Alex Lu

Artist Statement

  My preoccupation and fascination with the city of Vancouver, a transitional city in relation to influx of immigration from Hong Kong, Taiwan and recently mainland China have generated a body of work that deals with issues of identity in a site-specific way. The “Monster House” phenomena (Mac Mansions) and advertising of Chinese real estate agents at local bus stops as racial demographical markers for specific neighborhoods become stand-ins for the self, a cultural self that is seen by others and the self that is seen from within. In previous bodies of work, portraiture and rapid urban transformation via depiction of architecture then serve as ways to examine Chinese immigrant culture as in-between, hybrid subculture that negotiates an awkward position within a foreign context. The work has naturally expanded to investigate aforementioned issues in a broader, global term and this recent body of work reflects this expansion.

   The large scale canvas titled Mounting the Clouds and Riding the Mist no.2 depicts ropes doing rope things: binding, tangling, weaving, dangling and sometimes gravity-defying. The image has gone through a process of permutation to become its current state. Its original state is a small painting which depicts the art of Bonsai; an art form originated in China that involves tree tying to mimic conceived forms of perfection in nature. The tension between the ropes and the trees is manifested through the struggle of the trees against strategically applied force. As the image progresses onto a larger canvas, the trees are reduced down to an irregular grid pattern and as a result the ropes lose their original function, they hang on for the sake of hanging on. Formal reduction dissolves the original relationship between the trees and the ropes while brings to surface a dialogue between the grid and the all-over lines, both as systems of lines that create illusionistic depth without the use of perspective. The mingling between the grid and the all-over lines via the threading of the ropes thus activates the inherent depth in both systems. The borrowing of the Modernist language on a more personal level (again via the ropes) deals with the "relationships exist[ing] between cultural particularity and abstract painting.... the presumed universality of abstraction in relation to question of culture, nationality and particularity."(Besemer) The ropes then act as surrogate of the cultural self, masquerading as all-over drip lines while infiltrating the Modernist grid, laying bare the potency of illusion/assumption and at the same time its vulnerability. From a Chinese philosophical perspective, the idea of mutual co-creation is considered. The transparent grid is made three-dimensional only through the binding of the ropes while the ropes’ state of suspension is only possible through the support of the grid, their seemingly restrictive nature are complementary rather than oppositional.

    The title, Mounting the Clouds and Riding the Mist can perhaps sum up the recent development of my work. It is a direct translation of a Chinese idiom that describes a mental state of floating, a disengagement of reality into a hallucinatory state of ecstasy. It delineates the power of imagination/illusion/perception to achieve something that defies logic, that challenges gravity. Plotting impossible events in realistic terms, like the state of suspension attained through the intricate rope play of 70’s martial arts movies. The title also conveys a sense of movement, a state of flux, journey from place to place.