"The Wind Through the Pine Forest" part Wu Junyong
The Pure Mountain, By Leon Condini
"The Forest of Daydreams - Peach" part Wu Jian'an
"Climbing the Stars" Marinella Senatore ◎ Brother
Exhibition: Imaginary Encounters: Divine Comedy Dialogues with the Classic of Mountains and Seas
Duration: 6 November 2021 – 20 February 2022
Venue: Shanghai Pearl Art Museum
Primo Levy, a writer at Auschwitz, faced with a terrible environment, read aloud a chapter of the inferno chapter of the Divine Comedy in order to let himself and his compatriots experience a little bit of humanity, reminding people that "we should not live like beasts."
On the day of the 750th anniversary of Dante's birth, the famous Italian director and comedian Roberto Bernini recited the last song of "Paradise" in the Italian Senate: "To attain that lofty fantasy, I am powerless; but my desires and wills have been propelled by love like a wheel that turns evenly... Love also pushes the sun and other stars. (Zhu Weiwei translation)
From hell to heaven, this prophetic work depicts the universal destiny of mankind, and generations of people climb the stars along with the verses of the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, reveling in the beauty of language and the endless imagination of love and life.
On the 700th anniversary of Dante's death, the branches of imagination extend to the Pearl Art Museum in Shanghai, and in the exhibition "Imaginary Encounters : The Divine Comedy Dialogues of the Classic of Mountains and Seas", the enormous possibilities contained in this classic text collide with the imagination of another civilization on the universe, and this forked garden meanders to meet the winding river, allowing us to wander through it at the beginning of the new year.
"Imaginary Encounters - Divine Comedy Dialogues "The Classic of Mountains and Seas"" exhibits more than 70 multi-media works from China and Italy, covering documents, paintings, printmaking, paper-cutting, installations, videos, artist books and other rich forms of expression, the exhibition is divided into two parts, the "Divine Comedy" chapter and the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" chapter, which contain the creation of five Italian artists with the "Divine Comedy" and the works of seven Chinese artists associated with the "Classic of Mountains and Seas". Together with the works in the exhibition, there are also four precious manuscripts of the Divine Comedy from the Encyclopaedia Academy of Tregani in Italy, as well as two rare engravings of the Classic of Mountains and Seas from the Shanghai Library, which were specially presented in the opening week.
Contemporary art's reinterpretation of the Divine Comedy
The Italian poet Dante's long poem The Divine Comedy was called the pinnacle of all books by Borges. In it, Dante describes a fantasy journey in which he, led by the ancient Roman poet Virgil and the goddess Beatrizi, travels from hell through purgatory to heaven, where he is inspired by the divine. Dante brought the people, animals and environments he encountered along the way to life.
From the birth of the Divine Comedy, the earliest manuscript books contained a large number of illustrations based on poems, which were visual representations of the content of the text, and since then, countless artists have reinterpreted and created Dante's text, enriching the significance derived from this work.
In the exhibition "Divine Comedy", italian curators simulate the journey from darkness to light through the routing of the works of five artists. If you want to know the meaning of each work, it is best to do a little homework first, although they are not subject to the story of the Divine Comedy, but they are closely related to their morals. Know the source of the inspiration for the work, so that you can enjoy it better.
The first time we encountered Valentina Furyan's "Chaco" is a perfect example. "I walked halfway through our lives, but then I stepped into a dark forest because I had lost the right path." Dante's opening sentence in the Divine Comedy also seems appropriate to be placed here, because in this dark space, the experience of the dark atmosphere of the video work is confusing, like going astray. Heavy rain in the dark, close-ups of plants, dogs, and pools of dark red tones, constantly changing perspectives make you unclear about your identity. "Chaco" is the third layer of the Divine Comedy hell, where people who commit gluttony are imprisoned and torn apart by three-headed dogs. The artist recreates a hell of gluttony with images, throwing you into the cycle of illusion, rain, and water.
Step out of the "Gluttony Layer" and enter Marinella Senatore's "Climbing the Stars" installation, where three plaster sculptures of dancing human figures stand in the darkness, waiting for a passage of text of different allegorical shapes to be projected on it. The work was also inspired by the Inferno chapter of the Divine Comedy, about a man of all evils that Dante encounters, Vannie Fuchi, who is not evil against Dante's party, a villain who steals holy relics and plants bribes on others, and even blasphemes God in front of Dante, in which he will always experience the bite of the snake. In Climbing the Stars, the artist rewrites the fate of this man, allowing him to be redeemed.
Marta Roberti's Fables of Animals in Another World is an eight-screen installation that very cleverly depicts the animals of the Divine Comedy on graphite reproduction paper, which appear in different forms: some are real, some are similarities used to describe cursed, purified and blessed souls, and finally mythical creatures mixed with animals and people. Look closely at each screen and you can recognize the animals Dante encounters during his fantasy journey, such as Halby, a bird-headed banshee. The thin translucent paper flutters slightly with the air, and under the halo of the LED lights, a different world unfolds.
Sylvia Camporesi's The Hidden Doctrine, on the other hand, is less understandable and includes an artist's book and a set of photographic installations. The work is a reinterpretation of the Interpretation of the Divine Comedy, inspired by the French philosopher René Glennon's book Dante's Theory of The Hidden Micro.. Exploring the hidden meanings of numbers that appear in the Divine Comedy, such as the numbers 3 and 9, the artist created drawings and photographs, as well as processing special symbols. In addition, the 22 pictures also contain pictorial elements such as hypnotic bridges, French roulette, and the scene left over from the Tunguska explosion, making the interpretation more secretive. There has been no shortage of research into the metaphorical meaning of Dante's work, including René Glennon and the artist himself.
The Divine Comedy chapter concludes with Lyon Continy's The Pure Boundary Mountain, where a pile of rubble unveils a rising concentric circular mountain bag that grows greenery on top. This installation corresponds to the image of the Mountain of Atonement in the Divine Comedy, as well as to the public green space built from construction waste in Europe after World War II, with the meaning of transformation and purification.
Since then, the first part of the exhibition has ended, these five works reflect the richness of contemporary art techniques, the inspiration from literature is not a simple illustration, but each artist has found a very unique entry point to extend their own field, including visual and spatial use, and the understanding of the meaning of the work depends in large part on the understanding of the original work and familiarity with Western culture.
The next chapter of the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" seems to shape a world of both immortality and illusion, starting with Shao Yinong's "Heaven and Earth" series of paintings that occupy the entire wall, and the scene changes into a story space full of auspicious clouds, living beings, mountains, rivers, pavilions and pavilions. As the title of the exhibiting artist Peng Wei's work indicates, "We All Need Stories", the series of "Classics of Mountains and Seas" throws us into a story environment, experiencing imaginative traditions that seem to be rooted in the bones.
The imaginary path of the Classic of Mountains and Seas
Unlike the Divine Comedy, the Classic of Mountains and Seas has no clear author or protagonist, but an encyclopedic account of the ancient ancestors of their own world, and with its abundant imagination of showing the world picture, it was praised by Mr. Yuan Ke as "the ancient books of our country, the most magnificent and magnificent". It contains eighteen volumes, of which five volumes of the Classic of Mountains, eight volumes of the Book of The Sea, four volumes of the Great Wilderness Classic, and one volume of the Hai Nei Jing, in addition to myths and legends, also involve geography, astronomy, history, religion, folklore, meteorology, animals, plants, minerals, medicine, anthropology, ethnology... Countless Chinese artists have drawn nourishment from the descriptions of the Classic of Mountains and Seas.
Seven Chinese artists: Chai Yiming, Peng Wei, Qiu Anxiong, Shao Yinong, Sun Xun, Wu Jian'an, Wu Junyong, each starting from the nourishment of ancient civilization and mythology and history, crossed the instinctive ancient scenes in the mind and body across today, and reproduced them with images combined with contemporary techniques, you can not only feel an energy from it, but also experience how some cultural archetypes have evolved through a mixture today to become the artist's personalized language, and how this language is unified into a poetic atmosphere.
For example, Wu Jian'an's brass sculpture "The Forest of Daydreams", which is extended from a series of paper-cut works. Wu Jian'an studied with the master of paper-cutting in his early years, and this series of works from paper-cutting to installation presents very complex patterns, combining folk customs and Han Dynasty patterns, and the meaning of expression is more complex, which is the "spiritual anatomical diagram" carried out by the artist through paper and the extension on it. The brass cutouts give rise to a vague light and shadow under the light, as if returning to an era when art did not yet exist, only witchcraft. The "Signs" series of simulated animal specimens is a hybridized and combined beast between different animals, corresponding to the bizarre animals described in the Classic of Mountains and Seas.
Qiu Anxiong's series of prints" "New Classic of Mountains and Seas", although named "Classic of Mountains and Seas", actually borrows the style of "Classic of Mountains and Seas" to achieve a reconstruction of reality. These prints are based on the artist's ink animation work "New Mountains and Seas Classic" original white drawing manuscript, 12 prints in the form of pictures and texts to introduce 12 kinds of artists' creative "animals", of which it is not difficult to see the author's attention to the transformation of natural creatures by science and technology, such as "Nie Fei" is a human ear on the back of a mouse creature, it corresponds to the 2016 scientists "planted" human ears on mice, this scientific discovery can meet the organ private customization of this news event.
Peng Wei's "We All Need Stories" series is the first exhibition, which continues the artist's fascination with narrative and a new attempt to narrate from multiple dimensions and multiple media, exploring the narrative method of vertical space and horizontal space superposition. This series of works draws on the pattern of Cave 61 of the Dunhuang murals, and progresses in different forms and sizes around the story that happened in the tower space. In addition to the color works on paper, there are also installations and two animated videos. The usual long-scrolled stories are transferred to different towers, including imaginary dreams, myths and legends, religious stories, etc., and the content of the Classic of Mountains and Seas also appears, and the animation focuses on different characters and characters, unveiling the treasure box of each story.
In Chai Yiming's series of works named after the Classic of Mountains and Seas, under the seemingly classical landscape pastoral paintings, absurd and fictional details are hidden, and a closer look can find the hidden figures, animals, ghosts and ghosts in the composition, and the mountain body has also changed into a human body. The artist has long been interested in Chinese mythological stories, and the Classic of Mountains and Seas provides a path for him, and the specific creation is an unconscious spontaneous wandering, like a myth, without presupposition.
This part of the exhibition also includes the artist Wu Junyong's special painting of "Wind Through the Pine Forest" for the exhibition site, with improvised brushstrokes and "ceiling falling" allegorical images covering the walls, LuoHan sitting on a fool's boat, mermaids and goats playing, in the artist's imagination, Chinese and Western mythology and fable scenes seamlessly docking.
The "Imaginary Encounter" in the title of the exhibition extends different levels through the works of two parts, such as the relationship between literature and art, the works of the "Divine Comedy" chapter continue the creative tradition of excavating inspirational meanings from literature; such as the relationship between tradition and modernity, the ancient imagination and legend stories in ancient Chinese books such as "The Classic of Mountains and Seas", it seems to return to the classical style, use paper color, Chinese painting materials to express, but in fact, the artist's modern techniques have penetrated into it; the encounter between China and the West, For artists and audiences who have grown up in the modern context, the Classic of Mountains and Seas and the Divine Comedy are not even close and distant, which is also the charm of literature.
In the garden of imagination, you may have experienced their vague landscapes over and over again, and the exhibition may be an opportunity to bring the imagination closer from encounter to encounter. Photo courtesy of Shanghai Pearl Art Museum