Cold War Aesthetics

11 November, 2008
by: Katuschka

The bright and airy Louise T Blouin Institute is cashing in on the sizzling hot trend of exhibiting contemporary Chinese art by showing Wang Guangyi's new exhibition Cold War Aesthetics, as part of their ongoing programme to strengthen relationships with the emerging economic powerhouse.

Since flinging their doors wide open to the West and its capitalist concerns, many artists such as Li Yan, Shen Shaomin and Xiang Jing are bringing their talent to the West and revealing new waves of theory and style, unearthed from a largely hermetic culture. The exhibition is accompanied by talks and concerts focusing on a central theme of obliterating a Cold War mindset. The central exhibition is Guangyi's pop-art take on one of the darkest periods in Sino-Soviet relations.

The exhibition uses a range of sculpture and painting spanning two floors, although there are essentially two conceptual installations, which makes the six pound entry fee seem a little steep. On the first floor, sculptures of people employing the 'duck and cover' technique are littered about the floor, highlighting the futility of preparation and naiveté of the populace. Displayed on a wall at the back of the room are images from public service pamphlets, rendered like a comic book, an effectively childish form for the ineffective techniques they suggest. The prone figures are a population seconds before the impact of the blast, cowering from a threat that never arrived, yet remaining paralysed in its thrall with their faces turned away from impending doom.

Guangyi's sculptures are the microcosmic, Vesuvian victims of a tyrannical political struggle that held the A-bomb like a sword of Damocles over civilians. They can only stumble, blindly, into line, whether by holing up in bunkers or curling up on the ground. Guangyi also places blame on our susceptibility to the Cold War mentality, a self-fulfilling prophecy as future generations experience much of the same in a world coloured by nuclear threat; a trope which has simply been repackaged as a War on Terror.

This idea is explored further on the second floor of the exhibit, addressing the faceless uniformity of the nuclear 'threat' with a room full of sculptures in bio-hazard suits, their faces obscured by gas masks, the dystopian paraphernalia of the Cold War. Guangyi places viewers squarely in the centre of a post-apocalyptic world. This is the territory of almost every disaster movie as the (usually governmental) drones, swarm in on the outsider to relinquish control. Dramatic stuff!

Well almost…the idea is in place, but Guangyi doesn't seem to go quite far enough. For such a loaded subject, Guangyi's aesthetic diverts from the menace that would afford this exhibition some punch. To those who experienced the Cold War first hand, this exhibition may even offer a disquieting nostalgia, the primary colours of the bio-hazard suits and the naive aesthetics are a playful look at a disturbing past.

Most interesting perhaps is Guangyi's subtle unification of the iconography of the war: the images of mass panic and frantic salvation are proven to be the same for both East and West. Cold War Aesthetics is a fairly small exhibition, but it provokes discussion by introducing the sobering notion that perhaps a Cold War mindset will exist as long as nuclear arms are held. Guangyi also suggests that the breaking down of preconceived notions is the best route towards a positive form of thought and dialogue.

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