毛將焉附 No Bodies Home

“Living is the process of concentrating and integrating the world into one’s body through the symbolic system represented by the people.”

–David LE Breton

In the postmodern context, the choice of media in artistic creation has long been part of the concept. For performance art creation, choosing “body” as a medium means that creation will inevitably discuss the propositions of human existence and cognition, the relationship between the body and the soul, and the symbolism of the body.

The body is the source of human identity, just as the French anthropologist and sociologist David LeBreton puts it in “Human Body History and Modernity”: the body has a special position, self-existence ,and self-expression. The indispensable stage is also the symbol of the individual, forming a boundary with the outside world.

This is why the “body” is called the “Ultimate Medium” in artistic creation.

The creation of each artist’s unique creative method comes from its own original motivation and core proposition. The process of exploring the artistic creation language is actually the process of finding the appropriate form around the core proposition. In the process of searching, your own life growth experience is a path that can be relied upon.

The core proposition of the artist Yanxin Wang’s creation is his reflection on history and human existence because of his dislike of lies, and the game experience in his growing process has shaped the unique playful temperament in his works. Since acting as the main creative method in 2012, he has explored the use of the body from a variety of perspectives, including the challenge of physical limits, the expression of poetry and the dramatic presentation of public space.

In his creative practice, one of the key nodes is the work of “Light of Power Plant” – Yanxin Wang’s Personal Concert in Chongqing’s DLAF Live Art Festival in 2017. Starting from this work, in visual form, he began to introduce elements such as sound and light, and then officially began to use LED cold light lines to outline the body at the “Responding” festival in Fukushima, Japan. The practice, using the transformation of materials, is the key to changing the perspectives of their creation. From this point of view, the accuracy of the material is the accuracy of the language.

It is also from this work, in terms of working methods, the artist began to develop project-oriented multi-angle research creations around specific spatial fields shaped by power, capital, and historical synergy. The implementation site of his first project of “Light of Power Plant”–the abandoned power plant in Chongqing’s old city. His interest in this space stems from his grow-up environment where his parents work in large state-owned factories with childhood memories living in a collective community. It is this series of creations that develops into the main content of this solo exhibition.

During the period of residence, Yanxin Wang’s creation has undergone important phase changes, mainly in two aspects. One is from the use of the basic properties of the body to the symbolization and abstraction of the body.

In this series of works, the artist’s “body” in the LED cold light line outlines void, withdrawal, and slight deformation. When the human body disappears, only traces and contours of the body is left over. The visual appearance of this “disappearance” accurately conveys the theme he is discussing, namely, the physical exit and the social situation in the historical process of social history. This is concentrated in the works of “When We Meet Again”, “Once”, “The Spoiler” and “Upward” in this exhibition.

When the “body” in his work is abstracted into a flat outline, the reference is no longer simply the basic attribute of the flesh, nor the specific body of a person, but a symbolic extraction of the public body state. This unique and accurate symbol is the “core vocabulary” of Yanxin Wang’s subsequent creation. With this “core vocabulary”, the artist is free to express his judgments on social scenes and public events. It also leads to the second breakthrough in this stage, which is the transformation from individual social narrative to abstract group social landscape, which is concentrated in the exhibition works “Cold Sun”, “Step by Step”, “Victor”, “They also do not know what they are doing, “Down” etc. 

It was also the creation of this stage that helped him complete the transition from the simplification of the use of power symbols to the dialogue with historical and power fields. In the process, the “disappearing body” can reflect the real scene honestly and strongly. In other words, the body continues to be “present” in a “disappearing” manner. We can use the words of the anthropologist, Edmund Jabès, to say that the central truth is nothingness. As Edmund said, each society processes its meaning in its own way as it is tempered in the furnace. The so-called “facts” are only facts in their own eyes.

Until the emergence of this abstract body symbol, Yanxin Wang finally found a language approach that was extremely consistent with his creative motives (the dislike of lies and the reflection of history and human existence).

When a person finds his own unique language, his artistic language system begins to grow.

(Yanzi Hu in Huangjueping Dec.24,2018)