Sui Jianguo: Heart Imagery

Identification	Text · 10-TXT-0003
Author	SUI, Jianguo
Date Created	2010-05-09
Type	Commentary

SUI, Jianguo

Heart Imagery

May, 2010

Yang Qiong, born in 1983, does not want himself to be classified into the generation of animation art. Maybe it is attributed to his experience in the Academy of Fine Arts High school. The painting methods and technical high-density training make him disdain to be a pure illustrator who creates visual stories on a flat surface by decorative lines and colors. And maybe the same reason urges him to choose sculpture major in college---he needs new challenge.

He, being sensitive in new media, became a computer expert of 3D production in his college time. In one of my public art class, the homework he handed in is: in the busy traffic flowing of Wang Jing Street, he held a camera, focusing on the student who is holding a camera across the road. Both of them were walking and talking loudly to each other in the two sides of the street with the traffic flowing between them. The way to display his work is to play the video and sound from two cameras on two screens which faced to each other. It shows Yang Qiong’s skillful management of new media. The postures of two people making dialogue in busy street show the statue of individual human being in such urban environment and space.

During his graduation creation period last year, he found he was interested in material and the methods of dealing with them. First, he made a complete fictitious 3D file in computer. Then he went to professional factory to make the Bakelite material sharpen or formed by the three-dimensional milling machine, and then shapes them into a flat or rilievo with black and white colors.

In this process, Yang Qiong has a strong sense of insistence. The texture and grain in his work, comparing with the whole flat, are in a state of tension or compression. Sometimes, the black surface is covered by white furs, or even black furs.

The work’s plane sense makes itself be independent from the normal objects in life. The subtle fluctuations and grooves fasten on the black surface, and then framed by white frame, solidifying in a piece of vague black light. This kind of special vision is just what Yang Qiong wants to seize and show out to the viewers.

Maybe we can call such visual feeling as “Cool”. Here, “Cool” is due to the space compression, two extremely different color black and white, simple shapes and the visual tension formed by artificial material’s texture.

To particularly note, in the present process, the major player is Bakelite. It is a plasticity material used in electrical engineering. The visual and tactile sensation of it is different from the traditional sculpture material, such as rocks, wood, metal, porcelain, which can give people the sense of intimacy. The Bakelite transmits out a kind dilemma between rejection and reception.

After graduation, Yang Qiong, a young sculptor with sensitive mind, is fascinated by this kind of electrical engineering material, to show his own heart imagery and to expand forward.

1

Yang Qiong is best understood as an author whose practice begins in contemporary art and extends into design, branding, and business. He began his professional contemporary art practice in 2010, and art remains its starting point and long-term core. These are not separate careers, but different media and real-world fields through which the same ideas take form. As his practice has expanded, “artist” alone no longer fully describes its scope. Yang therefore prefers “author” as a broader identity for the whole of his work, without replacing his identity as an artist.
2

Solid-State Novel is an artistic concept proposed by Yang Qiong: making art with the methods of fiction, or novel-making. It imagines a world and brings its consequences into reality as objects, archives or even institutions that actually operate. Viewers begin with these visible traces and work backward toward the untold world behind them. The concept emerged from his artistic practice and continues to develop alongside it.

Series