'Ephemeral as smoke and clouds 7' 2006

Yu Ji

Photographic print
120 ⨯ 155 ⨯ 5 cm
ConditionVery good
€ 4.000

Willem Kerseboom Gallery

• About the artwork
  Photograph, framed on Dibond, 120x155 cm
  
  
  Yu Ji: A Game of Simultaneous Void and Fullness
  by Qiu Zhijie
  
  In the mid to late nineties, Yu Ji was known as representative of the
  performance artists from Chengdu. Compared to those in Beijing whose
  main focus was on the body, and whose emphasis was on performance art
  characterized by the stimulation of extreme experience, the
  performance art around Chengdu often relied on a special location to
  show the reason for the action. The history and cultural attributes of
  this location were often forcefully explicated; in fact, it determined
  the artworks' function of cultural evaluation. Even though they were
  also often based on bodily performance, these performances were more
  allusive and they tried to achieve a balance between intellectual
  pleasure and excitement for the senses. Even though it became
  fashionable at the time to represent the body's sense of resistance
  and impediment, there was always in the end an attempt to resort to
  language-not simply being satisfied with the stimulation that could be
  derived from contemporary myths. That is to say, the artworks could
  also be spoken about. Therefore, the titles of their works often
  derived from poetry or idioms. This was a distinct difference in
  comparison with the use of numbers for the titles of artworks in
  Beijing.
  
  In these circumstances, Yu Ji obviously could not completely avoid a
  degree of vulgarity. His earlier performances consisted of a type of
  repetitious dialogue; they became a platform for mutual referral built
  on the state of the body and issues gathered from popular culture.
  Their Chengdu flavor was most apparent in the use of harmonizing
  characters, the use of idioms, pre-designed theatrical process, etc.
  Pre-designing a theatrical process does not mean that the designer has
  absolute control - these performances are directly presented to the
  audience, they are not an experience revealed only with the help of
  media. Therefore, in terms of the predictable design of theatrical
  change during the performance, even though there were tones of
  subjective physical experience, it would be presented as the
  performance of that experience.
  
  These features were all clearly exhibited in Yu Ji's earlier
  performances, including "Playing Qin to Water" and "Kiss from an
  Outstanding Person". In one of Yu Ji's performances, he imitated a
  soldier crawling forward-as often seen in the revolutionary war
  films-allowing threads hanging from his clothes to be slowly ripped
  off until he became nude. This use of insinuated motion was, like the
  playing of the qin, a type of cultural "classic use". In these
  predictable moments, the combination of classic motions and the nude
  body-the most basically allusive body-became the trigger for
  theatricality. "The Kiss of an Outstanding Person" gained fame as a
  representative of the aesthetics of violence in the late nineties. It
  was a union of the significance of psychological and cultural allusion
  with physical suicide. It's tones of violence were mainly from the
  repetitive triggering of this theatricality. During the progress of
  the play, this trigger became predictable, thus becoming preconceived
  facts that the viewer had to bear. This rashly put the viewer in the
  position of an accomplice; it became an unbearable crime for the
  viewer.
  
  What's worth noticing is this: the characteristic of pre-planning
  slowly oriented Yu Ji to a pursuit of location, and this eventually
  distanced him from the type of performance art that build on a certain
  viewpoint. Yu Ji thus slowly distanced himself from Chengdu artistic
  trends, and entered the sort of experimentation that was mainly taking
  place in Beijing.
  
  When he participated in the group exhibition of a 24-hour performance
  titled "On Scene Collaboration", his body for the first time left the
  stage. He began to build the space of theatrical possibility through
  his manipulation of elements involved in designing the event and
  dispatching of uncontrollable ones. In such a performance, theatrical
  planning could only be carried in rough approximation. However, the
  various uncontrollable elements that floated around in the artwork
  guaranteed the imminent arrival of theatricality. In this instance,
  the dancer set amongst wooden structures built by carpenters was
  increasingly restricted by the densely placed wooden frames until it
  became difficult to move. The carpenters' work and that of the dancers
  progressed simultaneously; at this moment, the dance and the carpentry
  were genuine motions of their own rather than allusions to a cultural
  reality. However, folding the two together created a foreshadowing of
  the final moment of explosion. As the exhausted dancers and carpenters
  exploded simultaneously, and dismantled all the frames, the two
  identities were elevated, producing a shocking and dizzying experience
  of climax. Moreover, the ritualistic elements in his early performance
  art made an entrance at this instant.
  
  In my opinion, the 24-hour performance acts as a significant turning
  point in Yu Ji's artistic life. This work expanded the energetic
  pre-planning in his early performance art, removing other adjectives
  used in cultural allusions, adopting a framework to contain rituals
  and daily behaviors. This framework became a place of negotiation
  between the logic and theatricality of everyday behavior.
  
  For this reason, as we look at the photographs of "Reeky View", "Once
  over" and the installation of "So so Bazooka", we once again perceive
  a re-organization of everyday life which, to reiterate, obviously
  replaces the representation of cultural allusions. In fact, these
  images themselves should be considered the residue of theatrical
  scenes. I was at the set where Yu Ji took these photographs-when the
  smoke suddenly filled the room, the usual objects acquired a new
  appearance, and this brought about the same experience of excitement
  as a theatrical climax. The power of the scene formed an extremely
  complete theatricality. It is only that Yu Ji has chosen to make
  theatricality occur in the space of daily lives, this is not something
  that we have been able to see in the theatres. Yu Ji could only
  condense his scenes into photographs.
  
  Yu Ji's works have always had a uniquely empty position. "Playing Qin
  to Water" uses the emptiness of water to replace the physicality of
  the listener. The kiss in "Kiss of an Outstanding Person" is defined
  as a pause of breathing/life - for the actor it was a short pause, for
  the chicks it was an eternal emptiness. In a performance on breathing,
  Yu Ji once asked others to layer wet paper on his nose, to make his
  breathing gradually more difficult-this is perhaps the most vivid
  experience of emptiness in Yu Ji's performance series. Yu Ji often
  uses microphones to produce discontinuous, non-linguistic sounds, a
  pause of language. Stuttering creates a type of frustration, it
  inserts a doubt into smooth exchange: Can we really communicate? As we
  advance triumphantly in our everyday lives, the practical rationale of
  self-confidence insists that we never pause or vacillate. However Yu
  Ji is incessantly creating unharmonious sounds and rest notes for this
  marching rhythm. He seems to treat the display of vacillation as a
  type of introspection. Again, among these images smoke is a type of
  emptiness. Smoke permeates into our everyday spaces and redefines the
  attributes of these spaces. Because of smoke, these spaces become the
  stage on which reality becomes fantastic.
  
  Yu Ji's photograph "Reeky View" was done in the artists' own studios.
  In these famous artists' studios there are classical images familiar
  in the field of contemporary Chinese art, they construct the reality
  closest to us. The studios are often thought of as fields of strong
  personal will, all who enter will be rolled into this type of field.
  Therefore, in my opinion, Yu Ji has chosen a rather challenging
  task-if he would have chosen to shoot even more common types of
  spaces, the artwork would have been more lucid and comprehensible. The
  facts prove Yu Ji's tendency to avoid the easy path for the hard and
  the profundity of his intentions. With the installation of smoke and
  the presence of partly visible actors, such imagery becomes a type of
  text, a new visual experience is recorded into these texts, they
  become image-like. The photography becomes a type of drawing.
  
  Precisely because we are, to a certain extent, familiar with images
  done by these artists, Yu Ji's use of smoke creates a sense of
  distance that is imbued with a concept of time. Despite being
  symbolic, they will gradually wear down the fixed meanings. The smoke
  surging in seems to be a prophecy. In order to truly understand what
  we are doing, we must take further consideration of time. Thus, Yu
  Ji's smoke is not only a type of pause. The smoke defines everything
  it surrounds as things that will pass - all Chinese people would agree
  with this judgement.
  
  
  2006.7.22
  
• About the artist

  1965 Born in Chengdu, China
  1992 BFC, Graduated from Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, China
  Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

  Solo Exhibitions

  2007 ‘Smoke and Clouds’, Willem Kerseboom Gallery,Amsterdam, Holland
  2006 Yuji OEM Image Project-1: My younger brother’s first film exercise, Bizart, Shanghai, China

  2002 Beauty washing my feet during an hour (performance), 31 Bookstore, Chengdu, China
  Breath (performance), Chengdu Academy of Painting, Chengdu, China

  Group Exhibitions

  2007 ArtAmsterdam 2007 artfair, Willem Kerseboom Gallery, Amsterdam, Holland
  2006 A ticket to Beijing, Willem Kerseboom Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  Lust-Unfulfilled Desire, Vanessa Art Link, Jakarta, Indonesia
  Black White Zoo, live art exhibition, Taipei, Taiwan
  Common Link, Vanessa Art Link, 798 Factory, Beijing, China
  New Folk Movement – the reconstruct of the commonly living, contemporary art exhibition, Beijng, China
  The First MoCA Envisage Entry Gate: Chinese Aesthetics of Heterogenity, Shanghai MoCA, Fun Art Space, Beijing, Bizart, Shanghai
  High Art - from Contemporary Shanghai Art, Paris, France

  2005 CHINARTE, Titanik Media Space SUMU, Turku, Finland
  Maze - multimedia performance exhibition, Dream Factory laboratorial art center, Shanghai, China
  Ten becoming ten, Songzhao Headquarters, Beijing, China
  The City's Skin - Feasibility Research for Contemporary Metropolis Image exhibition, Shenzhen Art Museum, Tap Seac Gallery, China
  Conspire - Beijing TS1 Contemporary Art Center 1st Exhibition, TS1, Bejing, China
  Inward Gazes: Documentaries of Chinese Performance Arts - Call for Submissions,
  The Macao Museum of Art, China
  East Wind-West Wind, Shanghai Mixed Media Art Exhibition, The Creek Art Center, Shanghai, China
  Power of body, Blue Gallery, Chengdu, China
  24 hours, complete art experience, Beijing, China
  Making Relationships, China Performance Art Exhibition, Taipei Museum, Taiwan
  Second Chengdu Biennale, Museum of Modern Art , Chengdu, China
  The Biennale of Contemporary Chinese Art in Montpellier, Montpellier, France

  2004 Ten Preces of Red Bricks, Blue Gallery, Chengdu, China
  Taiwan-Asia Performance Art Meeting, Tainan, Kaohsiung and Taipei, Taiwan
  Dusseldorf Art Exhibition, Great Palace Arts Museum, Germany
  Matchmaking at Suzhou creek, Eastlink Gallery, Shanghai, China
  BizArt - Current , Shanghai, China
  Is It Art? An Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Shanxi Provincial Art Museum, Xi'an, China
  The First Beijing Dashanzi International Art Festival - Radiance and Resonance/Signals of Time, 798 Factory , Beijng, China
  2004 In Chengdu, Bule Art Center, Chengdu, China

  2003 Together with Migrants-Contemporary Art Exhibition , Today Museum, Beijng, China
  Return NatureⅡPastoral - An Exhibition of International Contemporary Art, Nanjing Shenghua Arts Center, China
  Asia - Middle Europe International Performance Art , Slovakia, Hungary, Poland
  Live International Performance Art , 798 Factory, Beijng, China
  China-Japan performance Art Exchange project, Chengdu Academy of Fine Art, China
  Unbalanced City, SiChuan Stadium, Chengdu, China
  Nippon International Performance Art Festival (NIPAF), Tokyo-Nagoya-Nagano-Osaka, Japan

  2002 Daydream - Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition, Nanjing Museum, Nanjing, China
  Mushroom Clouds or Utopia - Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition, Shanghai Weitan Art Gallery, Shanghai, China
  China New Photo - International Festival of Photography, Pingyao, Shanxi, China
  To Each His Own - Contemporary Art Exhibition, Guanzhou University, Guangzhou, China
  The First Triennial of Chinese Art, Guangzhou Arts Museum, Guangzhou, China
  New Urbanism, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China

  2001 First Chengdu Biennale, Museum of Modern Art, Chengdu, China
  Dialogue: The Other - Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition, Chiesa Santa Teresa dei Maschi, Bari, Italy
  Body Resources and Objects, Hongkong Art Commune, Hongkong, China
  Chinese Proposal, Paragold Int’l Art Center, Shanghai, China
  Friday: on Sound - Performance Show, Chengdu, China
  Second Open Performance Art Festival of China, Chengdu-Pengshan-Leshan, China
  Cross Road - Urban Public Environmental Art Proposals Exhibition, Beijing, China
  Up Down Left Right – 2001 Summer Academic Exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, Chengdu, China
  Remains, Chengdu Cultural palace, Chengdu, China
  Chinese Glamours in Thailand, Art Center, Bangkok, Thailand
  Holding the White Piece, Chengdu Academy of Painting, Chengdu, China

  2000 Explain Water – Outdoor Art Performance Show, Dujiangyan, Sichuan, China
  Documentary Exhibition of China Avant-garde in the 1990’s, Fukoukoa Modern Art Museum, Japan
  Chinese Humanistic Mountains and Water – Environmental Artistic Exhibition, Lan Island, Guilin, China
  Men and Animals - Performance show, 31 Bookstore, Chengdu, China
  Home? - Contemporay Art Project Exhibition, Yuexing Furniture Square, Shanghai, China

  1999 Internet Experimentel Arts of 1999-2000, on Internet

  1997 Wildlife, Lighting Festival – Beginnings – Outdoor Art Performances, Be

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