2023.05.13-2023.06.16
Guan Xiao | “From Leaves to Shields” @ David Kordansky Gallery
Antenna Space is pleased to present From Leaves to Shields, an exhibition of new work by Guan Xiao. The exhibition will be on view in David Kordansky Gallery from May 13 through June 16, 2023.
Guan Xiao’s work traces the lineages and connections between disparate imagery and iconography sourced from the digital realm. The works on view imbue the flattening effect of the smartphone screen and generate cohesive textures from contrasting, and even conflicting, worlds to fuse old and modern, digital and analog, and natural and artificial modes. By juxtaposing discordant images and materials, the artist reconsiders the technological thrust of the present moment and the capacity for physical objects to store memory.
In From Leaves to Shields, Guan Xiao creates a new installation, paintings, and floor-based sculptures that explore design, technology, and our fractured relationship with the natural environment. Episodic poetry and visual references throughout the exhibition hone in on a more mnemonic approach to these themes. The works on view incorporate familiar motifs such as an apple emoji, plant life, and the color green—commonly associated with nature and environmentalism and mimic figurative forms in their presentation.
In the central triptych, the artist further explores the natural environment and the human influence in the manipulation of natural resources—both for creative purposes and for more industrial uses, like the design of combat weaponry. The first of the three canvases is reminiscent of a paint palette, a recurring form in the artist’s practice, which likens the maker’s hand to the manufacturing engine in production. A plant stem with visible nodes prominently extends out across the two adjacent rectangular canvases. Plants are a critical icon in Guan Xiao’s presentation, both in their self-protective quality, similar to a shield, and in their ability to store information on a cellular level, which strengthens their relationship to the internet’s capacity to endlessly store data. The artist abstracts found images of foliage to find a more haptic sensibility in the composition, pulling the viewer closer to—as if touching—the textures and patterns organically constructed from the collaged elements. The rippled pixelation and contrasting qualities in light and color showcase the influence of—and Guan Xiao’s engagement with—Impressionist techniques combined with low-res images sourced online.
Throughout the show, bronze-cast sculptures of tree roots—an ongoing typology in the artist’s larger project—populate the space. In these works, known as Root Sculptures, Guan Xiao rethinks the value of traditional objects, making futuristic, anthropomorphic sculptures that stretch out over the floor and extend upwards with antenna-like additions, implying ideas of transmission or communication. The twisted and gnarled tree trunks are made using the ancient Chinese tradition of root carving, a process of sculpting and polishing tree roots into chairs, tea tables, and other functional design objects that have continued well into today. Guan Xiao has described her Root Sculptures as an ideal form: they are at once ready-made and naturally shaped by environmental conditions, causing the tree roots to curve in shape over long periods of growth. The tree itself creates lines and shapes in the negative space, embodying a figurative-like form in movement.
In the installation, Apples are the butterfly’s favorite food,” Characaracal says. (2023), Guan Xiao combines several distinct objects to stage an independent environment within the exhibition. The figural sculptural object near the center of the installation continues the artist’s interest in how sculpture can mirror aspects of the human body. The other elements in the work form a subtle connection between the placement of specific fruits and materials in classical still lifes and human interpretation through memory associations. Together, they pose the question: can memory move beyond subjective interpretation and, instead, live in the physical properties of an object?
Across From Leaves to Shields, texts accompany the works on view, providing an entry point into each object from the artist’s perspective. While the narrative structure is not prescriptive, it functions as an alternative reading into the nuances of the material and narrative history of Guan Xiao’s work. The exhibition showcases life as it exists in the contemporary world and offers a perspective that life—in its excavation and co-opting of natural materials—is never far from nature’s influence.
Text and images courtesy of the artist, David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles.
Installation Views
Artworks
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Guan Xiao, “Apples are the butterfly’s favorite food,” Characaracal says., 2023
Brass, burnt acrylic color, tatami, and lacquer
88 1/4 x 181 x 108 inches
unique
She always spends long hours looking at butterflies, their thousands of species and dazzling compendiums. From Asia to South America, the same butterfly, with the same red, white, and black color scheme, transforms into countless patterns. A butterfly does not have two spots that are the same, never.
“I have a question.” He abruptly interrupts her endless wanderings about the spots.
“Like what?” She asks.
“It’s hard to say.” He stares straight at her.
“I’ve looked at you for a long time,” he says, “and still don’t know you.”
She looks at him and lowers her head again.
The tactility of the stone becomes gradually apparent to her hand, and its uneven and warm surface reminds her of the low walls on the farm in summer. She slowly feels the bumps and grits on the stone surface, enlivening her memories of the farm. The grits seem to provide evidence for the existence of those memories. But, like the spots on a butterfly, there are never two identical gravels in the world. The lingering butterfly spots in her mind and the tactility of the grits at her fingertips starts to overlap. For a moment, she wondered whether the touch from her fingers illuminated the spots, or the spots replicated such a touch. Could human memories be stored in the physical features of things that are never identical rather than in the human brain? In the dry grits of a stone, under the fragrant petals of a spring flower, or in a butterfly’s gently opening and closing wings?
Memories are as immense as the universe. The universe is a memory. We have never died, and we have never been born.
“Why do people always eat apples?” She asks him, looking up.
“They like the way apples taste?” He replied.
“No.” She stared straight at him.
“Because we don’t always know what apples taste like, and no two apples taste precisely the same.
There is no such a thing as the taste of an apple in the world.”作品信息Information -
Guan Xiao, Autumn Arrows, 2023
Wood panel, polyester putty base, and acrylic color
78 3/4 x 145 5/8 x 2 1/8 inches
unique作品信息Information -
Guan Xiao, Bush Braid, 2023
Wood panel, polyester putty base, and acrylic color
79 x 145 5/8 x 2 1/4 inches
unique作品信息Information -
Guan Xiao, FEET, 0&Q storm, 2023
Brass, burnt acrylic color, motorcycle parts, rope, and fibreglass
51 x 50 x 50 inches
unique in a series of 3
Ants hiding under a leaf during a storm
The leaves of plants and human shields share similar characteristics, both in shape and functionality. Whether plants inspired humans to make shields, or all life on earth shares the same memories, is hard to affirm. The leaves tremble violently in the heavy rain, and under one of them hide a few tiny ants, a ladybug, and a butterfly with wet wings. They wait motionlessly and quietly for the heavy rain to pass, so they can climb onto the leaf and enjoy the energy from the sunlight anew.
The main body of this sculpture resembles a warrior standing with a spear in his hand, which extends to the ground and becomes a soft rope and the plant’s stem. He leans behind the disc, perhaps his giant shield or a shelter behind the leaf.作品信息Information -
Guan Xiao, FEET, Ci6 dawn, 2023
Brass, rope, burnt acrylic color, and fiberglass
52 x 37 x 32 inches
unique in a series of 3
Relax.
The day is yet to arrive,
the wind is yet to blow,
the birds are yet awake,
and the bed is yet to go cold.
Swinging gently in natural drooping.
No hunting today.
The “C,” “i,” and “6” are formal analogies of this sculpture. “FEET” is at the bottom of the sculpture and looks like a standing foot, hence the overall posture of the sculpture looks like a free-standing figure. The disc hangs effortlessly without a sense of deliberate installation, which acts as a leaf or a hanging shield. The nails represent the stems of the plant, and the spears, and a piece of thread. I want to render a natural laxity with a loose sculptural structure. The sense of light is essential to me, so I chose “dawn” because it is the most relaxing time of the day, a magical moment that is unlike the peaceful night, but a calmness with transparency when everything is yet to happen, everything is waking up, everything is possible, everything is in time.
The leaves hang low, the treetops tremble lightly, the shield hangs on the wall, and the spears lean next to the trees. The radiance at dawn nourishes the earth like limpid water.作品信息Information -
Guan Xiao, FEET, V7V bow, 2023
Brass, rope, burnt acrylic color, and fiberglass
79 x 57 x 44 inches
unique in a series of 3
There is no absolute parallel,
all lines converge at the end.
The letter “V” represents the shape of the rope, and the number “7” represents the shape of the nails. They also represent the stems and limbs of the plant, ropes, and spears. While both “V” and “7” consist of two lines converging to a point. “FEET” similarly suggests the overall sculpture as a standing human figure. The “bow” refers to the semi-ring structure at the top of this piece.作品信息Information -
Guan Xiao, Horizontal line, Road Trip, 2023
Brass, rope, burnt acrylic color, and fiberglass
horizontal trunk: 227x38x30cm
41 x 89 x 16 inches
unique in a series of 3
The “Horizontal line” is how I conceive a sculpture that consists of top and bottom parts. In any sculpture or object that is divided into two parts, there is a horizon line, depending on our perspective angle. Like the horizon that divides the sky and earth, or the sky and the ocean. It’s also similar to when our body lies flat with a bed beneath it, a piece of paper placed on a table, or a couple embracing one another. It divides things into two as much as it unites them.
The undulating structure of this sculpture suggests the various unexpected events on a road trip, which can be scenic views and obstacles.作品信息Information -
Guan Xiao, The Stars Overhead, OK-3, 2023
Brass, rope, burnt acrylic color, fiberglass, and motorcycle parts
56 x 33 x 26 inches
unique in a series of 3
If one were to film the motion of the stars for 24 hours, one would see multiple loops. And if such observation were to be carried out continuously for one year, their positions would change into intricate and tangled curves in constant variation and rotation. The stars overhead are analogies for the curly shape of the upper part of the sculpture. The letter “O” refers to the disc, and the “K-3” refers to the bottom structure, which looks like a K and 3 are coming together. The rope embodies both a soft spear, the roots and stems, and the lines that hold them together. Both the rope extending to the floor and the ready-made objects suggest the piece of thread undermining the boundary of this sculpture and outwardly expressing a kind of exchange and invitation.作品信息Information -
Guan Xiao, Twin Servants (Vertical Lines, Dinner in the Jungle) , 2023
Brass, burnt acrylic color, fiberglass, lacquer, stainless steel, motorcycle parts, and toner
87 x 45 x 14 inches
unique in a series of 3
Dinner in the jungle
the moon hangs atop a tree
cutleries scatter all over the place,
no one’s eating,
and no one’s sleeping.作品信息Information