Dunhuang Impressions | "Jingxiang Dunhuang" Art Exhibition Artists Gao Shiqiang and Shao Wenhuan Dialogue
Dunhuang Contemporary Art Museum presents the "Jingxiang Dunhuang" exhibition from November 11, 2024, to May 31, 2025. This is the inaugural exhibition marking the official opening of the Dunhuang Contemporary Art Museum to the public.
The exhibition brings together works from 20 renowned contemporary artists: Cao Shu, Chen Zhihao, Ding Yi, Gao Shiqiang, Gu Fei, Hu Junjun, Lu Wen, Ni Youyu, Ouyang Lin, Peng Wei, Shao Wenhuan, Shi Zhiying, Shi Weixiang, Shi Dunyu, Sun Zhijun, Xie Xiaoze, Zhang Huan, Zheng Bo, Zhou Zhenru, Zou Yingzi (listed in alphabetical order by surname), aiming to explore the relationship between Dunhuang's ancient books, archives, cultural relics, and modern and contemporary art. Notably, many pieces in the exhibition are the results of artists' on-site creations in Dunhuang.
In this feature, we invite two artists, Gao Shiqiang and Shao Wenhuan, to delve into their Dunhuang memories and share their unique understanding of Dunhuang.
Work | Landscape: How to Spend the Night?
This work takes the frontier fortress poems from Tang poetry as its creative starting point. Through the study of a certain number of frontier poems and field investigations and shootings from Dunhuang in Gansu to Zhongwei in Ningxia, spanning thousands of miles, the creative team speculates on the ordinary daily life of a Tang Dynasty intellectual guarding the frontier, imagining how he endures the long days and faces the night and the bright moon.
We guess that even though this Tang Dynasty literati was at the border, the stage of his spiritual life was always Chang'an, the place where his poetry took effect, and the group of confidants who could understand his lofty sentiments or the melancholy of his hometown at dusk still pointed to Chang'an. Therefore, this ordinary border guard, ordinary literati, and tiny individual in the long historical space, his life is always on the boundary between day and night, and his life is always between the multiple frontiers of the soul and the flesh.
Thus, we pay tribute to the frontier poetry with the poetry of images, using the timeless vision of ancient and modern frontiers to expand the imagery and poetic sentiment of frontier poets.
Gao Shiqiang
Born in 1971 in Weifang, Shandong Province, Gao Shiqiang is currently the director of the Media City Research and Development Center at the China Academy of Art, the head of the Experimental Art Department at the School of Intermedia Art, the director of the Spatial Image Research Institute, a doctoral supervisor, and a professor. He is also the vice chairman of the Zhejiang Photographers Association and the deputy director of the Experimental Art Committee of the China Artists Association. Since the mid-1990s, he has been engaged in the creation and research of situational sculpture, installation, and experimental image-making. At the beginning of this century, his research and teaching focus gradually converged on the field of moving images, and in recent years, he has been committed to the research and creation of spatial image narrative.
Gao Shiqiang: This land has led me through a process of "subtraction" from the body to the visual, leading me to a more essential expression.
Q: Before you went to Dunhuang, what were your impressions of the northwest region, especially the land of Dunhuang? Do you have any unique memories?
Gao Shiqiang: Actually, before going, my understanding of Dunhuang was mostly limited to books and video materials. In my memory, the northwest is always filled with a desolate and vast sense of power, and the silence of that desert has a unique appeal. Especially Dunhuang, with its many glorious historical and cultural heritages, such as the Mogao Caves and murals, has always been one of the symbols of Eastern aesthetics and religious art. This land has an inherent sense of mystery that makes people yearn for and respect it.
Q: What was your deepest experience during the shooting process in Dunhuang? Especially in terms of physical memory, such as environmental differences and climate challenges. How is this Dunhuang creation different from your previous "landscape" series?
Gao Shiqiang: The environment of Dunhuang is indeed special. Shooting in that extreme climate and topography is a different experience. The dry air, hot days, and cold nights are constantly testing the limits of the human body. It is completely different from the humidity and sense of layering when shooting the landscape series in the mountains and forests before. Dunhuang's landscape is more minimalist and intense, even a bit abstract. It can be said that this land has led me through a process of "subtraction" from the body to the visual, leading me to a more essential expression. In this creative process, I began to think about how to present the vastness of heaven and earth and the passage of time with the fewest elements, which is the biggest difference from the past.
Q: Then, during the creative conception process of the work "Landscape: How to Spend the Night?", how did you integrate these feelings into it?
Gao Shiqiang: The birth of this work is actually a result of continuous exploration. I hope to capture the "real feeling" of the night, including those low-frequency emotions and the awe of nature, through light and shadow and image projection. In "Landscape: How to Spend the Night?", I integrated some modern symbols, such as lava batteries and photovoltaics, which represent traces of contemporary technology. In fact, this is a way I want to dialogue with the ancient culture of Dunhuang, exploring how to transition to modernity between distant landscapes. This difference is not only a contrast of time and space but also a cultural integration.
Q: During the planning and exhibition setup of this exhibition, did you and the curator have any special designs?
Gao Shiqiang: We wanted to use this projection method to allow the audience to experience a feeling of "wandering" in the desert. Projecting images onto the sand allows people to feel the fluidity and instability of nature. When the audience walks on it, their footprints will gradually change the form of the image, also giving a sense of "immediate disappearance." It is different from the traditional flat exhibition, emphasizing the concept of "traces of people in nature." The desert of Dunhuang is a natural canvas, and this attempt makes me feel that every step has an interaction with nature.
Q: Finally, can you send a few blessings for the opening of the Dunhuang Contemporary Art Museum? Or talk about your expectations for the future of the museum from an artist's perspective.
Gao Shiqiang: It is a great honor for me to participate in the opening exhibition of the Dunhuang Contemporary Art Museum and witness its establishment. I hope the museum can become a window for more people to understand Dunhuang and feel the beauty of the northwest. I also hope that this space can continue to stimulate the imagination of artists and the audience and become a bridge for dialogue between tradition and modernity. Dunhuang has infinite possibilities, and I look forward to seeing more works that integrate Eastern and Western cultures here in the future, expecting the museum to become a place to explore the unknown and connect the ancient and modern. I wish the museum more and more success and become a source of artistic creation.
Work | Ten Thousand Years NO.1
The picture is a night sky scene of the northwest Dunhuang area. The work still follows the author's usual creative method, splicing more than 300 pieces (more than 300 focal points) of photos into a complete image that looks consistent with perspective (reality). During the splicing process, by coordinating the relationship between the natural invocation and deformation, time is deconstructed, allowing hundreds of focal points and moments to be hidden in a single image, like a "flashback" method, extending the temporality of a single plane. The work, through the display of a huge picture, uses the gaze from left to right, from top to bottom, utilizing the scanning and wandering of photographic focus and viewpoint, making the "human eye" drive each solidified layer of time, feeling the space to wander, and deducing the freeze-frame of the intersection of time and space.
Shao Wenhuan
Artist, professor at the China Academy of Art, and director of the Photography Department. Currently works and lives in Hangzhou. His creation mainly uses photography as the medium and has conducted extensive experiments on the ontological language of art. Materials, processes, textures, colors, scale, digital technology, and their fit with concepts have become topics that he continues to focus on and experiment with repeatedly. All his efforts are trying to break through the limitations of photography itself, attempting to reach a state of free expression.
Shao Wenhuan: I think nature is the source of creation, but it is not a simple presentation of reality; it is an artistic expression with spiritual depth. My works do not necessarily take reality as the standard, but they must be based on the exploration of artistic possibilities.
Q: Before you went to Dunhuang, what was your memory of Dunhuang, especially in terms of image memory?
Shao Wenhuan: I was born in Hotan, Xinjiang, and often took the train with my parents when I was a child, going back and forth between the pass and outside the pass. The train would stop for a long time at a small station near Jiayuguan called Liuyuan. Someone told me that I could take a long-distance bus to Tibet here, and not far away is the famous Dunhuang. Dunhuang was just a longing in my childhood, perhaps because I loved history and geography, and when mentioning Yangguan and Yumen, I naturally thought of Dunhuang. Although I had various thoughts about Dunhuang since childhood, I didn't really go there until 2011. My impression of Dunhuang is mainly caves and Buddha statues. Since I was a child, influenced by books and magazines, Dunhuang has been deeply rooted in my heart as a kind of style. I remember there was a magazine from Taiwan in the 1980s called "Artist," and there was an issue that specifically introduced the Dunhuang caves. It was the most exquisitely printed Dunhuang image I had ever seen, especially the well pattern of three rabbits sharing three ears running, which left a deep impression on me. Later, when I was studying to be a teacher, I copied it. At that time, I was very fond of the exposed rock mountains and the boundless Gobi, and I didn't like the humid and lush scenery.
Q: You mentioned Tang poetry; how does this topic affect your creation?
Shao Wenhuan: This has to be mentioned when the first "Road of Tang Poetry" exhibition, Teacher Liang Shaoji came to my studio, and we talked about Tang poetry: Why do we still think Tang poetry is amazing today? It's not just because the poetry itself is so beautiful, but because it allows you to feel the existence of people in the universe, under the vast starry sky, and the dialogue with the universe.
After the completion of the work "Ten Thousand Years," some people said that the work is like the moon's surface. In this case, it seems that some of my works do have an extraterrestrial feeling. "Ten Thousand Years" unfolds a castle ruin that seems to have once had human traces, but in reality, it is the natural vicissitudes of the Yadan landform, shaped into a dramatic stage under the night sky, like the existence in the desolation that seems to be and is not.
Q: How do you view the relationship between these natural landscapes and artistic creation? Returning to the work itself, we want to hear you talk about the exhibited work "Ten Thousand Years."
Shao Wenhuan: Once when I was shooting in Yadan, there was a power outage, and the room was as hot as a steamer. But outside, the stars were bright, and there was no light pollution. Seeing the vast starry sky made me feel out of balance, with a sense of floating, sometimes a little scared, or it can be said to be awe, unease mixed with surprise, a particularly magical experience. I think nature is the source of creation, but it is not a simple presentation of reality; it is an artistic expression with spiritual depth. My works do not necessarily take reality as the standard, but they must be based on the exploration of artistic possibilities. The creation of "Ten Thousand Years" attempts to flow the temporality of change and considers humans, nature, and the future. This work has a personal experience in Dunhuang Yadan and uses some technical means to complete. I hope the work is not straightforward but leads the eye to drive the viewing of time, and nature becomes my personal projection.
