Lei Hong 雷虹: Non-geometric study
April 15 – May 14, 2012, Pearl Lam Fine Art, 181 Middle Jianxi Road, Shanghai
Lei Hong works with very simple elements to express the dialogue he is having with the materials he is working with. Paintings (some on canvas, some on rice paper) and sculptures are both present in the show and distributed equally. Two video works are on show as well. In the paintings, Lei works with the basic elements as dots, lines and squares, pointing towards traditions of European modernist abstract art, with very reduced expression. All is in white, black and an occasional grey. The shapes are geometric and rectangular, yet soft and hand-drawn. The paintings are placed in a dialogue with minimalist sculptures, like a white wooden bar sticking horizontally out into the room, or connecting two sides of a wall niche. Then there is a long straight metal rod, hanging horizontally at eye-height on barely visible fishing strings from the ceiling. It bears a strong resemblance to the lines in Lei’s paintings/drawings. There is the attempt to be straight, but the materials, as well as the hand are allowed into a dialogue, whereby small deviations from a ‘perfect shape’ occur. Other sculptures are made from iron (squares placed on the floor), sand (piled up in the corner of a room) and wooden composite (rectangle shapes propped against the wall).
Whereby the paintings themselves would allow different interpretations (it is abstract in a modernist sense, is it minimalist, is it conceptual), the sculptures give a certain clue as to how to read Lei’s body of work. There is a concern with material, and with the forces that exist in between the material and the artist. The concern with material is close to minimal art, and many of the sculptures directly relate to the theme of material as material. In the paintings, the relation becomes more complex, as the materiality is a mediated one. There is a canvas, a paper, ink, brush, etc. Given the ‘clues’ in the form of sculptures, I believe that the painting are also relating to a certain materiality, to a dialogue that happens when shape is being forced onto the material – this can be forcing iron into the shape of a rectangle, but as well forcing the ink into the shape of a rectangle. Furthermore, the imperfections of the ink paintings signify that the process is not really about forcing shape onto a material, but much more about a dialogue, maybe with the material, maybe with the artistic self, that shape the resulting artworks.
In addition to sculptures and paintings, two videos are on display, which in my view support the interpretation, that the relation to material is the central topic of Lei’s work and not a formalist concern with the shape and form by it self. The videos show a glass cube and a stone object placed on a sandy beach, with waves of seawater splashing over them again and again: A confrontation of elements, of water and stone. While water and glass bear a resemblance in their translucence, they are of completely different material matter. The interaction of natural and man-made forces is a never ending cycle.