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HUANG Yongping, <Library Project - Chair>, Cane Chair, paper pulp, 80x50x55cm, 1988 © JJY Photo
HUANG Yongping, <Firecracker pants>, C-p rint, 40x60cm/42x60cm, 1987, Courtesy of the artist
HUANG Yongping, <The Beard was Easiest to Burn>, paper, 29.9x22.2cm x 4 panels, 1986 ⓒ Guan Yi Contemporary Art Archive
[China] HUANG Yongping Library Project - Chair The Beard was easiest to burn
A founding member and leader of the Xiamen Dada artists group, one of the most important artists in the wave of Contemporary Chinese art, Huang Yongping has been living in Paris since 1989. Integrating various traditions and mediums, Huang has been constantly challenging existing historical and aesthetic notions, exploring relationships between Eastern and Western cultures, between humans and animals through installations in an attempt to discover a mode of expression that transcends national boundaries and ideological conflicts. His art practice has inherited elements from Joseph Beuys, arte povera and John Cage, as well as elements from traditional Chinese art and philosophy. The Beard was easiest to burn is a Dadaist analogy. The artist recorded and documented the burning Leonardo Da Vinci’s self-portrait with video and photography. As the materials were destroyed, yet notion was left behind. This act does not necessarily symbolize the death of painting, but rather manifests the artist’s attitude and strategy towards the medium. Library Project - Chair is a rattan chair wrapped with disintegrating paper pulp from books. Traditional objects and ideas with modern notions are reconstructed, juxtaposed, integrated in his works, offering new perspectives to the real world. |
