White - Artist’s Statement

Identification	Text · 10-TXT-0007
Author	Yang Qiong
Date Created	2018-12-09
Type	Artist's Statement

In the summer of 2014, I visited the Humble Administrator's Garden and the Nets Garden in Suzhou. I was deeply impressed by the old bonsai left by the ancestors in the park. These bonsais are made of strange stones and green plants. At first glance, they are like miniature models of real scenery, but we all know that they are actually created by the creators, using materials similar to those of mountains and rivers, in front of the world. I was inspired by creating a place that I knew before but did not exist, and created a natural order with human hands to stagger the order in the heart of the creator.

The Chinese bonsai is quite similar to today's installations. I would like to see these works left by the ancients. This is really a nation with connotations. They rarely describe the true feelings directly, but put the words they want to say outside the object. Concealed between the big mountains and the big waters, it is said that the big ones are called the things to say, and the little ones are called the borrowing scenes. In the aesthetic taste of the Orientals, it is the assertion of the meaning and the endlessness. The "things" are used to present the Tao and Zen in the void, and both the creator and the viewer are introduced into a space of meditation. Therefore, the people of the East do not care like the Westerners, they care about the black and white things that are expressed. What they care about is precisely the part that is not expressed. As Mr. Kurokawa Yasuke said: "...not letting the other party understand, but driving the mentality that you want to understand; not accurately telling each other, but letting the other person enter the world over there and discover it by himself; Let the other party know, but use 'hidden' to guide the other party to 'explore'; not to persuade, but to choose to silence in order to deeply influence the other party. Retreat to progress, hide and seek knowledge, solve the problem silently..."

Driven by such thoughts, I tried to use the universal art form of the world to rediscover the aesthetic value left by my ancestors. With the experience of the bonsai in the front, I began to create today's "bonsai" - about a place that was familiar but did not exist.

So, with this exhibition "White".

Beijing is a snowy city. Maybe I was born in the north. Snow has become an emotional bond between me and the city. It reminds me of my hometown and thinks of my childhood.

The meaning of snow is coverage, let us temporarily forget the filth and edge of the city, a new world. My favorite moment is that the winter will go away. The thick snow gradually melts away in the rising temperature. It starts with a whole piece, then turns into several small pieces, and the small pieces shrink every day until the end. Nothing left, this beautiful heartbreak, let me want to press the stop button.

The word "white" in the title of the exhibition refers to the snow that is melting. I got inspiration from the walls of Beijing, the bricks and tiles, the imperial city Zhumen, and the steps of the stone steps. I created 11 "snowy" bonsais. It is the "stop button" that I pressed, which is the order in my heart.

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.

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