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Sticking Your Hair Where It Doesn't Belong

Wu Gaozhong at Zendai MoMA - By Melanie, May 29, 08

If pig hair covered guns, boots and bandanas aren't enough to fluster your feminine side, how about a half-crazed artist blasting through Zendai Plaza in a car sprouting black boar bristles?

Wu Gaozhong got behind the wheel of one of his brutish sculptures at Zendai MoMA on Tuesday. Opening his biggest solo show to date with a grandiose cruise through an outdoor Pudong shopping mall, the artist then parked the vehicle outside the museum entrance where it now rests safely.
With "Spectral Memory," Wu travels to the (conceptual) future so he can take a gander at modern life from the distorted filter of recollection. The resulting central display is a lengthy bed of fake ice, covered in modern day objects, many of which are oversized and all of which have undergone the pig-hair treatment. Workman's boots, weapons, sheer size and of course, the overabundance of hair, place this exhibition firmly in the masculine sphere.



Wu's presentation enables the viewer to observe man's "tools" in the same way we might look at Neanderthal artifacts, like a cave painting, or Fred Flintstone's wooden club. And the effect is similar.

Were it literally translated from Chinese this show would be titled "Hair-raising" but curator Li Xianting deemed the moniker sophomoric and, after much deliberation opted for the more cryptic "Spectral Memory." This incredibly involved engineering term refers to the filtering system by which, over time our brains retain imprints of those experiences that have affected us most strongly.

So, why does Wu's memory produce objects so big and hairy? Does Wu think of us as larger than life? Is he commenting on a society obsessed with size? Will humans as they are now go down in history as grotesque, weapon-wielding motor-heads?

In a pleasing paradox, the artistic process required to create these works glorifying "MAN" is probably as painstaking as needlepoint. The hours consumed plucking course hairs from the animal and reapplying them to choice objects is a frightening notion. Perhaps, with all this machismo and chest-thumping Wu actually pokes fun at what it means to be manly.

But don't jump the hairy gun just yet by labeling Wu some sort of closet feminist. Remember that this show opened on the eighth anniversary of Wu's "Birthday" performance piece, in which the artist drummed up controversy by emerging nude from a deceased bovine. Usually, I'm the first one handing out "benefit of the doubt" passes to creative types, but isn't this the artistic equivalent of calling your mama a fat (dead) cow?

"Spectral Memory" is an exhibition that only a male could conceive. I don't mean that as a demerit, in fact I'm rather pleased to absorb some art that makes me wonder if I should be pissed off. But splendidly eluding my judgment, "Spectral Memory" loafs around in a glow of self-deprecating irony that shields it from condemnation. Who after all, would actually drive Wu's Wooly Mammoth-mobile? And even if you are someone who gets swept away by size or finds herself enamored with Wu's artistic concepts, these manifestos to hair are just about the last things you'd ever want to crawl into bed with.

Spectral Memory runs from May 28 through June 20 at the Zendai Museum of Modern Art.

Main image taken from www.mayakovskaya.blogspot.com

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