CITY: Beijing LOCATION: Galerie Urs Meile IN BOX: Cheng Ran UNDER BOX: Diary of a Madman AUTHOR: Tom Mouna In Lu Xun’s seminal 1918 fiction story A Madman’s Diary, a paranoid man becomes convinced that those around him are cannibalistic, and are plotting to eat him. Marked as the first work of modern Chinese literature, the story’s leitmotif is an exploration of the insider/outsider dichotomy. At Galerie Urs Meile in Beijing’s 798, Cheng Ran’s namesake series “Diary of a Madman,” created over the last two years at residencies in New York, Hong Kong and Jerusalem unfolded in the form of videos and photographs that interweave elements of markedly cosmopolitan psychogeography with astutely rendered cinematography and aesthetic jouissance. With these works, Cheng, like Lu Xun before him, gives voice to an outsider who expresses a profoundly melancholic interiority. Walking into the space, one might assume that the exhibition was solely about this series. However, the artist’s attempt to create a narrative around alienation in cityscapes, through this series laid out in consecutive rooms, was at times interrupted by works drawn from other projects, such as those from the Ear Bums project (2017). Nonetheless, these awkward inclusions did little to detract from the dominant “Diary of a Madman” artworks. The first work visible on entering was a multi-channel-video-sculpture conceived in Jerusalem. Various forms pop out from the three screens that rapidly alternate between aesthetic states: on one screen a submarine travels through water as the screen moves through levels of saturation and hue; on another screen a moon transforms its arc and color. Three metal panels have paint scraped across them and a photograph of Jerusalem printed onto each. Chains, belts and paint-covered straps hang off the screens. It is worth noting that, while participating in this residency, Cheng experienced a type of anxiety and paranoia that forced him to get away from the city, in an incident that echoes the effects of the well-known Jerusalem syndrome. In the adjacent room were two screens featuring the “voices” of a tong gau (stray dog) and an Asian black kite bird, reciting anxieties and gripes about their native city of Hong Kong. The surfaces alternately flip upside down and back the right way depending on which anthropomorphized animal is speaking; this heightens the feeling of moving through the city, perhaps looking up to the bird and down to the dog, while also adding a dose of unsettling instability. As a backdrop to these musings on the city’s future were numerous photographs that Cheng took during his residency there. A heavy melancholy marks the work, drawing the viewer to a dark underworld, littered with discarded syringes and homeless populations, that is often overlooked in the ostensible commercial paradise. A heavily slowed version of the patriotic ballad Pearl of the Orient played in the space, perhaps attempting to slow down and look closer at a city that is known for its phenomenally brisk pace. Language is important to this series. In the Hong Kong works, Cheng’s broken Cantonese voices the dog, and the struggling, vaguely incorrect tones reference the linguistic roadblocks encountered by foreigners. This was further explored in more profound detail in the final works of the “Diary of a Madman” trilogy, filmed during Cheng’s residency in New York and exhibited at The New Museum in 2016. For example, in one floor-to-ceiling video work, protagonists bumble through recitals of foreign languages indecipherable to their ears. The text which they read is, however, searchingly introspective; a strange effect is created, resulting in an existential atmosphere that leaves these characters strangely alienated and yet involved. Emotional admissions abound. The works from the three cities share an exploration of what one might call the subconscious of these places. Individually, they offer fragments of latent ideas and aesthetic qualities that point to psychological distortion via psychogeographical studies, but I struggled to draw out unifying theoretical suppositions. However, Cheng himself has hinted at the incompleteness of the project, which explains the elusive conclusion and points toward his further investigation in the subject. The exhibition should thus be seen as more of a signifier of promise in the young artist as he develops this vision, rather than an evaluation of it.
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