion of the center and said goodbye to the reality of China’s contemporary art of being neither Chinese nor Western.

 

Looking back at this work, one often gets inspired by Yan Lei’s and Hong Hao’s humor. Yet, in China in 1997, there was for many people absolutely no reason to rejoice, especially for the invitation letter’s recipients. Their anger following the disclosure of the truth is very understandable.

 

Similar to the tremor caused by Marcel Duchamp’s urinal piece, Fountain (1917), Invitation Letter also had a tremendous impact within the art system. Its purpose was not to be a simple prank, and certainly not to be as great as in many people’s estimation. It was a prelude to the individualization of China’s contemporary art, which was just about to evolve, and also a symptom of contemporary culture’s inclination in the context of globalization, which especially resonated with the working methods of many overseas Chinese artists.

 

Yan Lei and Hong Hao’s approach had some similarities with Zhang Peili’s Anonymous Letter to the Students of Central Academy of Fine Arts, with the difference that the sense of pressure and panic conveyed by Zhang’s work is closely linked to questions left over from the Cultural Revolution and can be interpreted in many cases as a relation based on action or art practice. However, Yan Lei and Hong Hao’s work was completely unaffected by this element of Chinese history, and it is certainly also not centered around elements of China’s art history or art practices. It did not converge with the global community. Even though they used Documenta as a central idea, it was only because they did not have direct access or connections to it. Their work was like a “hacker attack” or a viral infection towards Kassel. And on the broader level of China’s contemporary art sphere, their “malicious” mockery destroyed the new tradition that were being born out of the sprouting ideology of China’s contemporary art.

 

1999: Second Hand Shop

 

After moving to Hong Kong, Yan Lei inevitably merged into the culture and politics, as well as adapted to local characteristics and its distinctive case of localization of this post-colonial site (Hong Kong’s films, pop music and other cultural characteristics had a strong impact on the entire 1980s and 1990s era). Its culture and politics were closer to the British model, than to its geographical neighbor, mainland China.

 

Especially after the exhibition China’s New Art, Post-89 curated by Li Xianting in 1993, Hong Kong was even more coated in layers of mystery and openness, turning into a safe haven or land of freedom in a mainland artist’s yearning and imagination. Due to its geographical convenience, Hong Kong was a utopia for Chinese contemporary art. Ai Jing’s song My 1997 (1996) also intensified this yearning, although people had no idea what would come with Hong Kong’s return.

 

Soon after the Handover, Yan Lei moved to Hong Kong. According to him, Hong Kong was not a sufficiently open field and his appropriation of global culture and politics and mockery of mainland China’s contemporary art transformed into the long and narrow passage of International Passageway (1999), the work created together with Fu Jie.

 

In 1998, Yan Lei migrated into Hong Kong and moved five times within three years. As a result of these shifts of space of existence, demands for spiritual and material space became the main threads of reflection in his real life and artistic creation. On one occasion he duplicated the frames of the eight doors along the corridor leading from his home to the street, spaced them a distance apart according to the real distances between the doors, and covered them with military camouflage, forming a flexible passageway resembling a boarding gate (International Passageway, 2001). He regards this passageway as a link between the internal and external spaces, and compares it to the “international passageway” he has gone along as an artist from his studio to exhibitions. (Excerpt from Pi Li, Out of Focus – A Dimension for Painting, 2007)

 

If an artist cannot find a sense of identity on a geo-cultural level, he will often emphasize his own cultural background. Cai Guoqiang, lives in the US and uses gunpowder, or Huang Yongping lives in France, and uses compasses, Chinese medicine and other elements. Maybe Yan Lei was fortunate to move to Hong Kong and not to the “real” Western world, as impressions and pressures were diminished this way, creating a sense of a home-away-from-home through a shared culture, and establishing neither a strictly Western nor Chinese cultural connection. I prefer to think of this as a natural metamorphosis without any kind of strategy behind it. In International Passageway we can see a faint shadow of Yan’s work from the 1990s, however the artist no longer appears in it; this change must have started in 1997 with Invitation Letter. Yan Lei’s portrait was not to be seen again until 2006 in Sparkling: Aspen. Did this classical mode of expression prompt or bury the change of the 1990s? Was this another attempt to decompose a classicized form or rather an emphasis on the artist’s portrait as a major component of art?

 

Second Hand Shop, after This Way Kassel (1998) and International Passageway, represented a direct return to the issue of Hong Kong’s culture, and a more obscure creation not belonging to any art form appearing in Yan Lei’s system. We can only assume by reading his works’ contextual relationships, that he was undergoing another transformation. This transformation is not so obvious from today’s perspective, it seems to even be a bit ambiguous in his resume, however it was a predecessor to his work series created while residing in France (for the Centre Pompidou and CRAC, Regional Center for Contemporary Art in Nice in 2004) and the work The Fifth Element (2004), after his return to Shenzhen.

 

Second Hand Shop may be interpreted as an alienation by everyday means of the correlation between oneself and art, while also being an introduction for the audience to a specific environment, and evoking the view on the “everyday,” as well as a collision of the artist’s identity and position of thinking, thus subverting the concepts of classical art. But was it able to subvert the concepts of (modern) art? We cannot tell, but at least Yan Lei achieved more creative freedom after Second Hand Shop, and the fact of his beginning to return to the modes of expression of classical painting showed (at least) a tension within his own works, formed by his appropriations of the classical and exploration of the contemporary.

 

It is not hard to understand that if an artist’s creation is based on the subversion of “classics,” his paintings, performances, residencies, or live actions must be of a piece, or as he puts it, an “entity.” And as he has said, his self-image is an integral part of this entity. His art exists within these complexes, systems, metaphors, schemes and mysteries. The artist refuses to explain and interpret any of his expressions; the art relations set by him are like forests full of mist. No matter from which time or media the explorer departs, he will always return to the empty fog and lose orientation, without any beginning or ending.

 

Only Yan Lei himself knows what he is hiding, what belongs to himself and what he reveals to the world. Perhaps this is exactly why he dealt so rationally with the relationship between the inner and outer world. The viewer will always stop in his tracks and start to think when they see Yan’s work, as one can only deliberate over its objectives on the surface. Following that logic, the artist and his work will always be in a state that leads away from the surface, hence, time is also continuously being guided to visions of the future and the past, while converging with the viewer’s experiences and emotions on certain points. Second Hand Shop is indeed this kind of passage of experience.

 

2004: The Fifth Element

 

Starting with Second Hand Shop through The Fifth Element, in 2002 Yan Lei found his technique to produce paintings and an aesthetic form, resulting in UAP (Unlimited Art Project), an independent approach to work. This approach deals separately with art – as Andy Warhol separated print from video/Warhol TV, creating two sides that were recognizable by the public. Before we discuss the existence of its rationality, I hope to find the element of time in between these art projects.

 

What is The Fifth Element? Considering all the levels of social reality, if art does not exist in Yan Lei’s painting and this project has a certain perspective, then this work, which once again shifted the attention of power and other realms, has an even greater tension and “de-artifying” characteristics.

 

The Fifth Element deals with relations between land ownership, artists, foundations, museums, and real estate developers. This complicates the issues of land ownership, as basic land ownership relations (as found in China’s environment), are constituted by three parties: the developers, the government, and the land-owners (usually by leasehold). Along with China’s extensive urbanization process and uncertain land policies, land ownership has always been an important foundation of the law on property rights, as well as a basis of China’s social ethics.

 

Yan Lei’s work is obviously not only a discussion on the legality of land ownership. His strategy and art should exist in the process of this reality’s coordination. Whether this appears in the later paintings (the painting part of The Fifth Element) is open to question. Yet, there is a transformation in this work, different to that of Second Hand Shop and its complete disappearance beyond the sphere of any form of art expression or language, which was created by borrowing an art context. While the artist challenges his self-control in The Fifth Element, it gradually infiltrates the issues of land ownership and economic development; its ambition appears to be in wanting to include all these areas into art. However, it may be an initiative of the artist to extend art into all those realms.

 

The slogans and contracts in this work (although not visible), as well as the emergence of the later paintings, all result from a real event, but are also a picture of an absurd scene. The painting’s function here is still to discuss art’s classicization, Yan Lei’s work is still a contradictory questioning and ridiculing, a subversion of classicization and the emerging contemporary spirit by sacrificing art’s visual form and the picture’s logic.

 

This work could not complete the reconstruction of the spirit’s intrinsic relations; the difference between an artist and a theorist lies in the restrictions on their freedom of expression and an individual decision to not explain an artwork. The independent approach chosen by Yan Lei, seizes exactly on one’s own autonomy, and the control gained in the continuous transformation process. Yet, it perfectly maintains the unique independence of an artist’s identity and the free state from beyond the system of art production and interpretation.

 

After the disappearance of form and the emergence of the documented image (as oil painting), the artist once again expresses the limited nature of freedom, which also proves the existence of a paradox within the art system. While dispelling art and subverting the art system, some elements that can be documented and handed down are evidence of the necessity to preserve the “substance” of this existing relation. This preserved “substance” will naturally be reintegrated into the art system, thus inevitably leading us back to art history and the basic questions of museology, of record and preservation, letting the artist re-invade these foundations.

 

What I find interesting about this is that Yan Lei did not directly choose video or another way of recording the image, but once again moved this scene and process into the context of the classicization of art. Like a double helix, they exist parallel to each other beyond this project, explaining, yet also counteracting or simply passing each other.

 

2007: A Present from Beijing

 

A Present from Beijing was created at the time of Documenta 12 (2007) – was it a resistance to Documenta’s mechanisms? Or a brief escape by the artist himself? The works displayed in Kassel were Yan’s paintings from 2004. Since the exhibition did not require the artist’s presence, or a commissioned project, Yan Lei’s exhibited work became an expression of Documenta’s classicization. Maybe this was also the departure point for A Present from Beijing for the Istanbul Biennale?

 

In today’s global cultural map, it is hard to consider artists separately, especially to distinguish them geographically or by their nationality or identity. But with all those things, it is also difficult to present the complexity of a multi-art reality. A Present from Beijing is a diversion from one of those hard to distinguish cultures. Brain Failure is a typical Chinese punk band, which entered China’s rock and roll stage at the end of the 1990s. Their simple chords collide with passionate bodies; everything they do is designed to negate China’s cultural understandings of the past. Punk culture did not arise from China’s own culture, but it embodies contemporary Chinese culture’s characteristics under the influence of European and American mainstream culture. By introducing the paradox of this characteristic to the Istanbul Biennale, Yan is making a mockery of “Chineseness,” but also of himself. At the same time, it is a subversion of the classicism of art in the context of contemporary culture.

 

A Present from Beijing is a strategic response to cultural phenomena emerging from reality, due to the world’s need for China, especially with the proliferation of the “China motif”—a borrowing from and correspondence to urbanization and localization that appears more and more frequently in international exhibitions—expressing “Chineseness.” A strategy for Chinese contemporary art is then born out of “self” hiding the over-strong image of China. Yan Lei’s work cuts into this corresponding strategy based on China’s global image. Through a vague knowledge and imagination about culture, a phenomenon not belonging to the realms of contemporary art is delivered to Istanbul (this city which bridges the East and the West). If we take a look at today’s maps and geography, the function of this bridge has already disappeared and the cultural sphere’s barriers have also been strengthened by various factors. Is A Present from Beijing strengthening or dissolving these barriers? It is probably very hard to explain the artist’s intention, as it is based on a vortex of provocation and paradoxes, while also indicating an emerging transitional period of greater understanding. If this work is a metaphor for the future, then its value will only show itself over the course of time.

 

A Present from Beijing is more like a present for the future; it is a hint left by Yan Lei. Different from the changes to the art mechanism made by Duchamp and other artists (turning ready-mades into art), Yan’s work does not only contribute to art’s possibilities, but provides a basis for future cultural structures and phenomena. Like the delays of today’s contemporary art and the natural delays of art history, some art phenomena will continuously be misread and only partially understood, yet at some moment in the future, it will show the value of this past. Which is why the establishment of many values in contemporary art were often delayed. Contemporary concepts and values are like risky investments. Their decisive factor is to believe that today is indeed the future.

 

From Video to Painting

 

The roots of video art in China can be traced back to Zhang Peili’s 30×30 from 1988. The rise of Video Art can be seen as a sign of the emergence of new media and the new art in the 1990s. While experimenting with the tools of new media, artists also explored real issues concerning the characteristics of time. Originally, film was called time-based art, so upon its appearance, it was still predecessor of video art, the short film aesthetic and visual art based on elements of time. Visuals are connected to photography, and these two elements are ultimately linked with cinematography in terms of material, aesthetic concepts and even time.

 

The differences between painting and photography lie in discussions about direct recording, indirect recording and authenticity. The subjects of religion, the events or the persons depicted in paintings were often composed with the help of a narrative. In addition to single paintings, there were also serial paintings that created a narrative chain, or panorama paintings that show historical events. Discussions about a painting’s meaning, a form’s function, as well as the action and time, take place outside of these images. This is also the case for later expressionist and action paintings. This detached narrative approach and exploration can be seen as art surpassing the role of visual and narrative, gradually steering towards different elements of knowledge and aesthetic realms. There is also another approach based on Gerhard Richter’s working techniques and image studies, in his explorations of image and narrative itself and also his later color chart paintings. All these led to a disappearance of the image in contemporary painting. I have discussed in a previous essay whether painting will die. On the one hand its termination is caused by the classicization of this classical media, and on the other, the ideological level, it is due to the image’s disappearance induced by conceptual advancements. Of course, this is not enough to really resolve “objects,” experiences and feelings carried by this classic media.

 

Opposed to painting, photography is an interception of absolute time, it is an image sequence without any context, and film is contrived exactly according to this logic and in relation to consecutive readings of single frames, a simulation and presentation of visual movement. What a film shows within a certain time frame is a non-contextual, time-based narrative, and video, especially digital images, even more so.

 

Today, when painting, photography, video and film are all learning from each other, we should talk less about art media and the purity of a certain aesthetic, and see the essential clues to their origin. Very often these media are combined in contemporary art exhibitions and performances. We only need to know the origins of the creations, that come from beyond these media (like the “installation concept”) and deal with contextual relations in the field of collage or bricolage. Does that guide us to the intrinsic meanings of artistic creations? I think this still won’t give us a satisfying answer to art’s meaning and human motivation. In addition to understanding things that are to understand (like hardware, methods, time), art also presents individual “hidden” experiences, which are those so-called parts of an artist’s work that are meant for himself (like buildings, film clips, symbols in photographs, colors in a painting).

 

“(…) painting was no longer simply a space for individual expression, but indeed a flat, rational, encoded space for production. The integrity of a painting, the degree to which it is circulated, and the extent to which it is appropriated are all factors that will ultimately determine its perfection. Painting becomes more than simply painting; it becomes a reason for production, something more akin to a popular production method.” (Excerpt from Ai Wei Wei: Super Lights: Yan Lei and His Work, 2005)

 

Yan Lei’s work also possesses these hybrid characteristics. From his early paintings to his transition to video techniques, the work 1500cm (1994) that documents a performance introduces the question of video art itself. Is video art a record of behavior, or rather an independent artwork? While discussing the media issue, one must also deal with the intervention of the artist’s body, the powerlessness of an artist’s intervention, and the characteristics of life that art gradually gains through transmission, whether with the help of media’s transition or through the discourse of scholars and theorists. Art has always been continuously transmitted; from the media to underlying ideologies or politics, art has never had a so-called original creator, because any vision must have originated with a reason. The depictions of reality in the cave paintings did not have originality either, as their original concept had not appeared back then, and the expressive forms were still confined. Hence, what art embodies in Yan Lei’s work, is just the artist’s choice.

 

For the same purpose Yan Lei invented a technique of monochrome painting: he delineated different areas in each photograph according to the different depths of tone, and marked them with numbers. Then he matched these with different shades of gray. Thus a work could be completed by applying a color of a certain number to an area of a certain number. He invented this technique so that he could hire anyone to complete the monochrome painting in “Yan Lei’s style.” Meanwhile, the photographs he chose for this purpose had been taken without any meaning attached. These photographs included various city scenes, a dining table after a meal, landscapes, and so on. Yan Lei tried to completely eliminate the meaning of an artist’s existence and the rationality of his or her work. Eliminated at the same time was the symbolic meaning arising from either the subject matter or the method of painting. To China, a country with a rich tradition of painting, these strange pictures constitute a challenge in concept. And the reason for the invention of this technique lies in the artist’s bitter resentment of the tendency of contemporary Chinese art towards symbolism. (Excerpt from Pi Li, Out of Focus – A Dimension for Painting, 2007)

 

What prompted us to start differentiating between media, or to even make media-based differences part of contemporary art history? When did we enter the realm of today’s view of art, where we have irrefutably determined the inevitability of media’s emergence and consider the issue of the rationality of media’s own evolution? After “painting’s death” this question is again worth arguing. A medium’s self-renewal and its existing rationality will often not completely disappear because of the appearance of a new medium. Those relations that are replaced are often due to the imperfections of the original medium, much like innovations in television and computers. In contrast, has painting already abstained from development and reached perfection? When Yan Lei began to use computer special effects tools to construct his images, he was drawing from and referencing new media’s aesthetics; however, these computer effects were derived from some special visual expressions in paintings. This can be seen as a subversion and re-subversion of painting, a cycle starting with painting, moving to computer graphic effects and finally returning to the medium of painting.

 

(…) As for traditional media like painting and sculpture, I deal with them in accordance with the art markets commercial rules. At the same time, this is also a very important art project of mine. However, not all works were made for the market, many of my projects are to communicate and interact with more people on the level of space and time, as well as to start a concrete discussion about art concepts.

 

Contemporary arts concept is a problem in itself. Peoples reactions are always contradictory in front of any work: Is that art? Is there anything that cannot become art?

 

(Excerpt from Carol Yinghua Lu and Yan Lei‘s Interview Is there anything that cannot become art? 2008)

 

The artist as an entity

 

Is art, as Yan Lei has proposed, an entity? An artist‘s image and identity changes nowadays, they could indeed evolve into a new discipline of art study, dealing with the freedom of the above-mentioned media and production relations. If artists have no longer to avoid the “ghostwriter” issue, will art lose its originality? This starts with the unreliability of originality, which was discussed before, the limited nature of originality in today‘s culture and also art‘s objectification, which has caused a detachment from art‘s original core of ideology and spirit; all these appear in the different forms (shapes) of art required by the market. Moreover, there are also those contributions that come from media attached to art, like the internet, television, and publications. When these generate experiences on an aesthetic and emotional level, then art is successfully transmitted. Hence, arguments belonging to art or which have been defined as such, do not mainly originate from a discussion about art‘s existing authenticity and certainty, but are demonstrations of the existence and dependent relations of art‘s legitimacy and business rules.

 

Thus, when one understands the paradox of this relation, art‘s originality and certainty will inevitably be shaken; art will be closer to a blurred reflection mixed up in human consciousness or subconsciousness, either transmitted or not transmitted. Sometimes, art is a conditioned reflex of the body, and not generated through logical thoughts. “Art” may need to be defined again to understand the possibility of its existence in a yet unknown realm – which is to say, before art turns into a work, its possible forms and information are not yet construed. However, before the emergence of art‘s objectification in today‘s society, it is bound to comply with its contractual and disseminatory relations, as well as the system that shapes value.

 

So it is not very hard to understand that the entity, which is made of an artist‘s image and artwork, belongs to an area before the objectification of “art,” nor it is based in the norms of society.

 

While learning thoroughly about the limited nature of reality, Yan Lei has clearly identified contemporary culture‘s characteristics of oneself being a part of art: identity, image, all turn into a part of art‘s inescapable materialization. This is also the ideology of contemporary art‘s substance, and explains the parallel relation between contemporary art and the interpretative system; any attempt of language and thinking will eventually turn into an assumption in advance of substance, and the artist‘s sovereignty will be lost in exchange for that external interpretative and presentational system. Until one day the artist feels the need to re-interpret that external art form or to declare the existence of reality in that dialogue.

 

We have long since forgotten the appearance of an artist, what does he or she look like? And what does he/she do? Individual’s biased knowledge and understanding , as well as prescribed and unchangeable ideas are the reasons for the current needs of artists, but also their necessities to keep an active and aggressive attitude towards their own image and art‘s form. Because approaches from the commercial sphere can also be applied here. The artist can also lose his own name, image and rights for his works and turn into a vassal or symbol of today‘s society. Maybe I have overstated somewhat, but behind those celebrities‘ faces, how many will survive as “humans” belonging to themselves?

 

The Form of Contemporary art

 

Compared to the reality of art‘s status discussed above, art‘s possible and impossible accessibility has become an ever-broadening topic, art is like a stone – whether it is perceived as gold or waste in the market, completely depends on the external system‘s ability of identification and its characteristics of time.

 

The art system is infiltrated by the financial system; art‘s value is providing the explanation for this systemic change. Art is not only a commodity that can be traded or pledged, art can also be the existence of a listed company, turning into a single unit in a pool that can be traded or separated (like stocks). This is a special era. Art is mingling again with the financial system that arose in the 1970s, showing its function of reflecting society. Art can be nothing, but it can also cause stocks to stop instantly. Art‘s expansion in the real world reflects in many ways how it has become a replacement for the public visual system, or biotechnology, or a political necessity, or how any associations in today‘s world can also be called “art.”

 

Therefore it is necessary to ask what art still is and what it can be. Art is like a sky full of stars, with all these unknown spheres and inconceivable spaces, times and forms. If the universe can originate from a pea (as Stephen Hawking has said) and that pea is just the imagination of an initial form, then art can also be a pea or a pebble. The difference lies in the form in which it exists in the external world, as how time changes its form while traveling. A sparkle can be born from the realm of emptiness and that sparkle will give birth to ten thousand more. The realm of emptiness can be seen as the formless void in which art exists within the artist‘s head; the sparkle might be a stone; later, the stone creates ten thousand objects, as well as those objects’ form and nature, interacting with and restraining each other.

 

I do not know if Yan Lei agrees with this kind of relation. Furthermore, the transition of art created from empty space to the state of ten thousand objects is also a process from imagination to reality (or illusion). So in the end, what exactly is art? Maybe this is a topic that can never be fully argued, but through the logic posed by objects it is possible to determine actual clues from things in terms of media and time. Let us steer away from that realm of emptiness that is unknown, but very close, like the body‘s inner structure, impossible to be known by oneself.

 

Changes coming from beyond the art world can be interpreted through concepts and knowledge. Does the logic that gradually replaces everything with rationality explain the issue that we need to learn about? Has art become a fixed perception and passed away? Neither artists nor art have to answer these questions, because the creation of “art” cannot be stopped. Thus, a new system to differentiate and connect art through existing objects was built. Returning to Yan Lei‘s work, his art is created with the help of these objects and their forms, an art with the logic of “existentialism.” Yet, his unsteadiness, and even his technique of deliberately eradicating his past work causes a break in this connection and introduces us to the only element that can be deployed within his whole appearance, suspended there.

 

Epilogue

 

For this text about Yan Lei I have used formal logic and chronology as corresponding methods to show an artist‘s way to their work. Yet, due to all kinds of hidden relations within the artist, this logic itself has been punctuated with black holes. Thus, it cannot entirely present the context of the “objects” within an artist‘s work – of course, this is also connected to Yan’s UAP system. The main reason why I did not overly discuss this work, is due to this system‘s implicit market relations, which would require a much longer and separate text to explain. To put his work in order we can only rely on our imagination derived from his art projects, and Yan Lei‘s own words, to deliberate on the relations moving from the inside to the outside of his works, as well as the production relation between him and this real world.

 

Of course, any interpretation would be futile, as Yan Lei‘s work has not yet come to a halt, he is still continuously updating his own knowledge system, while also deliberately erasing his past traces, and even applying the method of completely destroying his works, to reach, what he considers a more accurate form of “art.”

 

I would like to thank Tang Contemporary Art Center and Yan Lei for their invitation, I am very glad to have received this opportunity to address one of my favorite artists and the preparation work for his complete artistic creation.

Translation by Weina Zhao

 

 

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Li Zhenhua is a multi-media artist, curator, producer and writer. He has worked with Chinese as well as international contemporary art and culture since 1996.

(www.bjartlab.com)