Zong Ning accentuates the traditional Chinese outlook in order to offer scathing criticism of modern Chinese society and of the ways by which it deals with issues such as moving away from family values, class differences, contempt of human life, materialistic aspirations and a growing distance from nature. For example, he uses a monochromatic palette and unprocessed raw materials to express his objection to seductive, commercial art which, he says, “is not made with the heart.” The logs scattered across the gallery are a Buddhist symbol of rawness as containing the potential to be anything. In Dao culture, the wise person is often likened to an unprocessed log of wood, which is seen as close to the source of all things.

The installation’s form resembles that of a traditional Chinese garden, enclosed by walls and featuring plants, rocks, and water. The image of the water pond, on which photographs of the artist’s childhood are floating, is associated with movement, change, and flow. In this way, the artist invites us to experience the installation as part of a process of endless becoming both in the world around us and within ourselves – thereby rendering present another key element in Chinese philosophy: the notion of the “path” (in Chinese, Dao). However, contrary to traditional Chinese gardens, this one is full of menacing motifs and provokes unease. Zong Ning’s work is informed, at one and the same time, by belief in the transformative power of art on the one hand and a dystopian view of reality characterized by fear and existential loneliness on the other. In this context, the artist quotes Milan Kundera, an author who has greatly influenced him. Kundera’s story The Joke depicts people who, “lured on by the voice of utopia, … have squeezed their way through the gates of paradise only to find, when the doors slam shut behind them, that they are in hell.”

Photos by: Louiz Green

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