Phoenix (2008-10) is the newest project in New York by the Chinese artist Xu Bing, who previously lived in the city for 18 years before returning to China in 2008. Installed in the nave of Saint John the Divine’s Gothic Revival cathedral, two monumental sculptures, in the form of mythical birds, soar 18 feet above the floor. They are composed entirely of materials and tools from construction sites around Beijing. Xu has explained, in various print and video interviews, that he hit upon the idea after he was commissioned to create a sculpture for the glass atrium of a building in Beijing’s central business district. During his visit to the construction site he witnessed firsthand the harsh working conditions of the migrant laborers and decided to use salvaged building materials to bring attention to them. The developers requested making the sculptures more aesthetically pleasing by encasing them in crystal, but the artist refused. As a result, he lost the commission. Barry Lam, the president of a major computer company in Taiwan, eventually purchased the artworks. Before coming to Saint John the Divine, Phoenix was displayed in the Today Art Museum in Beijing, the Shanghai World Expo 2010 and MassMoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts last year.

At first sight, the massive scale of the two sculptures strikes the viewer with awe, just like the shiny new buildings cropping up around Beijing (and New York). Further examination of Phoenix leads to the discovery that the creatures have been brought to life through dirty, rusty, commonplace items, wielded by laborers toiling in an environment far from shiny or new. As creatures born, according to legend, from the ashes of fire, Xu’s phoenixes stand in for those grand examples of Beijing architecture, and succeed in packing a powerful punch in terms of conveying its message, one of Xu’s strongest political statements to date.

Phoenix is best understood within the theme of metamorphosis, which preoccupied Xu after moving to New York in 1990. In 1997, he invented a new writing system by fusing elements of the English and Chinese languages. Although his words look like Chinese characters, they are comprised of English letters. His audience was invited to learn this “unified” language in an environment resembling a traditional calligraphy classroom, complete with manuals, writing tools and desks. The whole project was entitled New English Square Word Calligraphy. Xu’s Living Word installations (2001-2002), including one exhibited in Washington, D.C., visualized the word “bird” taking flight from floor to ceiling. Each element was either a modern Chinese character, an ancient pictogram, an animal form, or Xu’s own square-word calligraphy. Viewed as a whole, the sculptures evoked the process of morphing from one form to the next. Closest in concept to Phoenix is the artist’s Background Story, an ongoing series begun in 2004. Approaching frosted glass panes, the viewer first sees reprisals of famous classical landscape paintings. Upon coming closer and looking at the verso, one realizes how the brushstrokes are composed of debris both natural and manmade, such as leaves, branches and discarded paper. Background Story masterfully translates, in literal terms, the classical conception of the brushstroke as a representation of the energy and essence of nature and the Universe.

Like Background Story, Phoenix seeks to reveal the humble yet profound origins of creativity, but it does not have Background Story’s transitional stage, facilitated in the latter by the viewer’s movement from the front to the back of the glass panes. The idea of metamorphosis is also not as clear in Phoenix as it was in Living Word. The white lights lining the birds unify the composition, but emphasize stasis. Xu’s idea to imbue his majestic creatures with an element of ugliness is brilliant, and he could have pushed this further. Unfortunately, the choice to install Phoenix within Saint John the Divine further diminishes the impact of its original message by tipping the balance in favor of beauty and grandeur. It also encourages the impression that the sculpted birds are divine. This might induce the viewer to forget about those migrant workers toiling on the ground.

Ultimately, the original site would have been the best place for these sculptures, as they would have reminded visitors of the building’s genesis. On the other hand, temporarily nesting in locations not quite suited to them aptly reflects the plight of Chinese migrant workers, who are forced by poverty to leave the comfort of home for work. Phoenix certainly offers substantial food for thought to make the pilgrimage to Saint John the Divine worthwhile.

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The April 3 detention of internationally celebrated artist Ai Weiwei by the Chinese Government is a matter of increasing concern and indignation in the global art community.  artcritical applauds the leadership of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and other institutions working for his release and urges readers both to sign their online petition and to join protests, called by others for Sunday April 17 at 1pm at embassies and consulates of the People’s Republic around the world.

The petition is accompanied by a statement we fully endorse: “We members of the international arts community express our concern for Ai’s freedom and disappointment in China’s reluctance to live up to its promise to nurture creativity and independent thought, the keys to ‘soft power’ and cultural influence.’’

It is especially galling to see the artistic adviser to the 2008 Beijing Olympics arrested amongst hundreds of lawyers, activists and ordinary citizens in a crackdown clearly intended to stifle any spread of Jasmine revolution to China.  The charge of “economic crimes” cuts no muster, for Ai’s woes with the authorities are longstanding and political.  They are said to date back to the artist’s courageous stance on the Sichuan earthquake and its aftermath, and have already included the extraordinary spectacle of the government-ordered demolition of his landmark Shanghai studio.

While these actions are appalling, they also powerfully vindicate the idea that art and artists can actually matter in the minds of governments and the hearts of protesters.  China needs to get the message that persecuting its most high-profile artist directly undermines its Olympic glory.

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June 21 to August 2, 2008

Xiong Wenyun’s project, Moving Rainbows, began ten years ago, when her travels to Tibet inspired her to create installations transforming local architecture and lines of trucks along the Sichuan and Qinghai-Tibetan highways. Using colored plastic tarpaulins that added exuberant hues to Tibet’s mountainous landscape, Xiong created a moving rainbow of trucks as they made their way along the high roads of the region. The colors she used—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple—echo those seen in the prayer flags drivers and journeyers left alongside the highways they traveled on. According to a statement by Xiong, Tibetans “say that this color sequence comes from rainbows, and that rainbows are god’s ladders.” Xiong, who is a well-known, highly active artist who studied at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts and then researched color in Japan, took this order of hues and made it her own by covering the trucks and the doorways of roadside cabins. As an artistic venture, Moving Rainbows involved both Tibetan society and a sharp sense of the environment; Xiong possessed the wherewithal to complete her plans, so that the procession of trucks and the covered entrances encountered along the way celebrated her sense of sublimity found “in this beautiful, innocent sequence.”

The artist documented Moving Rainbows with still photography and videos, which formed the contents of her show at Three Shadows. It is clear from them that the line of vehicles enlivened the steep landscapes of Tibet, as well as being of strong interest as art in its own right. There are photos of officials taking part in the departure ceremonies, Xiong standing alongside monks kowtowing their way to Lhasa, and the brightly colored clothing of minority peoples in the area (another inspiration for her color scheme). One has the sense that Xiong’s interventions not only reflect the high, joyous spirituality of the people she worked with, but also the inner life of the artist herself, whose quiet presence in the project connects persons to the sites she chose for her interventions. Color is central to her imagination. Indeed, she says, “I believe this order [of colors] is the most pure form of the universe.” Xiong’s presence served as a bridge for so involved an undertaking; a sure sense of hue as well as a gift for bringing people together enabled her to realize Moving Rainbows. Like many people who do public works of art, Xiong has had to portray her efforts through photography, which only gives a fraction of the excitement participants clearly felt. A documentary approach, after all, doesn’t do justice to the complex interactions and extraordinary visuals inherent to the artist’s design.

Nonetheless, the joyous nature of Xiong’s idea comes across, despite the fact that the record is partial. This piece is being written a very short time before Beijing’s hosting of the Olympic Games, and China is clearly worried about protests, most especially those having to do with Tibet. Xiong’s treatment of the landscape, which includes coloring rocks and trees cut for timber, is ecological and not political. Yet her audience, knowing what it does about China’s incorporation of Tibet within its own boundaries, as well as the commercialization of Lhasa, may well see the artist’s efforts as a way of bringing attention to the colonization of a remarkable culture. As an environmental activist, Xiong has created a process-oriented art whose dimensions are quite literally heavenly as well as humanist. Her images capture the noble nature of the landscape, as well as the moving portrayal of the people who live within its mountainous terrain. Her grand action is undertaken with a true spirit of humility, something that China has lacked in its assumption that Tibet must be modernized at all costs. What is needed, more than anything else, is Xiong’s sense that the interaction between people and landscape is something sacred, and not an excuse for raw profit or environmental exploitation.

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