PIFO Gallery is delighted to announce the opening of Liang Shuo: The Grand Topology on 3:00pm, 27th January. This is the first solo exhibition to cooperate with artist. The exhibition will end on 15th March 2015.
In this exhibition, Liang Shuo builds a topological space in the gallery. The audience enters the gallery and thus gets into a topological space.
The theme “Tuo Pu Ou Le Ju” is a trick, a figure of speech that stresses the rhetoric itself. The fond taste for the excessive and the affected, boasts an undisguised affection for kitsch. An irony somehow arises from this overtness. This is perhaps what Liang means by the aesthetics of “Zha”.
However, to translate “topology” to “Tuo Pu Ou Le Ju” is not without a sound reason. Xu Guangqi translated “Geo” to “Ji he” according to the Shanghainese pronunciation of “Geo”. Xu Guangqi’s translation is both phonetic and sematic. So is Liang’s translation of “topology”. To create the impression of the localized kitsch, Liang reinterprets the imported word “Topology” by the concept “Zha”. Hence, the Chinese name “Tuo Pu Ou Le Ju” is reminiscent of a piece of property embellished with counterfeit roman columns.
Certainly, Liang’s work does not remain on the level of aesthetic or cultural taste. What fascinates him more is the working mechanism: to create possibilities under certain conditions. The conditions include specific spaces, concrete materials, limited budget or time etc. The possibilities offered by these conditions are unknown until they are activated by Liang’s ideas and craft.
The newly renovated exhibition space provides a solid starting point for Liang Shuo. The spatial structure and the form of exhibiting (which essentially dissolves the traditional concept of exhibiting) all derive from the characteristics of the gallery space. Liang aims to create the continuity of space and the reflexivity of viewing That is to say, the form of exhibiting becomes the exhibit, while the experience of the viewers becomes the view.
Continuity is a typical topological issue. Going beyond the continuity of surface and space, Liang moves towards the continuity of artistic system. By representing the full spectrum of the artistic production, Liang embraces the continuity of artistic system.
Confined by limited time and budget, Liang chooses light construction materials and soft decoration papers to erect his topological space. More specifically, Liang pieces these irregular panels together to a three dimensional structure. He spreads the rectangular panels on the ground and throws sticks randomly from above. The irregular forms of these panels, therefore, are determined by the lines created when the sticks land on the panels.
With this working mechanism, Liang obtains the real freedom, as freedom is not the romanticised hollow concept of “freedom without constraints”. The real freedom can only be obtained under restrict controls. To respect and follow the intrinsic qualities of things, to embrace the contingency, and even to create contingency by setting the rules of the game, Liang presents us here the crystallization of the unpredictable.
Actually, in Liang’s work, between taste and mechanism, in other words, between self and freedom, repulsion grows. Yet it is exactly this repulsion that fuels the two.
About the Artist
Born in 1976. In 2000 Liang Shuo graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Sculpture Major, in 2002-2007 he taught in Tsinghua University - Academy of Arts and Design, Sculpture Major, in 2005-06 Resident Artist in Royal Academy of Art, Netherlands; currently he lives and works in Beijing. His recent works has been included in Space Station (Beijing, China, 2014); The Armory Show(New York, America, 2014); Time Museum(Guangzhou, China 2014); Groningen Museum(Groningen, The Netherlands, 2013); Gallery Yang(Beijing, China, 2013); Pifo gallery(Beijing, China, 2012); National Museum of China(Beijing, China, 2012); Power Station of Art(Shanghai, China,2012); C5Art (Beijing, China, 2008); National Museum of Contemporary Art(Seoul, Korea, 2007); Museum Het Domein(Sittard, Holland, 2007); Museum Beelden aan zee(The Hague, Holland, 2005) and Kunstnernes Hus Art Museum(Oslo, Norway, 2001).
About the exhibition
Curator: Bao Dong
Opening: 3:00pm-6:00pm, 27 Jan.2015 (Tuesday)
Duration: Jan 27th, 2015 – Mar 15th, 2015
Address: PIFO Gallery, B-11,798 Art Zone, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Rd, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China
Courtesy of the artist and PIFO Gallery.
