The same year that atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing a rapid close to the Second World War, Aldous Huxley published Perennial Philosophy, a book that probed the notion of a ‘divine reality’. It is curious that at a time when the atom bomb’s detonation affected, not only mass destruction of life on a unprecedented scale, but a general senti- ment that God himself was left dead in the aftermath, Huxley’s book attempted to identify a consensus throughout epochs, cultures, and philosophies of an omnipresent truth or, in Huxley’s words, “the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the imma- nent and transcendent Ground of all being”. The metaphysical divinity that Huxley was after might’ve in fact been the very same God who vanished when mankind realized complete annihilation was just the flick of a switch away. Sixty five years later, Hu Xiangcheng’s exhibition Itinerant Deities is still looking for the presence of a divine being in a world where the ultimate threat of atomic obliteration has been momentarily obscured by the advent of biological cloning and an unbridled sense of material salvation.

In the spacious halls of Shanghai Gallery of Art Hu Xiangcheng’s large-scale installation, painting and photography works form the artist’s own ‘Perennial Philosophy’. This vibrant exhibition attempts to probe the essence, not of trans-historical faith, but the conundrum of contemporary belief systems in the globalized setting of China’s economically driven social reality. It is a situation where a historical and politically determined spiritual vacuum has been confounded by the frivolous, and often irreverent, employment of ‘spiritual’ signs. The de-contextualization of religion, tradition, and its attendant idols is emblematic of China’s paradoxical present-- A society that, while driven by pluralistic aspirations, ultimately takes on the appearance of a landscape littered with empty signifiers. But Hu’s concern is not so much the semiotics of faith but faith itself. He questions where our beliefs lay today. Has faith in a world beyond our tangible reality been circumvented by rationality? Have traditional customs been re-configured to honor practicality and secure our systems of substance? What does transcendence mean today, and is it even important? Throughout the show the dialectic of rationality vs. spirituality and material vs. metaphysical manifests itself in massive, highly complicated pieces.

The perfect square has no corners - I Ching

In several works in the exhibition the motif of the square exemplifies the fundamental dilemma of mankind. The Square doesn’t exist in nature. It is an invention that man has employed to control his environment, yet this attempt at control is ultimately frustrated by the control that his square inventions and systems exercise over him. In X2 Galaxy Planning, an 18-meter-long woodblock print, manifestations of the square in our lives are intertwined with other obscure and appropriated images. Grid cities, computer terminals, Mao’s little red books, newspapers and other right-angle innovations are crammed together to form, as the artist states, “a blueprint for civilization.” If X2 Galaxy Planning is the blueprint for modern civilization then Ambiguous Architecture is the sanctuary for a culture consumed by its own administrative excess. This installation not only references the omnipresent construction site in China, and the developing world’s massive urbanization efforts, but the plethora of ‘squares’ that compose one’s life. The work actually reads like the artist’s autobiography, with the di- mension of each rectangular hole that perforates this hulking red edifice corresponding to Hu’s personal history. Represented in rectangular cutouts are his birth certificate, the floor size of his first apartment, ration tickets, his diploma, and even the dimensions of his death plot.

This idea that we are marked by our material remnants is echoed in Dinosaur Skin, an installation that features a positive steel cast of a dinosaur shape juxtaposed against the rubber mold that was used to make it. Here the artist presents both the positive and negative sides of the sculptural process. The cast from which the steel work is born, like the wood block print, points to the work’s potential for infinite duplication as well as the idea of authenticity in the age of digital and biological reproduction. Forming the texture of this dinosaur skin are protrusions of chops, stamps and paperwork that compose the clerical aspects of our modern existence. Along the positive and negative surface of this ‘dinosaur skin’ cell phone numbers, marriage licenses, land deeds, and authorization stamps give the piece its prophetic quality- like the great dinosaurs that once walked the earth, we too will perish, and what will we leave behind as evidence?

The ‘Itinerant Deities’ theme becomes explicit in a trio of works that occupy the gallery’s front room. Here a troop of florescent green Plexiglas constructs march out in front of an antique bed. Plastered onto the Plexiglas plinths are images of Greek Gods and Goddesses, Corinthian columns and other incarnations of Western classicism. But upon closer examination these Grecian emblems are not situated amongst the relics of Athens or Crete but part of new luxury real estate developments in China. In order to appeal to a nouveau riche enamored by all things Western these neo-deities now adorn villas and plazas as signs of sophistication. However in Hu’s arrangement the plastic pieces are flanked by the meticulous wood carvings of a grand, traditional Chinese bed. The, once brilliant, red of this antiquated wood furnishing provides a stark formal contrast to the screaming green of the Plexiglas. The bed is the innermost womb of one’s dwelling and therefore represents the home, the family, and the motherland. The ornate bed speaks of China’s traditional past and the roots of a culture that, now are being stared down by an army of alien invaders. As an almost cynical gesture, images of fireworks from the World Expo’s opening ceremony blast away inside the bed. In this work the allegory of modern China emerges, whereby historical amnesia has given way to self-colonization by a bunch of glossy, but empty signifiers.

The flipside of this metaphorical equation rests against the gallery’s outer wall of windows. Here the artist has mounted a stratification of shelves made from traditional lattice-work windows. Atop these hand carved windows sits a crowd of Buddhas, Guanyins, and other traditional Chinese religious icons. While some of these statues are actual antiques most are mass produced chachkas that are traded as souvenirs in flea markets. These once scared forms no longer have a place in the homes, hearts and temples of reverent believers but instead masquerade as authentic signifiers of what may in fact be the tired remains of cultural tradition. The window is the portal of the home to the outside world, and these deities sit in the threshold perched for departure against the glimmering, ultra-modern skyline of Pudong in the distance.

On the opposite wall Hu makes the point that the decontextualized deity isn’t unique to China. In Collected Deities black and white photographs of religious idols are mounted in plastic boxes above and below a six-meter florescent tube. These images were all taken in Western museums of non-Western religious objects. In the museum, these sanctified idols become objects of anthropological, archeological, or even aesthetic inquiry and essentially stripped of their religious significance.

Hu’s installations, ambitious and profound as they may be, are only the starting point to understanding the scope of this artist’s multifaceted endeavors. Hu is an artist whose extensive travel and years living abroad- first in Tibet, then Japan and Africa has affected his approach to art making and his role as artist in society. While what is presented at the gallery are ‘artworks’ Hu’s practice extends far beyond the studio and the production of material objects towards activity that affects real social change. He believes that a contemporary artist should not merely address social issues, but more actively look for solutions. Some of his activities has been in the area of administering cultural exchange between Africa and China, such as in the publication and illustration of an Anthology of African poetry, or in his consultation to The United African Nations Pavilion in the 2010 World Expo, or even in his duties as professor at the Shanghai Drama Academy. More recently Hu’s efforts have been concentrated in erecting a traditional Chinese village on the grounds of an abandoned factory in the outskirts of Shanghai.

One could say that the exhibition, Itinerant Deities embodies the problems that the village hopes to rectify, or that the exhibition is an extension of the village. Si Min Hui Guan is a haven with the aim to preserve, revive, interpret and educate about literati culture, Chinese folk customs, crafts and philosophies. The village stands as a monument to Southern Chinese traditional life and catalyst for reviving literati culture and traditional folk customs that are indigenous to the 1600-year-old history that grew out of this Jiangnan region. At the same time the village has an exhibition and event program that sees much contemporary interpretations of traditional forms. This multifaceted ‘research laboratory’ is an effort that involves collaboration with many institutions and individuals, effectually extending Hu’s work not only across the artist/activist divide but across the rural/urban divide as well. Here in this recreated village in Shanghai’s outer most suburbs,

Hu has created a setting that allows for one to quietly and slowly reflect on life - a temporal spatial landing ground for modern man’s weary feet and brain to rest; as well as a device to help slow rapid migration to cities by retaining culture in the agricultural heart of China.
While the world is fast-forwarding towards an urbanized state of hyper modernity, and while the schizophrenic, iconographic overload of our late-capitalist, globalized society has made us causalities of our own material desire, Hu’s work has etched a small but meaningful place for divinity in our lives.