Lin Yan is the third generation of Chinese female artists in her family to go abroad to study—she is a graduate of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, and L’Ecole national superieur des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Unlike her mother and grandmother, however, who went back to Beijing, Lin has stayed on in America, her country of choice, although recently she has been returning to China to work for a few months at a time, in response to the prohibitive cost of renting a studio space in New York. In this solo show at China Square, the artist has been inspired by a quote from President-elect Barack Obama: “And above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years—block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.” Her exhibition’s title, “Remaking” takes a word directly from Obama himself but, at the same time, slyly refers to the reconstruction of images and surfaces with traditional materials: Chinese paper, ink, wax, and wood. Out of these materials, she makes moving, contemporary art that looks hopefully at America’s changing political landscape.

As Lin points out in her website’s artist statement, “My works appear to be paintings, but they are not painted; they are sculpted, created of the mold and then cast.” In This Nation(2008)—again the title originates with Obama’s speech, Lin has cast an American flag, whose stripes are composed of cast bricks, mostly but not entirely white (some are black). The upper left-hand portion, where the fifty stars are located on a traditional flag, consists entirely of paper; here is a wonderful example of Lin’s referential artistry, which is literally made of images belonging to the president, but which also suggest one of the icons of American modernist art: Jasper Johns’s Three Flags (1956). Lin has managed, through wit and a visionary interpretation of speech, to create a low-relief sculpture that refers simultaneously to American political and artistic history. Its large dimensions, 36 by 60 by 8 inches, give the work its monumental presence. At the same time, her audience may wonder whether the architectural details—the bricks that have been molded and cast—acknowledges a third source for the imagery, in this case the constant tearing down and building up of buildings in Lin’s hometown of Beijing, where old and new bricks are ubiquitous.

Much of the show explores the visual experiences that monuments and memorials are capable of producing; there is a deep-seated mystical sense of form in her “Monument” series, a sequence of works that include molded bricks framed by Chinese paper and colored by Chinese ink. Monuments #6 and #8 (both works are from 2008) are extraordinarily tactile reliefs, with the softness of the Chinese paper contrasting sharply with the raised, seemingly hard surface of the bricks; but then, suddenly, we remember that the entire piece is made of Chinese paper, and we recognize we have been tricked slightly by Lin’s excellent craft. In this process of remaking, Lin says, “shapes are derived from real objects rendered abstract.” In another work, titled Under Cloud Cover (2008), it looks like Lin is referring to clouds hanging over a wall—rivets seem to join different sections of the work together. Black ink colors one row of the studs, while the large size (82 by 47 by 8 inches) simulates the weight and authority of a large door or portion of a wall. Lin is a very strong artist, someone who constructs lyric displays taken from nearly nothing in regard to materials. As she says, “There is great fulfillment in emptiness and nothingness.”

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September 3 – 27, 2008

The premise of Su Xinping’s show, entitled “Toasting,” is allegorical in its striking but troubled imagery of bare-chested men lifting glasses in an atmosphere of post-apocalyptic emptiness. Su, well known in China both as an artist and educator (he is head of the printmaking department at Beijing’s prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts), offers his viewers both the optimism of the toast, its cheerful recognition of what is yet to come, and the grim awareness that such are meaningless in the face of a lurid red horizon, beckoning as an empty future. Read symbolically, Su’s quizzical images seem to split into a double message, at once sanguine and pessimistic, in which the actions of men look hopeless, even desolate as they raise their glass to unknown prospects. Art, it seems, can only do so much; and while it is hard to correctly read Su’s subversive views, he suggests that China’s great leap forward is not so remarkable as it seems. Dissonance wins out; as curator Judd Tully points out in his incisive essay, “It’s all very strange.” The brutalized features of those sharing in the toast intimate violence, but at whose behest we don’t know.

Portrait in Segments (2007), one of the most striking images in “Toasting,” is a very large (138 by 79 inches) pastel on paper, divided into nine panels. It concerns a coarse featured, bald headed man, whose uplifted face reveals only a partial view; the head, body, and hands are drawn in a dark red, with white highlights.  Wearing a simple jacket, with buttons or beads at the neck, this Chinese Everyman seems to embody the future. His bony fingers touch each other, creating an image of prayer, or near piety. We don’t know the object of the man’s gaze, but we sense that he represents an attitude that is portentous, bordering on the mystical. Nevertheless, Su’s audience has to acknowledge that the future here is unknowable and perhaps unappeasable, despite the humility of the figure’s outlook. While the people (almost always men) in Su’s work intimate happiness and shared pleasure, the future they toast remains indistinct and even threatening. Thus Su manufactures in his paintings an alienation that feels inevitable, in light of his figures’ ignorance. We will never know what the figures are waiting for.

Toasting is the theme of the show, and the other paintings address it. Toasting No. 55 (2008) shows three shirtless men extending a glass filled with liquor, most likely beer. Seen in profile, their features are rough, even brutal. The eyes are narrowed to mere slits, while around them are suggestions of a post-industrial landscape. It is hard not to read the image as an allegory of lost hope, if not despair. The red sky and horizon offer no solace, only the grim trappings of what might even be read as a post-nuclear countryside. The portly men literally glow in a harsh yellow light that leaves ominous shadows around their heads; it is impossible to imagine that light as natural. In addition to being an important painter, Su is also a remarkable printmaker. He continues his theme of distress in the woodblock print Toasting No. 5 (2008), which depicts a line of six men in profile, each of them holding a full glass of beer. Three stand on the left, while the three on the right sit with their drink. Again, the men are shirtless. There is the same red background, and this time the figures toasting are also red, contributing to an eerie, unnatural scenario.

One does not want to exaggerate Su’s gloom, but an unspoken anguish works its way into most of his art. His paintings beckon toward an isolation that is as moral as it is esthetic, so completely existential is its underpinnings. The strangeness of Su’s scenes reveals little of their origins; we remain in the dark as to their intention. However, they communicate a quiet desperation the viewer can do nothing to assuage. There is, in these times, the global sense that we are creating a hopelessly damaged environment, and that we have given ourselves over to trivial pursuits. In light of China’s embrace of capitalism, it is easy to speculate that Su is pointing out the hollowness of showy self-congratulation. But we must remember, however, that the figures are entirely enigmatic, even if Su wants to make symbols of them. His brilliant portrayals of loss remind us that we are inevitably exposed to harm, the cost of living in an ambiguous world.

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