Blooming, a solo exhibition by Chen Xiaodan
May 30 – June 04, 2008
Shanghai Art Museum


Contents

Betty and Gloria would not be very pleased to see this exhibition.

Stenciled on the wall with spot lighting, the introductory review is being littered with figure of speech - exquisite, sensitive, weak, frail, dualistic physical and psychological roles within a social context – fatal association with the literal semantics of femininity, a physical woman or women in general.

Wikipedia defines that earthenware is a common ceramic material used extensively for pottery tableware and decorative objects. Fittingly, Xiaodan's decorative objects are made of earthenware in Blooming.

Meaning

Lost in rhetoric translation, its title deserves to be in participle tense of 'Blooming' or 'Blossoming' but never in 'Bloom'. The artist has defined her work by thematically referencing to poetic clip 'flower as non-flower.' To deduce, it is literally a flower as non-flower. Alternatively, it is a physical non-flower as flower. On the other hand, it is a flowering-flower as non-flower. Then, it is a non-flowering flower as flower. What? What had you say, Jeremy?

It is cliché at its best.

Form

The artist has perceived her artwork as a flower, a form of flower or in a state of flowering, but in sculptural form and installation format. Flower is the image and object, inherently viewed as blossoming flowers as well as a state of transforming spirituality. Then, the artist had persistently denied to label but specifically display bone structures and tree trunks in the exhibition. Structurally, the tree trunk is a tree trunk while the bone is a bone; to the artist, a tree trunk is perceived as a bone, and vice versa. Metaphysically confounding, the artist has taken to elevate her work with lame association to 'the meaning of life' or 'secretion of the artist's soul.' Where the subject studies elaborate of life, in exploring the meaning of life, the fragility and toughness of life, all these literal senses are lumped together and conjugated as the idea of ‘contradictory and complexity' in artwork. All these well complement the wishful thinking of the artist - the paradox of a tree being fragile ecologically while a brittle bone in dealing with the way of life. They are, however, some pure crap and rather some corny discourse.

No doubt, they are some beautifully made craftworks.

An inquiring mind

Laced into the introduction, the artwork metaphor defines the secretion of soul of the artist. I think this is more crap than crap.

Why would a woman always being presented as a woman writer when she writes? Why would a man never a man-eater when the man eats?

Is this some structural or literal paradox?


Jeremy
Shanghai upon the Sea
January 19, 2009