They Are Growing, Entering Into People ' s Lives

Allow artworks to penetrate this kind of space without any fanfares, to gradually discover their own influence. People are hardly aware of how the works operate, but at select moments when they encounter them they do not just look with the eye of simple belief or doubt.*

Pairs of trees, planted 1.2 meters apart from each other, distributed among the office area, residential area, and production area of the Siemens VDO (Huizhou) Company ' s new factory complex.

Perhaps my description of this work can only go that far.

They are distributed about the periphery of the factory complex, looking at first glance as if they were just slightly different from ordinary landscaped belts in factories throughout the Pearl River Delta. The difference is not huge, regardless of whether you adopt an attitude of “ simple belief ” or “ simple doubt, ” they all continue to exist in the same way.

Chu Yun ' s works always end up in a state of ineffability, just as the young Wittgenstein wrote in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: “ What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence. ” Chu Yun ' s works likewise draw a boundary between visual and intellectual expression.

In a moment of seemingly unlimited possibilities for art, Chu Yun ' s works appear to have returned to a basic question: the boundaries of personal life and the boundaries of artistic production.

In fact, what changes us are not necessarily those things of which we are overtly conscious, or even the things that we are able to remember. I think we are more liable to being unconsciously changed by things we cannot easily observe, and that these things change us even more quickly and rastically.

Explorations of boundaries must be undertaken quietly and subtly. In Chu Yun ' s early works, his explorations always unfolded around the materials of personal, everyday life. In “ The Light of Rented Rooms, ” he used colored paper to bring some life to dark rented rooms belonging to poor young migrant workers. In “ 1607 ” he shot nearly 6000 photos in his own apartment of less than twenty square meters and then stacked them together, creating a “ brick-like ” photographic installation; people knew that behind the first photograph

there were many more that could not be seen. In “ Who Stole Our Bodies? ” he assembled pieces of soap collected from his friends as a way of symbolizing both material disappearance and individual fate. As far as Chu Yun is concerned, the meaning of artistic creation lies perhaps precisely in the gaps between the stacked photographs, or in the differences between each individual piece of soap. The artist is the person who introduces microscopic changes into life, and in so doing, microscopically influences the traces left by life.

Chu Yun has remained in continual pursuit of things that mask pain and happiness, skeptical of dispositions that can be clearly defined, brought on by explicit suffering, joy, tragedy, or anger. Chu Yun ' s pursuit of the “ hidden ” derives from his recognition of the real. This, in turn, has made him more and more willing to abandon the use of strong visual images to attract people, and left him to ponder the question of how an artist can become a medium for transcending the visible stuff of everyday life.

I always hoped to do a work about friendship. How does enthusiasm arise out of mutual nderstanding? Perhaps I am we, and we are just a strange illusion. The work “ Love ” is about “ two ” and “ one, ” about “ units, ” about “ me ” and “ you, ” and about the “ one ” that we can create using objects and their position in reality.

Chu Yun ' s encounter with Siemens VDO (Huizhou) Corporation happened exactly as the company was moving from old to new facilities. In this process, it is possible to see how an enterprise, as an organic

entity, is able to break through contradictions, how it renews and develops itself. It is possible to sense the position and disposition of the individual in this massive machine. In fact, everyone has had the experience of living inside a massive system, and this machinelike system takes efficiency and market-value as its final mandates.

The individual is thus driven by the necessities of survival, divided into two.

So what can art bring? How can art speak to the people here?

I never intentionally create any obstacles to understanding, it ' s just that from the outset I have tried hard to avoid some things that others believe to be extremely important. At the same time, some viewers (including some viewers who do not quite understand contemporary art) are very quick to understand what I am doing, to the point where no one has to explain anything.

Chu Yun sees “ love ” as another source opposed to the machine-system. He sees it as a medium for re-integrating broken entities, for turning two into one. He chose trees, at once a basic component of daily

life and a symbol of nature. He does not emphasize the symbolism of the tree, but merely acknowledges it. He worked with the landscape architects of the new factory complex to fit his pieces into the plan they were creating for real life. For this reason, the realization of the works as well as their final visual form all take on the appearance of everyday materials. The works ' artificiality and position in real life make people view them with the insight they would use for things in real life: this is the “ encounter ” that Chu Yun seeks to create

between his viewers and his works.

Seen from the surface, in this work “ Love ” the artist has only slightly changed the normal method for planting trees: he takes the trees used for urban “ greening ” programs and plants them as couples, distributed around the periphery of the factory complex. But this subtle manipulation frames the artist ' s awareness of art and place, and of the relationships between people, thus enabling him to connect to his own daily life “ without difficulty. ”

At the opening of the art project “ What are they doing here? ” on Valentine ' s Day, February 14, a day which also marked the 20 th anniversary of the Siemens VDO (Huizhou) Corporation as well as the opening of the new factory, general manager Tan said: “ An enterprise must have love, and once it has love it has everything. ” The day before, family visiting day, Chu Yun opened a studio, and a number of workers came to talk with him. A single work can have many different interpretations, and people can choose the one that

suits them. But for Chu Yun, “ Love ” is a metaphor, referring to an unnamable energy.

Perhaps after one or several years, people will no longer take these trees as works of art (perhaps the current crop of workers will all be gone, and the newcomers will be unclear as to what the trees mean. Perhaps they will not be interested.) Everyone will have come to accept the “ pairs of trees planted together ” as natural; the curiosity will have disappeared. By that time, this work will have become a part of reality, and a part of people ' s daily lives. This process is the antithesis of creation as a one-off event. Perhaps it is a failed movement, but it is nonetheless an affirmation of the ideals in these works. The trees are growing, entering into people ' s lives. Even as Chu Yun casts doubt on art and the boundaries of the everyday world, he is

also structuring the relationship between art and each of our daily lives.

© Hu Fang

*The bold text in this article is taken from Chu Yun ' s conversations and e-mail discussions with the author.