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At the sight of iron in modern China, one thinks of the future, its construction and progress, and decidedly not the past. A sculpture of a fruit tree branch and hummingbird, an antique from pre-war Shanghai, is chosen to be mounted in Liu Dao’s 2009 work, “Rusted”. On the other side of the rice paper shine four LED hummingbirds which jump along an LED halo of the iron carving, creating two worlds in a single piece that speak of one time versus another, a blossoming cultural scene and a period when farmers throughout Gansu Province stood watching human-sized plumes of smoke trickle upwards from the mouths of village furnaces into the cold air. Liu Dao’s technique of matching tangible facets with electric representations is developed in this piece, as the iron material which protrudes from the canvas has its own LED existence like a tree living both underwater and in open air. The red streaks which glow under the branching limbs speak of neon characters inundating the modern world and the sphere of electronic information as a whole, while the twitching, flapping LED birds act as living versions of the iron one who is frozen in stale history. [Pete Bradt] |
