Heroes in the World
Barry Curtis, Associate Director of Doctoral Programmes in University of the Arts London
Shen Jing Dong’s work has an immediate, playful appeal. The images, mostly of faces or figures, seem obligingly innocent, with slight inflections of posture, grouping and posing. They look out, with pinpoint eyes, from seductively coloured and perfect surfaces. It is only when viewing the range and variety of his work that more troubling and ambivalent meanings are revealed. Familiar elements of his early - uniformed ‘Heroes’ continue to re-appear in different scenarios – interacting with Disney characters, or as elegiacally broken statues, as defaced, monochrome, and, occasionally as bandaged and abused, The military characters seem to relate to Shen Jing Dong’s and China’s past, they are innocently rendered social realist figures, animated, and progressively combined with an expanded cast of characters of different ages, roles and ethnicities. These new forms of sociability and affability seem to reflect the opening up of Chinese culture, coinciding with Shen Jing Dong’s own journeys and experience – his regular visits to New York and the increasing scope of his exhibitions and audiences.
The work that features uniformed men and women, inevitably provokes curiosity about their roles and significance, and raise questions that so frequently accompany the reception of Chinese culture in the West. A writer of Chinese speculative fiction warns that attempts to make interpretations relating to ‘subversion’ and political orientation have become an ‘ideological crutch’ for Western critics. ‘Dissident’ Chinese art has been highly valued in the West. Shen Jing Dong is ambivalent in this respect, although there are works that seem responsive to political moods and issues rendered schematic and enigmatic.
Writers have drawn attention to the immaculate surfaces of his figures, and their resemblance to ceramics – to traditional Chinese vessels, to figurative funerary sculpture, and shiny plastic toy-like entities associated with mass production. In all instances, these characteristics can be read as evocative of 21st `Century China - looking both ways towards a long, venerated past, and an accelerating future. The hard, shiny surfaces and the brightly variegated colours are attractive and distancing at the same time. They deflect the gaze in ways that produce a sense of the detached autonomy of the figures and their seductively reflective ‘skin’. The sheen configures a sense of perfection, and a certain resistance to interpretation. Analogies with traditional Chinese ceramics as well as the mass production of ceramic figures of party leaders and heroes of the Revolution link them to deep history as well as the ambitions of the partly discredited ‘Cultural Revolution’. At the same time, they are reminiscent of collectibles, of the cute/dark dialectic of anime and manga figures.
Shen, born in 1965, had his first exhibition as an artist in Beijing in 2006, whilst still serving in the army. He had studied printmaking and spent the years from graduation until his mid 40’s as a set designer and scenery painter, attached to the army and working on some acclaimed theatrical productions. He was in his teens in the late 70’s, at a time of uncertain and troubled liberalisation, but his generation were still assigned roles on leaving college. He was a student at the time of the significant Rauschenberg exhibition in Beijing and was part of a generation that experienced the optimistic early stirrings of the opening up of Chinese culture to Western influences. He was also witness to a period of repression and the ‘Cynical Realist responses of the 90’s generation.
Shen Jing Dong’s range of experience in designing large scale realist graphics and image-making for performance is evident in his work, in the high level of technical proficiency that comprises prolific work in photography, sculpture, design for exhibition design, posters and publicity, as well as self-portraits and performance pieces. He shared this practical and pragmatic training with some of the mid 20th century Western pop artists whose formative experiences were in sign painting, window design and advertising graphics and whose work often combined celebratory awe with an ironic critical edge in the Pop Art of mid-century America.
The cultural opening up of Chinese culture in the 80's came at a time when New York was the centre of the art world and the ideas of Duchamp and Andy Warhol, among others, were revelatory in inspiring new private and public dimensions for artists. It is likely that the neo Dada ethos was particularly relevant to the contradictions that new artists in China were experiencing - the attempt to break with traditions, the re-evaluation of chance and spontaneity as well as the place of the personal, in ironic and humorous 'against interpretation' realms of artistic practice Certainly, there is something of Warhol’s iconicity in Shen’s work – where the reflective surface becomes the primary meaning and his strategy of an unproblematic, affirmative ‘liking’, functions as an affective openness. The sharing of knowledge, eased travel conditions and cultural exchanges, combined with the successful establishment of a gallery system and extensive trading in contemporary art are all registered in the enthusiastic and explorative dimensions of Shen Jing Dong’s art.
The postmodernist influences combined with a personal iconography, and an adaptiveness to new opportunities for display are evident, as are more traditional affinities to practices of calligraphy, realist iconographies and modes of performance that provide opportunities for the artist to enter into the celebratory presentation of his work Early exponents of contemporary art in China exploited the affinities of the official State approved Socialist Realism with Pop and what was termed, particularly in Germany, 'Capitalist Realism', to refer to the 'quasi propagandistic' way in which advertising dominated the visual landscape. An inflected form of Pop, along with ‘Red Humour’ was an initial response to the questioning of State mandated art in China. The use of irony and ridicule produced an 'exotic dystopianism' that has proved to be appealing to Western art collectors and audiences.
China’s growing sense of the importance of ‘soft power’ in the 21st Century has developed at a time when the West has undergone financial crisis and deterioration in the quality of political leadership. A dangerous imbalance in mutual knowledge and understanding has developed with nearly 700,000 Chinese students studying abroad annually, and many English-speaking Chinese citizens with abundant access to Western media. Ideological diversity in the Chinese population is rarely acknowledged. At a time of renewed tensions in Sino-American and British relations there is a conspicuous difference in government competence over the handling of the Covid epidemic.
Shen's 'Heroes' have acquired a new resonance in the light of the Covid crisis. The bravery and social responsibility of low paid healthcare, transport and supply workers has been widely celebrated and, occasionally become a subject for art. The BLM movement has led to a questioning of conventional attitudes to which historical characters should be memorialised. In the light of these recent events – images of ‘ordinary people’ have acquired a new currency. The figures in this exhibition are characterised by a congenial positivity that reflects their 'heroic' status. They seem content with uniformity - there is little that could be termed cynical or dissident in them, although Shen is responsive to tensions in the relations of individuals to the State.
Shen’s works demonstrates an interest in allegory, fantasy and ‘fairy tales’. The recurring figures of Saint Exupery’s ‘Little Prince’ and his fox companion suggests a profound sympathy with the story’s validation of emotional understanding, creativity and heartfelt aesthetic engagement. In recent work there is a creative interest in the carnivalesque mood of theme parks and an evident pleasure in the advertising, merchandising and staging of his work. ‘Shen Jing Dong Was Here’ stickers, were a conspicuous presence in his exhibit at the Venice Biennale. He designs posters, book bags and presents his work in short promotional films. Alongside his more sombre works there are strong affinities with advertising, graffiti and street style, evident in designs for skateboard decks. Shen’s Facebook feed is restless and experimental – comprising more ‘traditional’ and conventional portraiture and abstractions of emojis and logographs.
In some of his recent works, notably the ones on display in this exhibition, the stylised images of famous British people are conveyed in portraits, reminiscent of ones that appear in childrens’ books, collectors’ cards or as ‘famous’ national presences on stamps or banknotes. They are emanations of ‘soft power’ – the personalities that create a charismatic national aura, ranging across scientists, monarchs, inventors, performers, rendered as a kind of homage to national ‘genius’. At this moment in British history, there may be unhappy resonances with the British ‘exceptionalism’ that has played a malign role in the British exit from the European Union, but they are also representative of a generous Chinese perspective on British culture.
Shen Jing Dong’s characters are playful and iconic, skilfully crafted and provocative. They appear to us as characters from an extensive work of speculative fiction. There is a long tradition in China of expressing alternative views through fable, metaphor and irony. In the opinion of Chen Quifan the rich vein of science fiction in recent Chinese literature is a way of making sense of accelerated transformation in a society experiencing rapid growth and accelerated change. He suggests that myth and speculation are ways of describing and, perhaps resolving the ‘social rips’ that are a consequence. Shen Jing Dong’s ‘fairy tale’ characters seem to relate to the impact on individuals of living in conditions of social and political unrest, new opportunities and exposure to wider international currents of thought and feeling.
