- 730
Shu Qun
Estimate
1,200,000 - 1,500,000 HKD
bidding is closed
Description
- Shu Qun
- Identical Voice Series - A Post-Vanguardism?
- executed in 1993 - 1995
- oil on canvas
Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner
Catalogue Note
Shu Qun provided the theoretical foundation for the "Northern Art Group" throughout the '85 period. In his declarative text "The Spirit of the Northern Art Group," Shu Qun notes: "Our painting is not 'art'! It is only a single method for the transmission of our thinking. ... We believe that the standard for determining the value of a set of paintings depends on whether or not they evince sincere principles; that is to say, whether or not they display the strength of human intellect and its highly valuable ideals. ... We believe that Eastern and Western culture have already fundamentally disintegrated, and that their replacement can only be a form of new cultural strength—'The Birth of Northern Civilization'".
After "China/Avant-Garde" the curtain closed on the consideration of modernism in mainland China. Earth-shattering changes in the political and economic systems of the 1990s caused the principles of the market economy to take root in the hearts of the people as the pursuit of wealth became the universal and correct value system and idealism was replaced by utilitarianism. These changes in the social environment also influenced the directions of Shu Qun's reading and study, altering too his views on his own circumstances. His distrust of marketization allowed him to perceive something of the emptiness that comes with the wreckage of ideals as well as the absurdity of unfamiliar social formations; as such, he began to focus on positivism and analytic philosophy, rereading the work of Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Rudolf Camap, and Karl Popper. As he has said himself, Shu Qun turned from existentialism to positivism, furthering also his turn toward structuralism. The artist's practice entered a stage of transition, which he has described as a period of "the fall of the sacred." The series Identical Voice Series – A Post-Vanguardism? was created in this social and intellectual context. Examining the title, it is evident that the 1980s rhetoric of "Absolute Principle" and "Wading Towards the Opposite Shore" has become useless; the zero degree of rhetoric with which it has been replaced "is intended to direct the audience toward a dimension of thought based in intellectual archaeology". The subtitle, A Post-Vanguardism?, appears because the artist believed "the ideology of the avant-garde at the time was a thing of cynicism, very crude. I still think it was very individual, a form of expression that had not yet transcended the chaos of the self". Identical Voice Series - A Post-Vanguardism? thus continues to manifest Shu Qun's philosophical thinking of the 1990s. In terms of graphic style, the artist portrays a series of "spiritual ruins," mysterious architecture rich with a sense of the religious in a desolate and solitary palette, continuing the use of repeated solid geometric structures. Although the style and color bears a trace of the "Absolute Principle" series of the 1980s, the emotional state of the picture plane conveys an experience of the dejection experience by this former work in the context of the 1990s.
After "China/Avant-Garde" the curtain closed on the consideration of modernism in mainland China. Earth-shattering changes in the political and economic systems of the 1990s caused the principles of the market economy to take root in the hearts of the people as the pursuit of wealth became the universal and correct value system and idealism was replaced by utilitarianism. These changes in the social environment also influenced the directions of Shu Qun's reading and study, altering too his views on his own circumstances. His distrust of marketization allowed him to perceive something of the emptiness that comes with the wreckage of ideals as well as the absurdity of unfamiliar social formations; as such, he began to focus on positivism and analytic philosophy, rereading the work of Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Rudolf Camap, and Karl Popper. As he has said himself, Shu Qun turned from existentialism to positivism, furthering also his turn toward structuralism. The artist's practice entered a stage of transition, which he has described as a period of "the fall of the sacred." The series Identical Voice Series – A Post-Vanguardism? was created in this social and intellectual context. Examining the title, it is evident that the 1980s rhetoric of "Absolute Principle" and "Wading Towards the Opposite Shore" has become useless; the zero degree of rhetoric with which it has been replaced "is intended to direct the audience toward a dimension of thought based in intellectual archaeology". The subtitle, A Post-Vanguardism?, appears because the artist believed "the ideology of the avant-garde at the time was a thing of cynicism, very crude. I still think it was very individual, a form of expression that had not yet transcended the chaos of the self". Identical Voice Series - A Post-Vanguardism? thus continues to manifest Shu Qun's philosophical thinking of the 1990s. In terms of graphic style, the artist portrays a series of "spiritual ruins," mysterious architecture rich with a sense of the religious in a desolate and solitary palette, continuing the use of repeated solid geometric structures. Although the style and color bears a trace of the "Absolute Principle" series of the 1980s, the emotional state of the picture plane conveys an experience of the dejection experience by this former work in the context of the 1990s.