News release
The Accession of Zhong Kui
Dates: 14th Sep. – 7th Oct. 2013
Time: Tuesday – Sunday 10:00 – 18:00
Opening: 14th Sep. 2013, 4pm
Place: Joy Art Space, D-10 798 Art District, Chaoyang District, Beijing
Hi Art – Joy Project is honored to announce that the Gao Yu solo exhibition The Accession of Zhong Kui will be held at Joy Art Space in 798 from September 14th to October 7th, 2013.
Willing to break and bleed, Zhong Kui died in front of the steps to the golden palace with spirit intact. Afterwards, he hunted ghosts to please the emperor and gained the official title of Monarch of the Blessing House, prevailing for thousands of years. Many artists have painted his figure in the themes of “Marrying off his sister” and “Drunk,” and today I shamelessly join in the fun to admire the character of predecessors like Shen Bochen and Zhang Guangyu. To carry on this ethos, I borrow the theme of Zhong Kui and follow suit. In addition, Mi Gu created the titillating picture “Also Called Wu Song” as a satire of Childe Jiang’s anti-corruption campaign-so called Fighting with Tigers Action in Shanghai in 1948, a theme that I also borrow in my play with Zhong Kui. Putting all sorts of things together only to feint, such is The Accession of Zhong Kui.—— By Gao Yu
In 1918, Shen Bochen, the most successful and influential cartoonist of the period of the May 4th Movement, established the first bilingual Chinese comic magazine, Shanghai Punch, the first issue of which sold more than ten thousand copies in the Yangtze River area. In 1925, Zikai Comic, edited by Zheng Zhenduo, was published, and since then the term “comics” has been widely accepted in China. Ten years after the birth of Shanghai Punch, Shanghai Comic was issued, with major editors including Zhang Guangyu and Ye Qianyu. As the most influential comics magazine in modern China, it contained satirical political comics as well as amusing comics describing civilian life. Publishing 110 issues in two years, it was the climax of Chinese comics. From 1934 to 1937, as a result of national patriotic enthusiasm against the aggression of Japan, comics experienced another peak of development; from the late 1930s into the 1940s, comics became a sharp weapon to satirize on social realities.
This is a fading memory. In the history of modern Chinese painting, besides the school led by Xu Beihong and Lin Fengmian, there also existed a group of sincere, hot-blooded cartoonists. Their styles were sophisticated and pointed, or humorous and modern; their thinking was more radical and their creations closer to life, making them able to fully render civilian life and turbulent situations. This solo exhibition, ”The Accession of Zhong Kui,” is a tribute to these predecessors in comics. Under the influence of children’s comics and Japanese and American cartoons, artists born in the 1980s collected manuscripts from the comics masters of the 1930s. Gao Yu knows this part of history well, and these vivid works have influenced him not only in terms of contemporary visual language, but also with the genuine creative spirit of traditional comics. Gao Yu’s last solo exhibition in 2012 was considered by many critics to demonstrate the growth of post-80s artists in terms of social responsibility, an intention that is shared by comics. The anxiety and introspection brought about by responsibility constituted the motivating power of these classic incisive works.
In this exhibition, Gao Yu tells a whole story through a 23-page comic. The story of Zhong Kui, as depicted by Gao Yu, is displayed on huge films in the exhibition space: the ghost-eater, Zhong Kui, is unexpectedly shown in a state of being teased, bullying the weak while fearing the strong, and cheating himself as well as others. The customary calligraphy dialogues and ink painting conventions of Gao Yu, in combination with the super-sized comics format, dot paper, and coloration, make the exhibition unique. The serious thinking of the artist is expressed in the form of pop art. Gao Yu expects a more extensive resonance with viewers through the comic format, which has no threshold to understanding “The Accession of Zhong Kui.”
