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{"id":162017,"date":"2017-01-15T18:05:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-15T23:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/compte-rendu\/holzwege\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T13:33:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T18:33:03","slug":"holzwege","status":"publish","type":"compte-rendu","link":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/holzwege\/","title":{"rendered":"Holzwege<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Holzwege<\/em>, the title for the inaugural exhibition of ShanghART\u2019s new gallery along Shanghai\u2019s West Bund, is taken from a book of six essays by Martin Heidegger, most recently translated into English as Off the Beaten Track<\/em> (2002), which includes one of his most famous essays, \u201cThe Origin of the Work of Art\u201d (1935\u201337). \u201cHolzwege\u201d denotes a path in the forest that only a woodsman would recognize, not one that has been cleared, but rather formed naturally. \u201cOff the beaten track\u201d suggests a journey taken by those skillful enough to see the path that lay before them, but perhaps the French translation of Heidegger\u2019s book (a title he purportedly endorsed) is equally instructive: Chemins qui ne m\u00e8nent nulle part<\/em> (1962), \u201cpaths that lead nowhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What would it mean to travel along a curatorial path with no assurance of destination, only to reach an impasse where the path no longer reveals itself? There is a beautiful refutation of the naturalness of forward progress, maybe closer to the heart of the kind of questioning Heidegger intended in the post-war return to his lectures on the notion of art than the exhibition\u2019s organizers realized. Holzwege<\/em> offers a glimpse of Chinese artists and international artists (mostly German) as they travel an uncertain path that leads either to open fields or impassable briars.<\/p>\n\n\n\nRobert Zhao Renhui<\/strong> Trying to Remember a Tree<\/em>, 2014. Photo : Alessandro Wang, courtesy of ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
One of the first and oldest works in the show is Ich bring\u2019s uns wieder<\/em> (1981) by J\u00f6rg Immendorff. Immendorff, a student of Joseph Beuys, sets the tone with thick lines and unselfconscious painterly-ness that is as much Georg Baselitz in style as it is SpongeBob SquarePants in content. Next to Immendorff\u2019s work is a large painting by Zhang Enli, Soilred and Bottlegreen<\/em> (2016), awash in browns and greens, a seductive landscape in two dimensions. There are enough paintings in the exhibition to suggest that painting itself is a kind of connective tissue between these artists of different geographies and generations. Ding Yi\u2019s Appearance of Crosses 2016-2<\/em> (2016) and Robert Zhao Renhui\u2019s Trying to Remember a Tree<\/em> (2014) use dots and grids in long beautiful patterns to suggest a third order of painting that doesn\u2019t abandon the medium but joins it with high-gloss and deeply satisfying technological panache. Liang Yue\u2019s Treant<\/em> (2016) is the pinnacle of this painting-as-origin-story approach. Treant<\/em> is a single-channel video of a scene from Yushan Island. The focus is on a huge tree, its roots thick and tangled, leaves blowing in a light breeze. The scene is so palliative, so perfect, that it takes a moment to notice that the composition of the image within the frame unmistakably signals the conventions of painting: Treant<\/em> is a movement-image freed from its screen-ness by embracing the frame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are, of course, other movement-images, too. Chen Xiaoyun\u2019s Chopping You Up Deadly<\/em> (2013) is a multi-channel video of a battle against an invisible foe that shows a man in blue shorts fight-dancing with a hatchet, illuminated by a lone spotlight against the dark countryside. Yang Zhenzhong\u2019s If You Have a Parrot, What Words Would You Teach Him (Her)? <\/em>(2001) offers a different kind of movement: a television tube, some remote controls, a circuit board, and the intervention of the artist and assistants during the opening reception, desperate to calm a parrot who had clearly had enough of art for one evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some follow the path, and others take flight.<\/p>\n\n\n
![\"89_CR12_Meyers_Renhui_Trying](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/89_CR12_Meyers_Renhui_Trying-to-remember-a-tree.jpg\")