Miao Xiaochun: The Real in the Virtual
Dennos Museum, Traverse
City, Michigan
Sept. 30, 2012 – Feb. 10, 2013
Billed as his “first major solo
exhibition in the US,” Miao Xiaochun: The
Real in the Virtual occurs in the most unlikely of places. The Dennos Museum
in Traverse City, Michigan, a resort community of less than 150,000 residents
and six hours north of Chicago, has built itself upon an ill-suited permanent
collection of Inuit art largely paired with exhibitions by local artists. To
find a video installation by multidisciplinary Chinese artist Miao Xiaochun in
this location is unexpected, to say the least. For it to be his first major
show at a US museum seems somewhat unfortunate.
Squeezed into one darkened room no
larger than 2,500 square feet are four of Miao’s video works: Disillusion, RESTART, The Last Judgement in
Cyberspace and Microcosm. The
pieces are projected onto each of the four walls; the viewer watches with his
or her back to a central room divider topped with projectors and speakers.
While we can choose to narrow our visual focus to the video directly in front
of us, unfortunately this is not true of the accompanying sound tracks to each
video. Two works have their music turned down so low that it is essentially
non-existent; another utilizes a feeble attempt at focusing sound to the viewer
seated below via a hanging plastic dome, and the room overall is dominated by
the volume of the fourth film. This loss of integral audio for three of the
four works diminishes the experience, and the condition of the room overall
limits the viewer’s ability to immerse himself in each work and absorb the
artist’s full intent and desired impact.
As for the works themselves, having
all four of Miao’s pieces exhibited together is a tremendous and immersive
experience. Disillusion is a
contemplative dance of shimmering biological forms reminiscent of Chagall’s
dream-like compositions. Linear plotting and shimmering surfaces both imbue forms
with transparency, delicacy and transiency. Juxtaposed against the hard
surfaces and massive forms of industrial and military machinery, the soft and
small organic forms of man and animal are exposed for the ephemeral, tenuous
existence that we try not to think about on a daily basis. A pietà emerges as
one of Miao’s self-representative figures grieves over a slipping, dissolving
form made of bubbles that he tries futilely to grasp in his arms. I found this
to be an elegant and contemplative piece that would have been made more so by
the proper isolated environment and audible soundtrack.
RESTART
was a well-matched companion work to Disillusion.
While again the loss of the artist’s chosen music was noticeable and detrimental,
the imagery itself was rich, the scenery more tangible, and the metaphors
well-defined. Miao’s use of one figure only, his own image, multiplied many
times to represent every individual in the work, enhances the idea that we
humans are also multiples, duplicates of each other, a mass of humanity for
whom the individual is significant on a very small scale but in the greater
scheme has more impact as a part of a greater whole. Thus, each replicated
figure labors united, digging and building and doing battle and uncovering the
archaeology of our existence. Each layer of humanity we uncover simply shows us
the previous layer of ourselves as components of the constant flow of life. The
fantastical evolution of Miao’s nature takes surreal paths that evoke the work
of Hieronymus Bosch more so even than Microcosm,
the video based on the painter’s The
Garden of Earthly Delights.
In RESTART I found the most satisfaction in the artist’s reflection on
the History of Art. Bosch’s fantastical characters, Gericault’s Raft of Medusa, and other familiar
scenes provide the landscape for this particular human experience. Most
stunning was the skeletal cathedral environment surfaced entirely in a Delft
blue pattern. Similarly-decorated figures climbing through its elegant and airy
heights engage in a captivating dance; this clever visual texture was one of
many rich surfaces of marble, steel, ice and clouds used to create a truly
visual symphony.
The
Last Judgement in Cyberspace immerses the viewer in Michelangelo’s
masterpiece from the Sistine Chapel, with each figure in the original painting
represented by Miao’s image of himself. Michelangelo’s vivid hues have been
replaced by a monochromatic grey palette, so there is nothing to distract us
from the confused, querying humans floating as they await their fate. While I
admit to missing the context of coloration and earthly landscape in order to
help maintain my orientation within the animated composition, the fear and
confusion among the falling, floating, groundless figures was more evident by
the removal of any real visual grounding. Recomposed in three dimensions, the
viewer travels throughout the scene and visits various groupings within the
original painting: the angels blowing their horns, the figures holding the
cross and the crown of thorns; as the viewer we pause amidst each group and
have a brief moment to both experience their perspective on the event as well
as their confusion as to their role in it. As in Miao’s other works, the
singularity of a person is ultimately meaningless and carries minimal impact;
it is as a whole that we affect a collective human experience. Here, the
personal experience is understandably one of fear, disorientation and doubt, as
is how we commonly perceive our inevitable demise.
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The final work in the Dennos
exhibition is Microcosm, based on
Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of
Earthly Delights. It is to this work that the majority of the room’s
resources are dedicated, its sound system invading the other works and
dominating the largest portion of the room. But it is arguably the most
significant of the four works; the richest in visual texture and symbolism,
perhaps the most profound. We are presented with symbols as simple and provocative
as an apple, referencing the Tree of Knowledge, and da Vinci’s innovations in
humankind’s progress evoke the struggle between base survival and advancing
technology. We draw from nature, create from nature, and return to and feed it
in the end. Have we built something so large that we are insignificant within
it? Miao’s representation of Bosch’s allegories reflect this modern dilemma.
For a community that has less
exposure to contemporary and multidisciplinary art than its siblings to the
south, Chicago and Detroit, this is on the one hand a peculiar exhibition to
bring to the museum’s audience. To its credit, and perhaps to give it the
benefit of the doubt, I applaud the Dennos for mounting this show in spite of
its many significant shortcomings and hope that it opens the door to more
adventurous future programming.
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