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By Chien-Hung Huang

Translator: Yvonne Kennedy

 

When 30-year-old Tang Yongxiang left Hubei for Beijing in 2007, China was poised for her ascent in the global arena. If the work Blue Back (2010–2011) is regarded as an observational starting point, vestiges of figuratively realist depictions had begun to delve into color separation in an interrogation of “abstract” spaces. However, up until 2013, figurative silhouettes and spaces in works such as Dark Woman on Purple Background (2013) remain mired in an analogous visual perspective. As Lu Mingjun(1) has noted, the dialectic between positive and negative spaces characteristic in the works Three Trees, Figurines and Several Circles (2009–2011) and Three Pairs of Legs and One Foot Walking on a Light Green Background (2013), underscore traces of “media attributes.” However, Tang’s present experiments unmistakably transition from surface-level visual impressionism into the realm of abstraction. These experimental outcomes seem to enable him to express fundamental shifts in perception seen in his 2015 series regarding the depiction of “hands,” namely, the depth of space. The artist’s sense of finesse, meticulousness, and calm in the midst of an upheaval in the capital and media environment, exemplifies his unique persistence on the path of painting. He resists being engulfed in the “art manufacturing industry” of capital accumulation of flow. For him, painting is neither a symbolic service or formal market inherited from the Beaux-Arts tradition, nor is it the avant-garde spectacle of “art for art’s sake.” Rather, it is a methodology and technique that spans millennia. What he re-contemplates, or, the re-contemplation expressed through his art, is the current state of the relationship between human beings and this skill. It is no longer a “what is painting” question of cultural colonialization, neither is it an aesthetic hierarchy and market differentiation theory of “what makes a good painting,” but a practical methodology that simply asks: where does this painting lead us? In other words, vis-à-vis prevailing social sensibilities and insights, Tang Yongxiang tacitly surrenders the perspective of painting as ontological truth or reality. In fact, as early as 2017, he ventured into the realm of “mediated perception,” establishing a position and trajectory for re-location within society: that is, a quotidian, essential state of the “ordinary.” The “cut-and-paste” or “collage” quality in many of his works from 2013 to 2015 were liberated from a direct mimicry of media output, initiating an exploration into the profound influence of digital media on the crea tor’s perception. Hence, the cyborg journey.

(1) Lu, Mingjun, “A Floating Fictions, Lurking Perceptions, and an Interwoven Form,” In Tang Yongxiang: 2009–2017, Hong Kong: Horizontal Rivers Press, 2018.

 

The cyborg journey Tang Yongxiang has undertaken is not a dystopic vision of sci-fi redemption, nor is it a cacophonous technological revelry; rather, it marks the inception of a resistance against illusion, an interrogation into individual lives for understanding, and an effort to elucidate the world we inhabit. For him, there will be no fanfare or heroism associated with these “beginning;” but simply a return to the ordinary that evokes the words of Lao Tzu in Chapter 16 of Tao Te Ching: “Attain utmost emptiness. Abide in steadfast stillness. All things arise in unison. Thereby we see their return. All things flourish, and each returns to its source. Returning to the source is stillness. It is returning to one’s fate. Returning to one’s fate is eternal. Knowledge of the eternal is realization.”(2)

(2)Stefan Stenudd, Tao Te Ching, The Taoism of Lao Tza Explained, Create Space Independent Publishing Platfrom, 2015, chap. 16.

Here, the artist undoubtedly touches on the most paradoxical of propositions, of delving into a fundamental comprehension of life within the quotidian, particularly in the reorganizations and expansions stemming from technological interventions in our world.

 

1. Unintentional Milieu

We have become increasingly cognizant of the fact that we are, and always have been, cyborgs. Cyborgs do not refer to uniquely stylized bioengineered heroes, but rather, to the ever-blurring boundaries between humans and their technological and physical environments resulting in an intricate transmission of cognition and behaviors. Smart phones, digital cameras, computers, smart devices, cloud and mobile devices, etc., all interact with us on an intimate level, transforming us into cyborgs of the digital age. Of course, the cyborgs in films and animations do not reflect the development of the present realities that confront us. The mediating connections enable the realization of cyborgs not as an integrated bionic entity, but rather, as a manifestation of a topological space comprised of environments and behaviors. It is the digitally transmitted networks formed by externalized organs, or by the conductive space. Cyborgs are the embodiment of these topographical spaces at different moments.As contemporary art moves away from portraiture, ensemble theater, and realistic or concrete characterizations and forms of the past, human figures depicted in contemporary paintings have grown increasingly remote. Instead, the focus has shifted towards exploring abstract expressions of interiority.The relationship between human beings no longer figures into the dramatic narrative, but more often appears in the touchpoints and distances in quotidian moments. Landscapes and emotive crime-scene-like spaces have also undergone rotation and fragmentation, conjuring non-linear spatial relationships. Objects, lines, and traces have detached from the stable states of still life or wabi-sabi, or from the afterimage of physical motion in photorealistic experiences, to become scattered among multiple dimensions within a world of nonlinear spaces.

Simply put, the contemporary world functions as a dynamic network of relationships. The “cyborgs” we encounter in our daily lives are comprised of behaviors, relationships, and the environment. Tang Yongxiang’s paintings originate in the intersection between his own visual sense and digital mechanisms. For the artist, both cameras and mobile phones represent a certain initial “zoom-in.” Whether a tree in a residential enclave (4, 9), objects accumulated in a landfill (8), a street crowd (3, 6), pigeons on the road (11), a section of the human body, or a corner of still life (1, 5, 10)—the photographs he takes for the purpose of gathering subject matter do not vividly create a photogeneity in the portrayed subject. The forms of human figures or objects are rarely emphasized. He avoids capturing any “intentionality” in the subject. This “initial zoom-in” captures the subjects “unintentionality” and underscores their “milieu” (as seen in 1, 2, 3, and 4). Hence, we can venture to say that his gaze does not project a “self” onto the object or event, and will not shape the objects or events into a specific entity. Instead, what he sees is the “milieu,” and a certain prerequisite for an encounter: people, events and objects must be located in a milieu in order for human observation and consciousness to come to rest. In the process of painting, Tang Yongxiang endeavors to extract and encounter the milieu of objects and to gradually transform it into a site of “consciousness.” This also becomes the primary element within Tang Yongxiang’s paintings, forming a directly and immediate link to our sensory perceptions.

 

2. E-quotidian(3) Turn

The development of contemporary art has forged a connection between artistic encounters and everyday experiences. Drawing on Harald Szeemann’s concept of artistic research and research-based exhibition practices, Paul O’Neill posits that in the Western world, the potential for juxtaposing and fostering a dialogue between abstraction and realism has been evident in the evolution of conceptual art since the late 1960s. By the latter half of the 1990s, a global sense of personal anxiety resulting from the Asian economic bubble began to emerge. This is evident in exhibitions such as the Cities on the Move exhibition curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Hou Hanru; as well as in the sharpening and magnification of quotidian perceptions as presented by the Young British Artists (YBA); or in the works of Japanese Micro-Pop artists such as Koki Tanaka and Taro Izumi. Subsequently, the 21st century witnessed the global emergence of digital and internet culture, as various digital technological interfaces integrated into different aspects of our daily lives with the advent of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. Our consciousness and lifestyles began entering into the world of virtual reality, augmented reality, and cyber-physical embedded system. Tang Yongxiang’s works have persisted in a departure from the academy-nurtured modernist symbolism into the quotidian world. Hence a commenced a confrontation with a realm outside the cyber-physical embedded systems: the quotidian.

In the embedded cyber-physical world of today, everyday-life is often a hollowed-out sense of “equotidian” dailyness. The equotidian has been edged-out by virtuality and performativity in daily living. Daily existence is characterized by the implosion of “weak imagery” (or “micro-spectacles”) from the inundation of short videos, social media messages, and uncensored online video resources. Simply put, the “equotidian” has been compressed into the myriads of interstices. Early in Tang Yongxiang’s painting process, lines and negative spaces are posited in a state of equality within the visual expanse. The first initial strata begin to appear in the process of linear detachment from objects and material forms. With its figurative traces preserved, reality is deconstructed and unfurled as a two-dimensional plane. The spatial distance between objects, between entities, and between forms are a relationship of juxtaposition. Image cognition functions in this depthless two-dimensional cyber-physical embedded system. In this cyber-physical era, paintings become a rite that reveals the equotidian. “Mine are not beautiful paintings. I have always wanted to paint that which is not anything. Most of my work is within the spaces, within negative forms. Why are forms concealed? This is key.” (Conversation with Leo Li Chen at Magician Space on December 26, 2019). A painting that is “not anything” implies an absence of an inherent connotation of “painting;” hence, we can speculate that Tang Yongxiang is undertaking a third layer of the “equotidian.” In addition to images of an “unintentional milieu,” and outlines of juxtaposed equalitarian spaces, the third “equotidian” is the cancellation of preconceived projection of imagery at the onset of painting, because any preconceived projections will enable the painting itself to become a process of conceptual production—signifying a departure from the production of the “equotidian” and re-creation of “art for art’s sake.” Only by returning to a “equotidian” of “not anything” can one enter the process of “causality”, rather than a “praxis”(4) of the physical manifestation of concept.

(3) Rooted in an Asian concept embodying connotations of detachment and indifference, “equotidian” a portmanteau derived from the words “equal” and “quotidian.”

(4) Primarily derived from Karl Marx’s definition, “praxis” here refers to the implementation of ideas and concepts into actions in the physical world. However, what is seen in Tang’s works is not a conceptually guided practice, but rather action initiated by diluting and emptying all existing concepts.

 

3. Multi-Concaved Milieu as E-Quotidian

The idea of “art for art’s sake” has been around for over a century. Throughout time, sketching and painting was for the purpose of sensing and reflecting on one’s world, for the purpose for creating one’s own consciousness or spiritual “milieu.” Painting is a method of connecting to this milieu. Tang Yongxiang’s milieu initially points toward the equotidian, but in his second and third phases of the equotidian, he makes a clear distinction from “realism,” because in the cyber-physical reality, the capture of imagery will endlessly follow micro-spectacles, and re-present dailyness imploded by countless micro-spectacles. Realism will only continue to commodify the everyday and transform it into spectacle, declaring the end of the “equotidian,” because reality is no longer a specific object concealed within the existing reality, but is necessarily a “phenomenon” that occurs in the profound interaction or multiple connections between individual action and reality.

In the space where the underpainting and painted color blocks intervene into the lines in adjacent spaces, or even cover up parts of the outlines, each color block or plane becomes a point of entry into a space from a specific angle. Under the context of the equotidian, hues and gradients are successfully presented as angular differences and spatial vibrancy. With the intervention of colors, Tang Yongxiang begins to pierce through this milieu where the spirit and consciousness intervene and reside, creating pathways into varying qualitative spatial dimensions. First, contrasts between different color blocks and planes highlight the ambiguous interplay between the transparent image layer captured by mobile phones and the deliberate image layer uncovered through painting. This also encompasses the meta-effects generated by residual matrix markings that have become increasingly visible in his recent works. Then, there are the color blocks that are sections of the body (5, 6, 8), cross-sections of objects or living materials (1, 4, 8, 10), a section of a venue (1, 2, 4, 9), remnants not covered by color blocks (Mackie lines,(5) as seen in 3, 11), relational amalgamations (1, 2, 4, 9), etc. These are spatial differentiations that have been both decontextualized and recontextualized. The color planes that determine the visual field often simultaneously manipulate what is extracted from the relationship between the arena and the body (or object), and what is cut from the background. Hence, we can say that the coverage provided by smearing, layering, and withholding of color is more akin to a gesture of excavation or opening. Each object or lifeform opens a different spatial dimension, and every “part” attached or constituting the object or lifeform has the potential to become a portal to a dimension. This is the artist’s perception of ordinary time, as well as a cognitive model gradually taking shape as we enter the “digital era.”

The various “layerings” of sketches and smearings that Tang Yongxiang undertakes seems to suppress color hues into a type of “non-protruding coverage” that maintains various concave spaces in a certain “e-quotidian” adjacency, while the profound provocation of consciousness and psyche relies entirely on the hue and depiction of color. “Color depiction” is ultimately the “profundity” where consciousness and milieu intersect in his paintings. Large color planes make an appearance in his latest works featured in the current exhibition. These color-saturated layers comprise a certain “equotidian” surface, recalling Egon Schiele’s treatment of corporeality, except that Tang Yongxiang creates an “equotidian” at the portals to arenas and spaces, and emphasizes the density of the “pallor” within the covering depiction. Perhaps the milieu is the “spiritual corporeality” in the artist’s consciousness. However, this “spiritual corporeality” as milieu overlaps with Nicolas de Staël’s treatment of abstract spatial color tones and tonal spaces in his later works (such as in Composizione, 1949, or Fleurs dans un vase bleu, 1953). The spiritual adjustments of the brushwork within the diluted “e-quotidian” color palette, coupled with the intricate handling of the interplay between figurative and abstract adjusted through a compressed “e-quotidian” approach, ultimately find a spiritual resonance within contemporary Chinese society. In doing so, they serve as a mediating force in the ineffable existence between capitalist spectacles and mass imagery. Based on the above developments and interpretations, we can say that China’s ecological intelligence has already entered a cyber-physical embedded dailyness, but it is a spectacled dailyness of tacitly increasing entropy. However, returning to the living existence that Tang Yongxiang attempts to capture, it is the “e-quotidian” cyborg.

(5) Editor’s note: Mackie lines are light contour lines at the borders between areas of density variations in a photographic image caused by a delayed appearance of edge regions in the developing process.

 

4. Nonlinear Relational Crystal

Alongside the subtle coverage rendered by color impressions within the “e-quotidian” imagery of the multi-faceted environment, there is a distinct sense of tension and crisis in perceptual penetration that permeates time and space (specifically in 1, 4, 8). The color blocks that open up portals to various spaces may embody a surface representation of “deconstructing the figurative,” but within the painting they actually create an imagination of mutual transferring space and time. During the painting process, different dissociated states of reality gradually surface as the diverse and heterogeneous micro-spatiotemporalities reveal their distinct trajectories. At this juncture, these memories mutually erode and unveil their forms, and the artist is seemingly able to form diverse juxtapositions and arrangements during the painting process. This reveals the encompassing state of the “e-quotidian” within the erosion of memory and begins to realize the possibilities of consciousness and intellect to continue to generate both “future” and “moments.” The artistic roots that Tang Yongxiang’s paintings most trigger are the interrogations of the realization of the e-quotidian and multi-milieu process. When the artist successfully opens diverse spatiotemporal dimensions through color blocks crafted with lines and negative spaces, what results simultaneously is a process of crystallization. Why do we find ourselves lingering before Tang Yongxiang’s paintings? It’s because his works center around the everyday focal encounters (raw mobile phone images), unique juxtapositions (equal linear divisions), the unveiling of micro-spatiotemporal dimensions (through color blocks and planes), and the transfer of layers (connections within the space-time network). All of these evolve into crystallized relationships as they come before us.

If his works are considered an e-quotidian cyborg journey, and painting is regarded as a method of practice rather than the purpose of production, then, seen through the “layers” he creates, Tang Yongxiang’s paintings are a densely layered process. This density entails a protective act, of painting his observations, contemplations, and milieu. Each color serves as a prism that cuts into the image to ultimately complete a nonlinear relational crystallization. Through the crystallization of amalgamated objects in space (1, 8, 11), of texturized folds (2, 10), of the phenomenon of a waiting crowd (3), and by transforming objects and organs into crystalline forms (5, 6), and illuminating the crystallization of trees (4, 9, 7), the artist’s act of painting becomes yet another layer and aspect of “entering the cyborg.”

From the perspective of visual culture development, telecommunications and information began to influence behavior in the 1960s, and performance art began to emerge with the advent of portable video recorders. Performance art has consistently evolved in diverse forms, manifesting distinct connotations between the visible (documented) and the invisible (specific time or place). However, as contemporary performance art shift towards conceptualizing temporal nuances, situational contexts, everyday experiences, and envi ronmental exposures, the previously cyborg-influenced “performances” can no longer depend on the “situationalism” conceived in the revolutionary utopias of the last century as a means of liberation. They must enter into an alternate practice: “In my repeated experimentations on canvas, I am actually awaiting the opportunity, awaiting serendipity. Constant overlapping is not my intention, but artists cannot simply wait for inspiration. The smearing of color is a way of advancing while waiting. The result of waiting for serendipity leaves behind the process of that waiting. Both of these are present.” (Conversation with Magician Space Research Department on February 19, 2022).

If we interpret “destiny” as “the rheological changes conjured by dependency at the margins,” then it is conceivable that “performance” viewed from a purely sociological or anthropological perspective, cannot be detached from a fully borgified (cyborg infrastructural) cybernetic society. This is because the “performance” described is a phenomenon and data format intentionally limited to the biological context, where “rheology” has been entirely eradicated. “Performance” must then depart from the ontogenetic perspectives of the 1960s and immerse itself in recursive and serendipitous relationships to create exploration and anticipation for “destiny” within the practice itself. What Tang Yongxiang presents for us to see, or more accurately, the “moments” he shares with us, are the discoveries of space. He attempts to find sufficient “entries/portals” into spaces that enable the spirit to traverse freely. Hence, the application of “coverings” on his images are not “concealments” but “openings” that open multidimensional arenas and facilitate transfers within. The three-dimensional facets and digital facets are facets that become points of entry and boundaries into the world. Reality is merely a gateway to truth, while painting is the path to truth. Each smearing of a color block layer, every transformed color block layer, serves as an entry into another realm. This is the nonlinear relational crystal; it is a method of entering by way of the cyborg, into a form that cannot be controlled in a cybernetic society, to activate true “destiny.”

From Zhuangzi’s The Adjustment of Controversies:Everything has its inherent character and its proper capability. There is nothing which has not these.Therefore, this being so, if we take a stalk of grain and a (large) pillar, a loathsome (leper) and (a beauty like) Xi Shi, things large and things insecure, things crafty and things strange; they may in the light of the Dao all be reduced to the same category (of opinion about them).

It was separation that led to completion; from completion ensued dissolution. But all things, without regard to their completion and dissolution, may again be comprehended in their unity.(6)

(6)Zhuangzi, Chuang-Tzu: The Inner Chapters, trans. A. C. Graham, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981, chap. 2.

 

Through observation, capture, outlining, and color application, Tang Yongxiang intends to encounter milieu, understand milieu, and create milieu. This is a “performance” and “dialectic” that he undertakes through painting (artistic practice) until he reaches a multi-faceted milieu. By means of sketching and smearing, the canvases, lines, and color blocks (planes) engage in the process of forsaking form, fostering integration, and facilitating mutual communication and interaction among each layer of objects, lines, and color blocks. This process resembles the initiation of a particular “adjustment of controversies” cosmic imagination of painting, allowing everything to unfold through auto-poïesis with the aim of returning to the e-quotidian. For him, the appearance of painting precedes conceptualization, and occurs and operates within a state of “speaking without out speech.” This is not mysticism but a profound contemplation of, and resistance to, contemporary life. In 2023, Tang Yongxiang’s e-quotidian became a critique and escape from the imploding spectacle of dailyness. It is a journey designed and initiated by conscious or intelligent methods while resisting unconscious automations. For him, whether a jouissance of perception or an externalized consciousness, an exit strategy is not a valued form of spiritual armament, but rather a “spiritual cultivation” and “spiritual preservation” undertaken in the name of “painting.” The world propelled by the technological age does not generate endless thematic spaces for our consumption and immersion. It is necessary to encounter a certain entity, where the entity truly enters into a multi-dimensional temporospatial cosmological milieu. In his paintings, destiny undertakes relationships; and the rheology between objects and their milieu generates certain “destinies.” But these “destinies” are not preordained or preset, but are organic and cosmological. They (the works) are not a re-presentation of the ontogenetic, but auto-operational.

The decentralized, irreplicable crystallization process is an individualized state of our rheological sense of borgification. Regarding art (in Tang Yongxiang’s case, paintings) as an approach toward the “e-quotidian” is a cosmic technique that generates unique narratives and concepts without pursuing “technical instrumentalism” and “technological spectacles.” We can almost say that in the process of each work, Tang Yongxiang engages in a certain “micro-Gaia” experiment. Painting appears to envision eyes that perceive the workings of heaven and earth, the realm of monads, or even the quantum universe—eyes akin to those of Zhuangzi, Leibniz, or Schrödinger, but in total silence.