by Wang Minan

　　　A Drama of Materialistic Objects can be counted as a brave attempt in contemporary art. What Xiao Yu intends to explore with it is not so much what art expresses as what contemporary art is, or more extremely speaking, what art is. It is just by these means that Xiao Yu has abruptly pushed the idea of art a bit forward. What on earth is a piece of artwork? In what way does a piece of artwork make a boundary for itself? With his drama of objects, Xiao Yu is among the pioneers to put forward the question of the boundary (or boundary line) in art. No doubt, a piece of artwork has its own boundary, limits, and sovereignty, and art exists above all as an objectified and represented integrated form always in its individual body and appearance. We habitually view an artwork as a concrete form; even if it flows or vanishes, its boundary and pattern can never be destroyed. 

　　　Xiao Yu has challenged the myth of “art’s boundary” with his creation. The drama (we will call it a drama for the moment) consists of a variety of artistic genres such as video, installation, painting, music, stage design; in short, almost all contemporary artistic genres as far as we can imagine are included in it. It is a complete assemblage of artistic genres, but for what? It affirms diverse artistic genres and meanwhile negates them. All kinds of artistic genres are legal, but they should not thus make none progress. Their existence can be ensured, but they should not make boundaries for themselves. As for Xiao Yu’s artwork, the form of artistic genres as such constitutes its essential content. In fact, Xiao Yu takes the form of artistic genres as one of his important objects for observing: art’s reasonable and unreasonable aspects, its liberating and binding functions, and its revolutionary and conservative characteristics. Besides, Xiao Yu has employed a large and jumbled mixture of materials: ready-mades, products; cheap instruments, expensive luxuries; decorations, oddments; forgeries of ancient painting and calligraphy, newly produced authentic works; exaggerated props, simple objects; medicines, grains; small pieces of paper, big guns; bright lights, noisy sounds; ambiguous words, hard articles; dead animals, living plants; various daily necessities such as clothes. These materials are so jumbled and seem all-encompassing. To what extent are they jumbled? We can even assert there are no materials which cannot be absorbed into artistic conception. We have no way at all to figure out Xiao Yu’s grounds for choosing materials. Perhaps he has got some peculiar fantasies or made some rigorous conception. Anyway, to bring materials as such into artwork may certainly not be taboo. These all-inclusive, numerous materials, and so comprehensive a range of artistic genres, mutually juxtapose and support each other. In this way, the objects present a strange appearance which is distinguished by extreme complexity (sometimes you are dazzled by such complexity). It seems like an encyclopaedic coverage of contemporary art. It is not rare that some contemporary artworks are created in most succinct form, but Xiao Yu has shown an unprecedented interest in complication, uproar, diversification, and multilevel. It is just in such multiplicity and ampleness of field that contemporary art proliferates endlessly. It is of special significance for us to point out a new tendency in the making: art can reproduce with the aid of itself.

　　　

　　　Nevertheless, the art’s self-reproduction is not equivalent to a hotchpotch, and we should not sum up the creation simply as a collage of several works. Why do these pieces of work self-reproduce, self-complicate, and self-enlarge? From a direct point of view, the drama of objects is comprised of several works and each one seems to have independent existence. Indeed, the works catch our eye one after another (let’s count how many they are according to Xiao Yu’s classification for the moment: nine scenes plus a prelude, so ten scenes in total) – such as a person reading aloud English in Chinese tones on video, a dead emperor lying in a coffin, and a lone corridor with signs saying “tender” stuck everywhere.

　　　

　　　In fact, each work is not isolated and on the contrary, all the pieces are mutually interactive. Each piece seems to be embedded in another; each serves as the context of another; and each forms one part of another. This is the most imaginative point in A Drama of Materialistic Objects. These pieces are embedded in each other, respond to each other, horseplay with each other, and talk to each other, which cannot be completely blocked by any boundaries. The drama of objects is permeated with carnival, whereby the boundary that an individual piece has delimited for itself collapses. Hence one piece can reproduce another and thus all pieces can reproduce each other. What’s more, reproduction is neither equal to reduplication, nor to simple assembly, nor to mathematical accumulation. The increase in one work’s meaning does not depend on the embedment of another piece. In effect, the embedment impels both sides to change their meanings, in other words, the original meaning of an isolated work never remains. However, this is not the mutual embedment of two pieces but an embedment among multiple ones. It is the embedment among ten pieces. No! It is more than ten, if we do not view one scene as one work (In fact, they are not merely ten works, in other words, ten pieces is just their appearance!) They are either one work or numerous ones! In the drama, the conception of one integrated work collapses. Although these pieces are divided by scenes, they have no boundary and are closely linked up perfectly like a constant flow which can be regarded as countless drops of water or as a continuous entire stream. Therefore, you can call this drama of objects one work or innumerable ones, except for ten pieces. Or more radically speaking, you can name their number as you like, which depends on how you understand the drama. The meaning, boundary, formation, and integrity of an individual work – all have been changed as a result of the space existing in the drama of objects. We can see one piece of work after another and meanwhile we find the fragility of their boundaries (boundaries in meaning or in form), the unreliability of these individual works, and the impossibility of an individual work as an individual one.

　　　How does Xiao Yu successfully help these plural works revel, their boundaries break down, and reproduce or multiply each other? We must see the differing joining methods between two scenes: a winding passageway between Scenes I and II, a man-made wall between Scene II and III, a door between Scene III and IV, and no definite boundary line among Scenes VII, VIII and IX, which have been placed in a common space. These transitions and links as such are works or parts of a work. However, to which scene do they belong? Do they belong to the former scene or the latter one? The screen-like continuous corridor can be looked upon as a complete work, or as a part of Scene I (a concealed mask of imperial palace?), or as a part of Scene II (a curtain for hero’s performance?). Between Scenes II and III, the wall, whose one side is a big gun and other one seems a flower in bloom, is a joining wall rather than a partition between two scenes. Once again, we can regard all of the transitions and links as one part of a grand work. It is just the ambiguity in these links and transitions (they are embedded as well as independent) that destroy the separations in the works and thus each work and each scene has finally lost its fixed starting point and terminal one. Besides, I would like to stress that all of the components and elements including space itself constitute the inherence of work and become the work as such. To go further, Xiao Yu’s Drama of Materialistic Objects has no outside and the whole world as far as the eye can see is one part of the creation. Although the artwork lies indoors, it strangely appears to have no backdrop or background, and what’s more, even backdrop and background are transformed into the work. We usually visit exhibitions and appreciate artworks indoors (in art gallery and museum) and can easily identify which are artworks or not, which are the inherent essence and components, and which belong to the outside as a foil for artworks. But Xiao Yu has exploded such exhibition form and thus shown the powerful explosive force in his creation. Anything as far as the eye can see is art, a part of art, or artwork itself. Even the exhibition hall’s wall, ceiling, windows, lights, and floor (he has deliberately paved the floor with different materials) usually serving as artworks’ background before, and what’s more, even the air (it is permeated with chemical smell as a result of interior decoration, a bit mysterious, eerie, and stifling), all have been promoted to be artworks. Not merely anything placed indoors but also the whole space has been developed as artwork. Xiao Yu has changed the exhibition hall of an art gallery into his own work. In reality, he has completely created and invented an exhibition hall rather than making clever use of it, and more exactly, he has created an artwork with it. Here, the whole space is totally closed and separated from the external world; we are entirely submerged by the creation and can do nothing but cross or stay within. What we do now is not “to watch” the creation outside it any more but “to experience” it inside it. Significantly, once we have entered the creation, we ourselves have in effect constituted one part of it; since we are just within it, we certainly become the flowing essential elements of it. 

　　　The saturated artistic space has indeed challenged artistic genres and exhibition form, and nevertheless it cannot totally eliminate its own grammatical form. It can be indistinctly seen that a thread of time from ancient times to the present meanderingly runs through the creation. Though the work has reconsidered and created a space, it has still taken time into its distinctive consideration. Its grammatical form is time, by which the drama of objects has obtained its organizing frame (perhaps it is the reason for naming it “drama”). The drama of objects appears to possess an epic effect under such time frame, and a grand epic seems to rise before our eyes from the complete space. Therefore, we can see a historical legend full of metaphoric tint: the beginning (also the ending, a person reading aloud on TV video, a misreading graft hybrid between China and the West?), the ancient time (decayed and conservative emperor), the modern time (the hero and his rising will, shooting up into the sky) and the postmodern time (money, irony and nostalgic collage). What on earth does Xiao Yu demonstrate by such a temporal channel? Doesn’t he intend to indicate the solemn process and uproar of history?

　　　Really, the drama of objects does have the roar of history in it. Nevertheless, Xiao Yu has made every effort to manifest the absurdity in history, as he links up the historical clues. History always extends, but in an absurd way. In other words, absurdity is the quality of history. Xiao Yu has his work tinted with absurdity, but his sense of absurdity is not the same as the famous theatre of the absurd in the last century. The theatre of the absurd has taken anxiety and indignation as its expressive way, while Xiao Yu’s absurdity has been presented entirely by absurdity. Since absurdity is located within absurdity, the sense of absurdity leads neither to helplessness, nor to anxiety, nor to rage. On the contrary, this is a sort of out-and-out absurdity. Absurdity bursts in laughter, in unreasonableness, in irony, in sound and fury, and in short, absurdity bursts in absurdity. And those expository words, as important components in the drama, have intensified the absurd effects as well. They seem to suggest the intention of the drama, that is to say, to explain the drama as such, and to expose the “truth” in it. In fact, these sentences are all ambiguous and ironic, such as “We lightheartedly and merrily come along the path trodden by heroes,” “Fireworks waste money while bombs earn money,” and “You should do moneymaking deals if you have money.” Facing such suggestive sentences, we should not so much rack our brains in understanding its meaning, as experience its absurdity, the absurdity in history, and the absurdity in laughter. Here, a sentence rather than a word has been taken as the drama’s signature, an ironic sentence as its signature. Anyhow, these sentences are so significant that the drama would not be complete without them. Besides, these sentences as the drama’s signature are not extrinsic, but integral parts of it. To a great extent, these signature sentences purposely contradict their represented work itself, or in other words, it is not contradiction but irony which deliberately has the whole work self-split and self-dislocate. Obviously, Xiao Yu’s work is flooded with dislocation: English read in Chinese tones, emperor and hand telephone, gigantic spacecraft and small medicine box, outdated military coat and fashionable luxurious hat, one always wrongly thinks once he starts to think, and so on. Such dislocation runs through the whole work, the whole temporal system, and the whole spatial system, so that it even rises to far-ranging one, to far-ranging absurdity, to “global” dislocation and absurdity. In this way, we can (ironically) realize that actually “it is just the same all over the globe.”

Translated by Cao Leiyu  [edited by d.r.i.]

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