Sun Yuan and Peng Yu Can’t Help Myself (2016) in Tales of Our Time at the Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York.

Launched by the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative at the Guggenheim, Tales of Our Time aims to challenge traditional notions of place and history through diverse forms of storytelling. In preparation for the show, curators Xiaoyu Weng and Hou Hanru traveled across China in search of avant-garde artists outside of the mainstream who actively engage with social issues. Eight selected artists from a wide range of backgrounds examine and interrogate social-political realities in contemporary Greater China. Despite the vast differences in media, style, and perspective of the works, the exhibition engages its audience in an effortless flow of narratives like a collection of exhilarating short stories, offering gripping plots, surprising twists, and satisfying climaxes.

Known for creating spectacles, Hou deploys his trademark style. When entering the exhibition, the viewer immediately encounters Can’t Help Myself (2016) by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, a gigantic, frenetic robot violently splashing thick crimson liquid all over the space. The headlights are white and luminous, reminiscent of operating tables. The glass walls that contain the monster look like ceiling windows in a downpour of blood. The passage, uncomfortably narrow to walk through, forces a confrontation between the beholder and the spectacle.  Tsang Kin-Wah’s video installation, In the End Is the Word (2016), features edited online footage of sea battles over Diaoyu Islands, the subject of a perpetual territorial dispute between China and Japan. The lights in the room strangely point downward. A conspicuous space lies between the screen and the back of the chamber. The design, however, delivers a pleasant surprise when white words begin flowing over the ground like waves washing up on shore.

More sprawling texts lead one downstairs, where further theatrics unfold. Dimly lit by a wide screen and with walls covered in ink drawings, the cinematic space evokes Plato’s cave. The allegorical animation of Sun Xun’s Mythological Time (2016), screened at the center, merges seamlessly with the stunning mythical visuals of the mural-like background. In the adjacent room that showcases Zhuo Tao’s Land of the Throat (2016), two face-to-face screens operate simultaneously, while the viewer sits awkwardly on the tilted, skateboard-shaped ground, experiencing a disoriented reality with the characters. After a breathtaking flag made of seventy-five types of fabric, a couple of secretive taxi conversations, and a series of identically twisted nails, the audience is invited join a relaxing traditional Chinese tea party that is part of an activist work titled Unwritten Rules Cannot Be Broken (2016) by Yangjiang Group. The activity intends to soothe the anxieties evoked by the other artworks while constructing a harmonious, utopian social environment. One may even test its result with a blood pressure meter, finishing the otherwise intense series of narratives on a humorous note.

The complex composition of some pieces makes it difficult to identify the artists without additional notation, and the labels could be difficult to find. Nonetheless, the connections among the works, the space, and the viewer create a coherent, immersive, and emotionally engaging art experience.

Tales of Our Time is on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York through March 10, 2017.

Lux Yuting Bai is an independent curator and writer. She is also a Curatorial Fellow at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

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“We are not conceptual artists,” Zheng told me very firmly when we spoke (yes, over many cups of fragrant tea) at the gallery. Named after their hometown of Yangjiang, the group formed in 2002 with an anti-authoritarian and inclusive approach to art. Like Joseph Beuys, they believe that anyone is an artist, aiming to challenge the elitism and privilege that attaches to calligraphy in China—and to contemporary art. I asked the artists about their unique approach to calligraphy. Zheng Guogu responded to my questions with the help of a translator, while his two collaborators concentrated on refilling our teacups.

Yangjiang Group. Actions for Tomorrow, 2015; exhibition view, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. Courtesy the artists and Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou. Photo: Zan Wimberley.

Luise Guest: Traditional Chinese scholars liked to drink and gamble, as well as paint and write poetry. Are you following in the footsteps of the literati, or are you challenging those traditions?

Zheng Guogu: At first we wanted to try to experience that life, like the ancient artists. We found that when we were drunk, the calligraphy we made was very beautiful. We thought it had a special energy, so we adopted this kind of practice. Then we found out that when we were drunk we could forget lots of the rules of calligraphy. We discovered that the ancient scholars also had many rules, and by breaking them they could make their calligraphy more expressive. You need to follow traditions first and then break from those traditions.

LG: You have been described as iconoclastic calligraphers who throw thousands of years of Chinese tradition out the window—are you deliberately challenging China’s cultural heritage?

ZG: Yes, we challenge the old rules because each new generation has radicals who must break with tradition.

Yangjiang Group. Actions for Tomorrow, installation view at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art.

LG: Is your mural, which includes the words, “God is Dead, Long Live the RMB!” satirizing art as a commodity of international exchange or the loss of culture and tradition in China in a headlong rush toward ever greater wealth?

ZG: You are not meant to interpret any meaning. You should not use twentieth-century rules to view this exhibition; you should use a new way to see this. It’s not conceptual art; it has nothing to do with the symbols. Last century when you went to a gallery and saw an artwork, you would be guessing the meaning behind it. But now, with this work, it’s about how your body reacts—it’s an immediate response, an instinctive and emotional response.

LG: By choosing to work with calligraphy, you are positioning yourselves in a continuing Chinese cultural tradition. By subverting it, you are critiquing Chinese culture. Are some of your works  political statements? Here you have written, “God is Dead, Long Live the RMB,” for example…

ZG: No. It’s not art of the head—it’s art of the body and the heart. When you enter into this social space you feel the energy and increase your spirit. It’s not about the meaning.

Yangjiang Group. Final Days, 2015; installation view, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, wax and modified clothing installation, dimensions variable. Commissioned by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. Courtesy the artists and Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou. Photo: Zan Wimberley

LG: Okay, but in Fuck Off the Rules [1], you appeared to be challenging the very nature and value of art. What do you think is the importance of art in today’s world?

ZG: Lots of artists today are just fake. Real artists should break the traditional rules. Forget what the form is—then you can create real art. Previous generations of artists are not on the opposite side to us, we are one line of artists. We are all like the gods.

LG: There seem to be two things that are very important to you—language and what you call “the spirit.” How is spirituality important in your work? And are these two things connected?

ZG: To write you need spirit—or qi. [2] You use one breath to write one character, so the spirit is important. Some of the ancient calligraphers also practiced kung fu, so they needed to have great energy. This refers to the spirit and the breath. When you are writing, your brush strokes follow your breath. When you see calligraphy, you see the writer’s ‘qi‘. This has a relationship with the universe, the earth rotating and orbiting the sun—the same as the systems in your body. Writing calligraphy follows these rules.

Yangjiang Group. Final Days, 2015; installation view, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, wax and modified clothing installation, dimensions variable. Commissioned by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. Courtesy the artists and Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou. Photo: Zan Wimberley

LG: How did you three meet, and how did the group start?

ZG: Before 2002, I was working in photography, and then I transferred to writing texts…. In ancient times words had some spirit or energy inside, related to their nature, as well as something to do with the symbol and the sounds. So I think that words are not 2-D they are 3-D. They are alive. I changed my own name to ‘Guogu’ so that it would be a unique creation. Then I created my persona, my identity. When somebody calls your name there is some vibration in the air, in the universe. If you have a negative name the vibration will be negative. Although I think that words have very strong vibrations, I am not trained in calligraphy, but Chen Zaiyan is a professionally trained calligrapher, trained in Hangzhou. Sun Qinglin is from Yangjiang. I invited him because I saw his drunk calligraphy and it had a special energy. So we formed this little group.

Yangjiang Group, Das Kapital Football (still), 2009, ink on Xuan paper calligraphy, action, documentation, installation (two-channel video: DV widescreen anamorphic, color, with sound, ink on Xuan paper carpet). Courtesy the artists and Vitamin Creative Space.

LG: When people think of Chinese contemporary art, they think of the major art centers of Beijing and Shanghai—perhaps not of Yangjiang! What makes you stay?

ZG: Lots of people ask this! A previous generation needed to go to the art centers like Beijing, escaping from small towns, but the real inspiration for an artist is equally from small places. There is no reason to think there is less inspiration from a small town, or more inspiration from a big city…. In a small town people are living their normal lives, and our work is closer to ordinary people. I find that the most essential thing is to stay in one place and to pay attention. It’s like art meditation. In a big city there are too many distractions and you cannot concentrate. A real artist has to find real life.

LG: The Yangjiang Group has blurred the boundaries between art and life. In the past you have made works documenting gambling, drinking, football, gardening…. Some people might say, “Is that really art? Is that not just life?” What would you tell them?

ZG: The purpose of art is to make people live better. That explains everything we do.

The concluding event of Yangjiang’s Sydney sojourn is the Twilight Garden Party in the Chinese Garden of Friendship on February 14; Actions for Tomorrow is on view at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney through March 7, 2015.

[1] Yangjiang’s 2014 exhibition at Shanghai’s Minsheng Museum, Fuck Off the Rules, was a not-so-subtle reference to Ai Weiwei’s notorious Fuck Off exhibition and an illustration of their anarchic anti-art approach to the veneration of calligraphy in Chinese culture.

[2] The literal translation is “air” or “breath.” It is the underlying principle in traditional Chinese medicine and the practice of martial art forms. It refers to the life force and the flow of energy through the body.