Stone-headed family and Chinese artists

Sun Yuan and Peng Yu break boundaries, seek freedom at Arario Gallery Seoul


Six wax figures, apparently a family, sit on sofas set in Arario Gallery Seoul in Samcheong, Seoul. They look freakishly human, all dressed up and accessorized, except for one strange thing: They have big stones where their heads should be.

Every now and then a teenager comes in and plays with a soccer ball, as if to entertain the stone-headed viewers. He sometimes even kicks it towards the gallery’s newly built anti-shock glass walls.

The work, titled “Teenager, Teenager,” by Chinese artist couple Sun Yuan and Peng Yu premiered in Seoul earlier this month. It is one of the duo’s many bizarre performance-accompanied artworks. In 2003, they even brought in a tiger to roam around a gallery in China. 

“They like to break the boundary between art and reality and bring into galleries art that are unlike art. It will be a monumental show in the Korean art scene because in Korea, everyone wants to be more safe, classic and significant; but these Chinese artists want to take risks and push contemporary art into the future,” said Gu Zhenqing, curator of the exhibition.

On behalf of the artist duo who do not like to explain the meaning behind their works, Gu explained that the stone heads are a metaphor for how people’s minds become like fossils and lack ideas as they get older.

“It is because our explanations might simplify profound meanings of the works. We want viewers to feel whatever they can feel through our works,” Sun Yuan told The Korea Herald.

Freedom is one of the keywords to understanding the duo’s art. That is also one of the underlying themes of the two video works on display upstairs in the gallery. One shows them driving in a fake police car ― an illegal and dangerous thing to do especially in mainland China ― and another features Peng Yu making frog sounds to attract frogs in a grass yard near her apartment building.

Of Ai Weiwei, a symbolic figure in both Chinese contemporary art and human rights movement, the artists said that it was wrong for a government to put political pressure on artists.

“Not just Ai Weiwei but many contemporary artists in China are in bad situations in terms of human rights or political conventions,” said Sun Yuan.

Ai Weiwei was arrested in early April, an arrest which civic groups all over the world branded as political repression by the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese authorities said he was accused of tax evasion. He is now banned from leaving China for a year following his release on bail in June after 81 days of detention.

“Freedom is a word that gives an open feeling throughout the world. When it is heard in China, however, it feels as if it is related to political terms. But our artworks about freedom are not intended to deal with freedom in only that aspect but in every aspect,” said Peng Yu.

The exhibition runs through Oct. 9 at Arario Gallery Seoul in Samcheong-dong, central Seoul. For more information, call (02) 723-6190 or visit www.arariogallery.com.

By Park Min-young (claire@heraldcorp.com)