With the chill of Winter still lingering on the doorstep, there is no better time no to examine the psychological, social and symbolic connotations of the season.

Accompanied by the withering of plants and hibernation of animals, Winter implies a certain kind of “end” – a marker which signifies that another year has passed. In temperate climates, this pause makes itself felt in the slowing of agricultural activities. With no crops to tend, people spend time inside mending clothes or doing small repairs around the farm. It’s a philosophy we’ve taken with us into our modern lives – an instinct which drives us to go underground – to spend time with our books and our thoughts.

Staring out at the barren landscape, stripped of leaves and grasses, of the buzzing of insects and the croak of frogs, we are struck by a kind of sweet melancholy. It’s like a rest in a piece of music during which no sounds are heard.

But at the same time, that empty expanse of white speaks to possibilities yet unrealized. The ashen, bare branches pointing the way to Spring and the untapped potential buried within the tree buds or stored away in bulbs beneath the ground which will soon transform itself into a profusion of color. However dismal or bleak, without Winter, we would not appreciate the verdant mantle of summer. Winter is the “yin” which necessitates “yang”. Without one, the other does not exist.

In this show, we’ve collected a series of works which pay homage to these themes and we hope they will provide some inspiring ideas to warm you during these last few chilly days.

Artists including: Chai Yiming, Chen Hangfeng, Chen Xi, Ed Pien, Ge Fei and Lin Zhen, Ji Wenyu Zhu Weibing, Monika Lin, Robert Lee Davis, Shi Jing, Wang Taocheng, Zhu Ye

Artist's Statement

Chai Yiming: Untitled, water color and ink on xuan paper with cloth mount, 70 x 100cm, 2010

Winter in Chinese has the connotation of freezing, in a more genteel language we can say that all business has stopped or slowed. The ancients said, “In fall we harvest; in winter we store.” But the word “dong” for winter is also pregnant with the meaning of gathering. The contradictions of life are all present in these seasons. Is there any difference between painting in the winter and painting paintings of winter? Why don’t we let the painting answer that question.

Chen Hangfeng: It Comes and Goes
stop motion animation, 1:24 mins, 2011

This stop motion animation records the process of making a collage. The images are of different consumer products, that I cut out from free flyers, leaflets, advertisements and junk mail, which I collected during my residency in Sapporo.

Two mirrors are placed at 60 degree angles and it almost looks like these consumer products are worshiping themselves in the manner of the Shinto goddess Amaterasu. Therefore each collage repeats, which has the effect of looking like a snowflake pattern. The work acts as a tribute to Ukichiro Nakaya, who created the first artificial snowflake in Sapporo. But what will happen if there is no snow in the future?"

Chen Xi: Icebreaker, Moon Light, Rain and Snow and Sand and Wind
ink and pencil on fabriano paper, 70 X 100cm, 2011
ink and pencil on fabriano paper, 50 X 70cm, 2011
ink and pencil on fabriano paper, 50 X 70cm, 2011

I provide a seemingly irrational vision. This refers to the irrationality of the world we all live in ­– how strange it is to be human, to witness the oddity of living. It refers to the idea that life is meaningless and humorous and that societal narratives are simply constructed illusions developed in order to make living palatable. There are lots of things that happen in my drawings, which point towards how we as humans live in an inexplicable condition that is beyond our control.

Ed Pien: Curious Creatures, Leap of Faith
87 x 125 cm, hand-cut digital print on arches paper, 2011
87 x 125 cm, hand-cut digital print on arches paper, 2011

In these two hand-cut digital prints, I continue exploring concerns that I began in this overall series entitled “Blur Cuts.”  In the two most recent works, “Curious Creatures” and “Leap of Faith,” there is a note of playfulness.  Figures and birds commingle and reside in a natural world where mystery and life forces abound.

Ge Fei and Lin Zhen: After
Video 3:27 mins, 2008

On the Mongolian Steppes a snowstorm suddenly arises.

Ji Wenyu Zhu Weibing: No one in the Garden of Eden
mixed media, 310 x 126 x 87cm, 2010

Inside a two-meter tall mosquito net there is a transparent gauze tree. The elongated roots of the tree extend below the mosquito net and almost touch the floor. The topic is “No One in the Garden of Eden.”

After eating the forbidden fruit, we start from innocence and after that, what did we find? It was from this moment that we began to look for struggle, and at the same time greed emerged.  God Very wisely predicted that all would not be peaceful under heaven and angrily cast Adam and Eve from Eden. After this Eden retained its innocence, still beautiful, still flourishing, an unending sea of dazzling brilliance. In order to maintain it or to expand its growth, the tree’s roots needed even more nourishment. They became dense and thick, growing down, and growing long. The started to seek, and the more they sought, the more they found, and they became greedy. Nutrients! Nutrients!  And this time God was silent.

Monika Lin: Take-Away
rice, resin, masking tape, dimensions variable, 2012

Six years ago, after having encountered grain vendors on almost every block of my neighborhood I began thinking actively about "rice economies."  This term refers to countries and regions with low labor costs, as it is labor-intensive to cultivate rice. The vendors in my neighborhood offer various price points, qualities and varieties of rice, all of which brought to mind further questions about the nature of "rice economies" and their specific values and consequences. This eventually led me to the idea of rice itself as a medium.

The neighborhood street vendors who offer quick, cheap street meals in my neighborhood offered another key point of departure in this vein of exploration. These “economy rice” meals, targeting the working population, typically offer anywhere from 10-15 troughs of pre-cooked food including meat, vegetables, eggs and tofu. Customers select a combination, which is served accompanied by a portion of steamed white rice in a Styrofoam container.

In contrast, the plastic to-go containers I have utilized here are used to carry out/deliver food from higher-end restaurants. As a pack-rat, I had amassed a large quantity of them (whereas I would throw away the Styrofoam containers). As I delved further into thinking about the economics of food, I started to experiment with using rice as a medium and the plastic take-away boxes as the containing form. The result is a series of pieces made from mundane materials using a commonplace subject, trees, as a means to explore the tension between perceived high art and a popular/craft aesthetic while addressing themes of waste, the economy and labor, as well as the function of the gallery space.

Robert Lee Davis: In the Bleak Midwinter
mixed media collage, 75 cm X 54.5 cm, 2012

In the bleak mid winter, frosty wind made moan
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter, long, long ago.
                                               
In the Bleak Midwinter,                                                
Christina Rossetti, text

Shanghai Winter can be at once freezing, rainy and cloudy with glimpses of sun.  We tend to hunker down during this time, limiting movement to spending time with friends and watching DVDs.

In this work, I picture Shanghai as a city engulfed in fog, ice and the ever-present cloud of pollution.  Throughout the artwork are words and Winter remembrances of friends. These elements transform the city into a serial scene of contemplation.  The mountain in the distance is a combination of scenes from North America and China and represents our romantic notions of Winter.

Shi Jing: White Line
oil on canvas, 60cm, 2006

This work is called “White Line” 2006 (there are 16 in total). These works emerged from a global study of glaciers and oceans. The surface of the water in this work and in all the other 15 works is at the same level. Now this water and these iceburgs have already dispersed to different corners of the globe.

Wang Taocheng: Sister
chinese ink, pencil
180 × 33 cm, 2009

This piece reflects the suicide of one of my friends’ younger sisters. She told me this story one day on the bus to Pudong (a suburb of Shanghai). The basic problem was that girl's mother was a dictator, making all the decisions, and she was not able to do any of the things that she wanted to do. Because she was from such a poor family, she felt oppressed and developed a sense of inferiority.

Speaking from the mother’s point of view, no one can say she doesn't love her daughter. She had a terrible education and she was biased and blind to how this treatment affected her daughter. She only knows how to make noodles and bargain at the market; the world that surrounds her is very crude and unsophisticated.

Zhu Ye: Solitude
70 x 50cm, acrylic on canvas, 2011

There are one or two barely perceptible figures in the center of the painting who look as if maybe they are swimming. In this work I’ve created a scene of peace and solitude which is inspired by a Japanese Zen garden.

Thoughts on Being Cold

Spring Festival which typically falls during one of the coldest bleakest parts of Winter, when Spring is still months away seems like a kind of cruel trick played by the ancients. But it’s hard to see the humor when each tibia and fibula, each metatarsal, and tooth is chattering in the vain hope of generating some heat.

But perhaps this “Spring” festival is meant to offer some kind of encouragement, like how the evergreen trees, holly wreathes and candles kindle the hope of eventual warmth.

Traditional Winter has symbolized sleep, hibernation and death and in agricultural societies, Winter was traditionally the time of rest time when people stayed inside and made quilts or did small repairs around the farm.

It can also be seen as an opportunity to take stock of ourselves, but at the same time the lack of social interaction and normal activity can be a stimulus for mental illness. One cannot help but think of the hapless family charged with taking care of the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.”

Emily Dickenson, that mistress of the morose described aptly the effects of the weather on the soul:

“There’s a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons – That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes.”[i]

Indeed, the waning light, the falling of leaves, the gradual shortening of the days, the disappearance of animals from the forest, all serve as a yearly reminder of the passing of time and the ticking down of our days on earth.

Perhaps it’s the faint notes of “passing” in the air, which induce a kind of depression or seasonal affective disorder. Cartoonist Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame puts a lighter spin on it positing it as the perfect weather for curmudgeons, “I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood.”

Indeed there is something kind of sweet about this melancholy, the contemplation, the seclusion. Winter provides us with a room of our own. American author and gardener Ruth Stout says it succinctly.

“There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you . . . In Spring, Summer and Fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.”

The excuse of cold weather allows us to fully indulge ourselves in a bit of pottering around the house, laying in bed or delving into the far corners of our library for a particularly obscure and dense book which has been left neglected through the busy summer months.

It is precisely this contrast which makes winter so worth relishing. Without the barren landscape would we be able to appreciate the lushness of summer? Winter is the “yin,” which makes the “yang” possible.

Would we appreciate the leaves so much if we didn’t see them transform from bare branches to buds, to bright young leaves and finally to shiny dark green forms?

Or in the words of Shakespeare:

“Winter, which, being full of care, makes summer’s welcome thrice more wish’d, more rare.”[ii]

And finally winter is about mystery, about things which are hiding underground or buried under a blanket of snow, of buds yet to form and of plants yet to grow. It is about potential, a book not opened or a broken narrative waiting for interpretation.

American painter Andrew Wyeth, who had such a great influence on Chinese contemporary art, described it in terms of facial features:

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show.”

This is an interesting conception. Rather than look at the loss of the leaves and the life, he views it as an opportunity to gain another view of the landscape ­­– one which was previously obscured.

Italian humanist philosopher Plutarch, had an even more poetic take on it in his essay collection Moralia, seeing Winter as a time when communication ceases until the thaw of Spring:

“Antisthenes says that in a certain faraway land the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw and become audible, so that words spoken in winter go unheard until the next Summer.”

I am tempted to think that Plutarch may have been referring to my hometown of Ottawa, Canada, but his words also work in a metaphorical sense as well for anything, hidden and private which occurs during this season of dormancy.

We have presented these works for you with very little explanation. Even though their meaning may be locked up like a leaf frozen into a layer of ice, we hope you can uncover their potential and allow their meaning to emerge.

- Rebecca Catching