At its core, art refers to a highly diverse range of engaging human activities that involve the creation of visuals, auditory, or performed artworks. Art aims to express imaginative and technical skills that are supposed to be appreciated for their beauty and power. The oldest art forms were in the form of visual arts, which included images or objects such as paintings, sculpture, and photography. Characteristics of a piece of art are dependent on mimesis, expression, and a range of other qualities. Art has changed over time to include the general description centered on imagination and human, technical skills. Also, there have emerged numerous artists over the years with various styles and elements. Their works have blended with modern culture in several ways. One such artist is Guan Xiao, whose discordant images unravel her cultural and physical environments and personal thought processes.
Born in 1983 in Chongqing Province, China, Guan Xiao lives and works as an artist in Beijing. Xiao received her Bachelor of Arts (BA) in directing film from the Communication University of China in 2006. Xiao is known for juxtaposing the past, the present, and the future through a combination of diverse cultural artifacts and modern technology ("Guan Xiao — Art21", 2021). Most of her videos and sculptural works are centered on the idea of permanence, perception, and the general changes and transformations of art over time. For Guan Xiao, the world is constantly changing and never fixated. Therefore, neither human beings nor objects are static. On the contrary, their respective identities are determined by exposure to visual and auditory experiences. Her intrinsic belief in the impermanence of things contradicts the scientific principles that consider all matter predictable. Conceding the importance of people, objects, and phenomena, Xiao’s videos explore how technology, particularly the internet, shapes the world's vision.
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Based on the videos featuring Guan Xiao, it is apparent that art has evolved over the years. According to her, art is spending a significant amount of time at the studio trying to create beautiful pieces using materials that are of one’s interests ("Guan Xiao — Art21", 2021). For example, in the video titled “Beijing, Art in the Twenty-first Century” Season 10 Episode 2, Guan Xiao reveals that painting materials vary and depend on the artist’s preferences. Some are smooth-like, while others have a coarse texture. She further adds that her pieces of art are a mixture of elements of shape and ready-mades. The shape element in art is an area of two or three-dimensional space, usually defined by edges (Mamassian, 2018). Naturally, shapes are flat and can either be geometric, organic, and figurative. For instance, in the video, Xiao reveals various organic shapes she has collected from various industrial elements such as motorbike parts. Depending on the artwork, the visual element of shape can control how one feels in the composition of an artwork.
Looking at Xiao’s pieces of art, most of her representational shapes are drawn to a large degree of accuracy. Although realism is not the sole objective, her art has been styled with various levels of detail, from a mere monochrome outline to pieces that are fully rendered with color, tone, pattern, and texture. For example, the leafy painting shown in the video is a still-life piece of art that uses accurate organic shapes but evolves as an outstanding study of tone and texture while developing the choices of color as the major themes of the piece of work. Besides, she draws her inspiration from a fairy tale world where any character can get a life. This includes the collection of various inspirations ranging from trees to teapots.
Research reveals that different artists have varying styles of how they would like to create their images (Elgammal, 2017). Guan Xiao reveals that in her sculptures, she likes to create conflict and resistance. Generally, her ideas are based on creating images that do not conform to rigidness and certainty but instead leave the viewer wondering why some elements are off. To achieve this kind of constantly changing aspect, Guan Xiao uses different materials and processes. Therefore, as an artist, it is crucial to have a collection of materials that one may need for their painting. The artist leverages technology where she collects and arranges her materials and processes first on the computer before beginning the actual painting. Technology has played a significant role in art. For instance, while searching for ideas, they can get them on sites such as Pinterest. According to Guan Xiao, however, such sites are uninteresting, yet most of her works are interesting. One of the impacts is dependent on the advancements that have led to big data. Back then, the lack of advancement made most of these sites bring up strange things, which according to Xiao, were beneficial in art because things were linked such that they brought mysterious logic. The mysterious part is essential in Xiao’s part as she believes art should have a hidden message behind it.
Further, Guan Xiao reveals that her art should not be questionable to her viewers but should instead enable the audience to delve into deep thinking about the messages being brought forth. Furthermore, as a Chinese artist, the tendency of mist of art brings forth a cultural message about contemporary society in China. Through the choice of materials, an artist can relate it to a certain era when things were done in a particular way. For example, the use of ceramics in her drawings reveals that Guan Xiao relates to the ancient Chinese culture, where ceramic was a common material used in the pottery industry. The combination of past and present and primitive with high technology enables Xiao to use modern technology to unravel and address her culture. Disregarding linear time, her works consider diversity across cultures and various artifacts. Comparing regionally and chronologically different objects reveals similarities if cultures, eras, and regions while at the same time avoid particular conclusions. As mentioned earlier, her art pieces are meant to be puzzles and convey messages that the audience or viewer is supposed to resolve or comprehend on their own.
In her most recent video, Guan reveals that the modern culture has made artists always depend on technological gadgets such as smartphones and computers while doing their work. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, technology plays a significant and crucial role in almost every aspect of our lives, and art is not an exception. According to Guan, our modern era culture expects people to cope and work with distractions. These include the internet and frequent email and social media alerts. As a result of this kind of dependency on the media, Guan Xiao reveals that artists must avoid such distractions. This will give them ample time for meditation, better experiences, and consequently improved and well-thought-of outcomes of their videos. Her urge to resist distractions reveals the impacts of technology in our modern-day culture. As artists, stepping away from technology makes one think deeply about the sculptures and videos they are making for their audiences.
Commonly, the Chinese culture anticipates that its artists will produce work with overt social and political messages attached to it. Furthermore, the Chinese culture is significantly influenced by the social and political aspects of society. Based on her pieces of art, however, Guan Xiao has managed to diversify her work. It is not entirely based on the political aspects of the nation. On the contrary, she hopes that Asian artists have a variety of art to make and sell. Artists that came before Guan felt the pressure to always stick to art that passed a political message because of the urge to express their need for freedom. Furthermore, there are political ideologies that restrict its citizens in China, and sometimes some forms of arts are not allowed. In her video, she urges fellow artists to break free from the artistic chains of being politically oriented.
In conclusion, art has come a long way over the years, as revealed through Guan Xiao’s videos, paintings, and sculptures. Based on the extensively done research, her work is mainly a combination of the past with the present and traditional with high-technology to bring forth outstanding pieces that puzzle the audience. In her pieces of art, she uses various elements but mostly highlights the importance of shape. She brings together various shapes of art to come up with her own and well-thought ideas. According to Guan Xiao, technology has impacted modern art in that most artists spend a significant amount of time on their phones and computers. In her videos, she urges artists to break loose from distractions and have more meditation time. Concerning culture, the artist reveals politics influence most Asian-based artists in their drawings. Artists, however, should constantly be evolving, as revealed by Guan Xiao.
References
Elgammal, A., Liu, B., Elhoseiny, M., & Mazzone, M. (2017). Can: Creative adversarial networks, generating" art" by learning about styles and deviating from style norms— arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.07068 .
Guan Xiao — Art21 . Art21. (2021). https://art21.org/artist/guan-xiao/ .
Mamassian, P. (2008). Ambiguities and conventions in the perception of visual art. Vision Research , 48 (20), 2143-2153.
