Call it a cultural side effect of the Covid-19 era, but lately every art exhibition I’ve seen seems shallow and out of touch with our rapidly unreeling reality. Likewise, traditional art institutions have also failed to help diagnose or treat this contagious sense of collective ennui.
I’d rather retreat to the dark, moody glow of a late-aughts Tumblr feed in my bedroom and pretend everything is still okay than sit through another grainy, awkward Zoom art opening and pretend that its normal. Because it’s not, and we can’t kid ourselves any longer into believing that these simulated feeds are any substitute for the “real thing.” But what is the “real thing,” anyway?
There’s a serious glitch in the art world mainframe, and it’s this creeping sense of the “Unknown” that lies at the heart of Zhi art museum’s latest exhibition by Yin Xuizhen.
Artistic Antitode
For starters, it is necessary to warn you that I will frequently break the “Fourth Wall” of criticism and speak in extremely subjective terms throughout this piece. ZHI ART MUSEUM is my favorite museum in Chengdu, so my excitement at receiving an invite for UNKNOWN also came with a sense of foreboding. Although I was in bad need of an art antidote for the months I spent cooped up with limited creativity following the pandemic, I was worried that this exhibition would also fail to address my anxiety that the current environment of the art world is out-of-touch with the rest of the world (well, more out of touch than it normally is).
That being said, this exhibition was not easy to understand, nor was this review easy to write. I’ve never seen anything like it. This isn’t a compliment or a condemnation, it’s an objective fact, and perhaps the only one in this article.
Therefore, I will reference something that I have seen, my favorite director Christopher Nolan’s latest, equally as divisive film, “Tenet.”
Tenet Vs UNKNOWN
Like Tenet, which was also released in September, many viewers of UNKNOWN may walk out of the museum scratching their heads in confusion, while others will adamantly insist that it was “genius” and that we just weren’t smart enough to “get it.”
Yet, the stylistic parallels between Nolan’s time bending “Tenet” and ZHI ART MUSEUM’s conceptually daunting UNKNOWN go much deeper than this. Both feature a dizzying array of technical gizmos and gadgets set to a gargantuan, blockbuster-like scale, and both have the entire fate of their industry resting upon their shoulders. Will audience members, used to the comforts of home, once again flock to cinemas or museums? Likewise, what pretty special effects or artwork will bring them there?
For Christopher Nolan, it was the promise of explosions, time traveling secret agents, and yacht trips to exotic locations around the world. You know, something to watch while we munch popcorn and forget that we can no longer visit anywhere in the world at the moment. ZHI ART MUSEUM isn’t so nice to us.
In many ways, the exhibition feels as if it is checking off a grocery list for a “21st century society” starter kit, complete with 3D printing, facial recognition devices, and even a Foucault-esque panopticon (dubbed “The Universe”) that spans 3 floors.
With its colorful algorithms reminiscent of distant galaxies, the all-seeing-eye that you first encounter when walking into UNKNOWN refuses to let you tap out of reality, even for a moment. It follows you through every twist and turn of the dark museum space, and serves as a stark reminder that the gaze of modernity has, and will continue to, infiltrate every aspect our lives, even our creative spaces. It looms omnipresent in the background.
An Explanation?
UNKNOWN is the brainchild of female art superstar Yin Xuizhen in collaboration with Chronus Art Center in Shanghai, and despite the huge space of ZHI ART MUSEUM, the exhibition is really just one artwork with three installations. Much of the gallery spaces are simply left empty. This is a bold move on behalf of the extensive curatorial and technical team, and also disorientating for those who expect their museums to be full of art.
But somehow, trying to tackle any issue related to our shared “new reality” by hanging paintings on a wall seems outdated at best, and childish at worse. As much as I want it to be, in the era Covid-19, should art really serve as a pretty substitute for all the hours we spent stuffing our faces with stimulus from our phone screens, trying to forget the chaos of the world outside?
It turns out, no it isn’t. At UNKNOWN, our shared reality beyond the walls of the museum is unavoidable. The first room features 6 monitors that live stream up-to-date International and Chinese news headlines, which is meant to attract visitor’s attention, just like it would through our personal devices and media cycles. According to CAC technical lead Vytas Jankauskas, “Daily news and how we consume them, constitute our individual and collective perception towards reality, or in the context of UNKNOWN, a universe.”
Furthermore, the six monitors then record your reaction to the news using facial recognition software before beaming them up with a “musical ping” to the “The Universe” in the center of the exhibition hall, which compounds every visitors’ data into shared, nebula-like clouds that flutter in digital space before eventually solidifying into a sculpture with the help of a 3D printer.
Each morning, this object is then placed ceremoniously on the top floor of the museum as part of the exhibition, a hard-copy testament to our collective, daily emotions. As they eventually gather over time, these hard white nebulas, once floating in technicolor bliss on the “big screen,” become cold, plastic-y reminders of our human imprint on our environment, one that contrasts sharply with the warm exterior of ZHI ART MUSEUM’s natural surroundings.
Confused? Perhaps “the Scientist” in Tenet (played by Clémence Poésy) gives the best advice for museum goers, when she states with somewhat frank exposition,“Don’t try to understand it, feel it.”
But what does it all mean?
A Meta Analysis
Like the plot of a Christopher Nolan film, it is nearly impossible to unravel, much less explain, exactly what is happening inside ZHI ART MUSEUM’s latest exhibition using traditional art criticism or technical jargon.
Is it a commentary on our shared existence in an international sense? A meditation on short-term memory, the news cycle, and the omnipresent technical “cloud?” Or perhaps it’s a reminder that our emotions can have tangible results in the “real world,” in this case represented by 3D printed sculptures?
Your guess is as good as mine, and that’s not an insult. We’re so used to being spoon fed plots, explanations, and information that, when confronted with a challenge, its easy to dismiss it outright. Yet, what makes Christopher Nolan and ZHI ART MUSEUM great is not the reputation they have earned throughout the years, but their willingness to continuously push boundaries and test the limits of their audience’s understanding and participation, despite the institutional status they occupy. Just as “Tenet” requires repeated viewing to fully understand, frequently visiting UNKNOWN also brings new pleasure in the form of witnessing novel sculptures being generated, which will continuously fill the void of the exhibition hall for as long as the exhibition runs.
In fact, UNKNOWN requires an audience’s presence to function. Without a steady stream of visitors, the “cloud” would cease to exist, and the artwork would no longer be generated. In the era of Covid-19, where we have all become passive observers to our own news cycle, it is a refreshing, and somewhat harrowing, experience to take part in an exhibition that doesn’t demand I consume it, but rather asks my permission to continue. You cannot enjoy it from the comforts of home, it’s impossible.
But even if one doesn’t feel like diving into all the meta-nature implications or technical know-how that constitute Yin Xuizhen’s work of art, we can still enjoy the pretty colors of the machinery, marvel at the architectural finesse of the museum, and enjoy a day out appreciating something new, just as we can with Christopher Nolan’s latest blockbuster.
All Picture Rights: Zhi Mueseum
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