Rewild by Laura Zhang
Artist Statement for Wild Things at Parallel Space, Hong Kong, 2022
“So when we talk about art, we are talking in the region of love and desire, those unsteady, uneasy, wavering partners. Let us widen our gaze from the artwork to a more general description of this region. Love is not straight, because reality is not straight. Everywhere, there are curves and bends, things veer.
[...]To veer, to swerve towards: am I choosing to do it? Or am I being pulled? Free will is overrated.
I do not make decisions outside the universe and then plunge in[...]”
Morton, Timothy B. . All Art is Ecological (Green Ideas) (pp. 88-89). Penguin Books Ltd.
Language cannot explain art, it can only point at a doorway through an unintentional wall. A frame inside a frame of frames. In a previous role, now is about the time I would follow an unspoken template to convey relevance and context, grandeur and prestige, altruism without really taking a position, and then add a sprinkle of wordplay. All as an assurance that this is not for waste.
On a personal note, it’s nice that you’re here and, in return for the effort, I will try not to be too obscure. Even though it’s hard when you’re dealing with abstraction and the heavy weight of the aesthetic. It’s a bit easier to understand music without lyrics, perhaps because of the physical vibrations inside us. Tempo, volume, tune, melody, bass. We don’t need to know them to appreciate them. Sound just flows through. But, when an image doesn’t paint a picture, instead it deconstructs the parts that make a picture, we’re denied the instant gratification of naming the illusion of a thing. Colour, texture, movement and shape alone only reflect the gaze itself. It requires choice, the choice of looking into rather than looking at, staying around for a while, catching it in the corner of your eye, noticing the changes over time.
To me, my work is a study of the innate organic patterns that surround us but also exist within. I’ve always thought about repetition, meditation, macro and micro, the internal and external. This year the surface has changed dramatically as I developed my process in oil painting. It took a lot of time for me to leave behind the instincts from my drawing practice and approach painting for its own materiality. Continuing the constant cycle of trial and error, again and again.
My practice has also led me to a lot of questions about what we call ‘Nature’ and the noose of western logic, historically naming and labelling and categorising things that are in fact tied and tangled together. Recently I came across the philosopher Timothy Morton. Instead of using the word ‘Nature’, he they prefers ‘non-human’ as the concept of ‘Nature’ has built borders and zones and fences, tearing us outside of something that is entwined within. Morton got me thinking about wholes and parts; where the part ends and a whole begins; how we understand ourselves as part of a species; how objects exist in relation to other objects; how if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, it still falls; how to move forward in this strange, shadowy, ominous, end-of-the-worldy time that is the Anthropocene.
Just before I created these works, Morton released a new book, “All Art is Ecological”. I bought it on pre-order. I'd been feeling hopeless about art. What was the point, it all just added to the things about things that would eventually overflow landfills and contribute to the next mass extinction? If I cared at all, why was I not using recycled materials, painting with mud or moss or mould. Why was I creating so much waste, discarding so many failed experiments, for some material abstract idealism that no one really needs?
Then I reached the last line of the book: “You don’t have to be ecological. Because you are ecological.” That thought, backed by Morton’s loopingly insightful prose, gave reassurance to instincts I've only fleetingly felt. What is was always wild, and somehow, we have split the world in two. Hyper-objects both outside and inside our control are morphing reality to its ends. One person will never be ecological enough to steer the course of the Anthropocene. But healing can start inside. It starts with re-wilding the soul, dissecting the mind of myths and misconceptions, allowing what some call weeds to grow, leaving space to not know.
I don’t have the answers, and I never will. I’m back at the start again, but not quite, more like a loop within a bigger loop; facing illogical logic, questioning intentions, wading into the uncertainty between instinct and judgement, body and mind, sincerity and ego. Letting the material pull and bend, veering me into something new. With only the faith that “creating” itself has evolutionary origins, practiced in every culture and handed down from billions of years and infinite life cycles.
Although I still can't help but worry about worrying about what you think. I am only human after all…