Research From My Memo

Modernist sculpture has two important dimensions in aesthetics, one is the transfer from "meaningful form" to internal structure, i.e. the development of "sculpture as shape" to "sculpture as structure". One is the transfer from "meaningful form" to internal structure, i.e. the development from "sculpture as shape" to "sculpture as structure", the core aesthetic demand is "formal self-discipline"; the other dimension of meaning lies in the "materiality" of the material, and the excavation of its loaded aesthetics, culture, and social significance. In dealing with "materiality", there are two important creative paths, one is the transmutation from late modernist sculpture to minimalism in the 1960s, in which the medium in the modernist sense was gradually replaced by objecthood; the other is Duchamp's "Dada", in which the medium was gradually replaced by objecthood. The other was Duchamp's "Dada," which, though intended to be "anti-art," objectively legitimised the readymade. The greatest value of these two paths, which both returned to the same place in the late 1960s, lies in the fact that they bridged the gap between modernist art and life. In other words, "everyday objects" became the channel between art and reality. The emergence of the value of the "everyday" also signalled the decline of the modernist paradigm of creation and aesthetics.

　　Tan Xun and Shen Lieyi are representative sculptors of the young and middle-aged generation in the field of contemporary sculpture. Their works involve the transformation of medium and materiality, form and concept, and most of their concepts come into effect through the excavation of "everyday objects".

The Place We’re In

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