Li Qing，Images of Mutual Undoing and Unity·Mei-Lanfang

2 photos, dimension variable & oil on canvas, 170 x 127 cm x 2 2008

Li Qing’s earliest series was Finding Differences based on an entertainment often shown on television: two fairly similar pictures are shown on the screen, and the audience is asked to spot all the differences in a short time. In Li Qing’s version of this quiz, he created a series of scenes imparting subtle differences between the two panels. Afterwards, he began working on his Images of Mutual Undoing and Unity series. The gist of this series is that two separately painted canvases are pressed together before the paint is dry. The two resulting images are similar, muddled, and riddled with divergences. One could say that this format injects “performance” into painting, and that such painting is no longer an activity confined to an easel-mounted surface. All paintings done on an easel display a certain static quality, and once the paint is dry, they become fixed objects. The act of “mutual undoing” deliberately brings in random, unpredictable and even violently destructive elements into the paintings. The language is made to submit to, or perhaps join with, forces from here-and-now reality, so that painting turns into a more fluid medium. Compared with Finding Differences, the latter series is conceptually more intense. What is more, in his early productions, Li stressed the absoluteness of concept. That is, he emphasized the cohesion of surfaces to the detriment of “readability” in the pictures. Later he made adjustments in this respect, painting with an eye to the outcome and controlling the cohesion. He also tried techniques of partial cohesion, so that even after “mutual undoing” the two pictures would preserve rich and subtle differences. Having gone through this exploratory stage, he achieved impressive results in his renewed treatment of this series: Poet and His Wife (2007) and Mei Lanfang (2008) .

Afterwards, he transplanted this concept from easel-mounted surfaces to installation and video. In Ping-pong (2007) , the two sides of a ping-pong table were painted with maps of China and America. In the process of playing ping pong, the ball constantly picked up spots of pigment from the two maps as it went back and forth across the net. In the end the two maps grew spotted and indistinct, like diagrams altered by spontaneous, disorderly “stippling.” Or one could say that they looked like misaligned color prints. Use of Chinese and U.S. maps here reminds the viewer of early stages of “ping-pong diplomacy” and the subsequent history of ceaseless discord and interchange between the two countries: the densely spotted maps serve as a visual metaphor. After this came another piece, Training Room (2008) , in which two ping pong players, with a mirrored wall between them, each hit their own balls against the wall’s surface. This can be seen as an antithesis to the theme of “Ping-pong”: it implies that true interchange between oneself and the other cannot exist, and that all such efforts are illusions setting forth from and returning to the self.

Finding Differences and Images of Mutual Undoing and Unity are continuing series. They are like two compartmented boxes which into which Li Qing alternately deposits his subject matter and inspiration. In fact, in his early stage of creating Finding Differences one could clearly sense the playfulness of a youthful heart. In his paintings he erected and threw open a labyrinth where his own daily experiences were put in storage, and he lured viewers to come in and explore it. In such paintings, which have now been set aside, we can discern the contemporary setting in which a young artist lives and breathes: a child wearing a red neckerchief, a photo of a graduating class, a bachelor’s room, TV news, the moody scene in front of an apartment building, cartoon stickers along the edge of a computer screen, a sculpture in a traffic island, crowds in a park, a burning building, a tattooed girl on a dark street, disorder, freshness, this reality being rewritten by globalism which forces itself into our field of vision….yet the onward development of his art, whether in the Finding Differences or Images of Mutual Undoing and Unity is a process which increases his distance from that youthful experience . Historical memory and topical references are entering into his work, and they are gradually taking on decisive proportions. This means that his horizons have grown wider; he intends to perceive and comprehend current life as a whole. At the same time, he seeks out the underlying forces that feed into the unique temporal setting in which we find ourselves.

Irony and lyricism are interwoven in Li Qing’s works. Often he uses his own “language installation” to gain perspective on political incidents and ideological concoctions. In Hero's Return (2005) the astronaut, under the escort of guards, receives a warm welcome from crowds along a street. In the first picture, we notice that his bearing is stiff and he seems bewildered by the attention. It seems he has not gotten used to such grand occasions. To exaggerate a bit, his posture resembles that of a prisoner being marched along by his escort. In the second picture, he is making a sweeping gesture with his hand, as if he has gotten used to the role of “hero.” We can surmise that his life from here on out will be an unceasing series of meetings with leaders, with appearances at televised interviews, award ceremonies, lectures, and briefings. In the process he will become more practiced, assured, and eloquent, but as this happens he will gradually lose his own sense of self, until he will look in the mirror and see the typecast image of a hero. Through this contrast Li Qing deftly exposes the schismatic process of a person’s image. Yet when an astronaut really is situated in the starry reaches of space, testing the limits of human endeavor, he definitely possesses the hallmarks of a hero. However, after making his victorious return, when he sets his feet back on the ground, he cannot help lapsing into the role of tool for ideological propaganda, an image for political advertising.

At other times, Li Qing tries to encapsulate history in a lyrical treatment of fragments. Seizing on a telling metaphor, he “converts history into a tragic moment of joy.” (See “Between Athens and Jerusalem,” an interview with the poet Adam Zagajewski.) Thus his works often possess a buoyant, poetic mode of expression. Take his piece Mirror for example. These two paintings depict a corner of a courtyard, possibly somewhere south of the Yangzi River. In the past, it may have been the courtyard of a wealthy family. Later the estate was probably divided into separate quarters for many families. Hence the garden design was completely destroyed and no trace of the original artful garden can be seen now. Nothing but the plants - old trees, climbing vines, flowers and weeds – have managed to escape the onslaught of history. If we see the courtyard corner as a fragment of historical change, then what the artist does is to magnify a fragment of a historical fragment, a corner of a corner. Just as the protagonist in Antonioni’s film Blow-up solves a murder by details in a photograph, the painter solves a fatality that happened in history. What were these shifts that happened across time? How was the bygone world reduced to decay and oblivion?

What will continue to linger, and what is gone irrecoverably? The intricate and subtle amalgam of emotions and thoughts that arise when we reminisce about this period of history is truthfully captured in the “before and after” of these paintings. Interestingly, when these two pictures are placed side by side and compared, they seem to evoke a far longer stretch of historical transition than the time lapse suggested by the actual differences in their details. Here are some signs of change in the paintings: the widening crevices on the wall, the sagging of a drain pipe, the strip of tape on the dressing table, traces of a different person in the hazy mirror, as well as a window frame without a window. Wild flowers and weeds climb over the edge of the concrete plant trough, sprawling outward, just as the effect of time takes over the whole courtyard bit by bit, day by day.

Such imaginative lyricism is also found in Mating (2007, 2008) . Up to the present Li Qing has created four versions of this subject. In each one a China Airlines passenger jet or Chinese fighter jet is merged with an American or French passenger plane or transport plane. Unlike other works in the Images of Mutual Undoing and Unity series, in Mating the cohesion of picture surfaces does not lead to confusion of forms. We may remember that intermixture was one of Magritte’s surrealist techniques: that is, he joined two familiar objects together to form a third bewildering object. For example, the union of toes and a shoe resulted in an oddity that was neither toes nor shoe. In Li Qing’s case, through cohesion the two planes constitute a dynamic story line, anthropomorphized and associated with coitus. The different types and nationalities of planes make us think of coital partners who are different in race and physique, or who approach coitus in different roles or states of desire. This erotic theme is metaphorically extended to the different political systems behind the two coital partners, or to their cultural backgrounds and current historical realities. It would seem to be an irreverent commentary on the clashing and meshing that come with globalization.