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| Liu Zhuoquan in his Beijing studio, 2015, Photo: Luise Gues |
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| Liu Zhuoquan Self portraits - reading, 2016 four glass bottles, mineral pigments, rubber stoppers |
One Man, With Courage…’ Liu Zhuoquan
Beijing-based
artist Liu Zhuoquan is best known for beautiful installations of glass vessels
in which delicately painted objects, animals and people are captured, suspended
like specimens floating in formaldehyde. The walls of his Beijing studio are
lined with shelves; on every shelf is an array of glass bottles of different
shapes and sizes. Inside their curved surfaces the artist has depicted every
conceivable aspect of his world. It’s like a cabinet of curiosities or a museum
of specimens: as you turn your head your vision fills with crawling insects,
leaping fish, fluttering birds and a vast panoply of flora and fauna. More
disturbingly, though, other bottles contain coiled black snakes, human body
parts and internal organs, screaming faces, and images of beaten or executed
prisoners.
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| Liu Zhuoquan Sparrow, 2016 four glass bottles, mineral pigments, rubber stoppers Height - 18.5cm |
A
debate earlier this year at the National Gallery of Victoria asked whether
artists have a moral responsibility to speak out about political and social
issues. Should artists actively address issues of power, of corruption, of
oppression? Can art actually make a difference? The omnipresence of social
media and technology allows ordinary people to access information on an
immediate and unprecedented scale, even in highly censored societies. Many
citizens, artists most particularly, feel an obligation to address the uncomfortable
truths thus revealed, bringing to the surface things that would otherwise
remain hidden. In a measured and nuanced
way, Liu Zhuoquan does exactly this. Since his earliest childhood in Wuhan he
has witnessed and experienced the misuse and abuse of power, and he applies a unique
ancient Chinese craft practice to reveal some of the most troubling aspects of
his world.
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| Liu Zhuoquan Self portraits - drinking, 2016 four glass bottles, minera |
On
my first visit to Liu’s studio some years ago, amongst a profusion of painted
plants, insects and birds, I noticed a pair of bottles slightly set apart on a
small shelf. The larger of the two contained a portrait of a pony-tailed young
woman in jeans and T-shirt standing awkwardly with her hands behind her back,
the smaller contained just her head. I asked the artist about their
significance. He told me the bottles belonged to a series, portraits of executed
prisoners. The awkward young woman had been found guilty of murder and
sentenced to death, her photograph published in the newspaper. It has been
estimated that up until 2010, almost 5000 people were executed each year in
China; since 2014 that figure has halved, although the precise statistics are a
state secret. Liu Zhuoquan’s growing disquiet about the state apparatus of
crime and punishment in China resulted in a recent series of bottles featuring
police and their prisoners, but his preoccupation with the subject is not new, and
one may look to incidents in the artist’s own life and family history for an
explanation.
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| Liu Zhuoquan Policemen in a bottle, 2016 giclee print edition of 5 |
A
saying attributed to Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United
States, has particular resonance in the context of this brave body of work: ‘One
man with courage makes a majority.’ The notion of the singular brave individual
wielding the moral power to create change is, of course, highly problematic in
China today, where the authoritarian collectivism of the socialist past
collides with a new aspirational individualism. Tensions and conflicts are the
inevitable result, seen in recent covert Smartphone videos showing rebellious
villagers protesting land seizures or potentially toxic industrial developments
battling armed police. Other videos
circulating on Chinese social media show the violence of the feared ‘Chengguan’
municipal law and order cops against marginalised street vendors and rural
migrant workers on construction sites. Together with the recently renewed
phenomenon of nightly televised ‘confessions’ from human rights lawyers,
journalists – even Hong Kong book sellers – these images are a significant
aspect of Liu’s world and contribute to his sense that there is a darkness at
the heart of Chinese society.
Liu’s
painted glass vessels reveal these often-hidden aspects of
today’s China, as well as stories from the past. He has
adapted the ‘nei hua’ (inside bottle painting) technique, an exquisite
tradition dating from the Qing Dynasty,
used to ornament decorative snuff bottles. Tiny curved brushes inserted into
the bottles apply mineral pigments to the roughened inside surface, reversing
the usual painting technique by painting from front to back. Like many other
art and craft practices seen as relics of the feudal past, this was largely forbidden
during the years of Mao’s rule. Appropriating this imperial tradition, often
using images sourced from newspapers or social media, Liu combines his
contemporary sense of irony with acute observation of people, and the fragile
beauty of nature.
He once
described his studio as a scientific laboratory where he is recording the ‘ten
thousand things’ of Taoist philosophy. In ancient China this phrase meant
‘everything that exists in the world’, the simultaneous sameness and difference
of every element of the universe, the beautiful and the terrible alike.
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| Liu Zhuoquan Bullet, 2016 three glass bottles, mineral pigments, rubber stoppers Height - 18.5cm |
A
work such as Bullet (2016) recalls
stories from the not-so-distant past – maybe urban myth, or maybe not – of
families sent a bill for five fen to
offset the cost of the bullet used to end the life of their husband or wife,
son or daughter. Liu’s painted bullet, floating in its stoppered bottle, evokes
forensic science and the aftermath of violence. A narrative told with such economy of means
emphasises rather than diminishes the horror. Two miniaturised police officers
stand with their backs to us inside similar bottles, suggesting that they too
are trapped in a system over which they have no control: they are just obeying
orders, a chilling phrase we have heard too often before. These anonymous authority
figures also make an appearance in Two
policemen (2007), an earlier oil on canvas work, but the larger scale of
the painting changes the meaning – seen from behind, against a
loosely painted,
greenish-white background, we are starkly reminded of their power.
To read the rest of the essay, the catalogue is available from Niagara Galleries: HERE
I love the glass bottles, but I think after long consideration my favourite work in the exhibition is a painting on more conventional canvas. Two policemen in ill-fitting baggy uniforms are seen from behind, in the characteristic bored pose of soldiers or police officers with sore feet who've been standing for a long time. They are also victims of a system that seeks (and sees) dangerous dissent everywhere.
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| Liu Zhuoquan Two policemen, 2007 oil on canvas 99.5 x 70cm |