Hu Yun: An Introduction
——Karen Smith
The process of evaluating a young artist (a new artist in the process of emerging) is always complicated. Or is it, in fact, very simple? Young / new artists tend to have few works to their name, presenting only a slender portfolio to go on. As a critic / curator with the job of evaluating the work, we rely first upon experience, but more immediately perhaps upon gut instinct. In the best case, we encounter the artist’s work and it leaves an impression. Again, in the best scenario, this impression takes the form of a question, a lingering curiosity: the artist whets our palette, and we want more. We become determined, consciously or not, to keep this artist in mind, and to learn more about them at the earliest opportunity.
This was largely the way in which I came across the Shanghai-based young artist Hu Yun. And where the impression his work imparted is relatively new, and our acquaintance young, it is still filled with that delicious anticipation of work that is yet to come but that is promised by the slender body of work he has produced to date. For me, this body of work primarily centres on the large volume of drawings that he produces, and has produced since 2006. This proliferation of images are created both as art works in their own right and as plans for installations, for performances and for conceptual pieces that either had been exhibited prior to our acquaintance, or that are in preparation for future works that have yet to find a suitable opportunity for complete realisation.
Critics and curators, in looking at art and being forever on the trail of new and interesting artists, tend to function like detectives. We pick up the scent of a potential ‘master artist’, and follow all leads about them, all clues to their actions, leaving no artwork unturned until we can claim without a shadow of a doubt that an individual is ‘guilty’ of being an absolute, true artist; the art works they produce are the supporting evidence that clinches our case. With a young artist such as Hu Yun, there is often little tangible evidence to go on. Details, then, become paramount; every little gesture speaks volumes about the artistic intention and, more importantly, the ability to achieve that intention through a chosen form of expression. This is what makes Hu Yun’s drawings - or more properly his works on paper - significant.
In recent years, young / new artists have responded increasingly to the shifts that have occurred in the Chinese art world by rejecting certain ‘standards’ and benchmarks that had become almost a de facto part of being a Chinese artist. One of these contra-stances has been a reduction not only in the scale of art works being produced, but also in the physical substance of those works. No longer the exclusive, grand gesture in paint on a perfectly mounted piece of canvas but, instead, tiny scribbled reflexes on scraps of paper, cloth, tissue; whatever, in fact, is at hand. Here, too, one finds a shift in values: no
longer are such works considered precious ‘products’, although ironically, the best of them have exactly this quality in the combination of their physical fragility, the intriguing nature of their purpose and intent and their precious proportions. It is exactly these qualities of Hu Yun’s drawings that caught my attention and began to make a case for the artistic potential of Hu Yun.
In discovering more about Hu Yun’s previous works and the plans he had for future projects, as mentioned earlier, drawings or sketches appear to be an integral part of his process. Where they follow this role there is nothing contrived about the form they take, the materials brought to creating them or the content of the images. They are clear, concise and earnest, which are qualities that also underscore the handful of more formal works Hu Yun has produced to date. These works—installations, conceptual pieces and performance works—also reflect a number of leading concerns of the current age that are of particular relevance to Hu Yun’s generation as it approaches society, itself, and the global context. Two examples spring to mind: the first is Hu Yun’s 2008 video / performance work entitled Thanks for you time; its title alone is a succinct and subtly powerful label for the concept the work aims to illustrate. Here, the relationship between audience and artist and between artworks in the context of an exhibition space and the viewers who peruse them is radically confronted. Encountering Thanks for your time, viewers take a seat on a chair placed in front of a monitor, expecting, as such arrangements encourage, that they will be viewing a video work. They are, but what is less obvious at first is that the video is not a recorded sequence but a mechanism for relaying a live action performance that is taking place in the vicinity of the monitor but out of the viewers’ immediate sight. The monitor presents a scene of the artist standing on a stool, a noose around his neck, as if preparing to hang himself. But as the viewer watches nothing occurs and, as so often happens with video art in exhibitions, after a few minutes the (confused? bored?) viewer makes to leave…
But, as the viewer makes to vacate the seat, they are forced to realise the consequences of their action. As they stand, the stool falls from beneath the artist’s feet and he appears to be in danger of being hanged. His safety, his existence depends upon the viewing seat being occupied. Thus, Hu Yun forces on the viewer a sense of their own responsibility in participating in an exhibition and in viewing an artwork. Thus, through this very simple construct, Hu Yun places the burden on the audience, forcing us to understand how our presence can alter irrevocably the nature of art and, in this extreme case, the future of an artist’s existence. Metaphorically here that fact remains true for all such forms of visual exchange, and points to the fragile egos of artists who produce the works out of which exhibitions are made and which viewers visit art spaces to see.
The second example is Green Economy, which comprises a plant, a pot plant, and a genus that is commonplace in China and Chinese homes. What is special about this work is that the artist cultivated it until it reached exactly his
height: a height which must be preserved thereafter. What is clever about this concept though is that Hu Yun subverts the notion of ‘the edition’ by allowing any shoots or new growth from this cultivated work to be harvested and nurtured in a new pot, and tended until it too reaches the artist’s height. Where ‘sustainable economy’ is a global buzzword, so Hu Yun dovetails Green Economy to a thoroughly contemporary issue.
These few examples thus far provide a positive slew of evidence to speak on Hu Yun’s behalf. I can state, therefore, that until proven otherwise he is guilty of being an artist.