Introduction
PEACE OUT
Text by Liu Hanwen
Introduction
Chic and disillusioned night owls emerge from the nightlife of New York's TriBeCa, striding uptown in the early June morning, basking in the first rays of sun. Their tired faces, concealed behind exquisite sunglasses, betray the night of revelry. These young, affluent men and women look around, exchanging smiles and conversation. Upon finding a street corner shop, they crowd in and exit with cups of black coffee in hand. Leading the group, a young woman places her barely chewed gum on the coffee cup's lid and guides the jovial crowd northward for a couple more blocks. Eventually, they enter a skyscraper and, after reaching the 16th floor, arrive at their destination—a treatment facility called ReVit. In recent years, intravenous therapy (IV therapy) has gained popularity as a fashionable and swift health maintenance option among young urban dwellers. The facility's lobby features neatly arranged rows of plush lounge sofas. Nighttime revelers settle in, selecting their chosen IV treatments for the day. The treatment menu offers a wide array of options, even more elaborate than Atera's restaurant menu. Unsurprisingly, this group unanimously opts for alcohol treatment and NAD+ therapy. Once everyone is settled, a new round of cheerful conversation ensues. But suddenly, as if a ghost passed by, everyone halts their conversation and sits motionless on the sofas, staring vacantly, waiting for their treatments to conclude. The lobby of the treatment facility briefly returns to silence. Two hours later, these young individuals with radiant skin look revitalized and plunge into the bustling city center, embarking on their new day.
In Kang Haoxian's eyes, contemporary social lives, lifestyles, and people's patterns of interaction, as signs of the popular culture and the social milieu, are all channels to expose societal problems. The fictional social scene described above serves as a synecdoche for Kang Haoxian's new works featured in this exhibition. It summarizes the myth of contemporary social life depicted by the artist. Through this scene, we can observe the social behavior and lifestyle of contemporary individuals, amplified and disseminated through social media. They derive from the popular culture and, in turn, become part of it. This peculiar aspect of social culture, like an unofficial history, remains concealed in the hidden corners of contemporary life, yet it serves as a fable-like reflection of people's behavioral patterns and living conditions.
The "Palace of Leisure" draws inspiration from historical descriptions of places where the leisured class would indulge in pleasure. However, in this context, the "Palace of Leisure" is a mixed and composite form of imagination pervading the narrative atmosphere of Kang Haoxian's new works. It corresponds to two concepts. First, it represents the transient spatial scenes that contemporary individuals continuously experience during their social activities. The space in the "Palace of Leisure" exists beyond the confines of everyday spaces. In the past, this kind of space played a crucial role in defining the essential characteristics of a leisured class within a pre-modern environment. Interestingly, this spatial concept, in its current form, has dispersed in various ways within today's society. In the "Palace of Leisure," there are no specific rules guiding people's activities or thought processes, and productive activities are obscured. Here, individuals temporarily gain autonomy in their actions. In Kang Haoxian's new works, many such spaces are portrayed, simplified and turned into symbolic stages for the artist to manipulate the characters he depicts.
Escalators, elevators, balconies, empty conference tables, interior and exterior of cars—these spaces Kang Haoxian that has chosen are all fraught with urgency. Nobody lingers in such spaces for long; they act as fleeting respites squeezed between two functional spaces. In these brief moments, no productive goals or intellectual output will be achieved. These spaces are simplified into passageways or suspended voids, where the action of entering fulfill their purpose. It’s once again up the individuals within to decide whether to stay, to wait, and how to pass their time. Therefore, Kang Haoxian’s discussion and depiction of such a special concept is worthwhile, as it is the voids and our disillusionment that offer endless possibilities to these spaces, gradually shaping the action models of the contemporary. Kang Haoxian keenly captures the characteristics of these spaces and transforms them into unconscious social settings in his observations and subsequent creations.
As a result, the "Palace of Leisure" becomes a narrative scene for Kang Haoxian's new exploration, serving as an introduction that enables the artist to describe the state of contemporary social life that he has long been interested in. Amid the meticulously organized schedule of activities, the "Palace of Leisure" provides people with a new form of social life and state of behavior. As the fictional scenario described in the introduction suggests, if every line in the itinerary represents a formal social occasion, every interval offers fertile ground for self-directed actions. In these informal intervals, there are no deliberate social settings. Just like when they are waiting for the IV therapy, people have the liberty to choose collective silence or suddenly engage in a new conversation or social interaction. It is only in such scenes that the absence of attention is allowed, and genuine moments of selfhood emerge. It is in these moments that unconscious conversations and interactions triggered by a lack of attention come to life.
This behavioral state has always been lurking in our social lives. In the scenes of the "Palace of Leisure," Kang Haoxian captures this state through group portraits . In works such as "Blue Night," "Friday Night 2," "Look! Far Away," we see stylish individuals gathered in groups. Some are engaged in interactions, while others are immersed in joy. What's more intriguing is the individuals lost in their thoughts amid the colorful social scene. In the “Palace of Leisure,” being lost in thought or purely absorbed in oneself is acknowledged, as it endows a sculptural beauty to the actions of an individual, both rigid and vivid. It clings to individuals like a thin mist in the wasteland, forming postures transcending actions per se in a certain manner. The man leaning against the backseat of a limousine exudes a carefree aura, oblivious to the conversation inside the vehicle. The celebrity stepping out of the car with a stylish scarf wrapped around her head immerses herself in every movement of her exit. The black woman lying down at the conference table can freely reveal her exhaustion. And the lady striking poses for an imaginary audience while descending with the escalator appears so endearing, because in this moment, in this unstructured, purposeless, and distracted moment, we see her ego that is only revealed when carried away.
While the surrounding festivities continue, unconscious conversations and interactions unfold, and carefully adorned social lives blend with absorbed actions, creating a symptomatic portrayal of contemporary social culture and behavior. In Kang Haoxian's group portraits, individuals are integrated and set against each other, socializing as if on a mission. We want to eavesdrop on the whispers and secrets of the elite, or to overhear the loud conspiracies of successful businessmen in the social scene. Meanwhile, the unpredictable outcomes or collaborations arising from casual conversations and interactions excite us. Yet, in a moment of bewilderment, we witness two women placed in the crowd by Kang Haoxian, gazing at each other with intensity under the setting sun, or a man and a woman unconsciously holding hands. How romantic and enchanting. These people struggle mildly and resist restrainedly, breaking away from the jubilation before becoming part of it by going into a trance, to declare that they intend to regain control of their life's rhythm in the splendid social life, like making a frolicking statement. But before long, as the merriment resumes, they will plunge back into the festivities.
In the end, in Kang Haoxian's delineation of the ”Palace of Leisure,” there is a moment of respite with countless stories simultaneously gushing forth, where intentional, unintentional conversations and whispers, scattered, passionate actions and contacts, absent-minded and concentrated postures and expressions, turn these works into an unofficial history of social life, playing the B-side of the glamorous celebrities. Kang Haoxian's gaze is sharp, and his perspective captures the contemporary pop culture phenomena with surgical precision. He portrays the social culture as a representation of pop culture. When the once-hidden social lives and deliberately concealed upper-class secrets are exposed to the public with the impetus of the internet, Kang Haoxian gathers the broken footage to piece together the stories. The individuals and images in the “Palace of Leisure,” real or made-up, may not be recorded in the annals of history, but they are like ghosts clandestinely shaping the course of the official history. Those hushed conversations, the impromptu interactions and social intercourse subtly influence the life that people intentionally arrange and record in the official history, just like the testimonies that can only be spoken rather than being documented, recording the present situation of contemporary life.
