By Benjamin Evans
To say that the theme of “duality” is at the core of Li Hongwei’s elegant body of sculpture is, at best, an understatement. Here is a partial list of some of the binary oppositions at play in his work: Old vs. new, East vs. West, hand-made vs. industrial, delicate vs. strong, Yin vs. Yang, functional vessel vs. non-functional sculpture, lightness vs. weight, organic vs. geometric, literal vs. metaphorical, complexity vs. simplicity, the real vs. the reflection, heaven vs. earth, colorful vs. colorless, material vs. conceptual, intention vs. chance, creation vs. destruction, the perfect vs. the failure, the fragment vs. the whole… the reader is encouraged to add to this list at will.
Yet the possible interpretations of these binaries are very fluid and do not line up in any straightforward manner. The steel elements might be read as “western” owing to their association with skyscrapers, railroads and gleaming American cars, yet steel is also the fundamental building material of China’s own explosive growth as an industrial superpower. The ceramic elements reference the ancient tradition of Chinese porcelain production, yet are undeniably contemporary sculpture. Clay, traditionally associated with the earth, is here often transformed into something lighter than air. Creating a simple chart of these binary oppositions is impossible. Instead, we are faced with overlapping, contradicting, and intersecting lines of interpretive possibility, something perhaps like the twigs of a bird’s nest, that belie the simplicity and intuitive harmony radiating from the objects on first encounter.
This is not to say that harmony is not a central theme at stake here. In the ever-increasing articles on Li’s work, virtually every commentator describes at some length the way in which he unifies these various opposing forces in line with classical Chinese aesthetic ambitions of balance and harmony. There is surely good reason for this, and these commentators are surely correct. When encountering the Upwelling of Gravity series, for example, the immediate experience is largely one of marvel at the harmonious, seamless blending of the contrasting materials. Achieving harmony is unquestionably a deliberate goal of the artist’s process. Yet at the same time, I would like to suggest that underlying this initial sense of harmony there is also considerable tension, perhaps even conflict, lurking under the perfectly smooth, ripple-free surface. Harmony, I want to suggest, is only the starting point of an encounter with this work.
Such tension can be discovered through a simple “phenomenological” process of reflecting carefully on one’s conscious experience as one moves through the exhibition. To continue with the Upwelling of Gravity series, moving among these works I experience, if I pay attention, a subtle but discernable shift in gravitational forces as these objects solemnly struggle to free themselves from their bases and float into the air that seems, paradoxically, to be their native environment. The smooth, circular, ceramic dome actively lifts against the square point of steel that roots it to the earth. The ceramic object, now ethereal and light, and with its references to centuries of Chinese history and tradition, is perhaps being slowly engulfed by modern metal, or at the very least being held in place, frozen. None of this is by accident. Li has repeatedly described the way in which these works are allegories of Chinese cosmology, a circular dome representing the heavens paired with a perfect square at the base, representing the earth. In this unusual arrangement, clay has become the airy dome of the Cosmos, while steel takes the place of clay to become the ordered square of Earth. The initial formal harmony of these works is undeniable, but so too is the presence of a certain tension and stress.
Likewise, the Allegory of Balance series suggests a very careful selection and placement process, aiming to find a harmonious wedding of multiple elements. Hybrid forms of porcelain and steel take on the appearance of mountaintop cairns, guideposts calling to mind the improbable natural stacked sculptures of Andy Goldsworthy. As in that body of work, here too there is a powerful sense of precariousness. These stacks present themselves as deliberately delicate, unbolted, unwelded, unglued together. In their proximity, museum docents must nervously stand vigilant against the exploratory palms of unattended young children, or perhaps even a poorly timed sneeze. Even the sculptures in the more solid Dan series, resembling so many giant eggs, appear not merely placed but rather poised on an invisible edge, awaiting only a misdirected breath to come crashing down. Observing exhibition visitors I have on more than one occasion seen a tempted hand reaching out to see whether or not the forms are as mobile as they appear (which indeed they are).
The source of these tensions, at least those I’ve described so far, is unambiguous: simple physics. Gravity, as unrelenting as it is mysterious, pulls on the sculpted forms even as Li attempts to play with it. In the Xuan #30, a lodestone dangles precariously from a thin cable, which in context reads like a thread from some mechanical spider. In Allegory of Balance #41, a conical form likewise hangs mere millimeters from the base. In direct contrast with the figures in the Upwelling series, here the objects, whose elegant steel bases are honed to an almost fragile pin-point, are aiming at the floor, and even a viewer disinclined to phenomenology can’t help but feel the pull of gravity as they approach. As with the eggs of the Dan series, these pendulums remain motionless, but here the motionlessness becomes palpable because of the possibility of motion, the stillness itself creating its own tangible presence. By drawing us into the invisible physical forces at play around us, Li in fact begins to gently guide us beyond the physical. Far from harmonious, here the physical moves into tension with the metaphysical, the spiritual heights to which Li ambitiously hopes to direct our attention.
Nowhere is this more evident than the monumental masterpiece Beyond the Height #5. Inspired only in part by the physical forms of the great Cereus cacti of the Arizona desert, Li’s interest was in the psychological or even spiritual experience he had when encountering them for the first time, and it is this phenomenological aspect he is trying to capture through the interplay of dualisms contained in the work. Compared to the smaller works of the Allegory of Balance series, here the towering pile of gleaming objects has a much more solid and grounded feel. There is no longer any danger that it will all collapse at any moment. On the contrary, after our initial glance to its heights, we are confident enough to be drawn in to investigate the fragments of colored ceramic bolted firmly around the perimeters of various steel bodies. As the realization dawns that these fragments are from the very same vessels on display at the entrance to the show, we are pulled in closer still to investigate the precise miniature screw heads, which might call to mind (for those of a certain imaginative bent) the rivets on the armor of the thousands of buried terracotta warriors in Xi’an. Even the unorthodox screws themselves demand attention, with thick cylindrical heads and hexagonal fittings. Unlike the other works in the show, which almost seem to have appeared effortlessly ex nihilo, here we become much more aware that what we are experiencing has been deliberately constructed into exactly this form. [Figure 5 Beyond the Height #5 detail] Stepping back now, the eye is caught by its own reflection in the steel surface, which at this scale functions as a full-length mirror. We are trapped on the deep surface of the work, looking at a version of ourselves looking back from the inside. We might become aware of others around us, sharing the experience, or, if alone, of the empty space of the gallery appearing inside the sculpture itself. Inside and outside, one of the most primitive of dualisms, are momentarily reversed and we are disoriented, unsure. Perhaps we take a step back again now, hesitating before the complicated forces at play around us. Again we look up, but this time not with a glance, now with a deliberate gaze, as if standing before a sacred monolith in an alien temple, which, in a certain sense, is exactly what we are doing. Again, there is harmony here, but also a disquieting uneasiness, the tension one feels in the face of things we do not understand.
Immanuel Kant, arguably the most important German philosopher of all time, had a name for this, or for something relevantly similar, which might help to articulate what seems to be going on here. Kant, who adored philosophical jargon, came up with the phrase the antimonies of experience” to name contradictions that necessarily arise when the limited human mind attempts to step beyond the scope of its powers. The mind, for example, takes up two quite natural, plausible thoughts like “all things must have a beginning” and “the universe is infinite, with no beginning or end,” and runs into stark and unresolvable contradiction. This demonstrated quite concretely, for Kant at least, the limits of human understanding, and the need to articulate human knowledge as bound by certain limits. Whether Kant’s notion of antimonies function philosophically as he wanted them to (consensus seems to be that they don’t), I think Li’s “antimonies” are working perfectly. The contradictions of the forever multiplying dualities, the harmonies, resonances, and tensions formed between them create in the viewer a kind of rupture, deliberately revealing the limits of our understanding of the physical world, but in so doing directing our attention to a place beyond physics, beyond gravity, beyond dimension, “beyond the height”. From physics we are, again, lead inexorably to metaphysics.
To return from these heights of philosophy, I would like to call attention to one final moment of tension and dualism unique to this particular exhibition of Li Hongwei’s oeuvre, that of Work vs. Play. For surely one access point into this body of work is through the door of playfulness, through his joyful experimentation with materiality as such. In conversation, Li has explained that he aspires to have his work seem utterly light, effortless, like an athlete performing some impossible maneuver while making it look easy. It is worth stating clearly at this point that Li is completely involved in every single part of his production process. He builds the vessels, manages the complicated firing the crystalline glaze demands, shatters the pots deemed imperfect, sketches the imagined sculptures, works out the engineering, builds models, carves Styrofoam, casts, molds, and polishes huge quantities of steel, and when required, hand screws thousands of fragments together to create his final result. This list alone puts paid to the idea that the work is easy or effortless, yet this effort is never made visible to the viewer. “Constructing Radiance” is the first exhibition in which the public has had the opportunity to catch a few small glimpses behind the wizard’s curtain, in the form of a handful of photographs from his studio and preliminary sketches for his work.
In the drawings we can see Li repeatedly sketching on page after page the same mechanisms which compose Rebirth in Breakage, as though caught in the grip of an undiagnosed obsessive compulsion. The drawings contain no measurements, and are not intended as blueprints, but rather are what is left behind by somebody almost ritually working out a complex idea. If the drawings reveal a degree of mental labor, the photographs reveal some sense of the manual labor involved Hongwei’s work. In one, Li squats behind a field of potshards, surrounded by nearly perfect vessels of many colors, holding a large hammer and looking stoically, even defiantly at the camera. In my favorite, eight adult men in overalls are at work on various elements, some grinding steel, some welding behind a shower of sparks, some poised (but unposed) on scaffolding to hold unfinished sections in place. Here we see that all the seemingly effortless, easy play of Li’s practice is in fact an enormous amount of work, that radiance IS in fact a construction to which he routinely devotes ten-hour days. Perhaps one of the most telling fragments of evidence for all this came to me from a brief moment during an artist talk Li gave as part of the exhibition program. For a few seconds there appeared on the screen a photograph of the reverse sides of a vast collection of pottery shards being prepared for a monumental work, and we could see the shards were all numbered. Each shard had an exact place in the final composition, a fixed position in what appeared to be a totally chaotic jumble of things. This level of precision, of perfectionism, is unparalleled in my experience of working with contemporary artists, and activated yet another duality at stake in the work, that between order and chaos.
In traditional Anglo-American philosophy, the word “dualism” is used to refer to the commonplace idea that there exist in the world two, and only two, fundamental kinds of things: the physical and the spiritual. In textbooks it is typically associated with Early Modern European thinkers like Rene Descartes, but the basic idea persists as not only the cornerstone of most religions but also the general worldview of almost three quarters of the world’s population. Li Hongwei’s work provides us the possibility of revisiting this pedestrian version of dualism, replacing it with multiple binaries in which physical objects lead us first to invisible physical forces and from there to possibilities beyond. It is perhaps a commonplace observation that all art, at least the most interesting, operates at the intersection of mind and world. By delicately playing with the invisible forces of the visible world, Li Hongwei’s sculpture is a multi-dimensional car crash at that intersection, such that one can no longer tell where one ends and the other begins.
Benjamin Evans is an arts administrator and independent curator who serves as the Assistant Director/Curator of the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum in New York. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research in New York and an MFA in Mixed Media from the University of Calgary. His most recent position was as Assistant Coordinator for the International Academy of Ceramics (AIC-IAC).
Constructing Radiance: Sculpture by Li Hongwei is on view between September 26, 2024, and March 30, 2025, at the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum at Alfred University, New York.
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Captions
- Installation view, Constructing Radiance: Sculpture by Li Hongwei, September 2024 – March 2025, Alfred Ceramic Art Museum. Photo credit: Brian Ogglesby
- Upwelling of Gravity #69, 2019, Fired porcelain, stainless steel 9.8×9.8×24.5 inches. Photo credit: Brian Ogglesby
- Allegory of Balance #40, 2024, Fired porcelain, stainless steel 26x18x50 inches. Photo credit: Brian Ogglesby
- Allegory of Balance #41, 2024, Fired porcelain, stainless steel 27.5×21.6×63 inches. Photo credit: Brian Ogglesby
- Beyond the Height #5, 2024, Fired porcelain, stainless steel 60x43x138 inches. Photo credit: Brian Ogglesby
- Li Hongwei in his Beijing studio. Photo credit: Li Hongwei Studio
