Guan Wei
Navigating Guan Wei: Tally Beck
Born in 1957 in Beijing, Guan Wei came of age during China’s Cultural Revolution. After the turbulent events of the late 1980s, there was an exodus of contemporary Chinese artists, many of whom fled to Western art centers such as New York and Paris. In 1990, Guan Wei took up residence in Australia and developed the artistic idiom he had begun in Beijing. As time went on and he became more acclimated to his new home, he began to address cross-cultural issues, environmental awareness and Australian politics. (1)
In his 2007 Day After Tomorrow series, Guan Wei continues to demonstrate his fluency in a visual language of his own creation. An often-published quotation of his helps us understand his artistic strategy:
I try to emphasize three elements in my work: wisdom, knowledge and humor. I believe people need wisdom to choose from the many different cultural traditions that confront us everyday; knowledge is the key to open our minds to the diversity of the world; and humor is necessary to comfort our hearts. (2)
Guan Wei’s wisdom and knowledge inform his careful choices of subject matter and create a seemingly effortless balance of a myriad of opposing ideas. His signature style sparks the comforting humor that is simultaneously joyful and enigmatic.
The clarity of Guan Wei’s imagery belies its underlying semiotic complexity. Day After Tomorrow No. 1 (fig. 1) is arranged like two Chinese hanging scrolls that, in juxtaposition, portray a fanciful cartographic image. The left panel is dominated by a triangular land mass protruding from the left. Exotic flora sprouts from the top of the land mass toward a cumulus cloud. On the land mass, a huddled group of Guan Wei’s signature human figures writhe in attitudes of confusion, fear and despair. They lack all facial features except gaping mouths, suggesting haunting screams and wails. Beneath the figures, a red, rectangular seal marks the canvas in the tradition of ancient Guo Hua landscapes. Guan references Qing landscapes once again with an intricate and colored rock formation beneath the seal. The lower, left-hand corner contains another cumulus cloud formation that hides the recesses of the land mass.
The central white space that divides the two panels bisects a rowboat. At the bow, a standing figure faces the land with a pointing gesture. His pompous, authoritative position suggests the landing of a European explorer, symbolizing Western territorial expansion. A sinewy, fluvial inlet opens on the coast of the land mass where the human figure stands, and it snakes toward the group of the aforementioned huddled figures. The other half of the rowboat lies on the right panel and contains two seated rowers. The figures in the boat have their backs to the viewer, so their faces are not visible. Although their positions and relative sizes bespeak importance and authority, they are portrayed with the same nude vulnerability as the figures in the anguished group.
The right panel is dominated by the sea. One human figure with a gaping mouth bobs in the water, and below, another similar figure embraces two smaller ones, apparently shielding them from the commanding pointing figure. The top of the right panel shows the lower half of a human head with an open mouth, out of which he expels sea foam. This is a reference to the personification of the wind in seventeenth-century European exploration maps, but here, the head is shown frontally. Without billowed cheeks, the mouth seems to be regurgitating sea foam into the sea. This is an example of Guan Wei’s subversion of standardized representation and his creation of an alternative mythology. Below, a sea serpent, again a reference to seventeenth-century European maps, floats with its tail emerging on the left and its head and neck emerging on the right. It recalls the ‘Here be monsters’ images that marked unknown waters. The left half of a cumulus cloud on the edge of the right panel balances the cloud formations of the composition.
While Guan Wei’s iconography has recognizable antecedents in European maps and Chinese landscapes, he presents them in the context of his own personal visual idiom. His distinctive style unites the disparate elements that blend so harmoniously that we do not immediately perceive anomalies. The map-like background, his basic foundation, provides a conducive platform for his iconographic amalgamation. The perspective shifts and disproportionate elements are at home in this format. Guan Wei deftly accomplishes dimension without depth by subtly modeling the figures and formations such that he subverts the cartographic flatness. Furthermore, he delicately varies the tonality of the blue in the sea from dark at the bottom to a slightly lighter hue at the top, giving the vague suggestion of recession and perspective.
Careful balancing also serves to bring unity to the piece. The cloud on the right panel effectively offsets the clouds on the left as well as mirroring the group of human figures. The bisected boat binds the two panels and, consistent with the guo hua idiom, is positioned at the bottom to provide a starting point for our visual journey. Unable to escape wit, Guan Wei creates a charming visual rhyme between the river inlet on the left and the sea serpent’s tail on the right.
In
Day After Tomorrow No. 7, he presents four small panels. One is a quotation of the regurgitating face from No. 1, two show contemporary meteorological symbols (the icons for lightning and rain), and one shows a hand with the index finger pointing to the left with a cloud formation behind, recalling the animating Hand of God from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. Here, he effectively conflates science and mythology while collapsing the historical timeline.Art historian Charles Green compares Guan Wei’s work to Medieval Books of Hours, with its “minute and loving enumerations of recognizable detail, remembered in a nostalgic haze that mimics fragments of apparently utilitarian pedagogy.”
(3) He suggests that, as in Books of Hours, the individual elements escape allegory because “his components seem to have mnemonic rather than narrative functions.” 4 Guan Wei uses these icons to force us to conjure up notions of space, time and identity. His artful juxtaposition indeed defies clear narrative but rather asks us to consider relationships.The artist presents a playground for deconstructionists as he presents his iconography to represent binary oppositions: East vs. West, logical vs. emotional, science vs. myth. Simultaneously, he collapses time and blurs the distinction between past and present. He presents us with mythical Chinese dragons alongside dinosaurs. Conquering explorers encounter frightened inhabitants, but each share the same quivering flesh. Television weather symbols coexist with wind personifications. Guan Wei homogenizes the opposing notions rendering their surface differences irrelevant. What is left is a series of questions about man’s relationship to the environment, man’s relationship to time, and man’s relationship to himself. The cryptic elements of Guan Wei’s language lead to a commentary on the universality of human experiences.
Dinah Dysart, “Guan Wei: Cultural Navigator” in Guan Wei by Dinah Dysart, Natalie King and Hou Hanru, Craftsman House, Fishermans Bend, Victoria, 2006, p. 16.
1 Ibid, p. 14.
2 Guan Wei, artist’s statement, ‘Ways of Being,’ curated by Jennifer Hardy, Ivan Dougherty, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 1998, p. 56.
3 Charles Green, “Guan Wei: Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney,” art/text, no. 67, November 1999, p. 94.4 Ibid
1957 Born in Beijing
1986 Graduated from the Dept. of Fine Arts, Beijing Capital University
Present Lives and works in Sydney and Beijing
Solo Exhibitions
2011 The New Classic of the Mountains and Seas by Guan Wei, Red Gate Gallery
Spellbound – Guan Wei 2011, OCAT Museum, Shenzhen
2010 Cloud in the Sky and Water in the Bottle, Shuimu Art Space, Beijing
Cloud, ARC One Gallery, Melbourne
2009 Fragments of History, Kaliman Gallery, Sydney
Longevity for Beginners, 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Hong Kong
2008 Great Journey, Yonghe Museum, Beijing
2007 A Mysterious Land, ARC One Gallery
Day After Tomorrow, Red Gate Gallery
2006 A Mysterious Land, ARC One Gallery
Guan Wei, Red Gate Gallery
Other Histories, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
2005 Secret Histories, Arc One Gallery
2004 Looking for Enemies, Sherman Galleries, Sydney
2002 Island, Sherman Galleries
2000 Horoscope, Red Gate Gallery, Sydney
1999 Floating, Sherman Galleries
Nesting, or the Art of Idleness 1989 - 99, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
1998 Internal Circulation, Red Gate Gallery
1997 The Last Supper, Tokyo Gallery, Japan
Ex / Inspire, Sherman Galleries
1996 Returns to Paradise, Red Gate Gallery
Magic Garden, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong
1995 Treasure Hunt, Sherman Galleries
1994 The Great War of the Eggplant, ANU Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra
Group Exhibitions
2017 Red Gate on the Move, Red Gate Gallery, Beijing
2012 Two Generations – 20 Years of Chinese Contemporary Art 2012 Australian Tour:
City of Sydney Chinese New Year; Manning Regional Gallery; Damien Minton Gallery;
University of Newcastle Gallery; Melbourne International Fine Arts (MiFA);
Linton & Kay, Perth
2011 Two Generations – 20 Years of Chinese Contemporary Art, Chinese New Year,
Sydney Town Hall, Australia.
20 Years – Two Generations of Artists at Red Gate, island6 Art Center, Shanghai
20 Years – Two Generations of Artists at Red Gate, Red Gate Gallery
2009 Coming Home: Chinese Australian Artists Works, Linda Gallery, Beijing
2008 Red Gate Stars, Red Gate Gallery
Handle with Care Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia
2007 Down Under DenHaag Sculpture 07 Hague Sculpture, the Netherlands
2006 To the Watchtower: Red Gate Gallery’s 15th Anniversary
Between River and Lake, Jack Tilton Gallery, New York
2005 The Nature Machine – Contemporary Art Nature and Technology, Queensland Art Gallery
2004 Cycle Tracks Will Abound in Utopia, Australian Center for Contemporary Art (ACCA),
Melbourne
2004 Face Up: Contemporary Art from Australia, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Berlin
2003 Creating Paradise on Earth, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, New South Wales
2002 Deeper Places, Casula Power House Arts Centre
2001 Asia in Australia Beyond Orientalism, QUT Art Museum, Brisbane
Clues to the Future - Red Gate Gallery’s 10th Anniversary
2000 Kwangju Biennale 2000, South Korea
1999 The Rose Crossing: Contemporary Art in Australia, Sherman Galleries; Brisbane City Gallery;
Hong Kong Arts Centre; Singapore Art Museum
3rd Asia – Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery
Red Gate Artists Review, Red Gate Gallery
1998 Skin / Culture: Eight Australian Artists, George Gallery, Melbourne
1997 In-Out: Contemporary Chinese Art from Mainland China and Overseas,
LaSalle College of the Arts, Singapore
1996 Above and Beyond, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne;
Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; 24 HR ART, Darwin;
Contemporary Art Centre of SA, Adelaide
Red Gate Gallery’s 5th Anniversary
1995 Perspecta, Art Gallery of NSW
1993 Mao Goes Pop: China Post – 1989, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
1992 Chinese New Wave, Chameleon Contemporary Art Space, Tasmania
1990 Lun (six artists), Temple of the Sun (Ritan) Park, Beijing
My work has a profoundly felt, if implicitly ironic, moral dimension. In their complex symbolic form, my subjects potently embody current social and environmental dilemmas. They are equally the product of my rich cultural repertoire of symbols and my informed socio-political awareness and art-historical knowledge.
Guan Wei
