JP/CARLA BIANPOEN
The first time I saw a work by the group UNMASK, it was at an art fair in Beijing in 2007. At that time I thought UNMASK was the title of the work featuring a figure that had parts of the body cut out.
This stunning sculpture was made of thin white steel, striking and intriguing by its aesthetic reminiscence to the old style, as well as by its innovative form marking the contemporary element in the work.
As I learned, UNMASK is a group of three Chinese artists in their thirties – Liu Zhan, 32, Tan Tain, 32, and Wei Kuang Jun, 30 – who decided in 2001 to work together under this name.
They were still students of the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing. Even before they graduated in 2003, they were awarded first prize at the academy’s Graduating Students Exhibition. They then moved on, exploring the human figure using unusual materials and making their presence felt at exhibition halls in various countries.
The exhibition at the Beyond Art Space gallery in Beijing comes after a two-year lull. Titled “0 degrees”, the exhibition showcases works that have the appearance of installations or three dimensional structures in which human figures in apparent super realistic style are set in a virtual world where human relations seem to be nonexistent. The human figures with body parts covered by hair suggestive of unusual animal’s hair, which somewhat blurs the margin between humans and animals, are without expression though under a spell of melancholy They are set within an ellipse, giving the impression of sitting in a virtual space or a void of haunting and desolate isolation. This might well be a futuristic vision of human existence. The artists, however, deny any social or political reference.
For them, human beings remain the central theme, but they appear in continuously different shapes. In their “Transparency” series of 2006, for instance, they created human bodies with the aesthetics of classical sculptures, but removed parts that clearly defined gender and ethnicity, rendering sculptures of genderless human proportions and unusual beauty. In the current exhibition at Beyond Art Space, their figures are eerily realistic, but lacking the natural.
Suggesting another world, another space and another time, perhaps another era, one that is yet to come but that nobody is yet aware of.
Amid the tendencies of revisited history and tradition, pop and the overwhelming comics and animation of the present time, UNMASK seem to go down their own path of exploration, putting the public under their spell of mystery, apprehension and elation.
This is their second exhibition at Beyond Art Space, a gallery established in 2007 by Jing Li and managed by Mila Bollansee.
0° – UNMASK 2009
Participating Artists: UNMASK Art Group
Curator: Liu Chunfeng
through April 8th, 2009
at Beyond Art Space (Beijing 798)
798 East St., 798 Art Dist., No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang Dist.,
Beijing 100015 China
tel +86 10 59789561 fax +86 10 59789579
www.beyondartspace.com
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