Portfolio: Guo Hongwei
A Sichuan steel factory and a mineral collection in London: the Beijing-based artist shares a series of important images
A Sichuan steel factory and a mineral collection in London: the Beijing-based artist shares a series of important images
Stainless Steel Factory, Sichuan, China
As research for a new project I went to a stainless steel factory in Sichuan province, Southwest China. The factory has advanced production lines for making high quality stainless steel sheet. The production line uses a cold-rolling method which rolls the sheet up when it has been finished. I find the whole process fascinating: the transformation of material form, the changing shapes, colours, qualities and properties. All of these transformations happen one after another on the line. It’s almost like magic.
Carl Andre's Snowy River
I always find collage to be a good way to read images, no matter whether the image is abstract or narrative. I was staring at this image of Carl Andre’s Snowy River (1983) in a catalogue and it struck me that, with minimal intervention, I could create an image on the image without adding or reducing information. Andre’s minimal sculpture gave me the outline of a shape to cut, and the cuts gave shape to spaces. The result looks like more steel plates are growing from the ones lying on the floor, but it’s all happening on the surface of the image.
Tom Friedman, Untitled
We transform material with our actions everyday and even transform our selves from second to second. Materials transform too of course, but far slower, Humans seem to be contantly finding ways to instigate change and accelerate it. Tom Friedman’s works during the 1990s are good examples of how an artist guides the transformation of material in a humorous direction. These works also have a good balance between the conceptual and the visual, a nice escape from mind / body dualism.
Jérôme Bel's Disabled Theater
Jérôme Bel’s performance Disabled Theater is the only piece of contemporary art which has made me want to cry. I saw it towards the end of 2013, as part of Perfoma, when I was visiting New York. All of the performers in it have different cognitive disabilities. Not your typical professional dancers, their actions are distinct from an expected ‘standard’ and makes you question what that ‘standard’ really is. Their movements seem truer, from a place of pure enjoyment. It's an amazing piece. It forces us to question what performance is.
The Mineral Collection, The Natural History Museum, London
When I entered the gallery containing the mineral collection in the Natural History Museum in London last October I almost dropped to my knees. It’s the earliest official collection of mineral samples in the world and fills this huge space. Here you can see the plentitude of pure natural form. Its different way of growing, delicate and colourful. Humans treat themselves as the measure of all things, and using visual methods to distinguish, by seeing differences and similarity.
Old Printed Matter
I like all kinds of printing but especially old books and their material. I love that old books were handmade and that people would put a lot more physical energy into the production and design. The format of the printed word has long been settled, but these three dimensional diagrams are ingenious. It looks like an exhibition on paper.
Scientific images showing how different minerals burn
Natural scientific images usually have a particular visual structure: they look like a slice from the physical world, isolating a phenomenon for study. Without context, these functional images seem closed to further explanation – purely formal presentation.
