Tan Mu: Signal

An oft-cited turn in the media landscape was the emergence of 24/7 live news in the aftermath of 9/11. The seamless reportage of events from nearby and afar creates a shift in the public’s cognitive modes of being in the world and accordingly, the artistic representation of this perception. Parallel to the relatively small number of news photographs that went on to define a historical moment, continuous coverage and news tickers have joined an infinite number of amateur photos and video footage that has come to shape the narrative and collective memory of a certain space and time.

Tan Mu: Signal, Peres Projects, Milan, 2022. Image: Peres Projects, https://peresprojects.com/exhibitions/tan-mu/#.

In the densely woven network of events, the institutional apparatus increasingly appears as imminent generative machinery. In early 2022, a war unfolds in a cultural, political and censorial proxy battlefield – echoed in many other aspects of everyday life – with powers and intentions conferred on individual life by contending states and organizations. Conversely, web protocols morph into proliferating consumer goods alongside myths and controversies, public health policies dictate a household’s routine and living conditions, and multilateral or intergovernmental fora present a succinct expression of individual beliefs and sentiments. The inner workings of the machinery, meanwhile, remain obscure to many.

Related is the changing typology of source photos and viewing experiences. Drawing from archives of mainstream media, satellite imagery and GIS data, corporate blogs that explain milestone innovations, and shared encounters with devices and applications, Tan Mu’s work faithfully documents the momentum of these transitions. It promises a coherent but multifarious representation of historical development and painterly configuration by juxtaposing images of electronic inventions from the 1970s, such as the DEC’s PDP-10 computer and the blue box telecommunication device, with the data center of today’s tech giants and a game designer’s digital landscape. Impulses for exchange and archiving grow first into signals and bytes and then towards monstrous storage systems. Tan Mu’s body of work offers not assertion or provocation, but a channel towards the key knots, links and intangible forces between historicity and contemporaneity. Categories of the physical and digital, historical and imaginary, and household and cutting-edge give way to vivid memories surrounding each event.

The careful choice of subject matter and imagery sources allows Tan Mu to explore the image as a medium. In particular, the way truth and value is constructed both aesthetically and through how the image comes into being and is circulated. For example, the paintings based on archival or documentary images retain a connection to the past yet at the same time engage with the viewer in the present.

A tale of shifting modes continues as mobile devices eclipse traditional information sources. Industrial design of smartphone screens, evolving photographic methods and the aesthetics of postmillennial social media all shape the image one sees and subscribes to as reality. In NO SIGNAL (2019), the static noise speaks of a liminal appearance upon anticipation of transmissions versus the convergence of random radio waves and natural sources. Breaking from the flow of information, the momentary absence of meaningful input on TV sets — and in other works on show, digital screens — brings anxiety and suspension but also an elusive exit. In a spatial dimension, the locale of “no signal” foregrounds the connectivity between home device and scientific detectors; among others, the cosmic microwave background exerts a substantial influence on the static on analog televisions. Examples of technological, social and affective connectedness permeate Tan Mu’s paintings.

It is only amid such entwined objects, bodies and events that Tan Mu’s view of her work as timestamps manifests its true meaning. Instead of merely recording the date, these “time-stamps” undertake a dual function, a dynamic temporal marker and a stamp bridging pictorial creativity and tokens of postal operation. In other words, the works testify to the process of world-making, of human beings’ mutually shaping techno-science, politics, culture and nature. More precisely, the process is seen through a documentary lens that also emancipates the subject from its fixed place in history, enabling a multitude of contact points with the present.

In this exhibition, the seated young footballer in Turf (2021), arguably the least ambiguous in its crystallized historical form among all other technological atemporality, is in fact Tan Mu’s father, a professional player who decided to retire upon the artist’s birth. The image becomes a record to retrieve an unwitnessed past, a “family photo” that resides outside personal memory and even the family album. Juxtaposed with the “generations” of technology that are adumbrated in this group of paintings, Turf also searches into the positioning of the self and universe, heritage and future, familial lineage and techno-scientific progress.

In the mid-1960s, backdropped in postwar skepticism and prosperity, Gerhard Richter notes that painting from photographs, absolute and autonomous, frees him from conscious thinking.[1] Such keenness continues to resonate in younger generations of painters, yet for Tan Mu, the vision reorients to an interconnected world in reflexive formation and the apparatus behind images that reveal or conceal what reality is. Beyond the artistic concept and subject, Tan Mu’s technique, developed through her vigorous training in painting and media at top academies in China and the US, conveys a distinct style that balances meticulous control, confident execution and genuine appeal.

Parallel Narratives: Editing Angkor Wat at the 1931 l’Exposition Coloniale

Built in the twelfth century by King Suryavarman II, Angkor Wat and its vast complex stand in Cambodia’s northern province of Siem Reap with unrivaled splendor, in its scale, composition, artistic achievements, as well as political and religious significance. “Angkor Wat” translates as “city temple” in Khmer, its original name lost in history. The five main towers, made of stone, are intended to represent the five mountain ranges in Mt. Meru, where Hindu gods reside and heaven and earth are connected through an axis.

Angkor Wat’s structure, as a worldly replica of the religious “axis-mundi,” suggests the central importance of the Angkor Kingdom and its king. Carefully constructed following the cosmic order, especially the rising sun and moon, the entire complex mimics the “mandala,” or diagrams of the world. Archaeological studies by Eleanor Mannikka speculate the funerary purpose of Angkor Wat—evidence includes the temple’s facing west and the direction of bas-reliefs.[1] Dwelling on the temple’s intricate plan and unprecedented grandeur, the Khmer kings proclaim legitimacy in their political reign and spiritual dominance.

Editions BRAUN, Angkor Wat at night at the International Colonial Exhibition in Paris, 1931

ANGKOR WAT AS REPRESENTATION

In 1863, France adopted Cambodia as a protectorate and laid claim to the Angkor region, after the French naturalist and explorer Henri Mouhot’s memoir Voyage dans les royaumes de Siam, de Cambodge, de Laos drew European attention to the site.[2] Angkor Wat caught massive scholarly interest in France and was on show at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, the Exposition permanente des colonies at the Palais de l’Industrie in Paris, and then the 1922 Exposition coloniale.[3]

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Access the full article on Nonument.

The Nonument Group is a multidisciplinary artist collective founded in 2011. Starting as a research group focusing on hidden, abandoned, unwanted or otherwise forgotten 20th century monuments, architecture and public spaces, the group has since carried out several artistic interventions in public spaces.

Stripped Bare and Splash: Rosa Barba at the Park Avenue Armory

Rosa Barba: Artist’s Studio, Park Avenue Armory

Granted a sabbatical from Steyerl’s daring, stringent historical inquiry, the stiff interior of the Veterans Room swings the stage laboriously set by Rosa Barba. Even the dusky tip of metal light fixtures morphed into a rotating disco ball. The wild, disenchanting charmers distilled out the last bit of controlled posture they retained in a high-tech, foolproof robe.

Instead of a refined orchestra—perhaps as the playbill indicated, human performers were having a special night at the pre-installed field— the piece served as a host who expects guests’ presence to complement their hospitality and admirability at the same time. People were invited to the party but got cold feet, allowed limited room to witness and absorb. With every chance to step in and mingle, audiences were only encouraged to applaud while the cast shouted out.

Unlike a Philharmonic’s concert where each performer stands up to high standards and sits prepared for rigorous examination in a fixed duration, the room decor under Barba’s spell relished their liberation from the stale, creaking fixture of glamor treading across time. The furnace, metalwork, Tiffany window all threw themselves onto the dance floor and tapped their feet; to the beat indeed, but with the most naive and carefree body movements.

Drums chased off reluctance and stripped bare the gilded enchantment. Whimsical shrieks are added; the cello is stroked by film strips to produce the most docile sound of harmony. 

An ambitious treasure hunter who can map out all clicky clues and thread a magnetic net, Barba catered a party for her adorably unexpected roster of clients. Whereas Oliver Beer’s vessel orchestra was ingeniously programmed, Barba’s lineup was like those long queues in front of a community bunch spot, each with a chilled look in the infinite wait while radiantly fancying their way of steak and eggs. 

Correspondances in the Woods: Mrinalini Mukherjee at the Met Breuer

It all starts with little wonders, the easily missed but witty type that sparkles with wild imaginations and brings you back to a reunion with nature. Then you see the goddesses arising, myths permeating in the woods, and knots and holes channeling your mind toward an unknown world; but the journey concludes with an intimate conversation where you feel invited to speak and return to nature. Mukherjee’s magnolia flowers are withholding, blossoming, and decaying. Their variation has no intention to glorify the human capacity of imagination, but humbly mediating the undefined force of divinity into a lovable morph. Palmscape IV (2015), the latest piece on show at Met Breuer, offers an instant glance at the artist’s creative process throughout her life. As Mukherjee’s exploration continues, decades of practice culminates with no triumphant laureate but a modest place in nature.

Mrinalini Mukherjee, Met Breuer, July 2019

From the playfully dripping fiber to the unglazed, delicate ceramics, to the confidently detailed bronze, Mukherjee’s choices of material delves deeper into the divine realm with constant personal reflections. It never attempts to proclaim and convince, always remaining open to elastic, contextual renderings. Yet an inherent statement indeed develops and consolidates- the role as a receptacle of nature and divinity. Such assertion breaks down the canonical forms of individual and cultural conventions, pointing to an expansive realm of intellectual and perceptual amazement. When Charles Baudelaire concludes his Correspondances with a hopeful voice for the mankind to engage the spiritual sublime, the former is also endowed with a capacity to speak to every individual reader. Standing in front of Mukherjee’s world of creativity and wonder, each spectator is also granted a place among the woods. 

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner: Silenced Mental Imagery

And I waterd it in fears, / Night & morning with my tears: / And I sunned it with smiles, / And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night. / Till it bore an apple bright. / And my foe beheld it shine, / And he knew that it was mine.

—William Blake, “A Poison Tree”

The story of The Flamethrowers starts bluntly in an enactment, not at all distant, eerie, or oneiric. It does not evoke any blatant literary tradition that calls for nostalgia or melancholic contemplation. It thrusts the image into audiences and pushes them forward along with the collective wave.

Rachel Kushner, the author of the book, confidently points to the images that sparkle her writing. The image of the female protagonist comes from a 1970s Italy poster—Kushner encounters the image from an archival document—featuring “a woman with tape over her mouth...with a grave, almost murderous look, war paint on her cheeks, blonde braids framing her face, the braids a frolicsome countertone to her intensity.”1

This image is not realized through a plot where the woman becomes a rebel and unfortunately gets captured and imprisoned. Instead, the energy surging below the image fuses into a girl nicknamed Reno because of where she comes from, who acts on her instincts and adventures through the turmoils in the mid-70s Italy and New York City.