The Peak Suite is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new and recent work by Beijing-based emerging artist Su Wenxiang entitled “Action, Limit, Transformation” opening on 7 July and continuing through 7 August. Curated by Venus Lau and Robin Peckham of Kunsthalle Kowloon, this debut solo gallery exhibition will introduce the video-, installation-, and action-based practice of this exciting young artist to Hong Kong and international audiences for the first time.
At the core of the show is a triptych of three short videos documenting actions undertaken by the artist, two of which will be exhibited for the first time at The Peak Suite. In one, Slow Down (2010), an actor attempts to halt a moving train with a thin piece of string; in another, an actor shakes two trees, the leaves of one of which have already begun to turn; in the third, Running Away from Incheon (2010), the viewer sees hurried travelers breaking into a run at random intervals.
In these three pieces Su Wenxiang demonstrates the three techniques that define his practice in performative terms, engaging in actions calculated to test the limits of prosaic behavior and always enacting a degree of transformation--even when it is unexpected. The situations constructed here are explicitly quixotic and the behaviors espoused therein liminal and even ineffective; Su Wenxiang seeks to maneuver through only the slightest of disruptions.
In a second work, Course in General Aesthetics (2011), Su Wenxiang continues a project initiated at the Beijing institution Taikang Space earlier this spring. Whereas, for the earlier portion of the project, the artist collected and transplanted 70 wild trees into pots stored on the roof of the art space, the iteration at The Peak Suite in Hong Kong will exhibit photographic documentation, notes, and charts graphing the growth of these living materials in an ecological and creative environment drastically removed from Hollywood Road.
A final pair of works points in a more structural direction for Su Wenxiang, demonstrating the process of formal experimentation through which he found his creative footing in the mainland Chinese art scene. One one wall, reconstructed but unguarded blue electric fans spin away in Wind-Blue (2009), attempting to identify color with motion, while, directly adjacent on a video monitor, a generative computational process creates infinite variations of abstract chromatic forms in Black and White (2009).
Su Wenxiang is an important figure in the present shift away from fabrication and scale in contemporary Chinese art, choosing instead to work with both the tangible limitations of his media and the intellectual or cultural boundaries of legibility in artistic practice today. Driven by a willingness to experiment not only with aesthetic forms but also with his own studio process, the artist commands recognition amongst the most interesting elements of contemporary art in China today.
Born in Anhui province in 1979, Su Wenxiang currently lives and works in Beijing. He exhibited in a featured solo project of the “51 sqm” platform at Taikang Space in 2010, and has also been included in major group exhibitions at Pace Beijing, the Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, Platform China, the Zendai Museum, DDM Warehouse, and Fei Contemporary Art Center.
