“You Can’t See Me, You Can’t See Me”
by IONA
If, as Wallace Stevens once remarked, “Sight is a museum of things seen”, then Zhao Yao bore this out with his most recent show.
Heaving open Beijing Commune’s metal door and stepping into the light, one paused in one’s tracks, surveying a scene which seemed strangely familiar. Densely spiked silhouettes, a coiled figure, fabric paintings and bent sculptural lines for an instant entertained one’s glance before memory intervened – puncturing the expectation of a brand new exhibition. Gradually, and with a mixture of discomfort and intrigue, it became clear that this was the sight of things already seen.
For “You Can’t See Me, You Can’t See Me” Zhao has effectively restaged “I Am Your Night”, his first solo outing of last year. Some works were simply shown again or recalled from collectors; others, such as the clicking TV sets on the floor (“You Can’t See Me No.2”, 2012) which now numbered not two, but three, were multiplied or compressed; where last year there had been a blue human figure in a fencing mask, this time one appeared in white. The two exhibitions opened on exactly the same day, 12th June, one year apart.
Of course, Zhao is not the inventor of repetition, or of restaging as a ploy. Indeed, one might point out that artworks are restaged over and over again in successive exhibitions. As if in recognition of the fact that no repetition can be absolute, this year’s show was not an exact replica. Nonetheless, it is the sensation of recurrence which resonates here, and beyond an initial peculiar effect, there are various avenues to pursue. Last year, the interplay between the works – deliberately meaningless parodies of “conceptual” form – came to the fore. Now, the fact of exhibition itself takes precedent, with the works as mere props; the artist appears to flick away accepted – and expected – tenets like crumbs from the table of display: conceptualism as a force for originality, artworks with individual power, a new exhibition as a stage for virgin artworks. As if to drive home the point, the works’ titles are all those of the exhibition they were made for, followed by a number. Could this be called a “readymade” exhibition? It is not a response to pressure on young artists from a hungry scene to create, though one might call it an economical approach.
“You Can’t See Me…” has the dual effect of rendering “I am Your Night” historical – a visual event commemorated – and preventing a line from being drawn beneath it – suspending judgement, or shifting its focus. Repetition can reaffirm, but it also has the power to detach from sense, like a word pronounced over and over. One wonders what Guy Debord, for whom the art critic is one who “restages his own non-intervention in the spectacle” of art works, might say where the critic or viewer – tripped up on the threshold in expectation of new works – beholds a restaging of those of yesteryear. Certainly, this exhibition is about looking, about seeing art, and how the artist sees himself. This time, having ‘seen it all before’ needn’t put an end to possibility.
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