Another thing about “My Box” is that Huang Gang adopts minimalism into his artistic language, but it is evident that he does not totally approve the form. His minimalism includes simplicity, restraint, inwardness, and a certain intention. Moreover, his painting tries to abandon worldly tediousness, and to repress human being’s greediness toward material. And after purification, it leaves the world a broad, wide spirit. In those well-formed geometric structures, not only does the scripture express its mystery and the beauty of cutting, but it stands for the symbol of Buddhism. There are numerous works demonstrate this statement, such as “Ark of Dream,” “Scriptures,” “Pilgrimage of Buddhist Scriptures,” “Spiral Scriptures,” “Floating,” “Pipal,” “Big Spiral Scriptures,” “Golden Mandala.” Besides from placing scripture andleather into fine spatial arrangement, Huang Gang fills the golden background with dark brown dripping technique or paints a large red star. The red star series, which is combined and abstracted from China’s interpretation for red, has a particular meaning. The artist removed the original concept of minimalism, and further adopts sacred images of Tangka to make irony on the supreme figure’s self-deification and to differentiate his artwork from those overly abundant portraits of Chairman Mao. Features of minimalism – neutralization, non-characteristic, mechanization – are fundamentally transformed into metaphor or symbol-oriented phase. This is indeed the most interesting part about Huang Gang’s material art, and it is thus better to categorize his work as “post-minimalism.”

    The reason that we interpret Huang Gang’s post-minimalism as having realistic status in the language of minimalism is that the form of classic minimalism is over, and that social reflection, consumerism, and post-colonialism have covered up our spiritual need for contemporary art. What people expect for the art world is a fresh but critical point of view, rather than sheer visual images of art trend. Despite the fact that artistic minimalism is intrinsically contradicted to the real world and has once reached to a certain level of harmony to survive in the reality, people then found it hardly possible to keep visualizing the world as fair and unsophisticated as it was not. So the road of minimalism finally came to its end.

    Therefore, we consider that post-contemporary artists have perceived the limit of material-phase artworks so that they extend their works onto human’s life. It is heard that “Urban Zen,” a kind of maximalism now appears in China, is developed according to this modern thinking. However, what is the dimension of human’s social life? How does art reach to that dimension? Is modern society unable to accept spiritual longing and pure belief? Is there any intrinsic difference between Urban Zen and a casual visit to temples? Or, does pure belief only work for psychological consolation? These questions will undoubtedly become the basic asks for contemporary art.

    In fact, there is something in common between post-minimalism and Zen. Zen and Eastern traditional art belong to those interval types of art, while Western classical art belongs to connection art. Eastern art tries to welcome audiences walking into its “interval,” or audiences have to make themselves involve in that interval so as to connect every element together and that audiences are regarded as participating art. The concept of Zen is to connect gods and human beings, and to observe everything on earth. This is exactly the same idea of later contemporary art which takes every little detail as art.

    Huang Gang’s mix media artwork presents an aesthetic pursuit for spiritualized post-minimalism, making human beings return to a void mind to experience Zen, and discover emptiness and shadowy sides of pure abstractionism. The spiritualized post-minimalism has crossed time and space and carved out a spiritual pavement in order to salvage this overly materialized world. But it is only when an artist holds a common attitude will his work be building upon a reliable strength of art, individuals, and spirits. And it is the kind of strength that enables the painting to stand the trial of time, presenting its uniqueness in the simplest way. Between time and spiritual space, the ladder will never be affected by the former, and thus obtains honor.

    Last but not least, if there is a unified trait for contemporary art, it may broadly describe the period of new wave 85, reflecting the ideological liberation and changes of modern aesthetics. However, post-60s will have a problem fitting in this grand “unified modernization.” The practice of post-60s is derived from the idea that the standard form of unified modernization encounters a radical change and reverse, and so are post-70s and post-80s. The later series of changes then lead to diversification of art and on-going development of differentiation. Since 1990s, countless new art movements such as the rising of conceptual photography, performance art involving into public space, the realization of feminist art, self-awareness of body art, and many others alike are driven by post-60s, which manifests the new energy bestowed by post-modernism to Chinese avant-garde. Thus, it is crucial for people working on art criticism and research about post-60s should consider more of its historic factors and real situation. Finally, the accomplishment that Huang Gang gains out of the mainstream once again proves the exclusive status of post-60s artists in contemporary art.
 

        Daozi
    Early spring of 2008 at Tsinghua University
    (Daozi: Professor of Academy of Art and Design, Tsinghua University
 

 【编辑：霍春常】

编辑：admin