HONGHAO BOTTOM

Dates: 2009.5.23 - 2009.7.23　
Beijing Commune
4 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District
Phone: +86 10 8456 2862
E-mail: info@beijingcommune.com
Web: www.beijingcommune.com

Text source: Beijing Commune Website

In the fast developing modern society, it has become hard for us to know things as they have turned out to have many sides, and our perceptions rely more on the straightforward appearance of things. This made us to think about how we know things. Hong Hao’s “Bottom” series are trying to offer us a fresh perspective. Obtained through scanning, the images of the bottoms of various objects have blurred the originally identifiable property of these things, and present a view that is often neglected in everyday life. The collections of the “bottoms” lead us to suspicions about things that are familiar to us in everyday life. In this series, the reduction of the characteristics of each individual and the homogeneity of forms have gradually eliminated the property of function in these objects and supplied new images based on the highly formalized basic forms of the things. Then strange distance is created between us and these familiar daily objects, and we’ll have to think twice about our “perceptions”—do we really know the things that we have taken for granted? It has become a reflection on perception and knowledge. Hong Hao does not only offer us a new view to see things, but more importantly, he tries to re-construct our knowledge about perception.

The “Bottom” series are the speculative extension of Hong Hao’s “My Things” series, in which he has brought his reflections on the relationship between individual existence and the multitude of consuming goods in the consumer society to contemporary art practice. The “Bottom” series carry on the theme in depth. Today, consumption has become more rapid and convenient, and everyday life has been overwhelmed by large quantities of products. In this situation, in-depth cognition has become harder, and the process of knowing things simplified and stereotyped. All the things appearing in Hong Hao’s collected images, categorized and re-arranged by the artist, show a tendency of homogeneity. We found that the multitude of everyday products have gradually made cultural identification impossible. There are neither geographic nor cultural traits on these homogenized consumer products, and the differences lies only with the shapes and the colors. In the less informative ages of man’s cultural history, cultures of different areas of the world formed their individual characteristics in a relatively isolated process of development, while in modern times, the expressive communication of information and the demand of reducing the production cost have increasingly homogenized the cultures. They have lost their own originality and submitted to the demand of mass production in consumer society. The ever-accelerating material progress has made a contrast to the inert culture development. With all these problems, Hong Hao presents through his “Bottom” series his reflection on individual perception of things and his challenge to the way of collective existence.

one of Art-ba-ba reporters....


Hong Hao playing with iphone...



Beijing painter, Yan Lei (on the left)


Photographer Hai Bo in conversation with Hong Hao.



Beijing artist, Wang Jianwei.

Yan Lei pointing out to...?


Beijing Commune's director, Leng Lin (on the left.)


UCCA's chief curator, Guo Xiaoyan (on the right)