Qiu Zhijie: Deja Vu Hanart TZ Gallery Until April 9
Qiu Zhijie and Total Art Studio: How to Become an Empty Man Hanart Square Until April 30

A remarkably concise exhibition, Deja Vu consists of some half-dozen sculptural forms constructed of thin copper plates: beginning from tightly packed schematic arrangements of repeated symbolic images laid out across the face of these metal sheets – visually recalling the thangka designs with which the artists routinely works – Qiu Zhijie then cuts out and unfolds the figures depicted, approaching something between shadow puppetry and a pop-up book while retaining his trademark mythological vocabulary.

Reportedly inspired by the archetypal spaces of classical Chinese literature, these forms define a highly structural and repetitive space of iconography, limiting readings to apparently intentional strictures of reception: the Lotus Pond, the Feast, and other generic spaces are coded as inherently two-dimensional conceptual environments. Nevertheless, the play of form becomes intriguing in occasional moments, as when shadow and transparency compete with the metallic shimmer of the pieces proper. This is an extension of drawing (or, more likely for Qiu, ink painting and calligraphic inscription) as a symbolic practice, compressing the artist’s sprawling architectural projects into an impressively dense image space.

Many believe that Qiu Zhijie now produces his most interesting work as an educator and theoretician rather than as an artist; a concurrent exhibition produced by his Total Art Studio at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou intends to complement the gallery exhibition by proving this point. The most impressive moments come with a series of simple videos that document his lectures, leading students through complex leaps of logic and enforcing the broadly systemic nature of contemporary cultural production.

Other projects, however, largely reflect the work of his students, creating interesting opportunities to question the role of Qiu’s aesthetic in the formation of student work and drawing parallels between classroom and studio practice but, ultimately, offering few moments of artistic inspiration. In How to Become an Empty Man students are instructed to empty their thoughts in reverse on blackboards, while in Ideal World and Water Crossing students collaborate on group murals that reflect Qiu Zhijie’s own aesthetic to varying degrees. Instructed to engage in the creation of narratives and structures that precisely reflect his own concerns with myth today, however, such work remains more assisted studio practice than pedagogical development.

Robin Peckham