Wang Youshen bought 20kg of nutritious soil in multiple bags, and splashed it onto all the floors in public areas at his home: doorsteps, kitchen and toilet. For quite a few days, he and his family members were living in such a scene. Afterwards, he cleaned up the nutritious soil, which after being used, seemed to be different from the original soil by nature. The artist wrote:

After its first execution, I understood "Nutritious Soil" much more.
A: The function of "Nutritious Soil"being a basic land-constituting material, in covering the floor in public areas at home; and the functions of different floors towards cement made floor slabs.
B: The relationship between the migration of "Nutritious Soil" and other types of "soil" and the natural or humanistic environment in other places. I had a particular sentiment of the nutritional soil when splashing it by hand.       
C: I experienced the fun of land purchasing and selling, and possession, when buying 20kg of nutritional soil with money.
D: Is the "Nutritious Soil" really beneficial to the land? Or is such high-grade soil as nutritional soil
really going to do good to the natural or humanistic environment? I need to do more for testing and verification in this regard. 8  

According to his own "work flow", Wang had the nutritious soil transported out of China at a later time, and splashed into exhibition places in different manners. When doing so, nutritious soil was not splashed onto those places where it is needed in everyday life; in addition, it was splashed abroad. The artist hoped such an act would enable him to turn some originally personal and routine behavior into an act of wide applicability, hence leading to a new issue of symbolization: Would kindness of humankind be spread widely and commonly? Or is "entropy" nothing more than a sort of social and human concept, without the linkage to nature? An issue that people can think of is, the meanings of "Nutrition" are with conditions.

Time, image and actual venue, these are all the things that were related to the reporters. When one finds his occupation become a natural part of his everyday life, his job awareness may influence all the respects related to him. This is the case with Wang Youshen. When he photographed his grandmother, this continuous act has been related to the occupation of news reporting. However, who would take note on a person who is not a social issue? Who would care for a deceased when death is seen everyday? This ordinary fact of a living was revealed by Wang: he selected photographs from his collection and displayed them in a particular manner:

In Before and After My Grandmother Passed Away, the participant's visual journey with the artist and the process of reading becomes the emphasis of the piece. As for the selection of materials, there are not only pictures, but also software, water, lighting, natural light, which are prerequisite elements in photographing. By recording the images through a video recorder, I would like to let the audience see, on the exhibition ground, not only these photos, but also a physical transformation of an image in association with the theme of my works, an image changed by clear water and light, and something else. 9

In 1996, the artist also talked about his works:

My works in recent years are associated with my daily life and routine work. My job in the newspaper editorial office has exposed me to a phantasmagoria of social scenes; while as an ordinary person, my daily life has widened my perception of the artistic possibilities and led me in a direction different from others. This is also the reason for my artistic pursuit of reality. For example, the privacy of public issues (Newspaper Series, Washing: 1941 Deep Pit Buried Thousands of People in Datong) and of private issues (Before and After My Grandmother Passed Away, and Nutritious Soil, etc.) which command public interests, are all related to my daily life and routine work. 10  

Therefore, when some problems hidden in an ordinary event in daily life is amplified, no matter if an artist is willing or not, the game in the microcosmic world will turn out a macroscopical narration. Thus, a theme related to "Death" is not a personal matter any more, but a political, social and even ethical consideration. Sometimes, artists focus their themes on issues of historical significance. In 1995, Wang Youshen accomplished his installation works entitled "Washing: 1941 Deep Pit Buried Thousands of People in Datong", which consisted of two bathing tubs and some photos put thereon. These photos are about the atrocity of the Japanese invaders into China during the Anti-Japanese War Period, the result is that one may find it shocking when viewing the pieces. Without a doubt, such works led people to ask questions on a wider scope:

Melissa Chiu: Your latest works displayed in Osaka,  Japan,  seemed  as a vehement statement about Japan's  invasion into China. In the works, which issues commanded your interests most? Can you tell me the entire significance of these works? For example, what did the water in the bathroom stand for? Where did those photos hail from? And what kind of response did you receive from the Japanese audience after viewing the works?

Wang Youshen: I always value the reason or attitude behind the works by contemporary artists. My works should have the starting points and motives that can persuade me and others. This is also why I am always concerned about the psychological and physical changes between human beings in today's society.

My work, Washing: 1941 Deep Pit Buried Thousands of People in Datong was exhibited in Osaka and Tokyo of Japan. It was the historical issues that I and other people were aware of in 1995 —— the global celebration of the 50th anniversary of victory in the Anti-Fascist War. For China and other parts of the Asia-Pacific region, the 50-year-long invasion by Japan during the World War II was always a nightmare, while lingering on everyone's mind until nowadays. In order to address this historical issue that is of public concern and also make response to the "New Asian Art Show" to be held in Japan in July and August, I chose to read newspapers to discern the factors of my next creation. I came across the report about the Japanese soldiers burying 10,000 peasant miners alive into a big pit in Datong of Shanxi Province in China in 1941, and this became my next creation. That report was accompanied by a string of photos showing the Chinese researchers washing skulls of the dead. What is equally important is that, I read a full description, on another page, of all the atrocities of the Japanese invasion into China. Later, it became another major script of my works. My works Washing: 1941 Deep Pit Buried Thousands of People in Datong was a result of these two scripts that I read. The main objects exhibited on these works were two bathing tubs and utensils which people used to clean their bodies; onto the two bathing tubs there existed two sets of positive and negative films zoomed in at the printing house. Those images on the films have become rather big dots, because the photos of the original newspapers on the walls were too small. At the exhibition venue in Japan, when clear water was washing up the films onto the bathing tubs through the water circulating device and the sprinkler head, it was not only about the circulation of water, but the process of the fade-out images. 11

This work appeared in the "New Asian Art Show" held in Japan in 1995. The photos were put, in the form of positive and negative films, onto 2 bathing tubs each with a showering system for continuous washing. Such a concept and physical condition of "washing" was able to arouse the imagination of association. People applied it everywhere. But due to the historical notions from the Nazi in the World War II to the Japanese invasion into other countries, "washing" had become a rather complicated word in the political arena. After that, this word was applied to any event correlative with life crisis and slaughter.  Wang Youshen's concept of "washing" is explicit. It is an expression of remembering history and questioning the effect of time. Photos will lose their contents as being continually washed; then what will turn out from the washing process?  Where were the images originated?  Could people's judgment towards history change just as Wang's "washing" indicated? What factors determined the reliability of historical facts?  Wang Youshen's series directly expressed a historical theme; however, his expression mode is multi-tiered and filled with questions. As a result, the artist has indeed given up on providing a conclusion to history, but agreed that in various stages of humankind's  evolution, history can be interpreted differently due to many historical and political reasons: the "essential truth" was thus completely eliminated. Different from Before and After My Grandmother Passed Away, Washing: 1941 Deep Pit Buried Thousands of People in Datong strongly emphasized the social and historical functions of the arts, indicating the artist places importance on major historical issues. Different from his early work "√", Wang gave up the one-way, or theory-of-reflection-based, questioning, and turned to show the different facets of its meanings. This was an important logical change from essentialism to empiricism, until metaphysical emptying in whole, with only the gaming meaning in sociological and political terms preserved. This was the prevalent feature of those conceptual arts in 1990s that addressed such issues as "individualism" and "meaninglessness".

From 1998 to 2004, Wang Youshen's Darkroom was exhibited in Sydney (in the Art Gallery of New South Wales State in 1998), Pittsburgh (in the Mattress Factory Arts Center in 1999), Taipei (Taipei Biennial in 2000), and Guangzhou (Guangdong Art Museum in 2003) and Shanghai (Shanghai Biennial in 2004). This notion was unambiguous: he moved the darkroom, a place he was familiar with and had worked in for many years, into the exhibition space; he told the audience that they could take part in the darkroom work. In the exhibition held in Shanghai, the artist planned out the following work flow:

1. Participants select the negative film offered by the artist (or bring their own negative films) in a film selection area, before filling up the "registration form of darkroom users" as requested by the artist.
2. Participants wear the working aprons, enter the work area and develop and print photos in accordance with the work flow in the darkroom.
3. Participants will be given the instruction of photo printing and development. Participants can paste  the form at the film selection area and near the zoom-in device.
4. Participants are requested to develop and print 2 photos from each negative film, one to be retained in the clear water, and the other allowed to be taken away.
5. The finished photos are put onto the clear water tray in the exhibition area.
6. The image of each photo on the clear water tray will start to vanish after being soaked in water for long hours.
7. Take out the photos on which the images have faced out one after another, and clip them onto a thin thread in the darkroom for display.
8. Mail back the negative film album, all the finished photos (including those on which the images have faded out), and the "registration form" to the artist.

The artist intended to observe and analyze these issues in his mind such as "when, what, who, where, why, recording, editing, producing, consuming and responding". Each exhibited darkroom had a different audience groups with different experiences and backgrounds. The contents provided by participants and their way of working could have led to different effects and results. All the people who participated in the darkroom might have different feelings. However, the artist still had a chance to obtain the results attained by the participants, before inducing and analyzing them. As such, the audience's participation became a part of the implementation process, as they had worked jointly to facilitate the artist's finished works. As the artist revealed, the "darkroom" offered an open, interactive possibility, as the audience was allowed to choose between the artist's provided negative films or their own. However, when those finished photos were put into the water for film development purposes, time washed away the images on the photos. We did not know if the audience had experienced the complete "washing" process. However, one thing that we were very sure of was that it was the artist himself who had controlled the entire process from setting, observation to analysis. Differing from his former works that also utilized images, the artist was not concerned about the content of the image, or whether they were realistic. He was concerned about the evolution of an image and the process of vanishing, for essentially the evolution and process embodied his questions and issues about the media. In fact, "darkroom" was a symbolic observation. We are living in a world restricted by the media. So what kinds of response and performance can we give? As for each darkroom exhibited in different countries, the artist hoped to construct a temporary social ground. He provided the ready-made information (his negative film), and gave the freedom to the audience (they brought their own films). Nevertheless, in the end, the generated results were stipulated by the artist within the flow, and were therefore pre-determined by the artist. The artist stated:

One major feature of today's life is that individuals are confined by various restrictions. For example, TV programs are all pre-recorded. You have to accept such a mode of restriction before choosing what programs to view. I expressed such confinement in my works and in prints particularly. It is fair to say that there is a mode of restriction that culture exercises on individuals.

"The audience was allowed to experience both the truth and the virtual world, as symbolically reflected in the exhibition ——the realistic scenario of democracy and power", Wang said. His symbolic undertone was carried out quietly in different exhibitions. In fact, people's understanding of the "darkroom" came rather close to the artist's personal view:

Wang Youshen cares about how the context and images in the information dissemination process have been generated, conveyed, consumed and responded, and the meaning of all these links, as well as the "virtual" essence of information. We all live in a society that mass media serve as intermediaries. Media has undertaken the generation and passing of most of the daily information. Therefore, the trueness in society is tantamount to, more often than not, the mapped trueness presented by media. The generation of information is often mixed up with the real world. Wang Youshen allows the audience to control the development of photos and experience the process of information presentation in reality; whilst those negative films of different themes which provided by Wang also help the audience further understand the true and virtual scenarios surrounding them. In fact, an art gallery is a sort of public space, in which the audience can participate rather more "democratically" in the social system. To some extent, the Darkroom has overthrown the logic that "mass media are manipulated by commercial interests and political power."12  

The interpretation of Darkroom is subjective, as there is no absolute meaning existing in it.
Under the arrangement of Wang, a photo that came from the media, the artist or the audience, could constitute whatever significance depending on the person's analysis and judgment of its significance. Although Wang Youshen offered explanations and annotations to his own works at different times, anyone could explain his works from different angles, on account of his own experience, knowledge and stance. From 1988 to the present, Wang has remained a journalist. He is a news reporter, so he observes society; he is an editor, so he processes the information gathered from his observations; he is an artist, so he puts the findings of his observations into a space called "Exhibition Hall" in an effective manner, and invites more people to observe the objects that he has personally questioned——changes in the physical world, derivation of information and on-site control. Until 2005, the artist stated,

As for my recent works Washing and Darkroom, my main job: changing time and place. Using images as the medium, the features of the medium and technological flow. I intend to restore the fact and manifest the chain of social relationship. I am concerned about the relationship among artwork, artist and beholder. For this, apart from the natural participation of the audience, I am more concerned about "the integration of the concept", allowing the artwork to become a starting point, interacting with people's mind, and eventually changing the artwork's meanings.

Considering Wang's occupation and his utilization of photos and documents, "washing" is no longer an artwork, but a tried and tested social behavior. From his previous works Before and After My Grandmother Passed Away to the present, he has been washing the images. The artist has always been influenced by the images that are everywhere, and he strives to achieve the results of "washing" just as he tries to reveal the images in his early works. This forms an interesting contrast. Hence, there formed a certain ideological association among his works Washing: Before and After My Grandmother Passed Away, Washing: 1941 Deep Pit Buried Thousands of People in Datong, and Washing: Y2K, and Washing: Part.

In the forum "Another Voice – Forum of China's Contemporary Artists" which was about "Arts or Technology: Relationship between High Technology/ Multimedia and Art Creation" (held in He Xiangning Art Museum in 2005), Wang Youshen selected "Arts are Media" as the title. With his knowledge of media derived from his long-term occupational habits, he gave a new definition of the concept of acts in accordance to the information-oriented society. He fused "influential power" and "tool". People at different times would naturally employ different modes, means and tools to convey the issues of art. Nowadays, media and art are becoming inseparably related. The artist's hinting at this issue definitely shows that he was inspired by conceptual artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Robert Rauschenberg. However, when the logic of concepts overlaps with our own daily experience, what other than such circumstances could do a better job in helping people understand the legitimacy of using all materials and tools to recount art issues in an open-minded way?

The social and political functions of media and media's possible roles in social and political scenes have indeed existed. However, what could those participants attain from the works? Indeed, the experience of each audience was different. The artist's initial idea or the art critic's explication could only reveal the partial significance of the artwork. Remaining open for interpretation was essential. As Wang expressed through works exhibited at "Another Long March" the conceptual art exhibition organized by Holland Fundament Foundation in the city of Breda in 1997, in a battalion with historical memory, if an artist may tune the mode of a question he would be able to express his concepts and stance interestingly. 13

If time has the inner quality as "essence", this quality must have been associated with the repetitive recounting of history. In previous years, Wang Youshen has observed Wang-Fujing, a prime shopping distinct in downtown Beijing where swarms of people float on a daily basis. What he utilized was the continuity of time; later, he took photos of his own grandmother in a similar time span.  Time did not become Wang's tool until he came to view the old photos of historical happenings and allowed  many others to experience the so-called ideas such as "generation" and "disappearance" with his set time frame. Lately, he has continued to use existing photos, and he has also tried to demonstrate the historical attributes of these photos in different phases. On top of this, he has come up with the idea of using relief stones to carve out the composition of the photos that he has selected meticulously. Notwithstanding, different from the "no-stance" scenario in his works Darkroom, the artist, this time, chooses certain photos that recount historical happenings to "wash" or "freeze". Such a reduction of the "target" is related to the artist's experience and stance, which is a sort of notion about rewriting history. Therefore, we can also say that time is generated when photos emerge, and fades out when images are gone. In this point, the art of Wang Youshen exactly shows the generation and vanishing of time. It is worth noting that Wang's deconstruction notion intrinsically bears the concept of Zen to a certain degree, and thus forms an immensely important disparity from the rhetoric and argumentative background of western artists.

16 February 2007

Lu Peng, renowned Art Historian and Art Critic. His works include: A History of China Modern Art 1979 —1989 (co-author with Yi Dan), 1992; 90s Art China, 2000; A History of Art in Twentieth-Century China, 2006.


【Note】

1. Art Asia Pacific, Australia, No.2, 1996
2. From 18th November to 8th December and from 2nd to 23rd of December, the American artist "Robert Rauschenberg's International Tour Exhibition" was held in Beijing and Lhasa respectively. This exhibition amazed young-aged Chinese artists, and benefited them greatly.
3. No manuscript was published.
4. Kong Chang'an: "Jiangsu Art Magazine", 1993, 11, p18.
5. This is the collage piece comprises "news photos" that are randomly taken every minute in Wang-Fujian district (Beijing).
6. Wang Youshen introduced "Interior Design", stated that, "it was an art activity that I masterminded and organized in 1994. This activity lasted one year, and in each monthly session, one artist presided over the activity launched on our newspaper. In total, it was accomplished by 12 renowned Chinese contemporary artists. I masterminded this activity, in an attempt to, on the one hand, carry on my forthcoming of the relationship between arts and everyday life and artistic works' response to social appreciation; and on the other hand, I did so because I always want to spread arts on a wider range by the use of media, which is a conventional and powerful means of conveyance, so as to connect artists with the audience in the most straightforward way. Interestingly, such an activity has always attracted attention from the audience, artists and entrepreneurs." (Art Asia Pacific, Australia, No.2, 1996)
7. Art Asia Pacific, Australia, No.2, 1996
8. "Gallery" magazine, Ling Nan Arts Press, Issue 3, 1994
9. Art Asia Pacific, Australia, No.2, 1996
10. Art Asia Pacific, Australia, No.2, 1996
11. Art Asia Pacific, Australia, No.2, 1996
12. Zhang Fang-wei, Taipei Biennale 2000 Album of Paintings, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2000.
13. Breda used to be the largest military city in Holland; and the exhibition venue was used to be the biggest barracks in Holland, which were stationed by German troops during World War II. After the Cold War ended, this ground was used to hold refugees. According to the Urban Planning Proposal determined in the year of exhibition, it was to rebuild into a city museum and some residential quarters. The barracks are not far from the center of the city. Indeed, the capacity change in this ground was a typical reflection of those changes taking place in the European society, political climate and urban scene. Before its past was about to be recalled on textbooks, arts were invited to review its historical and cultural resources for the very moment.

Wang Youshen's proposal was to cover the grand glass window in the rear wall of the Side Chapel of the barracks tightly with a zoomed-in negative film concerning a beauty pageant in Sarajevo. At that time, the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina was fiery hot; however, on the photo there appeared a scene of  singing and dancing, except for an eyesore, which was an amazing beauty, who wore a scintillating laurel and a blue ribbon on her nice shaped body, held up a banner, which read "Don't Let Them Shoot Us". The sunlight trespassed the window glasses to cast their shadows into the Side Chapel which was made into a pub. War and peace, life and death, such cliché themes obtained their pressing significance in such a specific scene as barracks and chapel and under such concrete semantic circumstances.

(Tang Di: "Urban Space and Arts: Intermittent Thoughts and Associations" Shanghai Art Museum – Academic Research, April 2002)