Let's Stick Together: "Chopsticks" Dual Exhibit

It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: “What do you get with only one chopstick?” [Hungry? –Ed.] Yet at the hands of two of today’s most acclaimed artists, Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen, it’s not a joke, but rather a clear statement of their artistic practices. The husband-and-wife pair claim that, like chopsticks, each of them is useless without the other.

Chambers Fine Art, a pioneer in exhibiting Chinese contemporary art in New York, exhibited Song and Yin’s works in 2002 and 2006, both shows using “chopsticks” as their themes. This month, the Chambers Beijing gallery, which opened in 2007, will premiere the third incarnation of “Chopsticks.” Though Beijing serves as their base and is a consistent and central focus in both artists’ practice, this exhibit actually presents a unique opportunity to see new works by the artists in their home city.

One of the most intriguing aspects of this series is that Song and Yin create works independently and in secret; when the shows premiere, the artists themselves are seeing each others’ pieces for the first time. Often they unveil work both vastly different and eerily similar.

For example, in 2006 Song’s metal chopstick investigated the north-south axis of Beijing. In contrast, Yin’s chopstick was made of stockings stuffed with foam, but it too examined the city’s central axis. Other than the dimensions of the chopsticks, the artists hadn’t consulted each other about what they were creating.

Outside of this series of exhibits, Song and Yin are inspired by each other and work together in their shared studio, but their end products reveal marked material, conceptual and aesthetic distinctions. For example, in her series “Traveling Cities” Yin creates models of cities that are fashioned from found scrap fabric and old suitcases. The cities to which she’s alluding aren’t always recognizable in her childlike sculptings, but hidden clues affixed to the suitcase hint at the various locales. Fabric and found objects are a consistent theme in Yin’s work. She focuses on the embodied and the present, choosing to exhibit detritus that through her interventions continue to exist even after the original owner has discarded it.

Yin’s use of material objects sits in contrast to Song’s more fleeting and performative works. Explorations of the changing states of water run continually through his art. In one piece from January, he breathed for 40 minutes until he formed a patch of ice. He also keeps a diary, one he writes in water.

Due to the secrecy of the projects, even the exhibit’s organizers don’t know what to expect, which quite frankly demonstrates a staggering amount of trust. The only detail the artists have discussed is that the project will be broken into 12 parts, with each artist creating three pairs of chopsticks. One pair will be given to their daughter as a gift for her eighth birthday.

This upcoming exhibit gives weight and a sense of arrival to the idealistic tone of the earlier shows. During the 2002 exhibit Song and Yin celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary. Now, nine years later, the couple has endured. In fact, they have thrived in the viciously competitive contemporary art world. And both have secured international praise: Song Dong will show work at the upcoming Venice Biennale and Yin has a solo show at Alexander Ochs Galleries Berlin this summer.

The June exhibit, featuring all new works, is an exceptional chance to see what these hometown art stars will produce. Don’t let the cute factor of their “chopstick-dom” keep you away.

“Chopsticks” is on show at Chambers Fine Art Beijing from Jun 11 to Jul 30.

PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE ORGANIZERS