DESIGN

/ photos by Chen Yan

Unnatural: Mountain and Sea, Lost in Distance

14 Surell Compact Colorcore

Art begins not from the carnal body, but from the constructed shelter; hence, architecture stands at the fore of all the arts. The most scientific of the architectural arts stresses the importance of form even as it continually creates surfaces and bodies and links them together. Therefore we may define architecture as a framework art that is to say, a form of art that acts as the mortar between a number of different such frameworks. Some believe that the prehistory of art started with murals that is, paintings taking a wall as their framework before progressing to (window-based) stained glass and (floor-based) mosaics. The philosophers Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari could be considered the scholarly advisers to the Unnatural exhibition and could perhaps also provide an exit a classic problem for architects and designers to the designers who created furniture from Formica materials. The surfaces and blocs that cement together architecture walls, windows, floors, slopes are a complex system of points and counterpoints forming a coherent percept. Only in this sense can we study the works in this exhibition, and consider the participants in the exhibition artists. Unnatural invited 14 architects and artists to explore the traditional preoccupation with the natural among the old Chinese literati using artificial Formica materials commonly employed in kitchens, laboratories, and fast-food restaurants to create furniture, toys, scholars treasures, and even spaces that look like they could have been taken from an ancient garden. The exhibit, hosted in the solemn Beijing Center for the Arts, is unlike the gallerys usual pure-art or design exhibitions and seems at times to wander far from the theme of unnaturalness and to branch off into discussions (which also take place in the tranquil exhibit space). Formicas products became known for their durability and bright colors, so the first issue the artists tackled was that of how to deal with the materials themselves. Deleuze and Guattari say that the common similarities of artworks stem from the sensations created by the materials used in the works: the sensations are the perceptions or modalities of the materials themselves and could be summarized here as, for example, the warmth and dynamism of Formicas Surell, the durability and restraint of its Compact, and the coolness and honesty of its Colorcore all of which are put on display in the artists works. Naturally enough, the sensations pick up where the materials leave off but as long as the materials are used, there is a certain eternalness of the sensations whether natural or artificial. Zhu Xiaofeng responds to the topic of artificial materials in his Surell piece, Cloudery, recalling the artificial hills of traditional Chinese gardens. Zhu believes the unceasing, unchanging, eternal search for a relationship between man and nature is more important by far than the materials used to depict it. Chen Xudong uses a folded composition of black and white Colorcore and Compact material to create a form evocative of Lingbi scholars stones an elegant form based on a three-dimensional

Opposite page: Xu Tiantian FFF FFF (FurnitureForFormica)

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 Above: Zhang KeUn-natural Growing Opposite page: Ma Qingyun Object Manipulation

FFFFurniture for Formica form (Singularities) ABITARE CHINA

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tangram assembly. Liu Jiakun used Surell to create the Bench with Garden, a quadrochromatic bench whose convex base sprouts grass. Liu said he intended to challenge notions of the indoor or outdoor nature of objects, but that owing to time constraints he was unable to surpass the physicality of the materials to express their spirit. The stalagmites of Zhang Kes stalagmite installation recall the scenery of Guilin or perhaps allude to other things. One of Zhangs aims with his piece was to challenge the implasticity of the materials. Ma Qingyuns Object Manipulation, like a Mbius strip, leaves the viewer unsure of its direction, and subtly raises the question of whether direction implies position, and whether position implies identity. The artists exploration of the nature of their materials also leads to questions extending beyond merely the participants in the exhibition such as how furniture is produced, and what relationship it bears to the people who use it and the materials of which it is made. Xu Tiantian says she and the other artists were testing the possibilities of these materials; her work FFF (Furniture for Formica pieces of home furniture she created for the company) does indeed challenge the limitations of the materials, using liquid casting to create strange, mischevious forms. The dispute over form in design and architecture has raged for a long time, and

requires people to do away with the tendency to focus on individual forms in favor of a fluid system encompassing the lines and planes formed from the interactions between points, singularities, forces, and environment -just as necessarily applied in the spaces photographed in Abitare. The questioner continues: did the artists participating in this show fall into the trap of branding? Were they able to decide for themselves as part of this process whether to criticize or praise the materials they were given? Formica, though a top brand, has never sought to package itself as a luxury brand for a very simple reason. The reliance on the brand and its organization in discussing questions that ought to have been discussed to begin with, in the hopes that the discussion will be louder and clearer, is a new phenomenon, and it will require people who think long and hard about the matter. Another elephant in the room for the participants in the show is the question of traditional Chinese aesthetics: who possesses them; who doesnt? The sages of Chinese antiquity believed that mankind was an integral part of nature, and expressed this belief in their poetry and arts; the Ming dynasty painter Dong Qichang (1555-1636) was one of the first to turn his gaze away from nature and to emulate the ancient masters and imitate ancient paintings to establish a continuous tradition. But arent the
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 4 40 CD Look at the mountain, once it was fire.

people of today cut off from nature and from the ancients? Deleuze and Guattari say deeper consideration is required: whether dealing with trivialities or facing the ultimate trials of their existence, how do people find a territory for themselves; how do they endure and then finally reach deterritorialization; how do they make use of whatever is to hand -memories, talismans, dreams -- in establishing another territory? The social realm is comprised of such seemingly intractable problems -- the ownership, flight from, and re-establishment of territory are inextricably linked. If we aim to find the differences between the high ancients of China and today, then we must ask ourselves what sort of territory the ancients established, how they came upon de-territorialization, and where they next moved on to -- and to this end, we must find a purely Chinese archetype. Zhang Yonghe uses monolithic slabs to replace the traditional Chinese wood-and-paper screens, varying the thickness of the Surell of which his work is made from between 4 mm and 4 cm to achieve gradations of transparency that shift and mutate depending on angle and illumination, replacing form with shape in his reimagining of the traditional screen. Meng Yans Mountain Library, combining bookshelves, antique cases, and CD racks, has a similar concept; although it could fit albeit uneasily

- Opposite page: Deshaus Table-Chair Blow: Zhu Xiaofeng Cloudery

 / Above: Zhang Bin / Zhou Wei Table Landscape Opposite page: Meng Yan Mountain Library

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Special thanks to Gelimans natural performance

on a horizontal painting scroll, and could be read as an image of the city corroding the countryside (or the countryside surrounding the city). The choice of the name Book Mountain is intended to pave the way for the ideals and realities of the scholarly classes, and to reflect the aspirations of any literary people who might be passing by. In addition, Book Mountain was initially designed as an assembly of switchable modules, making it a mutable mountain. The challenge of any architect or artist is how to impress upon us the process inherent in the creation of a work as in the way Cezanne laid bare the formation of his landscapes in their depiction: Look at the mountain; once it was fire. Back in the exhibition space, one finds these strongly internal works scattered around the hall, recalling somewhat traditional Japanese Zen gardens: stones scattered as mountains on a bed of white sand raked into straight or curved lines to represent water -- and reaffirming the spareness and austerity of the monks lives. Spaces bring thoughts of environment: objects are products of a given environment, within and without which exist other environments by which old environments are reinvigorated. One cant simply look at the elements of environments - their abcissa or X-coordinates; one must also consider their affects - their ordinates or Y-coordinates. In the end, then, what is one to make of this furniture, these objects and spaces, and what affects do they produce? The Beijing Center for the Arts will serve to connect the designers with collectors, and will answer these questions in the future. April 2009, Beijing

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/ Zhang Yonghe Thick Thin Fold