by Julie Chun
(Disclosure: the author is one of the essay contributors in the recent publication of Tamen exhibition catalogue.)
Welcome to their world.
Little known fact: Yang Xiaogang is a better cook than Lai Shengyu.
Lesser-known fact: Lai Shengyu dreams in series. Yang Xiaogang dreamed of becoming a basketball player.
Visible fact: Yang Xiaogang exudes vitality and talks with his hands. Lai Shengyu commands stillness and speaks with his heart.
The Interview, Lai Shengyu, Yang Xiaogang, Bonny Yau, Lucine Yu, & Julie Chun, photo: Ruth Thompson
These personal anecdotes serve as the entry into the lives and practices of two artists who are actively seeking to redefine the paradigm of oil painting in China. “They” are Beijing-based Lai Shengyu and Yang Xiaogang, better known by their incorporated name Tamen. They both hail from Changsha in Hunan Province and have been working and painting together since 2003. “When we moved to Beijing to study at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), we didn’t know anyone so we relied on each other. The city was a new place, a strange place. Being from the same hometown, we went in search of Hunan food together. We found that our similar backgrounds and circumstances prompted us to work well together.”
In many ways, the two artists are an extension of each other’s selves. Their dual exhibitions are always listed as “solo” shows. They can insist on this singular appellation, precisely because each painting is a product of a completely collaborative undertaking. One can argue that Tamen’s joint painting process is hardly new or unique to China. If anything, China has had a long historical precedence of mobilizing two or more artists for the simultaneous production of court and state-sanctioned projects. Moreover, the institutional framework for art under Mao was none other than the integrated enterprise of art for the masses created by the masses.
Yet, the communal process, which is the nexus of Tamen’s practice, is not a continuing perpetuation of any exemplary socialist model. It is an intervention against the venerated and time-honored ideals of Chinese collectivity. Rather than the obliteration and effacement of the self, it is an assertion. Tamen’s cooperation is a selective, personal, and voluntary “co+operation” based on individual liberties for the purpose of achieving critical acclaim, global recognition, and economic success. Moreover, their practice is not structured by conventions or protocols, but relies on expressive intent.
The Opening, Yang Xiaogang, photo: Ruth Thompson
The artistic duo incorporates an uncommon technique known as “Exquisite Corpse” whereby they paint in alternating shifts to exploit the effects of chance and automatism.[1] This unusual but highly creative procedure has resulted in the production of eclectic images that are filled with contradictions. Many of their large-scale panels unabashedly embrace wide-open exteriors and bizarrely situated interiors. While seemingly real, the scenes on the picture plane are hardly any reflections of known reality.
Tamen’s Same Room series of 2005-2008 visually exemplified, within a single frame, the dual tensions of accelerated economic growth in China and the degenerative decay associated with urbanization. Inordinate lunacy is paradoxically placed in direct contrast to an orderly pastoral or cosmopolitan vista that suggest a pristine utopia. Effectively employing the format of a window (or is it a mirror?) as a framing device, they direct the viewer’s gaze to an embedded vista where the sensual aesthetics of natural beauty is counter positioned as the visual other against the haphazard disarray of preposterous actions or perplexing inactions taking place within.
Tamen’s pictorial language is not to offer a cohesive narrative but rather to provide signs. Within the vocabulary of art history, images of young adolescent girls symbolize innocence on the verge of being lost. Food represents carnal desires and still life characterizes memento mori (Latin epitaph for “remember your mortality”). These visual signifiers are intentional provocations to displace our senses and disrupt our understanding of perceived normalcy. Critics such Fan Di’an and Yi Ying have commented on the interdependent nature of the interior psychology and the forces of the exterior world in Tamen’s oeuvre.[2] “Even in the most frantic cities such as Shanghai or New York, one can still find peace,” Lai Shengyu contends. “Tranquility has nothing to do with what’s occurring externally. Serenity is located within.” It is the sense of crisis, presented as dichotomies of life, which Tamen compellingly seeks to explore as the central motif of their art.
In many ways, the seemingly bucolic vistas of Tamen’s recent paintings of 2013-14 can be regarded as prequels to the Same Room series. The two disparate spaces have now converged as if time and space had collapsed. Eloquently referencing a moment of primordial purity and clarity, the tranquil undercurrents of Daoism’s wuwei (non-action) and Buddhist nirvana can be witnessed on the canvas surface. Notwithstanding the placid landscape, the unusual terrain is diametrically marked by foreboding elements to heighten our sense of ambiguity. Once again, we are situated on a plane where the sense of estrangement directly bisects the space of lyrical gentleness.
Why the use of contradictions? Tamen’s painted metaphors serve as material testimonies of inherent dualities—interior/exterior, urban/pastoral, past/present—that mark the conditions of contemporary life. Yet through their own artistic practice, Tamen seeks to negotiate these opposing contradictions to achieve a sense of counterbalance. When asked if they argue, Lai Shengyu replies candidly, “We fight all the time.” Yang Xiaogang laughs and admits, “We frequently threaten to “divorce” each other.” Despite their idiosyncrasies, they continue to remain solid friends and colleagues, even traveling together when they are not working. While the nature of disparate personalities arising from artist collectives often succumb to fracture, the unified world of Tamen is sustained by their interpretation of the Golden Rule, otherwise known as the Doctrine of the Mean.[3] Tamen’s search for balance and symmetry is predicated upon mutual respect, loyal commitment and the ability to abide by the rules they have established with each other. Yang stresses, “Respect for individual human freedom is critical for coexistence.” This explains, in part, why despite their differences, they are able to share ideas, create renewed dialogues, and share canvases together.
For Yang Xiaogang, the journey is about the process. For Lai Shengyu, it’s the destination. Accordingly, the negotiation of duality mirrors the fluid forces of the yin and the yang exemplified in the contrasting personalities of Lai Shengyu and Yang Xiaogang. Converging as Tamen, the artistic duo personifies harmony when two opposing cosmic forces have achieve a balanced state of equilibrium. They have located the fulcrum where balance and counter-balance is compatible in art and life. They have found a way to complement and supplement each other by retaining and converging their identities as Tamen.
“A Chance Meeting”, installation & paintings, photo: Ruth Thompson
The installation & paintings, photo: Ruth Thompson
The Opening, photo: Ruth Thompson
ENDNOTES
[1] In search of an innovative literary technique, the French poets Andre Breton (1896-1966) and Philippe Soupault (1897- 1990) had developed a process of writing called “Exquisite Corpse.” Breton would begin writing and then pass off a thought to be completed by Soupault until a compilation of back and forth words accumulated into the 1920 publication entitled The Magnetic Fields. The original title in French is Champs magnétiques. For an English translation, see Andre Breton and Philippe Soupault, The Magnetic Field, trans. David Gascoyne (London: Atlas Press, 1985).
[2] See Fan Di’an, “Early Afternoon Sunshine: the Present and the Possible,” in Forget Themselves (Changsha, Hunan: Hong Kong Oriental Art Center, 2013), 15-17 and Yi Ying, “Image and Anxiety – from the works of Lai Shengyu and Yang Xiaogang,” in Tamen (Seoul: Pyo Gallery, 2006), 15-18.
[3] The Doctrine of the Mean (or Zhongyong 中庸) was a Confucian text circa 500 BCE. Consisting of 33 sections, the opening passage of Section 1 introduces the key theme of “centrality” (“equality”), harmony and Section 6 focuses on “perfect genuineness.” For an English translation, see Doctrine of the Mean, accessed April 27, 2014, http://classics.mit.edu/Confucius/doctmean.html.
