Conceptual drawing of "Decoration: Location" by ZHANG Ruyi, 2017
'Decoration' is the primary orientation for my artistic practice throughout the whole year of 2017. It will be comprised of 4 to 5 separate projects for spaces around different places as the subheads, contributing to a joint promotion, realization, and connection. Besides the recondition, reformation and ornamentation around space (private or non-private, urban or non-urban, natural or non-natural), the notion rather involves the duality of the relationship between destruction and reconstruction, in the process of which the very ends of the society are included. Such a relationship provides a location for a direct encounter between the individual and the reality.
- ZHANG Ruyi
View of "Decoration: Location" by ZHANG Ruyi, "The New Normal: China, Art and 2017," 2017, UCCA, Beijing
At the core of ZHANG Ruyi's unit entitled "Decoration: Location" at "The New Normal: China, Art and 2017" (2017.3.19 - 2017.7.9, UCCA, Beijing) is the idea of the architectural model, yet not to confused with the notion of a scale model but communicated in some loose way for a measurement of uncertainty as the evolving condition of the immediate present of the country situated in the global arena. The project is a singular design for a specific location to embrace a geopolitical understanding. In the turbulent era, the demise of an equilibrium of powers evokes the artist’s thinking upon the competition between architecture and sculpture, not only concerning the urban context that of whose space is subjected to analysis within Lefebvrean parameters but also at the moment of seeking a social architecture for a different society.
Still Life, ZHANG Ruyi, 2016. Concrete and steel iron, wooden board and acrylic, 13 × 7 × 10 cm (cactus), 21 × 10 × 0.5 cm (wooden board). Installation view, UCCA, Beijing, 2017
The artist’s particular concern is that sculptural discourse is not enough in itself to explain the appearance of specific forms. Consequently, she uses the occasion, the separatist organization of gallery spaces in the museum and its close form (each artist assigned to a discrete room), to shape her own discursive practice of sculpture as a response to the backdrop of the exhibition - a "state of exception," coined by Carl Schmitt and expanded by Giorgio Agamben, which means to "transcend the rule of law in the name of the public good." By virtue of taking "decoration" as protocol amid all other excitements, the attempt to establish a rational basis for social planning and cultivating in this vein is fully released through an assembly of field-focused elements in parallel with the reception of its "location" as spatial matter that literally refers to the physical environment.
Grapes, ZHANG Ruyi, 2017. Concrete, wood panel with ceramic tiles and belt, 10 × 12 × 28 cm (grapes), 80 × 80 cm (wood panel). Installation view, UCCA, Beijing, 2017
When questioning sculpture in relation to architecture, Henry Moore (1898-1986) clearly pointed out that "[a]rchitecture and sculpture are both dealing with the relationship of masses... sculpture, more naturally than architecture, can use organic rhythm... not being tied to a functional and utilitarian purpose, can attempt much more freely the exploration of the world of pure form." However, in the case of "Decoration: Location," ZHANG Ruyi conceives sculpture as the filled while architecture as the filling. The former is an activated or animated structure of correlated elements and the latter is a discourse to be given unto its intertextual formation, having them defined in systematical terms. As an alternative to the quasi-law or law-like manner of the white-cube enclosure and its institutional economy, where a set of elaborate procedures are developed to select, structure and control the production of narratives and presupposed positions, such an installing duo is premised on a continuous flow of topological spaces to articulate the metaphor of "shatter belt.”
Island, ZHANG Ruyi, 2017. Concrete, terrazzo, and cactus thorns, 12 × 8 × 7 cm. Installation view, UCCA, Beijing, 2017
All the elements that constitute "Decoration: Location" are either deployed against the wall or pressed close to the wall, the very boundary of the given space. The artist applies her featured method of trussing and strapping in the work entitled Grapes, yet the powerful materiality of cactus is decomposed in a way to reach a high point of interaction and compromise - Island having its thorns implanted into a piece of terrazzo and Still Life casting off the thorns from cactus bodies to render a civilizing process. Some untitled elements, by contrast, are inconspicuous visually. The particular role of the greenish skirting, the fluorescent tube, the cement boards and the wooden pole is to pull together the objects that yield their meaning to the eye, functioning as an adhesive force to bear witness to the support. Support during this time is not a form of generosity that remains a gesture by a generous subject to a needy subject. It is a temporary stage upon which a series of actions can unfold. Dependency, adaptation, and modification are the other formations in the meticulous space that can be mediated by the general protocol of "decoration."
View of "Decoration: Location" by ZHANG Ruyi, "The New Normal: China, Art and 2017," 2017, UCCA, Beijing
