Cao Zhen

    caozhen0806@126.com

    SOME artists struggle with the question of how to create art that is true to their artistic aspirations while still generating monetary gain to pay their bills. This internal struggle is likely to remain throughout some artists’ entire careers, but Chinese contemporary artist Gu Wenda believes that artistic truth and commerce are not conflicting and they can be united as a whole.

    “Artists should consider all aspects into the creation, not just painting on a canvas or creating a single sculpture. They should be conscious of how to present their works, combining markets, education and everything surrounding their life, as part of the creation,” said Gu, who just collaborated with Ping An Financial Center (PAFC) to create a massive painting this past weekend in Shenzhen.

    On Saturday morning, Gu directed 1,500 children to paint freely on rice paper with processed nontoxic algae water at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center’s Hall 3. After the paintings dried, he would remake the children’s creation into his own work. Titled “Verdant Mountains, Emerald Waters,” the project hopes to draw public attention to the overgrowth of algae in many Chinese rivers and to help raise awareness for the need of environmental protection.

    “This is also a promotional event for the Ping An company, which owns China’s second-tallest building, the PAFC, in Futian District. After the event, Ping An company will install clean drinking water systems in some rural Chinese areas, so this event is a finely converged act of contemporary art, public welfare and commercial promotion,” said Gu.

    As a pioneer of conceptual ink art, Gu uses public participation within his artistic practice to touch upon issues of language, cross-cultural communication, traditional Chinese culture and environment. Saturday’s event is part of his Public Contemporary Art Day project series and a continuation of his 2014 public contemporary art performance in Foshan City, Guangdong Province. On Mother’s Day in 2014, Gu collaborated with Hong Kong property company Shui On Group to direct 1,000 Foshan children to write Confucius’ “The Classic of Filial Piety” together on a giant piece of silk cloth.

    “The Public Contemporary Art Day is an attempt to bring the public closer to contemporary art through the act of participating in the process of creation,” said Gu. He said that contemporary art in China is a recent phenomenon, from the 1980s, and it is still not mainstream here, so he wants to promote it gradually, starting with children.

    “I’m always trying to promote that artists should make people understand that contemporary art can be fun. We should make it clear that art is not just for art circles but for people in general. If your artwork can influence people’s minds and make the society better, your artwork is successful,” Gu added.

    For the “Verdant Mountains, Emerald Waters” massive painting project, Gu himself also made a giant calligraphic work by playing off Chinese characters. He separated the radicals of “青山绿水” (literally “verdant mountains, emerald waters”) and re-grouped them into two “invented” characters. “The work is a simplification of the words, thus making them inseparable and reflecting the intertwined existence of the nature of humanity,” said Gu.

    Gu began creating his unique calligraphic works of re-invented Chinese characters in 1984, regarded as the beginning of conceptual ink art in China by the art circle. He said he was inspired by political posters from the Cultural Revolution which had many big-font miswritten characters, so he imbued this idea with traditional Chinese calligraphy to make what he called “pseudo-characters.” Gu once said the unreadable texts were used to evoke the limitations of human knowledge.

    In recent years, he turns this act into a fun game for children when he does public art activities. He states that it is artistic and functional and terms it “simplified traditional Chinese characters.”

    “Many calligraphers prefer to write traditional Chinese characters in their artworks because they admire their unique aesthetics. My ‘simplified traditional Chinese characters’ keep the aesthetics while saving space on paper, so it’s a new art and is fun. Now I’m writing a dictionary for my invented characters,” said Gu.

    Born in Shanghai in 1955, Gu studied traditional Chinese ink painting at the Chinese Academy of Art and moved to New York City in 1987. After spending a few years studying English, he embarked on a series of bold installations made up of human hair to stress the essential unity of the human community.

    In his ongoing global art project “United Nations,” which began in 1993, Gu used contributions of human hair from people all around the world and then wove the hair into monumental banners of unreadable text in various scripts.

    He said “United Nations” has traveled to more than 20 different countries which he selected due to their historical significance and political importance. “By utilizing the real hair of the local living population, I’m relating to their historical and cultural contexts, to create monumental installations and capture each country’s identity.”

    Gu said this project also received governmental or corporate sponsorships from various countries. “Contemporary art in the West is very mature because they developed art step by step, such as through the Renaissance, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism. They have sophisticated systems of art sponsorship. With more international cooperation, Chinese contemporary art is learning fast from the West and has been improving rapidly since the 1980s,” said Gu.