Journey of a yellow man No.3 - lee wen 李文

Solo Exhibition, Installation and performance
The Substation, Singapore 21-25 July 1993
 
        The exhibition sets out to challenge the conventional idea of a gallery by exploring and imposing a new attitude towards art presented in a gallery space. It also attempts at making compatible the “picture gallery” into a space for contemplation both for the artist as well as the spectator.
          By being in the gallery as the yellow man daily between 11am to 7pm, I am working, contemplating, creating and manipulating 8 long chains and 15kg. of white rice grain. Each day I am also concentrating on one of my “objects of desire”, trying to discover its significance through the performance. At 7pm I proceed to the Substation garden where another performance takes place improvising on that “object of desire” which I had been concentrating on. Doing the performance in a gallery over 5 days becomes a creative ritual.
           In addition to the chains I have used before I am also using rice to make art. The chains in many ways represent the socialization of individuals. On the one hand society places restrictions, constraints, and bondage on us but they also provide us with security, comfort, direction and continuity. Rice is a major staple food of Asia as well as of many people on earth. It is sometimes revered and seen to be sacred as life itself. Putting it on the floor may be deemed disrespectful for some, however working on the floor with the rice and chains require that I also work in a crouching position, a posture of humility that is necessary to work from ground level. I began with random amorphous shapes which grew into recognizable forms and then to grids and lines on the first day. Later on I included words, composed while I was working on the rice and chains, in relationship to the object which I was concentrating on.
        I also exhibited drawings, paintings, photographs and objects/sculptures of “DESIRE” as part of the installation. The basic desire for everyone is that of happiness. However the pursuit of happiness becomes distorted, distracted and disenchanted by our encounters with the world. Ours is a different world and we face different problems, situations as well as opportunities in our present history of rapid progress and modernization. Desire is reflected from my personal experience and study in relationship to the society we live in.

Paintings of Desire
     “Yellow man, where are you going?” was done in 1990 just before leaving Singapore for London. It was executed with spontaneous brush strokes. The allusions were to the way I liked how some Chinese paintings were done, especially those with Zen or Taoist inclinations. Perhaps it was because the Chinese saw painting as an extension of writing and calligraphy. They were not hampered into stiffness and over-respect for the painting surface that I find most uncomfortable about some western oil paintings. This painting was perhaps the initial germ or hint of the yellow man performances.
      Facing this was an installation of 4 large paintings with accompanying small paintings below each of them. The small paintings were appended to them like explanatory signs or even propaganda information for the larger works.  It refers to the media, marketing and advertising of the modern world or they could also allude to how art seems to require explanations at every step of the way in our confusing post modern pluralism.
Drawings of Desire
      The drawings were pinned on 3 walls that again gave the impression of propaganda. The use of map pins gave it a notice-board look. The drawings have words and images appropriated from the mass media, encyclopedias and books together with my own drawings and writings. The images and words sometimes overlap giving the implication of a tussle between different worldviews and perceptions. There is a tension between individual and social aims and intentions as well as between cultures - east/west, north/south, new and old.
Objects of Desire
      There were seven objects of which six were contemplated on and transformed through the performance. Each day I concentrated on one of them. During the performance I made a changing and moving installation of rice and chains on the gallery floor. The words and images emerging will relate to the object that I will use later at 7 p.m. for the improvisation performance in the garden of the Substation.
      The first day was that of a guitar wrapped in bandages. A guitar silenced from singing with bandages that were meant to protect and cure an illness. Then there was a pile of newspapers chained up with an iron chain and lock. And a glass jar with a plastic flower planted in a pile of coins. There was also a dustpan with the word “delusion” painted on it, placed inside a clear, plastic ballot box, a birdcage filled with books and a small pail filled with eggs placed in a basin of water. These “objects of desire” were put together without clearly knowing what they really meant. They were created out of an almost obsessive urge in my sub-conscious. It was only through the discourse of performance that their meanings became more real.