A Review by Andrzej Lawn

You can almost feel the weight of the imagery pressing down on you when confronted with Cui Guotai's recent expressionist paintings at China Square Gallery. Upon entering the gallery, Guotai's 7' by 24' painting entitled National Celebration looms over the viewer. Depicted is a giant locomotive engine, painted in a reddish color so that one almost cannot tell weather it is rust or the actual color of the train, and this is exactly the point. Ambiguities such as this are essential to Guotai's work, as the signs he depicts point simultaneously to both the future and the past.

Guotai's show, appropriately entitled Evidence of a Lost Era, is full of ambiguous historical signs. Using primarily a palette of black and white, Guotai depicts China's icons of the past in an eerie state of limbo. Cities, bridges, trains, planes, cars, loudspeakers, and monuments are held in suspension through Guotai's expressionist painting techniques.

In the painting titled Private Jet, a solitary damaged plane lies in sections rotting at the end of an airport runway, where the marred sections of the craft explode into painterly abstractions, highlighting and concealing what may or may not be the cause of its demise. The work's title is just as fluid and adds a touch of irony. It could be interpreted to be an ironic statement toward China's new capitalist oriented policies, and to the failure of China's older socialist oriented economic policies. In both cases, the future and the past is clouded by an abstraction of symbols.

Guotai's work hints that there is truth to the future that may only be found in the remnants of the past. History is now, yet the remains of the icons of the past are still a part of the present and are still actively playing their part, both consciously and unconsciously. Evidence of a Lost Era reminds us of this.


Photo Credit: Cui Guotai, Nanjing Bridge over Yangtze River, 2008, acrylic on canvas
180 x 260 cm. Courtesy of the artist and ChinaSquare Gallery, New York.


Author's Bio:

Andrzej Lawn is an art critic, artist and writer living in New York.


Exhibition information:

Evidence of a Lost Era
October 1st to November 1st 2008
China Square Gallery, New York City, USA
Curated by Robert C. Morgan.
www.chinasquareny.com