A pattern in its most basic form is something which involves a repetition of a number of elements spaced out in a regular way, to create a form which is often aesthetically pleasing. Patterns exist in nature — snowflakes and spirals would be an example, but the majority of those we see are man made.
In this show we are using the term “holding pattern” as a metaphor to examine human behavior — the accumulated actions which we repeat so often that they become second nature to us. We are in a sense, “held” by these patterns and our actions are governed by their principles just a pattern is governed by its own aesthetic principles.
When we see a piece of polka-dotted cloth, red with white polka dots, we do not question why each polka-dot is white, but if someone were to take just one polka dot and paint it green well then the whole pattern would be thrown off kilter, and we would question what that green polka-dot was doing, and who made that aesthetic decision.
Zhang Hao creates this effect with his work “One Night with the King,” which features a slowly disintegrating pattern of Middle Eastern motifs. As the pattern fades away, it creates room for an ambiguous object which dominates the foreground — a piece of wood which seems to be wrapped in a black and white patterned shroud. Has someone lain one night with the king? Perhaps? But there seems to be more than this, something of a whiff of a burial here, with an almost corpse-like lump beneath the cloth, where the presence of a body can almost be discerned. In this work, there is something akin to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” In the turn-of-the-century American short story, the female protagonist is confined to a room upon diagnosis of post-partum mental illness. During her confinement, she becomes obsessed with the wallpaper and then finds a way to crawl behind the wall paper and enter its world.
Her description of the pattern in the book could speak to not only this work but also the greater themes of this show:
“At night inany kind of light, in twilight, candle light, lamplight and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.
I didn’t realize for a long time what things showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it’s a woman.
By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour.”
Though Zhang Hao’s work does not offer up any such reading about the medical profession and gender biased diagnoses of hysteria, there is something sinister about his pattern. While at once cheerful and almost cartoonlike, it descends into something awkward and broken towards the bottom of the canvas as if traditions and behaviors are slowly starting to degrade into something twisted and shattered.
This device of layering two images atop each other occurs as well in his other work “Ladies,” which features a television test pattern, rendered in leaden hues (rather than the usual fluorescent pinks and greens, overlaid with a white wash of ghostly figures. These women stand as if they are in a police line up, only a witness would find it impossible to identify them, as their faces have been completely obliterated — rendered identical by the white washing effects of media upon human actions.
But there is something interesting in their poses as if they are facing the charges of some highfalutin parenting association which has deemed them unfit mothers for allowing their children to watch too much television. Media such as television and film play a huge role in the imprinting of such patterns on our psyches, something we see reflected in Zhang Hao’s work “The Politics of Translation” which depicts the iconic Hollywood sign. Originally erected in the Santa-Monica Hills to stimulate real estate development in the region — the sign came to symbolize the seductive power of the movie industry, not only to draw hopeful actors but also to seduce viewers with its values and ideas. Zhang has created a pun on the Chinese phrase “hao-lai-wu” 好莱坞 — the normal transliteration of the word Hollywood which involves the character for good “hao” for a kind of root “lai” and for a sort of land form “wu.” Zhang’s version of “hao-lai-wu” uses the characters for “hobby,”“come,” and “martial arts.” The phrase begins to make a bit more sense when see that the scene is staged in black and white atop a hill, the likely backdrop of some martial arts film, where we can almost expect two bearded figures to appear from behind a rock swords blazing. Here Zhang makes a quiet joust at the American film industry, a challenge perhaps to some sort of cultural duel.
Magdalen Wong offers several of her own meditations on media and it’s influence in pattern making. Her installation “MMM Wow,” consists of a number of television screens placed flat on the ground all playing a video with the light emanating in a small halo around the televisions. The video begins with a short clip of two ninjas laughing, then to a girl eating a cucumber and saying “oh yeah,” while another grabs her hamburger, and through filmic device called a “match on action” seemingly hands it across into another screen to Obama (or an actor dressed as Obama) who takes a bite of a burger. Then a bowl appears on a table and someone says “wah,” and a general crosses his legs while just at that moment his aid sprays his bare foot with some kind of perfume or medicine. This tele-stream of consciousness continues with clowns, la vache qui rit, a series of child detectives, a woman in a ridiculous yellow polka-dot hat, sumo wrestlers, the Hong Kong cartoon character laofuzi or Master Q, break dancing and Ronald Macdonald. What the viewer sees however is just the flicker of light and the different kinds of exultations, be they sighs of satisfaction, giggles, shrieks of happiness or the distinctly Chinese “wah” which seems to lack an English equivalent in connoting a certain kind of wonder or awe.
By splicing all of these sounds together, Wong lays bare the mechanisms of advertising which aim to work us into a frenzy, presenting us with ideal lifestyles which we should try to emulate, so we too can be as happy as they are. In turning these televisions face down, Wong is helping us to free ourselves from their Medusa-like gaze.
Another video work “Build Break Bricks” features a constant flicker of different images of line drawings created by children overlaid with black brick-like rectangles which slowly climb up the screen and then retreat. The movement of the bricks is complemented by a rhythmic clicking soundtrack almost military in its precision. Somehow one cannot help but think of the morning exercises that children are made to do as a way of instilling discipline or the art classes which focus more on coloring in a solid form rather than creating something wholly new without any parameters.
“Baby Pink Baby Blue,” picks up on this same theme of painting within the lines using a small plastic doll as its subject matter. The baby sits on all fours while a paintbrush colors in its diaper distributing pink paint all over it at first and then covering it with a layer of blue paint and so on until it becomes almost ridiculously large from the accumulations of pigment. The idea conveyed is that the child is of course completely powerless choose his or her sexual orientation. Interestingly enough a case in Canada in 2011 brought this issue to a head: a couple, Kathy Witterick and David Stocker, parents of two boys gave birth to a third child, Storm, whose gender they kept a secret to everyone except their family doctor and the immediate family members. They did this in an attempt to allow Storm some space to decide his or her own gender without being pushed in either direction. The couple’s first two children have a very flexible idea about gender and often wear dresses and long hair.
As a result they frequently receive taunting from local children and parents but remarkably they learned to deal with it in an incredibly well-adjusted way, responding to questions about their gender calmly and logically. Though the family has been greatly criticized by the right-wing talk-show contingent, it’s encouraging to see the space they have opened up for dialogue.
Families in fact play a very large role in creating and enforcing patterns. This idea comes through in Wong’s work “Chains,” an installation piece consisting of a series of used gold chains which form the structural element of a security chain — the kind one uses when one wants to open the door a crack without letting another person gain entry. Wong has gathered used gold chains, the kind that might be handed down or given as gifts. The use of these “used chains” stresses the ties between family members which create a web — a security net through which no one can fall. At the same time, these chains are also chains that hold, that stop, that restrict movement and certainly certain kinds of actions and behaviors that may be deemed unacceptable in a given family.
Working with this concept of fixed parameters and change, Wong’s installation “Stickies,” adds a playful element of randomness. Despite the patterns and rigid structures which we use to bring order and safety to our lives, fate nonetheless steps in add a playfull element of unpredictability. Her installation work consists of a series of sticky notes with different words written on each note to form a sentence. When a guest removes a note, a new word appears but the sentence is still a sentence, but only with a different meaning. The pattern of the colored stripes, blue, pink, purple and yellow remains the same but the content of the sentence may change from “You think I missed her” to “I believe you saw him.” In a sense it’s like our lives: we are cut from a certain kind of mold but we may constantly find ourselves in different situations replicating the same behavior with different people.
Li Haifeng’s work, “Waiting for Godot,” echoes this theme of behavior and reinforcement, featuring a crowd of people happily applauding, very much like the cast of “MMM Wow.” A group stands around a banister clapping towards an unknown area as if something momentous has just happened. It could be a child taking its first steps, a couple getting married — any event small or large which receives some sort of public recognition. Li has titled the work, “Waiting for Godot,” after Becket’s absurdist play. Though Becket did not mean for the word “Godot,” to be a stand in for “god” (the original play was written in French where the word for god is “dieu”) there is a definite existential connotation to the play and the work. We as humans want to be rewarded. We want to be praised to be told that what we are doing is right that our lives are meaningful, that our repeated actions on earth amount to something more than a pretty pattern.
His other work, “Bridge,” offers a poignant counterpoint. From the center of the picture plane juts a long board which looks like a dock or a diving board — leading one into the middle of a lake. It has the same sense of “event” or “performance” as “Waiting for Godot” and the same lack of a central figure or action. In this work Li employs a similar technique although the medium is slightly different. All of the forms in the painting are constructed through layers and layers of spirals, circles — taking the concept of “holding pattern” into aesthetic territory. But where “Bridge” differs from the first work is that it seems to offer a different path, way to leave the pattern, to dive off the dock and swim off in a different direction. And it’s from this jumping off point that we enter the other side of this exhibition — the works of Jiang Guozhe — the no-man’s land beyond the pattern, off the grid so to speak.
The characters in his paintings are all children, and have had less time to be conditioned by the mechanisms of society. The patterns bear only a light imprint upon them at this stage. They are surrounded by what looks like semi-natural semi urban environments engaged in games of imagination.
“Cloud, Moon, Light,” features two boys playing what looks like some kind of shadow boxing with costumes and props, in an ambiguous realm of shade, trees and walls. While the ironically titled “Spring,” depicts a child emerging from the mouth of some kind of sewer or factory pipe. Here children are using their powers of creativity to turn the grim city surroundings into their own imaginary kingdoms.
In “Welcome,” for instance, two girls throw up their elongated arms in a gesture of pure delight. Interestingly Jiang Guozhe has rendered them in an almost childlike painting style, which is surprisingly devoid of color. Meanwhile the wall behind them is covered in abstract chromatic exultations — similar to those found in “Build Break Bricks” — as if the children’s imagination has been drained from them and deposited on the wall behind them.
Meanwhile, “Ice Cream,” offers a very different portrait of childhood. Again two girls stand side by side in front of a low wall, one cast in a yellow light, one cast in red, both posed with ice-cream in mouth but both looking up fixedly at the viewer, as if someone has barged in on some intimate girlhood moment. The presence of the play structure and decapitated merry-go-round horse appear to act as signifiers of innocence, but they seem to be painted on like poster rather than rendered as a realistic background. There is something about the way the girls stare at us transfixed, the lurid yellow and red, that creates a sense of discomfort — putting the viewer in the shoes of some leering old man, disrupting their moment of childhood bliss.
In a way these girls are just embarking on a series of lifetime adventures of learning the pattern, and making mistakes, getting reprimanded by adults, and maybe, finally when they grow up, creating their own unique patterns, or even a series of patterns to adapt to each stage of their life. While a typical airport holding pattern is shaped like an oblong racetrack and is thus fixed, a human pattern should have the potential and flexibility of a spiral so that it can always grow and adjust to the infinite possibilities and challenges of human existence.
