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Su Chang: Breath

Source: AIKE Author: Huatong Liu 2017-09-09

In the modern residential space culture, the bathroom is the silent yet fierce battlefield of dirty and clean spaces. Visible filth is buried under the cover of sewers, to be moved out of sight immediately. Invisible bacteria grow and spread on water stains, rust stains, mould spots and fine lines and cracks on the surface of ceramic tiles. Cleanness always defends and counterattacks in the place where the filth stays, all kinds of chemicals and cleaning products constantly garrison in order to safeguard the hygiene, health of family life and the face of the host. On the other hand, time is the battle line between filth and cleanliness in the bathroom. No one will doubt that as time passes by, it will only be filth that gradually dominates the war.
For domestic life, few people really pay attention to the bathroom despite its essentiality. The artist Su Chang may be an exception. He not only paid attention to it, but also spent nearly two years to create relative works. These completed works are now being assembled in the exhibition hall in AIKE gallery, are publicly displayed under the name of "Breath". Basins, bathtubs, ceramic tile walls, Su Chang's plaster sculptures have remodeled the necessary elements that can be seen in a bathroom. They are displayed loosely among the white exhibition walls in AIKE gallery, reflecting the sense of open space and the space in which they can literally breathe.
In fact, the bathroom is first and foremost an exchange place. Just like breathing, it is always spitting out the old and absorbing the new, and expelling the waste of human body so as to ensure the health of individuals and the hygiene of domestic space. For Su Chang, there is a further significance of psychological space in the bathroom. This kind of meaning is about the breath of the soul. As an unshareable private space, the bathroom has become one of a few places where contemporary people can face and gaze at themselves without being disturbed. Each person's image is the symbol of his subject identity. When the bathroom is full of steam, the self in the mirror deforms; when curling in the bathtub, the body is reshaped under the wrapping of water. These images fleet and quickly immerse into the memory, blurred yet perceptual.
Su Chang used hollowing mold to represent the body shape wrapping by water. He also combined several turnover molds of water basins to form a sculpture with both concrete and abstract features, similar to Yin and Yang surfaces. This work, on the one hand retains the bright and clean surface, on the other hand it holds the roughness. In those works of replicating ceramic tile walls, he intentionally made water and rust stains, and sabotaged the precise arrangement of lines. It seems to indicate the track of connection between people and objects - the filth marks left by people in the using process becomes the proof of a kind of temporality in space, and declares that human' s sovereignty over this object.
It can be imagined that the molding shape insisted by Su Chang to highlight the attribute of vagueness, just like in the steaming bathroom, the shape of people becomes hazy in vision due to light refraction and non-perspective. This breathing of people and objects in shape seems to be the proof of memory. However, this kind of breathing memory for people is just like the bathroom, despite its white and clean appearance, stains are hidden with in. Wether it is essentially filthy or clean for human mental health, it cannot be known.

Related Artists:
SU CHANG 苏畅
Related Exhibitions:
Breath

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