AAP 109 REVIEWS 2018 June/July CITY: Beijing GALLERY: Yang Gallery IN BOX: Zhang Yue UNDER BOX: If I Could AUTHOR: Tom Mouna Based on examinations of war, violence, nationhood and governance across the globe, the artworks in Zhang Yue’s “If I Could” can feel more like pieces of broad-based investigative research than traditional art objects. The parts of the show that stood out, therefore, were those that—with Cui Cancan’s innovative and careful curation—revealed Zhang’s marked dedication to his chosen subjects, and that came out of the artist’s personal experiences. In this sense, the first of the exhibition’s four sections, “Gun,” was slow to hit stride. There were bullet-hole ridden paper targets plastered on the walls, created by participants invited by Zhang for the work, titled “Firing” Project (2016–17). On a white canvas, a table of results ranks the shooters’ marksmanship. Framed by the paper targets were painted copies of gun licences from various points in Chinese history and pen-on-paper drawings with text instructions on how to disarm a gun-wielding attacker. More interesting was the area with sketches of guns and related local Chinese argot; these hung above printed interviews relaying stories of gun use in the words of both victims and assailants (including one anonymous account about working in Xinjiang-based state security forces). “Gun” chiefly felt like a demonstration of Zhang’s long-term, project-based approach to the exhibition’s guiding concerns with violence and state apparatuses of control. The second section of the show was exceptional, both for its poignancy and for Zhang’s demonstrated commitment to the lives depicted. A series of square, cardboard paintings lining the insides of a tent began the unravelling of Zhang’s experiences in Northern Myanmar in 2015, during fighting between the insurgent Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Myanmar Army, over control of the Kokang area. Zhang travelled to a refugee camp in Kokang, spending 65 days living with the community, and documented the violence, prostitution and desperation that he saw in the brightly coloured acrylics. Nearby, photographic portraits of some of the camp’s inhabitants encircled an assortment of collected clothes, candles, and other random objects. After Zhang’s first trip to the camp, he returned to Beijing and sold artworks with the express purpose of earning money to buy over 25,000 kilograms of rice to bring back to Myanmar. This gesture was actualized and Distribution of Rice (2015) details who was given the rice and how much. The Longest Day (2017) was a black notebook stuck on a wall, in which, on Zhang’s third trip to Northern Myanmar, he recorded the explosions he heard while he was stuck in a hotel due to fighting. He tallies the time, frequency and vicinity of the attacks, expressing, with simple markings, the incessant nature of the death and destruction that surrounded him. After Myanmar, the exhibition’s focus pans out, as signified by the huge world map on the floor of the third section. Things were more hazy here, with objects—black boards, books, typewriters, tents and prints—coming from less developed and, more significantly, less personally experienced research into varied topics, including: Cuba and the fictional destruction of the United States, conspiracies related to the 2013 Boston bombings, a secret political body under the North Korean Kim family’s control, and how a language might be “annihilated.” At the exhibition’s end, we arrived at works related to Zhang’s four and a half years in prison served for an act of self-defence. Again, a sense of the artist having really undergone the ordeals that he depicts made for a more powerful group of works. At the end of a narrow space were drawings and paintings illustrating Zhang’s prison experiences, which he made secretively while behind bars. Also on show was a textbook that Zhang later created, detailing prison rules and guidelines, which is now officially used by all inmates in Shandong province. As with his trials in Myanmar, Zhang’s research here blurs the line between artist and subject; and, while many of the ideas that Zhang conjectures throughout the exhibition are worthy of attention, it’s in the prison and the refugee camp, where the artist’s research is lived, that Zhang was able to create the greatest impact.
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