Pillow on Books, A Site-Specific Installation
Pillow on Books 枕上书
Opening: Jan. 19, 4:58 pm (sunset)
On view till Feb. 8
Address: 89 5th Avenue, Suite 702, New York, NY 10003
Pillow on Books - 枕上书, a site-specific installation with pillows and books, related to the artist’s latest publication, Lu Zhang ≈ HuaiErDeMan (Wildman) Clab (New York: Gong Press, 2024), will be presented at Accent Sisters.
Opening on January 19 at 4:58 pm, timed to sunset, this installation-based happening draws inspiration from Lu’s previous public engaged project Sleep Date: It Takes Hundreds of Years to Sleep on the Same Pillow, a traditional Chinese proverb which invokes yuánfèn, the belief that past lives create the possibility for encounters, friendships, and love.
In this special iteration, the artist reflects on the poetic interplay of resting, reading, and wording, weaving together the themes of her artist-book with the embodied act of being together. Transforming parts of the bookstore setting into a shared space for rest and reflection, this “Pillow on Books” invites viewers to slow down, read, and immerse themselves in a dreamy dialogue between books, texts, and presence.
* about the artist:
Lu Zhang was born in Xi’an, and arrived in New York in 2012. Founder of Wildman Clab ( HuaiErDeMan Clab), member of P_______Lub, and co-founder of Chinatown Basketball Club. Lu is an artist who writes visual essays through moving images, dream poems, and situated ceramics. She teaches pottery and plays basketball.
https://www.luzhang.org/
* about the publisher:
GONG PRESS is a publishing project based in New York and Beijing by Qianfan Gu, St. Jiu, and Yuki He. We produce art publications in collaboration with our artist friends. The project is named after the weapon “GONG (弓, bow)”: like a bow without an arrow, Gong Press exists in a state of quiet and dormant potency, ready to be activated through creative collaborations.
https://www.gongpress.art/
* about the publication:
Lu Zhang ≈ HuaiErDeMan (Wildman) Clab is an artist book that serves as both an archive and a reflection on Lu’s public-engaged projects from 2017 to 2023. Within its pages is a collection of materials that trace the evolution of her practice, including documentation of her situationist ceramics, research notes, ephemera, reading references, visual poems, and contributions from her father in the form of drawings and calligraphy. The book-making process itself bears witness to Lu’s journey of reconciliation, exploring how her personal and artistic identity finds a place within a practice that defies easy categorization.
The publication comes in two editions: a special limited edition of 15 copies, presented in a handcrafted ceramic box and accompanied by a matchstick to ignite a ceramic slab, revealing the artist’s manifesto poem; and a regular edition of 450 copies, each accompanied by a hand-made ceramic piece inscribed with a hand-written character by the artist. Both editions make the publication a literal art piece in itself. The book also features a commissioned essay and an interview with the artist by film studies scholar Xueli Wang, as well as a foreword by Herb Tam, offering deeper insights into the context and themes of her work.
Lu Zhang ≈ HuaiErDeMan (Wildman) Clab
《张璐≈怀尔德曼俱乐室》
Artist/艺术家：Lu Zhang 张璐
Editors/编辑：Qianfan Gu 顾虔凡, Herb Tam 谭海俊
Contributors/写作：Herb Tam 谭海俊, Xueli Wang 王雪莉
Translators/翻译：Anqi Gu 顾安祺, Qianfan Gu 顾虔凡
Designer/装帧设计：St. JiuProject Manager/项目统筹：Yuki He 何雨祺
Publisher/出版物制作：Gong Press 弓出版 （New York 纽约）
https://www.gongpress.art/
Edition/版数:
Publication with ceramic box/陶盒精装本：15 + 5 A.P.
Publication with ceramic fragment/瓷片平装本：450
First printing, August 2024 二零二四年八月第一次印刷
Foreword
text by Herb Tam
Throughout history, the coming together of books and fire has symbolized violent revitalizations. In Chinese 凤凰涅槃 refers to the Phoenix immolating itself in flames, undergoing death and rebirth within the fire, and attaining eternal life. In the making of ceramics, fire doesn’t destroy, it creates and strengthens.
This book, documenting five years of the socially cooperative and collaborative activities of Wildman Clab, comes with a fire-proofing ceramic box while offering flammability as an invitation to the reader. A manifesto appears when its ceramic cover tablet is set on fire. Inside, the book expands on the provocations of the manifesto, which reads, not like an absolutist political or artistic doctrine, but more like the poetry of a wanderer’s questions. Wildman Clab founded in 2017 by Lu Zhang is a working theory, a proposal, an offering, and an alternative against what is considered “normal” through projects that bring people together in experiences that invite intimacy and affect into public realms.
The book is structured according to projects grouped into different understandings of Wild and Clab. The Wild conjures ungovernable spaces, interchangeable situations and social oddness, and can be understood as primitive, ancient or simply Asian. With an essay and interview by Xueli Wang (translated by Anqi Gu and Qianfan Gu), we are led through the conceptual and poetic formations of a body of social experiments meant to mediate relational ambiguity in the age of hyperconnectivity and in consideration of ancient beliefs like yuan fen.
In a series of signature works, Wildman Clab hosted matchmaking projects that embodied yuan fen through the aesthetics and metaphorics of the Chinese proverb “十年修得同船渡，百年修得共枕眠” wherein two participants signed up blindly for the same time slots to meet on a ceramic river boat installation, or a suspended conjoined bed. Questions of technological efficiency have reduced the potential for chance meetings, which can be determined by alchemy and intuition. Could the answers for how to find love in our data-driven times be found in how we lived our past lives?
It would be easy to understand Wildman Clab activities within the framework of Western contemporary art discourses, but in her essay, Xueli Wang helpfully contextualizes Wildman Clab outside of obvious categories like relational aesthetics and into a Chinese theory of the jianghu, a realm of outlaw culture existing in parallel with the larger society.
The Clab, a combination of “club” and “lab,” plays freely with existing forms of togetherness evoking spaces of study, research, experimentation, amateurism, and community. HuaiErDeMan (Wildman) Clab has displaced or suspended typical spatial functions by hosting a film screening in a dim sum hall; organizing an exhibition inside a Flushing mini-mall with artworks that explore aspects of life in the neighborhood, installed among room-for-rent postings; and combining an artist-centered MiniMarket with a basketball tournament.
With Wildman Clab, as well as Lu’s engagement in Painting Club and Chinatown Basketball Club she has removed herself from the center of the work. Wildman Clab projects allow participants to imagine meaningful ways to be out of context while balancing prejudiced cultural attitudes. Lu grew up in 1990s Xi’an, when China was transitioning from an era of social collectivism to capitalistic privatization. A communal and pragmatic mentality was drilled through daily activities in Lu’s early childhood. Perhaps that is why her art objects made of ceramic often play a functional role: a trophy hoisted by the champion of a basketball tournament, a Chinese Checker table to be played during a dating project, and as a light source for a sleep date project. As her husband and frequent collaborator, I have witnessed how Lu has developed Wildman Clab into a critical laboratory for re-imagining how communities can function, and how she embraced Wildman Clab practice as an individual artist. The reconciliation of Lu and Wildman Clab together emphasizes a group of amateur enthusiasts embracing imperfection while striving to improve at their own pace, collaboratively learning to give up control over an open-ended outcome, and ideally balancing asymmetrical power dynamics.
Herb Tam is the Curator and Director of Exhibitions at the Museum of Chinese in America. He is also the co-founder of Chinatown Basketball Club and a member of the painting collective P_Lub.