Lot 197: Huang Yong Ping , The Doomsday-- Da Xian mixed media, oil on fiberglass with expired food products; watercolor on paper; gelatin silver prints

each drawing signed in Pinyin mixed media, oil on fiberglass with expired food products; watercolor on paper; gelatin silver prints

each bowl: 30 7/8 by 55 1/2 by 55 1/2 in. by 78.2 by 140.9 by 140.9 cm.; each photograph: 34 1/4 by 39 1/2 in. 87.6 by 100.3 cm.; each drawing: 25 1/2 by 20 in. 64.8 by 50.8 cm.

Minneapolis, Walker Art Center; North Adams, MASS MoCA, House of Oracle: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective , October 16, 2006 - January 15, 2006, pp. 45-47, illustrated in color
Geneva, Art & Public, Huang Yong Ping: Da Xian - The Doomsday , April 24-May 17, 1997
London, Camden Art Center, Parisien(ne)s, January 31-March 16, 1997, detail illustrated in brochure
Johannesburg, Rembrandt van Rijn Art Gallery, 2nd Johannesburg Biennale , 1997

H. Obrist, Huang Yong Ping: An immanence, dialogue between Huang Yong Ping and Hans Ulrich Obrist,1999, Paris, illustrated
C. Thea, The Extreme Situation is Beautiful: An Interview with Hou Hanru, Sculpture Magazine, November 1990, vol. 18, no.9, illustrated

Art & Public, Geneva
Private Collection, New York

Executed in 1997.This work consists of 3 painted fiberglass bowls filled with expired food products, 3 photographs, and 2 works on paper.
Born in 1954 in Xiamen in Southeast China, Huang Yong Ping first made his name within the radical group of artists he helped establish called Xiamen Dada in 1986. The following year Huang made the work entitled The History of Chinese Art and the History of Modern Art - washed two minutes in a washing machine in which he did just that, exhibiting the pulp admixture as what is now viewed as a watershed moment in Chinese contemporary art. Following a move to Paris in May of 1989 to participate in the landmark Magiciens de la terre exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, Huang Yong Ping remained in Paris and has subsequently established himself as an artist of international repute. Huang represented his adopted home country of France in the Venice Biennial in 1999, and a large-scale retrospective of his work was recently organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Huang's combination of a Dada sensibility with esoteric Chinese traditions speaks eloquently to the present moment in contemporary art. While he has transcended the designation of 'Chinese artist,' his work nevertheless references Chinese history in ways that point towards a postmodern reading of art - including Modernism itself - that is based upon a multicultural sensibility corresponding to his own experience. His practice is certainly not without its political emphases, and imperialist appropriations of objects and ideas are a recurring preoccupation in the artist's work. Da Xian - The Doomsday (1997, Lot 197) is an excellent example of Huang's inspired interrogation of history. Scheduled to be in England shortly before Hong Kong was slated to return to Chinese jurisdiction in July of 1997, Huang Yong Ping conceived an installation work to commemorate this momentous occasion. Fiberglass bowls enlarged to the gargantuan scale of 59 inches in diameter (150 cms.) and 31½ inches high (80 cms.) were fabricated as though of porcelain and decorated with patterns taken from Western china from the 19υth century. The term "Western china" itself is revealing, and, significantly, the bowls Huang used as models were originally manufactured by the British East India Company. The painted porcelain bowl was, of course, originally a Chinese object, taken over by the West and subsequently remade in the West's image.

Decorated with what look to be Chinese buildings over which foreign flags fly, Huang's grand bowls ironically present a colonial style of decoration that he then neatly subverts to his own purposes. According to the artist, the very large bowls may be seen as hemispheres; they are decorated with the happy, peaceful images of life under the beloved protection of various colonial powers: Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States. To emphasize the political thrust of the work, Huang filled the bowls with British foods - water, drinks, seasoning, packaged goods, etc. - stamped with an expiration date of July 1, 1997, the day control of Hong Kong was returned to China. In a statement about the project in his recent retrospective catalog, Huang characterizes that date as "the doomsday for the myth of colonialism."[1]

Three photographs included in the present Lot focus on the identity and expiration date of the imported British goods. Two watercolor drawings, also included, sketch out the project, its decorative details and source material. Infused with Huang's sly spirit of subversion, Da Xian - The Doomsday caustically comments on the failure of colonialism and its vain penchant for inscribing itself upon the foreign cultures it pilfers. Politically engaged, conceptually rich, and refined in its material execution, Da Xian - The Doomsday represents Huang Yong Ping at his best at a significant moment in the history of contemporary China.

-Jonathan Goodman [1] Philippe Vergne, House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective, Walker Art Center, 2005, p. 45.