Follow The Feelings
Guangdong Times Museum
March 23 – June 23, 2024
“At this moment, the ‘walk’ that originated in the 1980s and is full of fearlessness and pioneering spirit has landed at the restart of the Times Museum, which is more like overcoming difficulties and testing the waters.”
After a year and a half, I once again stepped into the residential building where the Guangdong Times Museum is located. The first exhibition of the museum after its suspension was named “Follow Your Feeling”, which was taken from the song of the same name released by Taiwanese singer Su Rui in 1988. Su Rui sang in the song: “Follow your feeling and hold on to the hand of your dream.” This literally echoes the steps taken after the restart of the times, and also follows the exhibition clue hidden in the lyrics by curator Qu Chang – the “feeling” here is an emotion that transcends the individual and belongs to externality, which comes from the wave of that era: reform and opening up, marketization and globalization.
When I was ready to capture some feelings with the posture of a blank sheet of paper, the first thing that caught my eye was three or five curled advertising ceilings: Phung-Tien Phan and Frieder Haller’s installation “PAIN” (2016-) hung from the ceiling, as romantic as a screen. The panel immediately showed “PAIN PAIN PAIN” in black and white, which made people who interpreted them as English feel a little painful. But then, a row of prominent French words “French exquisite pastries” eased this feeling under the warm yellow light ball-it turned out that “PAIN” also means “bread” in French.
Continuing to go deeper into the exhibition, I came to a semi-open area. On one of the screens, a video shot along the highway was played in a loop: Guo Jinhong’s “Towards the Darkest Direction of the Heart” (2019) took the audience to the magnificent and undulating national highway connecting Qinghai and Gansu, facing the mountain god Cthulhu-people usually feel fear when they see this ancient monster, but what eventually swallowed them is despair. Turning to another area, the secret intimate narrative has been dormant here for a long time: “Closer and Closer” (2020-2021) is a work dedicated by Yuan Zhongtian to his mother Wang Qingli. The artist tried to use video to reconstruct the latter’s painting “Mother Picture Series” which was painted in 1994 but strangely lost. Mother and son must be close, but closeness never means lightness. Although people always blurt out “sweet, sour, bitter and spicy” when trying to define a certain taste, it is difficult to have an absolutely precise boundary in reality. It is often sweet with bitterness and laughter with tears. Yuan’s sonorous monologue, like “intimacy makes people die, cynicism can make people live” and “avoidance is wrong, only digging deep can make people free”, seems to be repaired in the name of disclosure to reconstruct a more complex and real original painting.
The three artists living in Shanghai use color as the organizational logic to explore people’s multiple feelings in the historical community in their works. Zhou Siwei exhibited large-scale oil paintings and acrylic sculptures in the style of mobile phone cases. The titles of his works used popular culture vocabulary, which were linked together like a poetic crystalline polyhedron: tattoo, money, patience, miss you, 23-degree rain, bubble tea house. The same lyrical urban experience is also reflected in Peng Ke’s mixed media photography “Eastern Airlines Cleaning Bag” (2018/2024). Although the work is relatively hidden in the exhibition hall, the gentleness, pleasure, simplicity, and goodwill in the images of life and daily chatter make the surroundings of the work a safe haven for this “sensory journey”. Zhang Ruyi’s “Decoration (Modern Weaving Net)” (2023) also conveys some flowing material stories and individual emotions in the precise “grid aesthetics”.
When people’s senses are immersed in the environment, their psychology will always be transferred. Hong Kong artist Xu Haolin used 8 short Showa-style advertisements “We Are Not Destined” (2022) to project the issues of concern to consumerism, gender alienation, and emotional materialization. When the audience tries to analyze these slightly grand topics and stares at the images in a questioning way, their eyes will unconsciously fall on the gift boxes as big as the TV screen on the ground; as the fast-paced image switching screens, the last second of thinking is quickly folded. In Tao Hui’s “Acting Tutorial” (2014) video, a group of girls seem to come to night school to improve their “acting skills”, and the acting teacher seems to have the appeal of a wizard; under the guidance, the girls gradually enter the “good state” of acting – “feeling” seems to be not only free to migrate, but also further expand and spread through imagination, and even become a means of deception and control. In contemporary urban society, “feeling” is often like a trapped beast in the system, panicked and exhausted, but people are used to making it quiet and obedient, and seek solutions from grand propositions, historical experience, religion or ideology. In fact, it is better to trace back to “feeling” itself – this is the key grammar in Peng Zuqiang’s work “Autocorrect” (2023). These works seem to praise individual emotions in a torrent of confusion and shadows: “follow your feelings”, to release it, tell it, soften it, and commemorate it.
Only by loosening up, rather than controlling, can we digest the thorns and the unspeakable at the moment. Curator Qu Chang explored how “feeling” is involved in emotional economy, emotional politics, and emotional life in different specific social contexts. The saying “follow your feelings” not only shows an attitude towards the present, but also retains hope. It is also a dual strategy: pursuing high confidence when “feeling good”, and staying alert when “feeling bad”. At this moment, the “walking” that originated in the 1980s and is full of fearlessness and pioneering spirit, has landed at the restart of the Times Art Museum, more like overcoming difficulties and testing the waters.
*Originally published on Art Review China (Summer Issue): 148–149. ISSN: 1005-7722 | CN31-1128/J
Yuting (Roxy) TANG 