Curator: Bao Dong

Attitude: Again

Jiang Zhi’s solo show “Attitude” hosted now at Platform China marks the third stage of a traveling project shown for the first time at Osage Gallery in Shanghai, September 2009 and thereafter in Hong Kong, December 2009. 

Just to make it more precise, “attitude” here doesn’t stand for the verb meaning “declaring one’s position”, nor it refers to the fact that Jiang Zhi or his show aims at expressing an “attitude”; in fact by positioning “attitude” in a social text it actually invites to speculate, it invites to transfer the understanding of all events and phenomena into discursive practices within the text. Only in this way we are able to re-read and re-write this social text. “Re-”, “again”, “once more” are ways to define what art is and where it belongs.

Here, society is conceived as a linguistic system and the social activities (including politics) are comprehended as  speeches. The body, expressions and human actions all are speeches and they contribute to construct the discursive practices of identity, gender, as well as of different ideologies. The art thus is conceived as the conscious – or maybe the reflective – discursive practice. The aim is to turn the fixed relations between parole and langue into something flexible and dubious. This is the significance of “re-”; the art has to function as a prefix and till then the presuppositional nature of reality will reveal itself.  

For this reason, Jiang Zhi uses the body, expressions and actions to allow the viewer to see the the hidden operations behind them or, in other words, to let us see how we used to perceive them , and in this way maybe we could re-look at them. What really counts is not what Jiang Zhi’s attitude is. Towards these faces, arms, bodies and voices, what is the right attitude we should have and what are the reasons for taking up that attitude? 

We could re-consider Jiang Zhi’s earlier works and when he uses them as ready-mades again, the method itself becomes the subject. The faces, arms, bodies and voices used to be installed that way and today make their second apearance this way…

Jiang Zhi’s ‘Attitude’ is like an observation of ‘words’ and ‘objects’, more precisely, an observation of ‘power’ and ‘becoming insane’. ‘Coyness’, ‘trembling’ and ‘tears’ are ‘between words and objects’, were given the elements of an ‘event’, and became ‘individualised’ and ‘plural’.

（- excerpts of ‘Power’ and ‘Becoming Insane' and ‘Attitude’ by Véronic-Ting CHEN）

Jiang Zhi’s ‘Attitude 2’ is humorous that against sarcasm. Each work is a ‘body’ of extension and ‘characters’ which could be captured and observed. These works of Jiang Zhi release vague signals consistently and slowly.

(-excerpts of After Perceiving of Works, Before Happening of Events – Attitude 2 by Véronic-Ting CHEN)

We are living in such a system, in which we could be stimulated to be excited beyond our control. Artificial Parkinsonism is spontaneous and unnatural but considered as natural.

(-excerpts of Artificial Parkinsonism Discussing  by Véronic-Ting CHEN)

Jiang Zhi’s Maiden, All Too Maiden! series undoubtedly put forward a very important study - to set up the shaming for evil ethnics, which is how to investigate Shyness - a phenomenology knowledge of body feeling. 

(-excerpts of StepTowards a Desire/ Knowledge Criticism of Mankind Political Economy by Wei Puhua)

In Curtain Call, Jiang Zhi presents an occupant of a stage who is unwilling to quit the performing mechanisms on a stage.

(-excerpts of StepTowards a Desire/ Knowledge Criticism of Mankind Political Economy by Wei Puhua)