In a gallery in Hong Kong’s Chai Wan district last week, during the city’s third annual installment of the international Art Basel fair, the Beijing-based artist Huang Rui introduced a new live work called “Red Black White Grey.” At the start of the performance, four affectless women walked onstage wearing trench coats, then disrobed one by one as Huang, who is sixty-three, slathered their bodies with black and then white paint. He directed them to lie down on a canvas that looked like four Hong Kong flags, in configurations that by the end spelled out “1997,” the year in which sovereignty over the territory transferred from the U.K. to China, and “2047,” the year that Hong Kong is slated to merge completely with the mainland. As the soundtrack’s drums and electric violin built to a furious climax, the women put their coats back on and the artist painted single digits on the front of each jacket, to form “2015.” The music stopped, and the audience applauded.
External sources:
Posted by
on
