Nature has generously endowed the world with coils. Many kinds of reptiles or crustaceans boast the ability to coil their bodies, but other animals also make use of this shape - if only during sleep. What we observe in some species externally is much more common under the skin: nerve ganglia, brain ganglia, etc., to end up in a fetus that remains in a coiled position until birth.
Man probably picked up on and gave the form of coils to some everyday objects very early on, and with the evolution and development of technology, coils and their uses continue to increase. We derive many benefits from the myriad varieties of coils, but there are some, such as barbed wire, that are unlikely to bring glory to man.
Fortunately, scrolls proved equally useful in more prestigious domains of human activity, such as art and religion. Scrolls appeared and perpetuated independently in many very distant cultures, because they proved to be an insanely convenient form of recording and easily carrying long texts. In Asia, because of their panoramic shape, they were used to paint pictures, very often landscapes. We have plenty of examples of such painting already in ancient China, as well as in Japan, where they enjoyed and still enjoy extraordinary popularity. Scrolls have not escaped photography either, where the era of glass plates was followed by medium-format scroll film, and a little later by 35-millimeter film, borrowed from film, ending with today's large-format computer prints. In today's China, torn between centuries-old tradition and the rush for modernity, one can find a great many extremely interesting attempts to combine the conservative legacy with contemporary currents in art. Out of necessity, I will limit myself here to two examples.
Luo Yongjin, born in 1960, an artist who has tasted knowledge in several faculties, moving freely between calligraphy, painting and visual arts. A citizen of the world fluent in English, he is known to audiences on several continents. He has also exhibited in Poland (Poznań). By day, he is a professor at the Shanghai Institute of Design at the China Academy of Fine Art. His interests are wide-ranging, because - like most Chinese artists - he is not ashamed of anything and has no complexes at any point. Hence, in addition to typically modernist or multimedia projects, he does a great deal of (para)documentary photography, so here (for lack of space) I would like to mention only his panoramic paintings. So far he has two types of them. The first he takes with a 6 x 18 cm camera - with a lens that moves in a circle - but he puts small-image film in it, which makes the frame an impressive 24 mm by 18 cm. In addition, he takes pictures in rather difficult light conditions without a tripod. This means that the total exposure time of a hand-held photo can be as long as 18 seconds. The effects are sometimes remarkable, but these are not the photographs I have selected for this publication. The second type of panoramas he creates are more complex in nature. Most often, these are images of the hyperspans constructed in China at every turn. Luo shoots them with an analog camera with a zoom, breaking the form of the building into parts, while paying little attention to the fit of the individual elements, and even playing with the focal length and focus of the image. One can't help but notice a certain similarity with David Hockney's work, although the artistic message here is quite different. These chopped images of buildings are shown vertically, of course, in very large formats in the form of computer prints on very fine papers, such as handmade or even on silk. The juxtaposition of tradition and modernity here has an almost spiritual dimension, as is the case with Chinese ancestor worship. The charm and depth of these images can only be tasted by interacting with the originals.
Yang Yongliang is 20 years younger than Luo and was for some time his student. His first exhibition was at the Ophoto gallery, of which Yongjin is the founder. When I made my last trip to China so far in 2007, I happened to be in the final days of his exhibition. I must admit that Yongliang's works completely shocked me, despite the fact that I have quite a distance from photoshop and new technologies. And when I learned that one work of two meters in length with a wrap costs "barely" $1,000, I absolutely wanted to buy one; only that it was too late, because everything sold out by the last number declared by the author. Two years later, his works have cosmic prices, as their author is one of the more shining stars of Chinese contemporary art. Recently, his newer works could be seen at the Arles Encounters, where he was one of the most serious candidates for the "Discovery of the Year" award. And what is so special about these works? Well, Yang started from the most classic landscapes, that is, panoramic scrolls usually depicting (sacred) mountains, water, trees and mist. At first glance, nothing out of the ordinary; all stamped in red and circled as tradition dictates. It's only when you take a closer look that it becomes apparent that the mountains are not mountains, the trees are not trees; that it's all some sort of cluster of towers of Babel or perhaps Babelian peaks built of concrete, glass and iron. Quite like Borowski's: "What will be left of us is scrap iron, and the deafening mocking laughter of generations."
The two Chinese artists have a lot in common, although they belong to two different generations. Both draw inspiration from their heritage and both are characterized by a skeptical view of progress. They are acutely aware of the dangers facing civilization, and are able to speak about it incisively and holistically, and sometimes more interestingly than many other concerned artists on planet Earth.
Photographs courtesy of OFOTO Gallery, Shanghai
The article appeared in issue 31 of "Fotografia Quarterly" in 2009