02/11/2019, Tate Modern
I have been to Tate Modern for the rest free exhibitions this week. From my view, it is very meaningful to trace the way of contemporary art and their exploration of new issues or movements. Western Arts, relying on the thoughts or technology revolution, sometimes have to delve into the separated factors behind the background. Therefore, I selected three directions of this show.
Modern Vision
This group of works reflecting the intensity of modern cities and the rapid pace of industrialisation like the high speed of transportation and information are all based on our visual functions. The artists put simplicity of geometries, reorganised shapes and blocks of colours into their abstract images and objects.
The left one (Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1972) shows diverse contours of man’s exaggerated body towards the dynamic space. Lights here have been restructured and embodied into different layers. And these abstract sculptures may represent how fast the speed is with the body in modern society. And the right one (Paris, 1951) portrays a scene of Paris city by means of light and weak-contrasting colours rather than an absolute picture. The lines and planes used in this work create a platform with a light energy flowing in the space.
This one above (The Dinners, 1919) reveals the expression of the dynamic modern word that most people congregated there. The artist chose a corner of the restaurant reflecting one aspect of the modern life. We could see the colours are less contrasting and the people have muscle-like bodies. At a very special angle from the half sky, this painting also emphasises on the crowded modern life, even the dinner time that could not avoid such situations.
Feminism
This is an age for women. I have heard so many times of that similar words from different places. The female artists are the most vanguards of such conversion of values and movements. Here are some of their works below, and apparently, most of them aim to break the rigid recognition of female via showing their desires, sexual realisations and emotions from daily life.
The one above reveals a religious understanding of female power. The artist researched hundreds of female images of God or admirations and collected them onto a huge format of collage. We could see a pyramid-like shape of this collection, and following the time, the primordial image flourished into diverse images of female, or mom in other words. The female artists are not only exploring the personal experience, but beginning to find the basic belief of feminism. It is a worthy attempt for women to get the clear recognition of themselves. But in my opinion, the spiritual world of women might be a more meaningful area to explore.
Media
Media and the network have become an inseparable part of our life, which are structuring our commonly virtual reality. This exhibition shows the artists’ thinking of these media and the information given via these media. And further more, we need to find out the problems behind some social phenomenons that we are inevitably confronting now.
The first is a group of screen collecting many quotations from artists. The second one is an installation of a tower made by thousands of audio machines from different times. They both reveal the impact of media on our human belief from visual and aural aspects which refresh our cognition of world every second. But these media and network as a physical access to the knowledge are so easy to be controlled by powers. How could we figure out the true reality behind the various information is still a question.
This series of exaggerated works shown below is a good example of reflection of the distance between the news and facts. The artists adopted a style of sarcasm to depict each news as a comics like the animal-look people. From these impressive images, I could see a strong message that how ridiculous the events occurred under the organisation of political powers and misleading of the mass media like the war, terrorism and conflict of religions.
Overall, these art works seem to portray our modern issues from the pace, female rights to the media influencing each individual every day. These issues are coming out with the industrialisation process and modern culture building process. However, we human as a part of nature cannot ignore the inadaptability of some aspects. In other words, we cannot betray our inherent essence. Therefore, these issues could be lasting effects in our daily life.