Artist’s Statement: Reduce to nullity
I always have to disassemble items or deconstruct conceptions in my work, but when some industrial ready-made came into my sight, I felt a sense of obstacle, the obstacle between the phenomenon and the material trapping me from feeling nature made me instinctively confused. Differ from touching the stone and wood, ready-made objects makes me feel like separated part to inherent nature. Modern society is highly integrated, including our knowledge system and cognitive experience, surely, in this way we can skip some steps of the process, it seems that behaviors and its products become more effective, but this also makes social items no longer Outside-equal-within, the specialty of an era is its epitome, ready-made objects’ materiality is veiled, alluding to the gap in the relationship between man and nature in contemporary world.
The "Sub-" Series is to replace the functional part of one tool that I noticed with single one self-formation attribute material[1] which I’ve found in this secondary Nature around me, so as to reconstitute a object, and finally all the tools, products, residuum I made during the process of reconstitution will be presented as installation or mixed media in the space, they are all connected to each other to form a bigger entirety. The process of doing creative works is also a part of my work, just like dissecting and then suturing back, I will disassemble the found objects, wipe off the functional material, then as the replacement, I will choose and remold a self-formation material, eventually, combine them with residuum of found objects. Both in my life and work, I’d like to make myself sense of mystery and unknown deliberately[2], because accepting ready-made would make people too lazy to think and feel, I won’t turn to ready method, unless I’ve got to face some professional problem, in this situation, I also ask the professionals for help, but still left unanswered, so I realized the difference between them and me, they try their best to do the plus, to make the thing better, more complex, what I am trying to do is subtraction, reducing the accessory of one function.
If I have to sum up the contemporary society, that would be Effective. You can see "how to do it fast", "how to do it effectively", "the quickest way" everywhere, but that makes me wonder why we have to put ourselves in such a kind of efficiency? What is the result of this kind of efficiency? Can we live more effective and compress the life processes? At least in my personal experience, high efficiency won’t always bring you the good results, it’s a kind of paralysis. My creative process always avoid efficiency methods, though it’s not my topic but more like a kind of disciplining, I always have to face a large number of failures and wastes in the experiments of creation. There are many different ways to accomplish an image, the curve process I chose tend not to appear in the final image, but I believe that it is necessary for me. The work can be the form or image, but the art itself is much more than this, the effective illustrative images are necessary, and also successful in art, but the artists have to persevere their own language against the inertia of entrenched groups, what you have to believe first is not theory, knowledge, experience, but your instincts.
[1] Self-formation attribute: This conception refers to a material that will obtain an attribute, which can reflect as a function after its formation, such as glass’s stress fracture, the pieces are shape naturally, unlike metal blade, it needs to be put a edge as secondary structure by grounding, in order to hold a incising function.
[2] Without using the network searching, inquiring, consulting and other means to obtain knowledge, but though practicing, these methods are almost like a kind of empiricism. Sometimes these kinds of behaviors are repeating the works of scientists, alchemists, but different purposes. For me, knowledge is accessory of feelings I expected. Such as my first hobbit, insects, I 've always been avoiding the study of Entomology, because I won’t get any thrill of exploring the unknown if learnt what it is before I find it in reality.