“Who Can See Cities,” Du Haijun solo exhibition.
M Art Space (Building 2, 50 Moganshan Lu, Shanghai). Apr 13–May 18, 2013.
In the 1950s, a comedy series called “The House of 72 Tenants” took the world of television by storm. It depicted the lives of the working class in Shanghai prior to Liberation in 1949; it became emblematic of life in Shanghai with one single line: “Rooms as small as pigeon cages, with lodgers all crammed inside.” Half a century later, the residents who used to live in the narrow and cramped lane houses with their shared kitchens have turned into modern landlords of high-rise apartments. Neighbors share, perhaps, the ceiling and the floor, cable TV and internet lines, and while the distance between flats is just a sound-proof wall, the sense of distance between neighbors has never been greater. They live in their high-rise apartments – close to the sky, far from the ground, knitting together dreams and reality within the narrow spaces of their lives.
Du Haijun records the dreams and realities of this city in oil. In M Art Center’s latest solo exhibition, we see ten works by a young artist who has, in the last seven years, continued to depict these familiar scenes. Put simply, Du Haijun paints windows on canvas. We gape through the windows of various high-rises in the city into the most private corners of the mundane lives of strangers. Du Haijun’s depictions hover between representation and abstraction: at certain times, we can clearly see the scene inside the windows, the figures inside, the decoration of the bathroom, but once we really get closer, we discover these apparent female figures are nothing more than some patches of paint on the canvas.
The artist provokes our imagination; he deploys colors to create space in a carefree way, using color to create a sense of atmosphere as though he wanted to add some humanity to the desolation of the modern city. Dim, yellowish lights unfurl the possibilities of the night amid dense stacks of apartments; the identities and stories contained in these buildings cannot help but pique our curiosity. After all, artists (like most people) are voyeurs with a strong curiosity about the human condition. The density of the architecture does much to heighten this emotional tension, where Du Haijun’s cities become rabbit warrens of the real world.
Gazing upon his works, we cannot help but think of Michael Wolf’s weirdly beautiful patterned abstractions of buildings in Hong Kong, replicating themselves to generate infuriating density. Looking upon these spaces begs the question, however: “If we live like caged pigeons, can we ever hope to be free?” Du Haijun’s windows can also be seen as an embodiment of Andreas Gursky’s photography, executed in oil. At the very least, there are many things to see on the painting surface. But whereas Gursky’s works represent the controlled accumulation of countless details, which explode into a comment on the disciplined and controlled conditions of modern society, Du Haijun lightly brushes past the surface, creating a seemingly realistic sense of detail. He creates something that is there and not there, accomplishing something difficult with apparent ease. Herein lies the charm of these paintings.
The title of the show, “Who Can See Cities,” clearly makes one think of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, in which Marco Polo relates to Kublai Khan the human memories, desires, fears and expectations (among others) contained within the imaginary city. Though Du Haijun’s city is a conceptualized creation, a repetition of the collective, a manifestation of a precise “lack of identity,” they are, at the same time, a true contemporary representation of a 21st century “House of 72 Tenants.”
(Editor’s note: in accordance to Randian’s Ethics Policy, it must be stated that Wang Kaimei translated a short text for the exhibition.)
Du Haijun, “Apartment No. 51,” oil on canvas, 180 x 146 cm, 2012.
杜海军，“51号公寓”, 布面油画, 180 x 146 cm, 2012.
Du Haijun, “Rear Window,” oil on canvas, 120 x 100 cm, 2012.
杜海军, “后窗”， 布画油画, 120 x 100 cm, 2012.
