Yuan Zhang
An interview with
Yuan Zhang Hi Yuan, welcome to LandEscape. Let’s start with our usual ice-breaker question: what, in your opinion, defines a work of Art? And what do you think are the distinctive features that mark the contemporary peculiarities of an artwork? One of the most important elements within a work of art is participation. By participating in the resonances, the viewers, the artists and the passers by are able to hear the poetry within the work. Repercussions generated within this encounter invite us to give greater depth to our experience. Once reverberated, the poem possesses us entirely in “a veritable awakening of poetic creation.” (in Bachelard, G, 1999) This awakening is rooted directly into our everyday lives and enables within us a transcendence of the ordinary, and a glimpse beneath the skin of familiarity. When talking about art today, we are ever more susceptible to thinking about it in terms of its confusions and contradictions. According to George an interview with Brecht, this sensibility is symptomatic of a difficulty in finding convincing attitudes within the contempo-rary a world where we are confronted with an ever-greater number of positions. (in Henry Martin, 2000) Contemporary art does not solve problems; it provides potentials. I am extremely interested in artists who attempt to articulate deep truths within their practice. For example, Picasso once described art as a lie that brings us closer to the truth. I like this observation for, whatever our perspective, we are not solely dealing in emptiness, but in a deeper meaning beyond tangible form.
Yuan Zhang
your creative process and especially about your set up for making your works. By the way, do you visualize your works before creating? Do you know what it will look like before you begin? I invest the ordinary experiences of my everyday life into my artistic practice. Montages of dreams and unconsciousness memories are thus transferred into a more universally perceivable realm through their becoming material, and sensorial. Therefore, the material of my work is derived from my experiences, memories, imagination, knowledge, emotions, etc. I think of this ‘material’ in terms of it being a sort of supermarket within my mind. With my personal psychological supermarket in mind, I work by making a sort of shopping list whereby I map out a story through selecting certain experiential ‘products’ and combining them as if ingredients within a recipe. When creating these recipes, it is important for me that I deal with the ingredients with honesty and respect.
The whole reason behind being an artist is to uncover "an eternal void, filled with the infinite possibilities." (Tao Te Ching) Here, the artist is able to reveal deep, and sometimes unseen truths. To reveal these truths, however, implies that one knows what they are - which isn’t often the case. Searching therefore, whether in light or in darkness, it is the artist’s job to feel through the connecting threads and, if they are lucky enough to stumble upon a sense of truth, their challenge is to make this truth visible.
Before getting in the matter of your art production I would like to ask you something about
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