DYSTOPIA NOW
For young artists in China, the explosive physical and economic growth of their country is an inevitable subject. Cao Fei grew up in a “new” city, Guangzhou, and tackles it head on, in diverse media (video, games, sculpture, photography, diorama), masterfully. As depicted in her show at PS1, the new cities of China are dystopias, conceived in eccentric styles and scales, and populated by young men and women who silence their inner lives, and find more meaningful expression in cosplay, video games, and fantasy.
Fei’s most eloquent works are a series of dioramas she constructed as backdrops for the 2014 video La Town. They’re made from model kits whose flat plastic parts are used to build scaled replicas of vehicles, buildings and monuments. The models parts here are blasted and refinished to give them a patina, assembled partially, and combined with elements from other model kits. Because the pieces are at different scales, and from different kits (a German town square, a McDonalds drive-through, an office tower, a beach scene, a zoo scene), the dioramas offer strange new fractured narratives. They’re displayed in sealed glass cases and lit with small hanging bulbs that throw horror-movie shadows.
The buildings are wrecked, with missing walls and floors, and look as if they’ve survived an earthquake. The lawns are an unnaturally hyper-green. The scenes are bristling with life, crowded with scale figures (all Caucasian) who gather in small mobs, run into the street, jump off of buildings, and copulate publicly. In one diorama a bullet train is derailed after hitting Santa and his reindeer. In another a one-legged woman swims in a pond below the site of an airplane crash. In another a trio of pole-dancers perform in an old movie theater while a construction crew works in the mezzanine above. The dioramas are gorgeously choreographed and crafted – Bosch for our age. And they serve up, quietly, a bold critique of the new culture and architecture in China.
La Town, White Street. 2014. C-print, 120 x 80cm. Image courtesy Cao Fei.