Those who went to Pace in 798 yesterday afternoon would have found a brown cow ploughing up and down the gallery on a huge shallow platform filled with earth. This is Xiao Yu’s aptly named “Ground”— the first exhibition at Pace in 2014 and the artist’s first showing there (he has just signed with the gallery). We are told in the press materials: “The performance can be seen as a ritual regarding labor and consumption…” Xiao Yu (b. 1965) is best known as a performance artist and participant in the Polit-Sheer-Form group.
Xiao Yu:
“In fact, my work is comprised of two components: opening and fitting together. In this course of events, I try to find the inherent power of the material, the hidden power.
If an artwork only has one answer, it is a poison that stirs up public sentiment by false statements. It is brainwashing. It is conspiracy. I create artwork based on one’s practice, sparking the audience to mobilize their prior experiences and advance them into a state of reflection.
An artist can be persistently attached to single point. An artist can do useless and foolish things. As time advances, an artist can, on the contrary, genuinely approach wisdom.
Even if they integrate a picture and symbol, if there on the spiritual level there is not a consistent awareness, then an artist’s practice can change into vagrancy, drifting with the waves and going with the flow.”
Xiao Yu, “Ground”, view of the opening performance at Pace Beijing
