Conceptual Art. Deconstruction and Reconstruction: Poetics

Author: Zhang Xiaoling
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1999-05-01
Features: If the theme given to artists by contemporary society is "shock"—its immense profit strategy making artists both envious and disoriented—then a more intrinsic theme is "numbness"—consciousness being generally damaged after shock, and the instinctive resistance born from shock fades away in adaptation to profit. In this sense, the decay produced by contemporary art can be attributed to consciousness surrendering to external forces. It is precisely in this sense that the author begins to discuss "conceptual art," viewing its restlessness as it emerges from the marginal position as the artistic impulse of this era. Conceptual art is an art phenomenon that flourished in the 1990s, known as the experimental ground for post-avant-garde art, encompassing genres such as installation art, performance art, environmental art, land art, and textual art. This book studies the phenomenon of conceptual art against the backdrop of China's social and cultural transformation, broadly exploring key issues in contemporary society and cultural trends. It also provides a theoretical and summary of conceptual art as a new cultural poetics. Additionally, it offers case analyses of more than 20 artists and their works.