Wen Fang

The Golden Brick:

" Topography of tomorrow's Beijing "

    One day in Tianqiao, right in the middle of ruins hidden behind large advertising signboards, I saw a dog. It was sitting before a door that did not exist anymore. Seeing me approaching, it started barking. Around us, the bright red "happiness" character still hung from the wall of a house halfway bulldozed down. Three minutes later the dog had lost sight of me but kept on barking, desperately, as if to protest : « Though destroyed, this house is still mine ! »

    To be a "rebel" tirelessly criticising everything is not in my nature.

    We calligraphers often say that from a hundred years of history, a genius will not necessarily rise. The great Master Baishi used to say : « Who learns with me shall live. Who tries to copy me shall die… »

    What we have to ask ourselves today is the following question : what must we learn from the Westerners ? During friendship years between China and France, French people rushed to the Confucius exhibition in Paris, while my neighbour was building a copy of the Garden of Venice in a suburb of Beijing, though it lacks water dreadfully…

    A day will come when Chinese real estate promoters will have become rich enough to run a risk, that of stopping to copy foreigners, so to attempt putting the Occidental know-how in the service of creativity and research of a new Chinese architecture.

    Then, "Rebels" like me will not have anything to say anymore…

    Life is short, but I think I will be a witness to this day…

    The installation "Topography of tomorrow's Beijing" represents a whole set of advertisements for real estate facilities, that can be surveyed by walking around Beijing, in this Year 57 after the foundation of the People's Republic of China… These advertisements are printed over cement bricks, contemporary material of Chinese architecture ; they are signed, numbered and dated in the way traditional golden bricks* were, and displayed upon supermarket stalls. Stickers indicate their prices and origins…

    * The golden brick was used in Chinese imperial architecture, made of finely selected materials, and modelled in a minute and refined way. This is what gave it the sound of metal, thus its name of "golden brick". Each brick was signed, dated, its size and manufacturing location indicated, so as to help find the artisan, responsible for the slightest imperfection.

All works are printed on cement bricks.

Dimensions: 30 x 14 x 7cm / brick, Edition: 12